I should have started playing these mind games a long time ago.

Today I’ve been playing a game. And in this game, I want to figure out who I’m talking or listening to. And so when I say something, I’m paying attention to what these people are saying. I’ve figured out that people are more than what we make of them. And that even if we tried to debunk them as much as we can, the variables are just too many. The biggest variable pertains the fact that you will never, ever know a person in his or her entirety just by looking at them.

Through this practice I’m cultivating a more present mind. Since I don’t know what the hell the person is going to say next and what I myself will say, I might as well pay a little more attention.

I got “high”, and since then I no longer have problems with myself.

There’s a lot of wrong things to point at here about myself. A while ago I was high on a drug (I’m not sure what drug it was), and the primary motivation behind me taking that drug was in order to run away from my shame and anger and self judgement and experience a state of bliss.

It turned out that that wasn’t going to be the case. As I got ”high”, I realized that it was going to be a very long night. I was losing my mind. I could feel my personality dissolve right in front of me. My thoughts were more intimate, but at the same time they were something other than me. I was dreaming and waking up and dreaming again. one minute, I would find myself talking to someone, the next minute i would find myself staring at a blank wall.

I said, ”I’m I ever going to escape?”

I found that all that I thought was pretense and angst and guilt was all a play on me. And right at that moment I realized it:

”In” is the way out. I realized that I was never going to run away from myself and that, in one way or the other, it has always been my responsibility to deal with all this shit that I have.

I’m literally stuck with myself. I’m my ultimate company.

The next few days I spent time tending to myself. I have been a lot more patient, lenient, and kind with myself. I’ve learned to love my little annoyances. Sometimes a very bad thought would intrude my mind, and instead of going like: ”Oh, here we go again!” I’m now going: ”Oh, welcome back!” I treat it like a visitor. I could ignore it, but if you’ve ever ignored a bully you sure know that he’s going to go to the extreme to get your attention. What I do now is let the thought make itself at home. It wants to be heard. I listen to it, and I let it talk and talk and talk until it feels heard. And then it goes away. I tell it to come again whenever it wants to.

The very worst thing you can do with a thought is to give it advice. Another caution is against encouraging it to talk on and on. Let it do it’s thing.

One big mistake that I’ve noticed in myself is that sometimes I participate in it. But resist that temptation. Stay where you are and you’ll be fine.

This is how I’ve learned to live with myself as an introvert. I try not to be inward a lot, now. But I’m still an introvert. I still feel shy to talk to people. I still feel uncomfortable in crowds and don’t like to call attention upon myself. But this time instead of thinking of how much I’m not talking and shit, I pay attention. And when I do pay attention, there’s no problem with me. Regardless of how I’m thinking.

So I hope this helps.