"Stop listening to the static."

I could easily whip up another analyzing gender identity-typa post in 30 minutes tops, but I'm not feeling it.

The importance of mental clarity has been dawning on me quite clearly these past few weeks. I may be a nutrition nut, but I'm really seeing how unhealthy it can be to allow some greasy thinking patterns to clog the walls of my consciousness.

I could be on a vegan diet free of gluten, sugar, and most allergens, but if I'm thinking crap, then I might as well be eating McDonald's three times a day.

This week I remembered what it feels like to truly hate someone. They were going out of their way to intentionally attack me and all of the hard work I've put into [successfully] reaching several challenging personal goals. I rarely feel this emotion in a serious way. I can usually muster up some compassion for the people who aggravate me; I don't even hate any of the few people on my "Dead to Me" list. I make the effort to see the gray areas with people.

But I keep feeling overpowered by a pure, black hatred. I find myself hoping that they will leave existence Forever. I guess we all have our thresholds.

Many people who claim to love you really just need you to be something that you're not. They need you to be what they want, and they often claim that their happiness is dependent upon you changing to meet their impossible fantasies. It's very rare to find someone who wants you to be you all the time.

Furthermore, they will impose the opaque image they have already drawn up of me directly over the reality of me; it is largely independent of what I do. So while it might be difficult to be misunderstood, it is pointless to try to be understood.

In spite of how trapped and discouraged I feel, I can't let things bother me so much. I am what I think; I am how I react. I need to make my mind my own work of art that I work on every waking minute of the day. Because it's my mind, and no one else and no other external circumstance has the right to infiltrate it without my permission.