Discovering the Me in I

Though there are no rules in the world of stream of conscious blogging or writing of any kind for that matter, I can't help but feel reticent in using my second post after a year of silence to take things down a notch and unleash some of the things I've been going through of late. I emphasize both the "some" part of that statement, as there are some things that are not only hard to talk about but are also inappropriate in so public a forum, and the "going through". I've never dealt with reality before. In fact, I've never had to "deal" with anything in my life. I was lucky enough to float through my childhood in a spaced-out daze, and when I first realized that I was a real person (sometime around the age of 12) I immediately stopped trying. My teachers noticed it from the get-go, and shared their new, disturbing discovery that the bright little kid in their classes stopped giving a shit with the last people who wanted to hear something like that- my parents. As this new outlook on academia began to really solidify in my growing mind, it became what I believed to be my greatest struggle with life. If I could only put some effort in and achieve this wonderful and wonderfully abstract "potential" I kept hearing about then I would have it all. But even then I didn't realize that I was romanticizing my flaws, slowly allowing my inner-writer to turn me into a character- a tragically flawed hero. And so the inspiration to change myself, aside from random short-lived bursts of epiphany, never arrived. Especially when I waltzed passed my toiling and arguably better qualified peers and classmates into the University of Southern California. I use the term waltz because of its colloquial use in denoting ease, not to imply that I'm one of those kids who dances everywhere. The word stroll would work interchangeably. And still I wasn't struggling with anything, especially when it comes to the concrete barriers that can always be found on the path of life. I guess there is one rule in stream of conscious, and it's obvious considering its name. I can't help holding some information back, and I'm definitely avoiding the word pain and everything it entails because of the particular nature of this pain, the fact that I'm still figuring stuff out and my intense fear of being emo. The whole concept of writing my feelings as apposed to my philosophical outlooks and, dare I say it, witty prose, is new to me. And loathe as I am to use the term considering its many connotations, I'm in a dark place right now. For the first time in my life I've come up against the cold hard truth of reality, and this time there is no poetic tint to cast on it. There is just no way I can convince myself that this is an epic struggle, or that I'm that aforementioned tragically flawed hero. This is not character writing, this is not even something unique to the world Josh Bass. It's entirely human. And I'm beginning to realize that I've never felt human before. Not in the "I don't belong" sense but in the daily struggle, I can't believe this is happening to ME sense of being human. I keep trying to disassociate from myself in the subconscious way that I have not only been able to do for as long as I can remember, but couldn't help doing. Now whenever I try, I'm brought back down to myself with an immensely unpleasant jolt. Hello me. I just tried to get away from you but it seems like that's not quite possible at the moment. Sorry I've been ignoring you for the past nineteen years of my life, but in my defense I didn't know you existed. Promise. If it helps, I am planning on getting to know you a lot better over the next few days, weeks, months, and if necessary, years.