What changed?

One thing that I have been thinking about in counselling is perhaps put as a question: what changed?

This requires context. I'm thinking about my past issue with purging. I used to be a very different person, especially when I started this blog. I had aspiration, confidence, arrogance and hope. Now I feel deprived of many of my motivations, mostly disappointed with life. Aspiration is something I am not allowed to have, and I'm stuck in a career vacuum with no hope of getting out of it. I liked the analogy that I heard earlier this week, emailing a former colleague of mine, who said that she's applying to lots of jobs, and seeing 'which one bites'. It's a fishing analogy (it is to be assumed). Throw bait, see the good areas, and see which catches the worm (or whatever bait it is).

I'm very much a different person to who I was at 21. Right now the phrase comes to mind: those with glass houses should not throw stones. I am not entitled to say that I'm better than anyone else, I'm not entitled to say that people are doing shit compared to me, I'm not entitled to be intimidating on the basis of status and ability alone. I don't even have a proper job, I don't have career prospects and I'm barely making enough as it is. The short of it is: I'm vulnerable and that affects the kind of voice I can have, as a person and I suppose as a political voice. Back in the old days those factors didn't impede me. I'm not saying that's the basis of what changed, but these things affect me, inter alia of course. Always needs to be an inter alia.

I speak with a muted voice. Sometimes my true voice is the one I have on here. I'm not as good at being honest with real people anymore, because I trust everyone less and less. I used to live in my head a lot more than I used to. I've just taken that head space and put it in my waking life. I did something quite drastic today, I destroyed a present that my brother gave me to give a message to my dad that he needs to change. My mum is very upset, angry at me. My brother doesn't earn much, its a very sentimental and heartfelt gift. What I did was callous, calculated and cruel. Maybe I regret what I did, maybe the price was too high. My brother is weak, socially powerless and a victim of all these changes going on: just like me.

I'm a real bastard.