I want to be a different personality style.- this is going to need revision and organizaiton

some people use thought not to participate in life

I am one of them

insecurity + low self-esteem keep me in the background of every picture,

the centimeters of my face smudged by a thumbprint

of some careless person who will never take the time to get to know me

it stems from childhood, they say

doesn't everything? so what if my parents didn't listen very well and I felt my thoughts and feelings were suppressed? does that mean I have to stay on the sidelines forever?

the glorification of my older brother,

he was strapping with thick brown hair and a puffed out chest

and the needs of my younger sister,

she unknowingly consumed all of the time and resources

and I was left to find my own way,

with a few slaps on the wrist for C+ grades

and the negative attention I received when my neighbor did that awful thing to me,

it stuck with me.

and the way they reacted when I brought someone home the first time

by secluding me in my room when I told my first lie,

I guess the sidelines felt safer.

this is what has happened to me,

it seems too heavy for someone so young

but it wasn't all bad.

I just want to be brought into the fold of life.

The Wisdom of the Enneagram

Personality Type Five: The Investigator

-Basic Fear- Of being helpless, useless, incapable/ overwhelmed

-Basic Desire- To be capable and competent

-Superego Message- "You are good or okay if you have mastered something."

-fives want to find out why things are the way they are.

-always searching asking questions delving into things in depth

-they do not accept doctrines

-test the truth of most assumptions

*fives feel that they do not have an ability to do things as well as others*

-rather than engaging directly with activities that might bolster their confidence, they take a step back into their minds where they feel more capable

-their belief is that in the safety of their minds, they will eventually figure out how to do things and one day rejoin the world

-they are not interested in exploring what is already familiar and well established--drawn to the unusual, overlooked, bizarre

-for better or worse, the areas that fives explore do not depend on social validation; fives become lost in the complexities of their own thought processes, becoming merely eccentric and socially isolated

-whatever the source of their anxieties might be--relationships, lack of physical strength, inability to gain employment, and so forth, average fives tend not to deal with these issues. rather they find something else to do that will make them feel more competent.

-learning to cut themselves off of nurturance--even from desiring it--becomes a way of defending themselves against further hurts and frustrations

-fives go through life avoiding the thing they most want, repressing their longing an dfinding substitute pleasures in interests, hobbies, and creativity

-you value and are attracted to wisdom, knowledge, understanding

-your passions are of the mind

-you are a seeker of truth

-you are a perceptive, insightful, original thinker

- you have the ability to objectively and dispassionately observe

-you are good at abstracting, synthesizing, and integrating different points of view and disparate elements

-you are a fair, nonjudgmental witness

-you can overidentify with the idealized self-image of being wise and perceptive. you live too much out of your head and forget you also have feelings and a body

-you can be overly intellectual. you may be afraid of and out of touch with your feelings

-you can become overly analytical and skeptical. your questioning can interfere with your acting

-you may be unwilling to consider others' perceptions and ideas

-you may stay in the observer position and not participate in life

-you may not make a decision or act until you have the certitude that you have all the facts. you want to know everything before you do anything

-you may be unwilling to disclose your position

-you are a good listener. you are gentle, patient, and nonthreatening

-you have the ability to get to the essence or heart of the matter. you can peer through extraneous details to get to basic structures.

-you can communicate in clean, clear, concise statements about what the issue really is

-you have an appreciation for solitude

-you are independent and resourceful

-you are reserved, respectful, and nonintrusive

-you may not contribute much to conversations. you let others do all the talking

-you can reduce life to bare dry bones and miss the juicy parts

-you can be stingy with your communications. you speak in epigrams or one-liners and are unwilling to elaborate

-you can be addicted to privacy

-you can be a loner who wants to do everything out of your own resources

-you have overdeveloped the tendency to move away from people. it's difficult for you to move forward with either affection or assertion.

