Like Wine

Something changed.  Maybe I just fell far enough down that I fell straight through the Earth.  Or maybe, as is the case, each time I woke up I found things changing slightly, mostly in myself.  But that's how it goes, isn't it?  The feeling has changed.  It feels like properly aged wine.  Where it was too sweet or too bitter or just not right, until one morning you wake up and it's just perfect.

But what am I saying?  I don't know anything about wine.  I don't drink often, and when I do, I have a hard time differentiating the taste from what I had last time.  It's all in the metaphor.  I don't know wines, but I'm a connoisseur in metaphors.  I've loved them since I first learned what exactly they were when I was nine? ten? years old.

I compare things constantly.  The first few pieces of what I consider to be my real writing are mostly metaphors.  The most memorable was about a page of writing, jumping from topic to topic, comparing one thing to another smoothly and effortlessly.  It was a stream of consciousness.  A directed one, perhaps, focused on the sensory and the comparisons to be made, but a free-write nonetheless.

So I come back to this metaphor of the wine.  Which is surprisingly inappropriate for the situation, but fits as well as anything.  Aged cheese would be better, actually.  It suits you more.  In a strange way.  But anyway.  This has become comfortable.  Which it has been for a while.  But it's a different kind of comfort.  It's like Quality vs. quality (yes, the capitalization matters) in Lila, which I haven't read since the one time I blogged about it, more than a year ago, I think.

This is the comfort of an old pillow, or a favorite pair of running shoes.  It's no longer the best.  But it's comforting in a very familiar sense.  It's what would be Comfort, with a capital c.  And I think that this has finally switched from being comfortable to being Comfortable.  It's gone from just being something pleasant to being something almost required.  Which has nothing to do with any of the food metaphors I started this with.

But again, the metaphors don't make the point.  They help it.  And I think that wine was as good a place as any to start this post.  And hey, it went precisely where I wanted it to be, so I consider this a success.

Do you remember?

I remember clearly the night I told her I loved you.  It was February.  Late February. I didn't want to tell her, but it was tearing at me, so I could tell her or I could tell you, and so I told her.  By which I mean I stuttered and laughed and waffled around it until she said something about not falling for you to which I just said "too late."

I was shaking.  It was probably shortly after midnight, and I know it felt more dramatic and emotional than it really was.  It was a night entirely too similar to a night four months previous that we had spent discussing why exactly I shouldn't date you.  I think I was the one who brought the topic up, and I think I was more trying to convince myself.  I wonder if she remembered that night when I finally told her.

I think I'm only just now starting to grasp how bad things were a year ago, because I'm starting to see how good they are now.  I'm starting to think that might have come dangerously close to rock bottom.  Which is strange to think of, because I didn't think of it that way at the time.  It was bad, yes, there's no denying it.  But it didn't feel like rock bottom.  It felt hopeless and desperate, but not in the way I'd expect rock bottom to feel.  I think I might have realized it would end, which made it easier to get through.

You fell back to depression, I started cultivating anger.  I find it interesting how differently we reacted to the same things.  I think depression was too regular for me by then.  Maybe not to the same extent or in the same way, but it just didn't fit the situation.  So I got angry.  I cried hopeless, angry tears.  I wrote frustrated rants.  I clenched my fists and rubbed at the marks my nails left later.

Being happy felt weird.  Being around good people was strange and complicated.  Everything was tinged with that sense of being hunted.  And in a way, I know it's true.  It wasn't me being psychotic or strange.  It was a game of sorts, a very, very twisted one, that ultimately I won.  I still wonder if the winnings wouldn't have been bigger if I'd done what I'd thought about, what I'd threatened.  But I'm glad I didn't.  I just can't help but wonder sometimes.

I take dates very seriously.  Okay, that's not true.  I don't take dates seriously at all.  But I often remember them.  When a year passes, I sit back and think on what happened then, a year ago.  I mark time.  I can tell you exactly how long it's been since I lost my virginity, since I fell in love with you, since I kissed anyone else.  But I also remember other things.  Like the bus ride I spent crying and the most terrifying phone call I ever made.  Or, like now, what happened a year ago.

Strange things are significant to me.  For the longest time, I remembered the date I first wrote "I love you," although I can't tell you the date I first said it.  I remember when the thought of something first crossed my mind, but not when it first happened.  I remember what was said on nights when my first roommate was on the phone at three in the morning, but not what I said on the phone at that same ungodly hour, two years after that.  My memory is strange.  It never stores what I expect.

But I guess the unexpected is a part of life.  Nothing ever really goes as planned.  And that brings me back full circle to the present.  I don't know what's going to happen.  I'm glad of that.  I'm perfectly happy to wait and see as it comes.  But the point is, I'm glad you're here now.  So thank you for that.

Lose Control

The work week is effectively over for me.  I have a few things to do tomorrow and a presentation to give, but that's all.  So I can finally relax a little bit.  Which is really, really, really nice since I haven't been sleeping enough.

