On the inside I’m screaming for validation. I, the supremely un-validated one, am screaming out for validation – how grotesque is that? Grotesque isn’t the word. They avoid me wherever I go, of course. They avoid me like the plague. The world avoids me and my constant clamouring for validation. I’m left on the outside, very much on the outside. The looks I get from people you wouldn’t believe! The looks I get speak eloquently if silently of utter, incredulous repugnance and that can be quite hurtful. All joking aside, that can be quite hurtful.
Apart from that life is quite good however. Apart from that life is good. Life is good, life is good. Life is richly rotund and full to the brim of extraordinarily peculiar nuances, just the way we like it! I’m trying to get back into the practice of keeping a daily reflective diary. It’s a good habit to get into – I would recommend it to anyone. I have a good idea for a theme – ‘What kind of things worked for you in the past, but don’t work for you anymore?’ It’s a kind of a self-help theme. I’m thinking along the lines of strategies you see. What kind of effective mental health strategies worked for you in the past, but possibly no longer work quite so well for you now? What kind of effective strategies for making positive life choices worked for you in the past, but don’t work for you anymore?
It’s kind of an interesting topic I think. It could be the start of a very interesting discussion. Or, in my case, it could be the start of a useful exercise in self reflection. Although in my case the exercise may not be quite as fruitful as it ought to be because none of my strategies ever seem to have worked out well for me in the past. Or even at all. I like to use words like ‘strategy’ and ‘positive’ and ‘effective’ because they’re so empowering. We all need effective strategies, after all. Where would we be without our effective strategies? I know all the right words you see, but it’s just never worked out for me. I like to make positive life choices but they never work out for me either. None of my strategies or my life choices have ever worked out for me. They backfire on me every time…
I used to think that if you made a positive life choice then that would be a validating thing, but now I can see that that it doesn’t necessarily work like that – not for me it doesn’t anyway. I think the reflective diary exercise has helped me to gain a little insight there at least! You see the thing is that if you’re not a valid person in the first place then no choice that you could ever possibly make is going to be valid either. You’re trying to jump over your own shadow!
If you’re not a valid person then nothing you do can be valid – if you can make valid choices then you must have been valid in the first place, which rules me out. Invalidity cannot come out of invalidity, after all. If it happens to be the case that you are not a valid person then everything you think is going to be invalid, everything you say is going to be invalid, everything you do is going to be invalid. End of story. Or it’s ‘the beginning of the invalid story’, if you want to put it like that. It’s the beginning of a big long invalid story where you work hard and read all the self-help books and try all the strategies but never get anywhere. If you’re coming from what is fundamentally a ‘wrong’ place like I am then you can forget about all about ‘positive life choices’ – you really can! You’re barking up the wrong tree there my friend. I may be stupid but I’m also smart, you see. I may be stupid but I’m also smart.
