Except the chambers of the human heart

2003-02-11 - 12:03 p.m.

It is my opinion that people should be able to write whatever they want in their journals without fear of meanness in return from their readers. If you don't like what you're reading, stop reading. Seems simple enough. But this morning I read an entry from someone on my favorites list and was once again highly offended. The urge to send out a "fuck you" or at least a "you're kidding, right?" was very hard to resist, but I managed. Instead I started thinking about narcissism. I posed to myself the following question: would it be better to suffer from narcissism or a complete lack of self-worth? My initial reaction was that narcissism would be much better. At least then you'd like yourself. But then I rephrased the question: would it be better to have everyone hate you and have no clue why or to have everyone hate you and know exactly why? If you know why people don't like you, then you can at least try to improve those areas or steer yourself in a direction where your weaknesses are downplayed. But if you are clueless as to why people don't like you then you will probably continue your dislikable behavior and even dislike everyone else more because they don't like someone who in your eyes is an obviously likable person--you. So for this reason I've decided I pity the narcissist. I pity you.

**********

The funny thing is you think I don't know how you feel. What it feels like to be told that you should just be "you" but "you" is not good enough. Do you read other people's journals? Do you listen? Do you pay attention? Everyone thinks they are alone, but no one is. There are lots of people out there who feel the way you do sometimes. You're not that special.

I've spent quite a bit of time yesterday and today being evaluated at work. Receiving "constructive" criticism. Basically there is one major thing that I do badly. In the upcoming sentences I will refer to this as this. This, they tell me, is a part of my personality, a part of me. This is a major part of who I am. I shouldn't change who I am. But I should change this. What am I to take from this constructive criticism? That I suck? Or that the people giving it are idiots? Or maybe, just maybe, it's somewhere in between. Or not that at all.

**********

I dreamed about Spike last night. I don't know why I dreamed about him, I haven't talked to him since the dancing broccoli incident and I haven't even thought about him in quite a while. But nevertheless, he seems to still be in my subconscious. And just a warning, this dream is mildly X-rated. I was working in the MICU but it was different than it is in real life. This MICU was set up like prisons you see in movies. The kind with several different levels of rooms all around the outside of a big open space. Only of course the rooms here had no bars on them. There were three levels to this MICU but it was only two stories high. The highest level was only tall enough for patients to lie in bed. If a doctor or other health care provider wanted to visit the patient, they had to do it lying down. So Spike and I were both working in this MICU. I had already examined a patient and was lying there working on some paperwork. He was in the process of examining a patient. He was lying on his stomach, I was lying on my back. There wasn't much space, we were lying perpendicularly, my thighs on top of his thighs. There was nothing in it beyond friendliness and very mild flirtation. We were working. But then for some reason we both shifted positions and when we resettled, I was on the bottom and he was on the top. At first it was fine. But then we became aware of the close proximity of our crotches. I felt him harden. I pressed myself into him. We decided to get a room. We moved to the residents' room. He put on a white condom and we started going at it. The only problem was that the residents' room wasn't empty. Slick was there. She was working on a project and was very annoyed at our distractiveness. She kept giving us dirty looks. We ignored her.