I lost track of a blog post again.  Whoops.  I just sorta wandered away for an hour there.  And I was about to start doing a bit more work, but that's clearly not happening now.  So screw this.  It's bedtime as soon as I finish writing, but I do want to finish writing first.

I like using lyrics for titles.  They often fit better than anything I could come up with myself.  They describe the way I feel at a given point in time, and I like that.  Sometimes I write with music in the background because that's how I do almost everything these days--to a steady flow of music.

Oh look, I lost track of this post again.  Seriously, bed soon, I promise.  In any event, the music I'm listening to often dictates my mood and/or the way I write.  Sometimes it even affects what I write about, but more often it's more subtle than that and is simply reflected in how I write about things.  Which helps to explain some inconsistencies in my blogging, because when one song ends and the next begins, I can't maintain the feeling of what I've been writing, so I jump, either in topic or in style.

This has been a terribly written post, but I felt like I really needed to put that down, if only as a record for my own sake so that I know I realized this if I ever reread this post.  Okay, good night.  Apologies.

Damaged Goods

I'm blatantly stealing this title, and most people reading this will know where I got it, too (not that it's much of a surprise).  To be fair though, it's entirely relevant.  I have a lot on my mind right now about people.  People and the damage they've taken, more specifically.

I know a lot of people who have been through their own personal hell.  Some once, others again and again.  And of course, every personal hell is different, so I'm not even going to try to put an objective threshold on this and am just going to say that it's a personal definition.  Moving past the technicalities...

The big thing is that we all got past it.  Or will get past it.  We've all been beaten and bruised, and some of us have been broken.  And while that does explain at least in part why we are who we are today, if perhaps indirectly, it doesn't define us.  We all manged to move on, and we continue being able to do so every single time.  No matter how damaged we get, we can still pull ourselves together and move forward.  It's such a common sentiment, but still so true.

Let me put this into perspective, at least a little bit.  About a year ago now, my life took quite an unexpected turn.  One that I quite possibly should have seen coming, but didn't.  The next four months involved bouncing from one hell to another.  Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as they say.  It was a particularly rough time.  And there were days when waking up was the hardest thing in the world, when I honestly hoped that maybe I wouldn't wake up tomorrow.

Well, I did.  I woke up the next day.  And the day after that.  And the one after that one, too.  And it got better.  Different portions of those months damaged different parts of me to varying extents.  But most of them are fixed now.  Sure, I still carry scars from a few years back.  I have experiences from even further back that have changed me and still seem intertwined with my subconscious in unpleasant ways.  But none of it hurts so severely anymore.  Everything got better.

Damage is almost never irreparable.  We can't undo what's been done, but we can heal it.  If I learned anything from the place I spent the last few years of my life at, it was this.  We are fixable beings, flexible creatures.  I learned that we can be okay in the future, even if we're not right now.  And I like that.

This has been an overly emotional and not at all rational post.  My sleep-deprived brain apologizes to the best of its ability.  Good night.

Burning

I feel the need to write.  I don't know what I want to say or why I want to say it, but I just want to put down words.  I'm sitting here when I'd much rather be asleep in bed, waiting for some files to upload so I can finish up for the night and go sleep, and suddenly I'm restless.  Not really restless, but I need to write.  I need to put something here that's meaningful and important.  And I have no idea what.

This week is almost halfway over, even though it either feels like it's just started or like it's ending right now.  I'm so, so tired because I haven't been sleeping enough or well.  My brain won't function properly.  Everything is hazy and all I can focus on right now, even more than the words, is the reflection of my fingers moving as I type on the screen.  But that's not significant at all.

They say we don't appreciate what we have until it's gone.  I believe it, having lost some things and almost lost many more.  I wonder what I have now that I'm not properly appreciating.  There certainly are things, but I can't pin them down.  Warning: jump in thought process.

My social anxiety has gotten worse.  I have trouble ordering food at cafeterias.  I try as hard as I can to avoid having to order something and tend to go for things that are self-serve.  It really wasn't a problem until fairly recently.  I don't know why it became one.  And maybe it's just a circumstantial thing, but it doesn't feel like one.

To be fair, at least I'm still capable of interacting with people at all.  I've made friends lately, I can hold conversations in various situations.  I worry about impressing people a lot, even though I know it doesn't matter.  I feel like I have to make good impressions or something.  Even if I'll never see them again.

I guess I had traces of this sort of anxiety throughout my life, but I think it might have gotten worse.  Maybe my mother is right and I'm being too much of a hermit, working too much.  I don't like the thought of that, but I guess it makes more and more sense the more I think about it.  The thing is, I don't want to get out.  I like my work.  It's engaging and challenging.  I don't like many people.  So work is largely just more rewarding.

Now I'm being defensive.  Again, with this constant need to impress.  I don't even know.  This isn't satisfying.  If anything, it's the opposite.  It makes me want to put more words onto the page to make up for these.  I want to say something meaningful.  And it seems like I'm just so, so bad at it.

I'll be just fine, pretending I'm not

I'm okay.  I'm really, honestly okay.


