being guarded

Should I have been more guarded? I said I had a good afternoon, and I did, and at the time that I posted it, I was definitely feeling good. But I have a funny way of remembering things.

I didn’t know it until recently that it was funny, but I’m told that it isn’t the ‘right’ way to remember things.

See, I look back on memories in light of everything that has occurred since, including my current mood and beliefs. Which means that if something was happening to me that made me happy and seemed good and inspired hope for further events like it to occur, or which made me increasingly happy because of the future happy events it seemed to imply, and since it occurred nothing like it has occurred and the implied future events have proven impossible, I don’t remember it as fondly. In the case of the recent good afternoon, the memory is only slightly diminished as my enthusiasm about that day has been met with something very near apathy and the afternoon put into a less hopeful, less … enthusiastic perspective.

I may not be stating myself fully. I’ll keep trying:

I believe that this phenomenon is largely related to my idealist nature. Boundless hope and the belief that utopia is achievable reside in me. I believe in true love and the possibility for joy that ‘happy endings’ represent. If I can be happy for one minute (and I can) then I can be happy for two. If I can be happy for two minutes, I can certainly be happy for four… and so on forever, right? If two people can make it work out for just one hour, then why not 1000 hours or 1,000,000 hours? The best IS possible, everything CAN work out. It is worth it to look forward to good times. I believe all of this to be true.

Which means that in any situation I tend to look forward to it getting better and better. If things are bad, they will get better. If things are good they will at the least continue and likely become amazing, transcendent, breathtaking and beautiful. How I feel about anything in the present is tied in this way to the expectation that it will only get better and better.

So when things don’t get better and better, when things get worse, or when things don’t happen at all, my view of how things will go gets adjusted. If my ideas about how things would get better were associated in any way with specific periods of time then when those times have passed, any hopes I had for them that went unfulfilled are removed, struck out, and the moments that were tied to that chance, that possibility for greatness that never occurred, are no longer tied to positive hopes. They are instead tied to dashed hopes and unfulfilled dreams. And now the memories that were so happy, so joyful, so hopeful, are tainted and sullied by reality. Brought into perspective and seen for what they were; good at the time, but not all that special.

Someone asked me a few weeks ago what my happiest memory was. I couldn’t think of one. I gave a couple of examples of what used to be happy thoughts, but that were now tainted in this was by dashed hopes and unrealized dreams. They didn’t really understand. They were the first to tell me that their memories don’t change the way mine do, from happy to sad and back again depending on the things that happened after them. Well, mine do. So the memories that I might have answered as my happiest just a few short months ago are now downgraded and filed away with ‘normal’ memories. I don’t expect those couple to ever change again, unfortunately.

In light of my own inability to trust my own happiness or hope in any present-based situation, I wonder if I ought to be more guarded about what I post here. Whether I ought to censor my emotions, not entirely, but for some sort of waiting period. Until I can put things into a better perspective and post a more properly gauged emotional response to a situation. I don’t want to mis-represent myself, but how I feel about past events changes as events related to it unfold, and life never seems to stop unfolding. Argh. I’m not sure I got anywhere with this.

Now, something else about being guarded on the site:

There is something I recently found myself thinking about and very intensely interested in. Something that I have been having dozens of different, creative ideas for or related to. Like an urging from deep inside me, or some talent or drive or passion that has existed mostly unknown within me until it was recently awakened by something I experienced. Something I think I could become fascinated with to an intense degree, something I think I could have a lot of fun with, something that (based on my understanding of humanity) if I tried discussing it with rational human beings would probably end up disgusting them. Regardless of their race or class or gender or sexual preference or national origin, this is something that would generally tend to upset people to a potentially large degree. There are two people in the world that I can think of that would not even think twice about this something re:my involvement in it, and may actually be able to see my interest in it and appreciate it nearly equally as much as I could, but they have each known me for about a decade. I’m pretty sure their minds have developed a new, secondary wavelength to work on when they’re around me or thinking about me.

Anyway, I’m concerned. This something is so intensely horrifying for so many people that if I mentioned it here the way that I’ve been thinking and feeling about it, or if I described the things I would like to do re: it, I would permanently lose readers and friends alike. So far from what is considered ‘normal’ for human beings that I have long suppressed this interest in me, and have long prevented myself from coming even in minimal contact with it, or things related to it, so that I could still be considered a human being by the rest of the world. So that I would not find myself so deeply and intensely involved in it and desensitized to its effect on people that I was ‘put away’ or destroyed when found out.

Except I got exposed to it recently, accidentally. I have not yet cut off the exposure. I am at a point of interest and much difficulty. Should I try to continue avoiding it, denying my desire and interest in it? Should I also try not to post about it, not so much as another word about it, even of my feelings or ideas about it? Is guarding myself against doing ‘unacceptable’ things (not criminal, just unacceptable) reasonable? Is guarding myself against posting about ‘unacceptable’ things, or my ideas about them, reasonable? what should I do?