(no subject)

I was going to write something deep and meaningful and stuff here, but then I read everyone else's journals and ran out of time. I'll probably have forgotten it later, or it won't seem worth posting, too. Oh well.

(no subject)

Hell is a place that you make for yourself, Duenda.

That's what she's called. Duenda. The small child in the darkness, feral and dirt-covered; my confidence.

There is a difference between ego and self-confidence. Ego is what you think of who you are now. I have quite a big ego. We dance in the firelight and we praise our God and we do our homework and we are pretty good, all things considered, especially compared to others. But I have practically no self-confidence. I continually think that this is it, this is all I'm going to get, now is when the decline is about to begin; I will fail my next set of exams, I will make no friends in my next social setting, I will have no more glimpses of the face of God. Self-confidence is what you expect of the future, and I consistantly expect the worst.

Hence Duenda. She isn't quite the Uselessness Bug; that one's pretty much driven out now, and good riddance. And the solution isn't to drive this one out, because she *is* my confidence; it's simply that she's been driven out into the dark places beyond the firelight, over the horizon. She doesn't want to join the dance, either; she is afraid of the light, she feels that if she comes into the light it can only bring disappointment. I feel that if I let my confidence be built up it can only bring disappointment - if I expect the future to deliver good things, then when it delivers anything bad (as it inevitably will in some areas) I will be crushed and it will invite back the Uselessness Bug, that I have failed rather than it having been inevitable. Hence when I drove the Uselessness Bug out of my life, I also drove out my confidence - Duenda.

(As well as the nasty things, Duenda was supremely confident; she believed that everything should work out in her favour and that she was always right. Naturally this got her into a lot of trouble, but she just dusted herself off and carried right on believing in herself. I don't think quite that level of confidence is justified, but slightly more than I have now is probably in order, realistically. This is the second reason for the name. The first is the above quote. although currently, Duenda doesn't look much like Duenda - she'd look too much like Kali if she did, I think. She looks like a small and dirty child, with Sath-like hair, but I do think she might have green eyes, although they're rather dark, dull human-green at the moment.)