It's this sort of gasping realization.  Like coming up after being sucked down by a current in the ocean.  Like feeling your feet hit sand again after being pulled too far out.  It's almost a panic of its own that sets in because it's such a powerful moment. It's like the start of a pouring rainstorm when for a second your heart races and everything is pure and perfect and beautiful.

There's always this moment when it hits.  When a wave of clarity breaks over you and the toxic haze of depression, exhaustion, fatigue fades.  When you breathe in and you want to cry because it's okay.  Because the world isn't falling apart and you're doing well and everything is really, honestly fine.  Sometimes it's even better than fine.  And it takes an unpredictable trigger to cause this realization.

There was one day several years ago now that comes to mind as a contrast to today.  I don't remember what happened or what went wrong, but I do remember that I was upset.  And this was before I learned to really enjoy heart-wrenching agony.  I remember walking through that door and locking it, opening my computer and turning the volume all the way up, listening to I'm Not Okay (I Promise) over and over again for half an hour on those shitty laptop speakers and crying.  Not the calm and controlled crying where tears flow freely and easily, but the gasping, shaking kind that's more sobs tearing through your body than tears falling.

It seems horrid now, thinking back on it.  I was such a mess.  And the coping strategy was, ah, less than ideal.  But it was better than the alternative.  I don't know if I'd stopped by then or not.  I don't remember if I did it anyway after I stopped crying or not.  Looking back, I probably did.  It doesn't matter anymore, but that was how I dealt.

It's interesting to see how much it's changed.  I've finally been able to give up that control.  I let my sadness carry me now.  I let it control where I go and how I get there.  And now it's the revelations that sting and make me gasp, not other things.  Perhaps I spend more time in a state of melancholy on the whole, but I come out of it better, too.  I wonder what would have happened if I'd waited for a revelation then.  If I would have reached the conclusion that I am capable sooner than I did.

I wonder if that's what really changed when I gave it up.  There was no defining moment.  I just stopped.  It was the easiest thing in the world because I didn't even have to think about it.  It just happened, and it wasn't until a month or so later that I made it a conscious priority.  I don't know that I remember how.  Not in the same way I knew then.  I'm sure I could come back to it, but I'm equally sure right now that I'll be okay without it.

I think what happened is that somewhere in there a part of me finally snapped.  That's usually a bad thing, but I'm not sure that this one was.  It was so subtle that I missed it and moved forward with my life.  I think it's possible that somewhere in there I hit a transition point without being at all aware.  I think it made me stronger in some way.  Or maybe just more of a masochist, just of a slightly different variety.  Whatever it was, I think it was good.


And yes, sometimes I still want to, because it's so easy.  It's the easiest way out.  It is control.  It doesn't represent or signify it in any way, it is control.  It's how I kept myself together for a year.  It's like a fucking drug, because it sets everything aside.  In that moment, nothing matters except what is before you, and once the moment passes, everything else is already gone, so life could continue.  That's how it always was for me, at least.  It was the best solution so many times.  Let me rephrase what I said: it's terribly difficult, but once you do, everything is so damn easy.

I still think I like this more, though.  I like the melancholy.  I like letting go because it's hard for me.  Once I finally do, it gives me a chance to reset.  And the realizations that come after a low point are more exhilarating than the release ever was.  I'm still not emotionally stable in many ways.  There are many things I have yet to work on about myself.  But I'm okay.  I am really, truly okay right now.  And most of the time, for that matter.  I am capable of dealing with things and taking care of myself.

I don't think I'll ever be normal or completely stable.  And that's okay.  I like my overpowering emotions.  I like the highs that come after the lows, and I appreciate the lows for giving me a break, a fresh start.  I may not always believe it myself, but I think I really have gotten better.

Somewhere along the way, we changed

I've had this page open with the title entered and everything for almost two days now.  I'm still not sure where to start.  I have a lot to say on the subject, but I'm not at all sure how to say it or where to begin, even.  So I'm not going to think.  I'm just going to write.  And I feel like I might not be pleased with some of the things that come out, or maybe I'll be thrilled with the quality.  But I guess we'll see, because this is something I'm fairly emotional about lately, and I really would like to write about it.  So, without further pointless introduction, here goes nothing.

We changed.  You changed and I changed and she changed and he changed and they changed and maybe we lost everything.  Maybe she really fucked it up because she became a bitch and made some mistakes.  Or maybe it's for the best, but I don't see it working out well, because we all know she has a history of messing up things that are good for her even, which this clearly isn't.  That was awfully specific.  And it's strange, because I had a completely different she in mind when I first wrote the second sentence in this paragraph, but I can't write about her.  I'm not entirely sure why, but I just can't.

And in a way, that's changed too.  I go back and forth in my thoughts about people, but especially about her.  It's like I said before, I can't stop, because my curiosity won't let me.  But you know, the strange thing is that she's changed too.  Quite possibly more than the rest of us.  And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing because I never knew her.  Not really.  I've known an awful lot about her for quite some time now, but I never actually knew her.