-you are generous with your self, feelings, ideas, and time

It's a proven fact

that women feel intimacy from discussion

yet men feel closest through physical contact.

why would God play this joke on us?

making us polar opposites

protons and electrons

no neutrons

almost impossible

to meet each other in the middle.

modeled off of "One for Sherwood Anderson" by Charles Bukowski

sometimes I forget about him and his erratic ways,

almost unbelievable, unexpected and always hurtful.

he loved me, I think, maybe he could have, but his condition was just too much.

tonight I think about him, the way he could make everything feel light,

and his exuberance

something like a little kid. but still

he was as fickle as the wind

sometimes here and sometimes there

leaving without justification

then coming back begging me.

he didn't have consistency. he

found me weak and wanting to fix him

he didn't know I couldn't

he promised me a diamond necklace that never came

he stole from his oldest friends

he talked a big game

and started to become like a Monet painting

because the colors mashed together start to look like something bigger--in his case, monstrous

and the nice little things started to get blurred by the bigger picture

and I couldn't come to know what was what

and I couldn't tell anymore what part was him or what part

his disease.

sans parapluie

Je suis sans un parapluie

toujours.

Mais j'enseignerai

d' être heureuse

quand il pleut

quand je suis seule.

Je danserai dans la pluie.

J'ai mon coeur, et ça suffit.

♡​

modeled off of Bukowski's "hello, how are you?"

a club I was never invited to join

this fear of being what I was:

sick.

at least I was mostly functional, I

went to class, not listening to a word that

washed out professor said, my peers

exchanged inside jokes, the room smelling like a cesspool--

the stale scent of fitting in

of last night's alcohol

of crappy campus coffee

of cigarettes smoked on the sidewalk

on the walk home from the bar

with the people that live on their floor

feeling nothing

except like a part of it all

except on top of the world

at an unaffordable school

free of feelings

of antidepressants

of broken hearts

of loneliness

of avoidance

of missing people

I stand motionless, jealous of their zest for life.

I'm wondering why you left me at the worst possible time and made it all impossible to attain.

hello, how are you?

by Charles Bukowski

this fear of being what they are: dead. at least they are not out on the street, they are careful to stay indoors, those pasty mad who sit alone before their tv sets, their lives full of canned, mutilated laughter. their ideal neighborhood of parked cars of little green lawns of little homes the little doors that open and close as their relatives visit throughout the holidays the doors closing behind the dying who die so slowly behind the dead who are still alive in your quiet average neighborhood of winding streets of agony of confusion of horror of fear of ignorance. a dog standing behind a fence. a man silent at the window.

♡​

♡​

nice people

nice people extend themselves to the underdog

wave to small children, coo at infants

nice people ask the library clerk her name

then engage her in lively small talk

nice people wear vineyard vines apparel and always seem to be carrying a tote bag,

they are preppy and fresh like daisies.

they smile at strangers, always say thank you and you're welcome,

are tactful when debating the price of their tuna steak at the grocery store

nice people always have permanent wrinkles from grins of white

they seem untarnished by life's tests

they make the dean's list, but it's not like we didn't expect them to.

nice people appreciate their spouses without being asked.

am I one of you?

thank god I'm getting out of this writing rut

Here we go again, I keep thinking to myself. "The dark place" is such a cliche' but I can't think of any other way to describe it right now, after having not written in months. I haven't experienced the friction of life with nearly as much fervor as I am right now.

I came to the library. I wanted to get out of my house, out of my head. I wanted to write in the artsy little cafe' by the lobby, a half a dozen tiny tables, chipping red paint of the walls, a window to write by,

But lo and behold, the tables all have two chairs, and there's just one me. The windows look out onto a ring of dumpsters, multicolored, white, green, rusty brown in their splendor.

If I focus hard enough, I can ignore the carelessly sprawled open receptacles and observe high-rises in the distance, little yellow houses with welcome mats, perhaps I'll even own one someday-- but as for right now I'm alone, and the gilded steeples are miles away. I'm too close to the garbage not to turn my nose up a little bit.