While I've been looking at the past a fair amount, and thinking about whether it's worth revisiting bits, trying to find ways to make amends and so on, by inference I've also been thinking a lot about the future, and where I want to be in that future.

   Over the last couple of years, I've been doing a lot of thinking - something that's never good for the sanity, I'm beginning to realise. I've had so much stuff rattling round in my head, looking at where I'm heading, where I've been headed, that kind of thing.

  And the conclusion I come to at the end of all of it is that in a lot of ways I'm tired of being me. The people who've hurt me from my history, no matter how much I've tried to beat them down, how much I've tried to get past it all, they've still got me in their grip, one way or another. That stuff has been with me for half my life now, and I'm still fighting it. But I'm tired of it - I know things need to change, and I'm working on it as much as I can, but that change, well, it's got a long way to go. The biggest struggle is to change my own perception of myself - my own self-image - and most of the time I just don't know even how to start doing that. I think a lot of it comes down to time, to just working things out, maybe even to growing up a bit.

  When it all comes down to it though, I still find I don't like myself - I don't think I'm worth other people's time. I do try and believe it when my friends and so on say "No, you're worth a lot" - but it's hard to believe, no matter how much work I put in on it. Part of it is that it's simply what I'm used to: it's the way I've felt about myself for the last 15 years minimum, and probably since birth if we come right down to it. I do stupid self-sacrificing stuff because of it - I want to see the people I care about being happy, and if I can't do that, if my absence will make their lives better than my presence, then I walk away. I wish sometimes that I didn't work like that, because it's caused me more hurt than most of the things I've done, and/or had done to me.

  I know that it's seen as a fault of mine, that I put myuself last in any situation. I still don't know if that's a good or bad thing. Maybe it's a good thing, but not one that should be practiced all the time. I've stood and watched people I care about get married, and wished it could have been me there, but they prefer the person they're marrying. I've ended up hating the people who hurt me, but at the end of the day I hurt myself far more than they ever did, so maybe that explains why I feel the way I do about my own self and life. But that's a chicken and egg situation - is it because I hate myself that I hurt myself, or vice versa? Or should the answer simply be "yes"?

  But how do I go about changing these attitudes I hold in myself? I still can't even admit my own weaknesses, the times when all I need is a hug, to simply be held. I can give that kind of thing to other people without any problem, yet I can't even ask for that for myself. I'm so stupidly paranoid about being selfish, about putting myself first, about admitting my own weaknesses: I know I'm an idiot about it, and that I go way too far in the opposite direction. I'm aware of it, and I know I need to address it - but again, it's more of a matter of "where do I start?".

  More than anything else, I think I need to put myself - well, if not first, then slightly above absolute bottom of the list. That comes down to self-respect, self-regard, all that kind of stuff that sounds so simple, but changing one's own attitude in that regard is a difficult thing to do, and knowing how to do that, even how to start doing that, it's difficult to know where to begin.

  None of this is going to be easy, nor is it going to be a quick process. I don't know how long it will take - it's pretty much stripping down everything and rebuilding it in a better way, and in all honesty Christ only knows how long it'll take. In a lot of ways, I think it'll probably be my friends who notice the changes before I do - in some ways I actually hope that'll be the case. In others, I hope it'll be me that realises things are changing - I know there will be indicators for me that I'm changing, and in many ways I look forward to realising that the change process is happening.

  But at the end of the day, what I actually know right now is that I'm totally tired of being who I am, being how I am, and it's time to start working on chainging these things. It's not going to be an overnight process - and it'll probably take a lot more writing and so on, seeing how things change, how it all works out. I'm sure I'll keep writing stuff on d4d as the process goes on, following progress, backwards steps, and generally just kind of mirroring my own mindset while I'm writing each piece.

  For now, for a first step, I think I need to assert myself a bit more. I need to find it within me to be more selfish, to admit there are things I want as well, and work from there. Right now, that's going to be hard enough work, so I'll be working on that before stepping onto whatever comes next. It's going to be an interesting time period, though, that's for sure.