You've changed, too.  You've become more cautious.  On the whole, you've gotten better.  You're happier, and that makes me happier.  You're more mature, more responsible.  You grew up, and it makes me glad to know that I could be a part of that, because you're doing really well right now.  I just hope I'm not messing that up for you because I know I haven't been at my best lately.

And that brings me back to what I think I really should be writing about: me.  This is something I use to reflect on myself, to sort out emotions and confusions and all sorts of other things.  So while I'm sitting here rambling on about other people, maybe I should turn my attention elsewhere and really focus on myself.  I've changed so much.  Someone recently saw a photo of me from almost three years ago and said that it was like looking at a completely different person.  And while I understand perfectly well that physical appearance isn't everything (not even close, really), it still says something that I've changed that much.

I keep leaving off after a paragraph and coming back again.  I've given up on the idea of making this flow anymore and I just want to finish it now.  I can't write for some reason, and maybe it's that I'm so tired or maybe it's something else getting in the way.  I feel like I broke through some sort of wall when I started writing legitimate content, and then I had to do something else and it all came back up.  And it's way too late at night right now for me to try breaking through it again.

So I'm sorry.  I know I haven't blogged as much as I'd like to lately.  And I know that this topic deserves a much better post, especially since I haven't really thought this one out at all.  But I promise I'll try.

Of This World

I fall in love too easily.  And not just with people.  Even more easily, I fall in love with stories, with concepts, with ideas.  I'm one of those people who is guilty of occasionally being more in love with the idea of a person than with that person.

Maybe it comes from not very much liking the tangible.  I've never followed fads or trends, material possessions have always had diminutive value for me.  The things I really wanted were all ideas.  Metaphors.  Concepts.  The first time I fell passionately in love was when I discovered genetics.  I was head over heels addicted, burying myself in textbooks for hours on end because I couldn't get enough.

I obsess over ideas and stories and details the way people obsess about well-written novels...except that this extends beyond the written word.  Especially lately, where I've found myself more and more falling in love with stories, with people's lives and thoughts and minds.  And the more I learn, the more I want to know and understand.

I saw a movie once which wasn't terribly good, per se, but a line stuck with me.  A woman had wanted to be a writer and so had become a stenographer, and she said (I paraphrase), "the more I worked, the more I realized that I loved hearing people's stories, and I didn't really have any of my own to tell."

When I was much, much younger, still in elementary school, I wrote a lot.  I wrote stories and they always had these bold protagonists who were special and extraordinary but had grown up not knowing this, their abilities repressed by their families and society.  And that's how I pictured myself.  Many years later, I understand now that it's a fairly common manifestation of the personal fable of adolescence to think that one is special and unique.

None of the stories were any good.  They were all too predictable because the characters were either flawless or had too many flaws to be realistic in the least.  I don't write fiction anymore, not really, anyway, because I don't know how to create stories that are believable.  The little bit of it I did in my creative writing class was based solidly in the things that were going on in my life at the time, and so was more a diary entry in story form than anything.

Thinking back, I don't think I took that class because I wanted to write.  I think I really took it because I wanted to read more people's writing.  I've met people who come off as boring and unimaginative, but whose writing is poignant and powerful in ways I could not have anticipated.  I love the depth that writing reveals about a person, the stories they tell and, especially, how they tell them.

In short, I fall in love with people's writing, thinking, ideas, concepts, blogs way before I fall in love with them.  Most of the people whose ideas I fall in love with I'll never even be friends with, some of them I dislike as people.  That doesn't stop me from being head over heels in love with the way they put down their thoughts. So I guess this whole post was really just a long rant about how much of a hopeless romantic I am when it comes to the intangibles.  That's okay, though.  Because it's true, and I like things that are.  I just wish I'd been able to phrase it better.

Metamorphosis

A little while ago (by which I mean a little more than a week), I wrote a certain Untitled Rant, raving in a selfish and not at all elegant fashion about how I haven't found myself.  I was thinking back on this today and realized that I may have been slightly mistaken.  No, let me correct myself: mistaken in a particular regard.  Because while I haven't found myself in terms of identity and hobbies and personality traits, I'm starting to see signs that suggest that I have found myself in some ways.

I've stopped apologizing for myself.  I've started refusing to be sorry about things I'm proud of or believe in strongly.  Perhaps more significantly, I've realized that there are things I believe in strongly.  I've stopped trying to be liked by everybody, because fuck that.  I have better things to do with my life than care what people think.

Maybe I'm not as weak or feeble as I keep thinking or feeling like I am.  I've started taking things in stride a bit better, so even though I still worry about just about everything, I'm generally able to push through it.  I'm starting to think that maybe I'll be okay.  And that really hasn't happened in a while.  It's getting harder to throw me off my game.  I think I'm approaching the point where it's nearly impossible to break me.

It's possible that it's just tonight, because I feel almost invincible.  I feel grounded. Solid.  Like I've finally put together enough of the pieces in a structurally sound enough foundation to keep it all functioning without extraneous support.  I'll stop ranting now and end it simply, one sentence to express the entire point of this post:

Maybe I really am starting to get better.

