ongoing.

You tend to indulge in very specious ideas when you fantasize. You work backwards from your conclusions, imagining yourself having achieved what you've sought after but only through a brief recognition of some vague and incremental process that's forever in your favor and with minimal pushback. You rationalize your wish fulfillment this way, by not granting it upon yourself in an instant what you envision, as if the shadowy process you acknowledge in the basest way is what imbues the thing you wish for with some value beyond itself.

You recognize this whole thing as hackneyed, perhaps enabling of a sort of cycle wherein you realize how much you've projected your own hopes and wants onto otherwise neutral circumstances. And especially of those that involve other people whom you know of strong wills. You slowly peel yourself away from your ideas, almost with a sense of shame and with a twofold recognition that you're not as self-effacing as you believe yourself to be. But even as you reflect on your own disappointment, so sharp and thoroughgoing, you realize how innately it came to you as such.

I used to think I was always in a state of wanting upon which I should extricate myself to feel as guilty as I do. But really it's the state of wanting to feel guilty more than anything else that makes me wonder why I am, as I am.