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If I could express what I’m feeling right now it would be a vast sense of emptiness.  It doesn’t feel like one giant hole but a million tiny pinpricks.  My body is covered with them and I imagine people can see right through me, as if an eyeball peering through a keyhole.  But you haven’t seen inside of me, only through me.  The secrets I keep hidden deep inside are too complex for even me to sort through so how can I expect someone else to start digging around in that mess.  But I don’t want to erode away. I seek emotional validation.  I think we all do.  I just don’t understand why, for it to be worthy, it must come from outside of us.  We all want to feel accepted, to be ourselves and to safely share our feelings and thoughts.  We often do a lot of invalidating by engaging in negative self-talk.  I think this is one of the most damaging things we can do to our psyche and yet it happens so often and it is so difficult to change.  I spend a lot of time attempting to modify my thought patterns.  It’s challenging but it can be done.  Or so I’ve been told.  I jump to conclusions a lot.  And those conclusions are almost never based on facts or reality.  It almost always has something to do with interpersonal relationships.  I am certain that when a person says she is going to call and doesn’t, it is because I’m an awful, smelly, turd of a human being who is neither fun to be around or engaging to talk with and she’d rather devote the evening hanging upside down by her ankles reading Latin and drinking concrete through a straw than spend a couple hours in my presence.  So when she finally does call and apologizes for not calling sooner because she had to spend the afternoon taking care of a sick grandparent or cooking at a homeless shelter I consider what needless suffering I put myself through in negative thoughts.  The process of thinking positively about oneself is just as simple as it is to think negatively.  The tough part is believing it.