Day 0387

Another night on a sofa. Relaxed on the bus home because it is one of the few times when I am physically constrained to do precisely nothing for a definite period of time, and there's no guilt about it. At home I should be working.

Finished The Fountainhead, which has been moving, compelling, thoughtful, wrong, motivational. It has influenced my dreams. I would like to meet my nemesis and marry her. I would like to believe in integrity and the importance of the self.

Bared my soul to my sister, starting with the bottomless pit of misery that is depression and how it is different in kind from regular sadness. She told me off for my arrogance, wrong use of words, (I say 'everyone' when I should say 'a statistically significant number of people from a representative sample'), for thinking I know people, for not trying to be happy, for shunning life experiences and thinking I know it all from the comfort of a house in the middle of nowhere that I never leave. All valid.

A reason I don't bare my soul to her but restrict our relationship to juvenile banter and hyperbolic nonsense is that I feel that if I share the reasoning behind the misery I so often feel and the futility I apprehend around me then it will taint her and make her unhappy. I don't want that and would rather people don't ask themselves the continual, merciless stream of 'but why do I think that? questions if there is any chance they will arrive at the same unhelpful, disabling conclusions that I am approaching; and with my sister I think there is that risk. I think to a very real extent ignorance is bliss. Just this morning my friend said he consciously doesn't answer certain questions to himself because he is scared of the answers. That is healthy and sensible so far as I can see, though self-delusion can of course lead to atrocities when the conditions are wrong.