On Happiness and Life

I have a really good life and I'm so bad at being happy.


This is a post from a blog I've been reading for a few years now, and also (of course) where I found the above quote.  I think things like this are really the reason I started reading this woman's blog, and also the reason I continue to read it.  She doesn't post often, but it's scarily well-written when she does.  She does what I wish I could--spin the words together in an elegant fashion and put down pieces of her life, of herself, onto the page.  I wish I was half as good.

The sentiment of it, though, is what really caught my eye.  That's me in a nutshell.  That one sentence sums up the past few years of my existence so simply and eloquently.  Because that's the thing about me...I know how good I have it, and I just can't seem to be happy about it.  It's almost infuriating sometimes, because it's entirely too too easy for me to sabotage myself, and I keep wanting to do it, even though I don't really have any reason to.

I don't even know how I got onto this whole self-destructive kick.  I remember the first time, sure.  I remember the first time after that, if it still counts as a first time then, which I think it does.  It's one of those stories that I want to pour out, because if I was a good writer, I'd be able to turn it into a heartbreaking tale of innocence lost or something equally dramatic.  But I don't write it.  As much as I've always wanted to, I never have and I don't think I never will.

First of all, I'm not a particularly good writer.  I have my moments.  I've written pieces that are honest and touching and emotional, at least to me.  I've been told they're well-written, as well, but I never know how much to believe impartial opinions on such things.  But most of the time, my writing isn't terribly good.  It's just me throwing thoughts down, putting characters against a contrasting background.  And second of all, it's personal.  I know I've written many personal things here before, but this is the sort of thing that I don't necessarily want people to know about me if they don't already.

In a strange way, the thing that I quite possibly allow to define myself is the one I don't want anybody to know the story of.  Maybe it's an instinct of self-preservation, where I understand my weaknesses and don't want others to know them, or maybe it's just another twist of my particularly crooked mind.  Regardless, that's a story that I don't know will ever be told here, or possibly anywhere.

But this whole inability to appreciate how good my life is never fails to bother me. I know how good my life is, and I'm certainly grateful for it.  And yet I somehow just can't be happy about it.  I don't know how to appreciate it.  At all.  It's like I don't know how to be happy anymore, because no matter how well things are going, I can't seem to dig myself out of this pit of mild to moderate depression.

I ruin things for myself.  I allow my anxieties and concerns to run rampant and spoil experiences for me.  And most of the time, I get past it.  I get over it.  I manage to stifle my problems well enough to continue with life and be functional. There are just those moments when I open my eyes to a wave of sadness washing over me and for a second forget to breathe.  Then it overcomes me and I'm powerless until it releases me.

Sanctuary

I think most of us have a sanctuary.  A little corner of the world all our own, where nobody can touch us, where everything is only about us and our thoughts.  It's a place that can't be desecrated.  A safe haven.  For some people it's purely mental, for others entirely physical, and for some (or maybe most), it is a combination of the two.

Let me make a small jump here.  I am an introvert.  I'm not antisocial (okay, maybe a little bit) and I'm not incapable of making friends and I'm not a hermit.  I just like spending time by myself.  I like being alone sometimes.  I like quiet activities and being engrossed in my own thoughts.  Long walks, hot cups of tea, and lots of time with me, myself, and I for company.  That's the way it's always been and that's precisely how I like it.

As you may expect, then, I have a sanctuary.  And I probably use it more often than extroverts who find more comfort in others than in themselves.  I'll put it simply: my sanctuary is my shower.  I take long, boiling hot showers when I want to think about things.  We've all heard the jokes about brilliant ideas in the shower.  That's almost the way it is for me.  I say almost because I don't have revelations.  I just use the shower to think.

When I'm too tired to work or too emotional or not emotional enough, I take a shower.  I like spending time alone surrounded by hot steam and boiling water.  I spend hours at a time letting the water wash over me and letting my thoughts pick their own course like the rivulets of water running down my body and the walls.  This is my sanctuary.  It's where I go when I don't know what to do with myself.  It's always been my escape.

But lately, I haven't been able to take these long, thoughtful showers.  I've always been in a rush and the shower has just become a sort of quick routine that simply needs to happen.  And maybe that's why I've been feeling a bit misplaced.  Like I've got a storm of thoughts buzzing around in my mind and I don't know what to do with them.  I haven't been able to use my usual coping strategy of long showers to work through everything, so I've been getting more and more bogged down and confused.

I want my sanctuary back.  I want my long, hot showers.  I want my hours of uninterrupted thought.  And I don't think I'm getting them back anytime soon.  Which means that I have to learn a new coping method, preferably one that still relies only minimally on people.  Just because I prefer to rely on myself in order to solve my problems.  Maybe that's just me.

Glory Fades

We all grow up one day.  We change.  As children, we all have this fine polish.  We've been raised and nurtured and developed by parents and teachers and peers until we develop into young adults.  We are untarnished, pure.  Nothing is unforgivable, everything is fixable.  We are so unashamed and not afraid of getting hurt.

