I apparently give the impression that I have a very negative outloook on life.

I don't.

The world that we live in is messed up, but there is so much potential for beauty, and joy, and life. It exists, even now, in such amounts that if I were to smile at everything that made me happy, at everything that I thought was beautiful, or everything that I saw that made me feel alive, if I gave that expression a chink in my armour, I would cease to be. I would explode in all directions at once, or go up in flame, because human beings weren't meant to hold that kind of emotion inside them.

I would become . . . I don't know what would happen to me but I wouldn't be who I am today. who I am now would no longer exist.

I would make of myself, a place where the self is not.

If that makes any sense. because you can't contain a sense of self amidst that kind of experience.

So it seems I have a choice: either continue to go on as I have, worried that I will lose my identity in what I don't understand and can usually contain. Or, cease to be what I've always been and become something new that will scare me shitless in the process.
Phooey, it's times like these that I really wish I could believe in some kind of deity. I could use a little bit of help on this one . . . .

See, and this is why I should never be allowed to drink coffee after 8pm.