Repetition

There's so much repetition happening in my life right now.  Some good, some...less than good.  I am a repeat offender in regards to art, good music, obscene levels of milk drinking, being generally hilarious...purposefully or not, and collecting weird stuff that I don't really have room for but that's too cool to pass up.  That's all generally good stuff.  But I'm also a repeat offender for stinky stuff...cigarettes, junk food, staying up too late at night when I have to get up the next day (ending in the zombification of me during daylight hours) and of caring too much about people who will never care about me.

I've talked about that last one before...like I said, I am a repeat offender and I know it.  I haven't been able to help it so far...once you get into a habit, it's easy to stay in it.  Maybe it's something everybody does at some point...loving someone who will never love you in return.  You know their feelings will never change, but it's like an addiction...you feel powerless to resist the pull they have on you, despite the fact that the entire thing is one-sided...even when you finally see that it's one-sided, you still try to make them love you.  Relationships shouldn't work that way.  Real relationships don't work that way.  

Unfortunately for me, I am an expert at finding these one-sided love situations.  I've always been that way.  I find the person who will take and take and take because I'm willing to give.  I don't think that it's a bad thing to be willing to give, or to take a leap and hope that this time will be different from all the other times you've been let down.  Hope can be a terrible and dangerous thing sometimes.  But I want to love and be loved in return, and the only way to do that is to put your love out there.

Since I've been art journaling, which has pushed me to get in touch with how I really feel about things in my life, I've come to see that I don't have to keep letting people steal my love.  That's not a requirement of love at all.  Love is too valuable to be wasted on people who don't appreciate it.  The feeling that my love is too valuable to be wasted is new to me.  I mean, I've understood the concept, just not as it applied to me.  Now I think I'm beginning to understand.  You, me, whoever...we're all worth so much more than our desperate need for affection.  We have to love ourselves first, before we can expect anyone else to love us.  We have to have enough self-respect not to jump into things with both feet and not try to get back to shore when we realize we're swimming in leach infested waters.

So I've got that part down...the part where I know that I need to make a break.  The next step, I'm not so sure about.  Now that I've unleashed my emotions, I have a tendency to feel very...passionately...  Passionate love is what I've got...but the downfall is that I have the opposite problem too...  And the opposite of passionate love is passionate hate...actually, that's not true.  I really think that the opposite of passionate love is apathy...in my eyes, having someone hate you is much better than having someone be indifferent toward you.  But I haven't learned how to be apathetic yet...I really don't know that I'm cruel enough to ever be apathetic toward a person...so what I have to work with is passionate hate.  That's my solution for now.  

I know, I know...that's not a solution.  But it's what I have to let (or make) myself feel for now.  It's the only way to break the cycle of too much unhealthy love.  Therefore, if I happen to see a certain person and set my jaw, roll my eyes, or comment to a friend that I hate said-person's stupid face, it's only because at one point I loved too much.  I have to replace the love I felt and the pain of rejection with the feeling of general disgust toward the person I formerly cared for.  And if I fake it often enough, eventually it will become how I really feel.  And maybe at some point in the future, I will be wise enough to let that disgust fade into not caring at all.  

And that's the thought I had in mind when I made this journal page:

"Repetition creates a habit.  Repetition breaks a habit too."  -Melissa Ferrick

Here's a live version of the song that the words on the page are from:

If somebody has a better idea of how I can skip the feelings of hate and disgust and go right to not caring, I would love to hear it...I don't want to hate people, but I don't know any other way to make myself stop caring too much.  I've thought about trying to pity the aforementioned non-returners of love...you know, because I am pretty awesome and they are missing out big time...but that's not worked out so well.  I really kind of want to hate them for now.  And that is a feeling...even if it's not a very nice one...and it is one of my goals to accept what I am feeling...  Can you tell I'm trying to justify my longing to hate?  ...really, I'd feel much better if I just got to throat punch the non-requiters...and then say, 'Now you know how I felt'...but I don't think violence is the answer...or, really, I just can't afford the lawsuits...  So, for now, until some better choice comes along, I'll be repeatedly telling myself that I am above punching people...but not above hating their stupid faces...and maybe eventually I'll break the habit of caring about people who don't care about me.