But growing up changes all of this.  Or maybe it only feels that way.  The polish fades.  We are covered in scratches and dents.  We are broken and pieces fall off.  Sometimes they are replaced, reattached with glue so they are still there, but no longer the way they used to be.  Other times they are lost or abandoned.  The silver tarnishes, the protective coating wears off and we begin to be damaged.  Sometimes it's repairable, sometimes it's not.

Life can't be undone.  And with that, sometimes we are broken in ways that can never be fixed.  No matter how much glue you use to fix the joint, no matter how many times you coat it and re-polish it, you can't get back the stability you had before.  So what is life about?  Is it about keeping yourself intact for as long as possible, staying as undamaged as you can for the longest time?  Or is it about crawling out at the end, broken and bent and utterly ruined, but with all the wisdom of your experiences?

And don't say it's about balance.  Everything is about balance.  "Take risks...but not too many."  It's what all of the advice in the world boils down to.  It's about enjoying the present, but not so much as to ruin your future.  It's sickening.  We're all so busy trying to make sure our lives don't fall apart that we don't really live them.  And maybe that's okay.  Maybe it's enough.  Maybe a mild happiness is better than an erratic patterning of highs and lows.  But then why is it that everyone seems to have these regrets about things they didn't do rather than things they did?

Maybe it's okay to be broken.  Maybe falling apart is good sometimes.  Maybe we can be happy because we're not perfect, not in spite of it.  So maybe everything will be okay, for some definition of okay, anyway.  And maybe "some definition" is better than either a rigid one or none at all.

Maybe, just maybe, if someone else believes that it is okay for us to not be okay sometimes, everything will be okay.  Eventually.  And if it's not, maybe that's okay too.

So Long and Good Night

It's so easy to wallow in misery.  On a (not at all unrelated) note, I think my delocalized depression has realized that I left again and found me back.  I should probably hate it by now for doing things like that, but oddly enough, I don't.  Maybe it's because I'm just too tired to care right now.  I'm not sure.

It's not even that I've had a particularly bad or stressful day or anything.  I'm just worn out.  The week has been a little rough and I'm a little battered from things that don't necessarily relate to being stressed.  I think.  I don't honestly think that made any sense, but I'm just throwing words down now, so it's okay (stop reading here if it isn't).

The self-loathing is back.  Well, not really.  Or rather, only a little bit.  Maybe that's the jealousy kicking in again, although figuring out where it came from or why it's there is a tremendous challenge all its own, one that I don't think I'll tackle.  Apathy is the wrong term for this.  It's not apathy.  I don't know that this is even depression right now.  It's too abrupt and not deep enough to really be depression.  Although I don't know what else would drive me to spewing my emotions all over the internet in a pathetic, nonsense fashion.

The past week has been good.  Nothing has really gone wrong.  I'm just...weak and pathetic and unable to do anything again.  Which is a frustrating experience.  Maybe it's just been adjusting to being in a different place again.  Or maybe it's just me having issues again.  I don't think I have anything new to say, so I give up. Apologies.  Good night.

Time to shake the hands of fate

Fate:
Something that unavoidably befalls a person; fortune; lot.
The universal principle or ultimate agency by which the order of things is presumably prescribed; the decreed cause of events; time.
That which is inevitably predetermined; destiny.
A prophetic declaration of what must be.
Death, destruction, or ruin.

Depending on how you define it, I either don't believe in fate or I look forward to it.  Maybe it comes from how I was raised, but I've always been quite the believer in free will.  I don't think there is any defined future or way that things must go.  I think  that we determine what happens in our futures, that what happens next is not predestined in any way.

On the other hand, if we look at fate as "death, destruction, or ruin," that just makes me curious.  I'm not afraid of it.  I just want to see what happens.  I'm curious.  People are afraid of the end--both their own personal end as well as the end of the world.  But for some reason, this doesn't scare me.  I'm just curious about it.  I would be perfectly content to watch the world fall to pieces around me.

No matter how hard I try, I can never come up with anything I want to do before I die.  If I had to, I'd say something like jumping out of an airplane (preferably with a parachute).  But even that isn't something I really want to do.  I'm indifferent.  I'll be perfectly content if I never get the chance to do it.  I don't have a bucket list.  I don't think I understood that when you wrote it, but I get it now.  I've had most, if not all, of the experiences I want in my life.  I don't need to be married or have children or own my own house for happiness.

None of the simple pleasures beyond what I have or have had appeal to me.  And there is nothing extreme or extraordinary that I want to do or accomplish.  I could die at this moment with no regrets.  And that thought excites me.  I want to see the end of the world.  I want to watch everything fall to pieces.  The thought is absolutely exhilarating, if a bit morbid.

I think the end of the world will be beautiful.  Maybe it won't be poetic or dramatic or majestic.  But I think that the sheer chaos will be breathtaking and incredible.  And maybe in the moment I would be afraid, but I don't fear the outcome.  I am not afraid of being rejected by a deity I don't believe in and I am not afraid of my own conscience.

I want to see everything break.  Is that so wrong?

