Journal de Henry

3|26|22

The core of my upset is pretty simple: if ‘x’ pretty girl doesn’t like me, I’m unhappy.

So what I can ask is, is that silly or sensible?

By continuing to be miserable, I’m indicating that I value misery in those situations more highly than happiness.

‘I’ think there’s something romantic about being miserable… and I think that those girls will respond to my misery.

Sometimes they do in a pitying sort of way, but living in that space doesn’t really feel good for them.

That ‘doesn’t really feel good to them’ in time turns into a sort of disgust.

So, they are disgusted with me because of the mutual vibe we exist in

My misery leads to disgust.

That means it’s silly to be miserable, because it will lead to the disgust-moment happening.

It feels ‘wrong’ to be happy if I’ve been rejected for example, as if it were a denial of the ‘importance’ of the time we have spent together.

I’m supposed to grovel for a bit

I’m worried about being perceived as weird

Which worry is because, again, a fear of rejection

So, what is sensible?

To continue feeling unhappy? Because it is considered normal

My belief is that anything romantic should be all-consuming in its intensity

Considered a cruel playboy if not behaving that way

I can just not be cruel by genuinely considering the emotions of the other

I don’t have to feel bad to genuinely consider their emotions

General sense of disappointment in my life because living in Seattle didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped

I imagined that life would be handed to me on a platter

And money

Portland was something of a verification of this, in my mind, that I wouldn’t be able to ‘have what I wanted’

In girls, friends, money

I learned that the world worked in a different way than I thought it did

I still don’t really understand it, I just have this disillusionment

Ok, I’m disillusioned

That’s where ‘stark reality’ comes in

Twin fears of not being attractive to girls and of becoming homeless/being dominated by work

For me the second fear is interesting, it’s being dominated one way or another: either by stupefication from being homeless, or from being dominated and exhausted by an employer/work situation

Both have the image of, ‘hard’

“What if life is too hard for me?”

And

“What if I don’t do enough, and so I’m not attractive to girls?”

I imagine that it’s something ineffable in me that makes me attractive, and that if life is too hard for me, that I’ll lose it

Another way of saying, there’s too much of a mystery for me to ever understand it, but also paradoxically that I do understand exactly what I’m “supposed to do,” meanwhile I’m frozen in a different fear and unable to do what I’m “supposed to do”

There isn’t too much mystery. It is explicable.

Attraction comes in layers of ego and then soul.

People are attracted to the simplistic beliefs they hold about “what is attractive”

And they are attracted to the beautiful, whatever that is to them. There are things that the soul is attracted to. It all depends on the individual, but there are commonalities.