Torrential, tropical, rain turned out to be a typhoon. I’m fine. If I’m not being threatened by religious idealism, my own mental decline or mediocre beauty practice it’s got to be natural disaster. We’re only getting the tail end of the typhoon but I’ve been rained in for three days now, going crazy. Editor’s note: crazier. Not that my average days are more than five star hotel pool walks and religious outings. There’s not much to do but learn about what it means to do not much. Still not quiet or silent.

As we all know, I lied to a nun. Lord forgive me. She gave me a book and I started reading it. I got told off for being self-obsessed and for trying to contemplate things beyond what God has planned to unfold for me and I’m still on page ten. I actually feel like I’m one cardboard sign away from preaching to you heathens about the second coming and eternal damnation. I don’t know why religion is so out of favour. Maybe if I have a complete mental break I’ll join the cloister. That nun looked like pure joy. People donate them eggs and cake so it’s not that bad a life. Isolation, contemplation. The ‘no boys rule’ sux tho.

I’m afraid that my obsessive inward search for an answer, like it’s just sitting in my little head or will jump out from the words I write, is now the thing that is killing me. Blog I’m looking at you like you need to shape up or I will cut you like any Thursday’s side hoe. Catholics can turn anything into guilt. It truly is a skill. I didn’t think being self-obsessed was bad. Because of course I think I’m really special and I don’t obsess over myself in the traditional ways that people are vain or think the world revolves around the attainment of their desires in that boring entitled way that we seem to think we’re above basic suffering. But apparently you are self-obsessed if you are merely just thinking thoughts regarding you. I thought constantly thinking about what life means (to me- selfish) was fine because it didn’t harm anyone. Is anyone really inconvenienced by the fact I completely walked away from my life and spent six months sitting on my balcony smoking? No not at all. Personally affronted perhaps. Concerned yes. But not so much a big deal for the greater world continuing to spin. I am just one little lost heroine in limbo. In the spirit of stepping outward even though I really want to agonise about every answer I can’t find let’s talk about something I read in the nun book.

There was a little passage, can you guess? It’s fucking love! Of course our little heroine zones in on the big L. Love is deep respect. Self-serving love leads only to dependency and slavery. And then I realized I don’t think I’ve loved anything properly. Am I talking about myself? Bad habits die-hard. I got really obsessed with human emotion at one point. I read a book on public shaming, I read a book on regular shame, I read a book on jealousy. I read all these things like someone could break down the elements of human experience and build me something to make the world fit back together. I am currently reading the Iliad, the original mythic experience of basic human drives. Still no answer.

If shame is the feeling of being disrespected by another, and we substitute the word love for respect then maybe instead of trying to love one another or love yourself (which is what my grandmother keeps saying to me) you could say respect yourself. If you have the wrong idea of love then it’s easy for that love to become ‘slavery or dependency’ that really resonated with me because I am often in ‘love prison’ whereas the word ‘respect’ is very clear. I can approach people with respect because unlike love it is not a huge multifaceted, gigantic and complex emotion that I have no concept of. It is an action. You act respectful towards someone or even yourself on a good day. Interesting. I told you that the language we use to express ourselves has the power to alter our reality (read instalment XX).

Nup. Time out. I actually don’t want to have a deep and meaningful. This whole thing is now a tropical disaster. I am going to have to figure the fuck out what I can talk about if I stop talking about myself and my experience. But this is my medium. But maybe it’s not healthy to always be searching and if I can just be quiet there will be answer? Let it be. Let it be and if the sun comes up tomorrow, let it be. Welcome to the inside of my head. It’s messy in there isn’t it? I don’t find this a fulfilling sensation. To be present, to be in the moment. Look, I’ll give it a shot. And you give me a break cause I’m going to have to come back with some kind of outward answer that isn’t this constant introspection. And then on the eighth day God took away the only thing holding my mental health together. A semi anonymous blog on the Internet. Well fuck.