And I'm Gone

Do you ever hear the silence anymore?  Ever just stop and listen?  Maybe that's not how I should have phrased it.  Or rather, I think I should have separated my original two questions.  So let me try this again.  Do you ever listen to the world around you anymore?  Is it ever anything beyond the blur of voices and clicks and rumbles and ticks of electronics and the roar of engines going past?  Do you remember what the world sounds like in any way other than a backdrop?

Every voice is a person.  Behind each piece of technology are more people.  In the rumbling contraption that is a vehicle are still more people.  All of them with lives and families and thoughts and feelings.  And it's so easy to forget that everyone is like this.  It's so much easier to think of them as machines that should do as they're told and make rational decisions.  It's hard to admit that other people are just like us...or perhaps that we are just like other people.  We don't want to face the reality that all of us have lives and concerns.

Admitting to ourselves that we are surrounded by other individuals no less deep or sincere or thoughtful than us forces us to reconsider how we treat those around us, how we think of them, what we say.  It's harder to ruthlessly victimize and mock someone once you know their situation and understand their troubles.  It's human nature to sympathize.  And as soon as we know enough about someone to do so, we immediately begin to.

We watch the news and read the stories about loved ones dying and family members disappearing and all of us constantly think and hope that it will never happen to us.  And then sometimes it does.  Sometimes people are stolen from us, sometimes permanently and sometimes not.  It's a life-altering situation and one that also changes our perspective.  We find ourselves able to sympathize with a group of people we never understood before.

And sometimes I can't help but wonder, what happens when it's our turn?  When we vanish from someone's life, how will they react?  Maybe it will be monumental and maybe it will mean next to nothing.  Maybe it will change certain people's lives  and leave intact the lives of others.  But there is no sense in wondering.  All we can know is that it's true.

One day, we will be gone.

Conditional Chaos

Everything is so dependent on context.  A smile, for example.  Between lovers, a hidden conversation.  Between friends, a warm exchange.  Between acquaintances, a friendly, if confused, interaction.  Between strangers, a potentially awkward or creepy moment.  And that's just a smile in the general case.  It also changes if the smile looked extremely fake or seemed elated.  But everything in the interpretation of this simple thing is determined by circumstance.

For most of us, every day brings us into contact with people with whom we are already acquainted and people we have never met before.  Sometimes we see people all around us, even if we don't interact.  And occasionally, we strike up a conversation, or find ourselves going to similar places, and then we become friends.  There is nothing more confusing than the interactions that lead two people to become friends.

Sometimes it is as random as the work-space you are assigned.  You happen to need a pen and turn to your neighbor and, well, the rest is history, as they say.  If you had been next to anybody else, there is a high chance you would not have met this person.  Maybe someone else would have become your close friend and, as friends are wont to do, would have influenced you, changed who you are in subtle ways.

How much do the people we come into contact with almost randomly wind up influencing our future?  It has to be an awful lot.  If we became friends with different people, in different places, at different times in our lives, wouldn't we be completely different people?

I don't believe in destiny and I don't believe in soulmates.  I believe in chaos.  I believe in entropy.  I believe that random occurrences in our lives set the stage for what is going to happen in the future.  While we can choose to talk to the person next to us or not, and the decision could maybe be predicted, we don't always get to choose who is next to us.  And sometimes even if we do, we do it not at all knowing the future outcome of our interactions.

As far as the butterfly effect...I don't know.  For those who are not familiar with it, the butterfly effect is the idea that if a butterfly flaps its wings in central America, it can set in motion air molecules in such a way as to cause a tsunami in Japan.  That's just an example.  It's the idea that everything is so interconnected that even the smallest motion here or there or somewhere else has unpredictable consequences.  And while I agree with the idea of each small change potentially leading to larger ones in the future, I don't know if we can apply it to something as drastic as a tsunami caused by a butterfly's wings.

It makes logical sense, if you extrapolate from the idea that things all influence each other.  But it is still difficult for the human brain to wrap itself around.  Is it really possible that such a tiny motion sets off something so huge and seemingly unrelated?  Maybe, maybe not.  I feel that it's probably possible for something like that to happen, but extremely unlikely.  Just as it is possible but extremely unlikely for a person to be able to quantum tunnel through a table, for example.

As the telling signs of age rain down a single tear is dropping

I wonder what people see when they look at my face.  What does my expression convey?  The scars, the imperfections, the lines, the blemishes?  What stories does my face tell that I don't know for myself?

I started seeing wrinkles a few years ago, and I'm still rather young for them to be making an appearance.  I used to stand in front of the mirror and wonder why these shallow creases started appearing on my forehead.  What did that say about me?  Is it only that I let the sun abuse my skin when I was younger or is there something deeper?  Does it convey a tired soul?  Or a wretched heart?

If there is anything I learned from the story of Dorian Gray, it is that a person's life gets written on their face.  And it's true not only in the context of this particular novel, but also in our lives.  There are people you can see who wrinkle their noses in a particular way and you can just tell that they won't be sympathetic.  Some people wear the lines of constant smiles around their mouths and eyes.  It's not a perfect system, but the face does say so much.

Lately I've been wondering if I've been turning into exactly the sort of person I wanted to avoid being.  I've spent the past three months lamenting how one of my former friends has become judgmental and inconsiderate, and yet I'm sitting here doing no better myself.  How did I let this happen?

The answer to that is simple, really.  I got caught up in the rest of my life.  In my job.  In adjusting to a new place.  I let myself go, because when I'm stressed and busy and transitioning, it's too easy to lose sight of what's going on.  Of what sort of person you're becoming.  And I guess that's what happened to me.

So right now, I'll do what I should have done before.  I'll apologize.  I'm sorry.  I'm sorry for being caught up in myself.  I'm sorry for ruining other people's mood.  I'm sorry for lying.  I'm sorry for not being there.  I'm sorry.  I'll try to be better.  I promise.  So please, give me a chance.

Transition State

I'm in a place between being overwhelmingly broken and overwhelmingly fixed, which makes no sense at all.  But that's how it is.  I'll wake up in a panic.  I know I've written about this before, but not in a while, because it's been a while since it's happened.  It's the sort of panic you can't shake.  You wake up and everything is peaceful for a second and then life crashes over you like a wave.  It breaks all over you and you curl up and shake because suddenly the thought of getting up to face the world is the most terrifying thing ever.  So it's not so much waking up in a panic as being accosted by panic the second my brain begins to register thoughts.

That experience renders the rest of the morning useless, because I wander the house like a terrified ghost, trying to find ways to occupy myself but unable to concentrate on anything.  I can't get work done and I can't find anything distracting enough to do.  I've spent a lot of time just walking from window to window lately, trying to see if maybe I would find something to get my attention.  Or maybe I'd just be able to drown myself in nostalgia for long enough to shake the fear.

Based on that description, I'm pretty sure it sounds like I need serious mental help.  Something is clearly wrong with me, right?  But that's the weird thing.  In that when I do eventually calm down, usually because of something mundane like the need to buy ink for my ancient printer or figuring out taxes, I'm more okay than I've been in a while.

When that happens, all of my doubt vanishes.  The self-confidence I never really had seems to make this brief and empowering appearance and suddenly I know, with more certainty than I've ever known anything before, that I'll be okay.  I stop thinking in hypothetical situations and beating myself up over aspects of my life I can't control and everything just makes perfect sense.  I can see what my life is going to be like in a few years, and I am 99% confident that I'm right about it.

Maybe I really have just lost it.  Maybe I'm actually a psychopath and this is the psychotic break that's going to turn me into a serial killer.  The fact that I seriously considered that a possibility for about ten seconds does nothing to comfort me about my reasoning abilities.  It's still morning, which might explain why my hands are shaking (I promise, it's not the cold) and I can't make sense of anything.  I have no idea what's going on with me.  Which, oddly enough, isn't scaring me.  Or maybe the fear from this is nothing compared to the panic that's already busy devouring me.  We're just going to pretend that everything is just fine until I know what to do with myself.  That sounds like a brilliant idea.

Untitled Rant

I am deeply jealous of the people who really "found" themselves in high school or in college or at their first real job or whatever.  The people who really bloomed in some way.  I think we all know people who were quiet or shy or awkward and then after some big transition in their life came back all confident and strong and abnormally full of joy.  

In case you couldn't tell, that never happened to me.  I guess to a point maybe it did when I first moved out, but if anything, I became more awkward and less confident as a result, so I don't think that really counts.  And you can tell I never really found myself because, well, think about it: I don't have hobbies.  I don't have interests outside my work.  Well, I write.  But that's not a hobby.  I don't write because I want to or because I like it or anything, but rather because I need to.  It fulfills something basic in me that I can't explain.

I've said it from the very beginning.  I write for myself.  Not for anybody who reads this.  Especially an important note for the people in my life: I don't give a flying fuck if you read this blog or not.  It's not being written to inform you of my emotional state or my sanity at any given time (although it may be good for determining that on occasion).  You don't have to read it.  Especially since none of you talk to me about anything I write here anyway, so it doesn't matter if you read it or not or if I know whether you did or not.

I don't care.  Maybe that's just the mood I've gotten into over the course of the past week, but I'm starting to realize that there's very little anyone can do to hurt me anymore.  I stopped being afraid of physical pain a while ago, so the only thing I feared was emotional pain.  And it's becoming pretty damn difficult to inflict that on me, and I'm not sure if that means I'm getting stronger or something (hint: I doubt it) or if I've just grown numb.

But again, you don't care.  It's strange to me that I still write this for an audience even though there really isn't me.  Maybe I never moved on from that adolescent belief in the imaginary audience--that there are constantly people around you who actually (get this) care what you do and how you look.  I know there aren't, not in the way the imaginary audience implies, anyway, but I insist on writing as though there are.

In case you couldn't tell, that would be my self-confidence getting washed further down the drain.  It seems to have started making progress on that descent over the past three weeks, rapidly accelerating as it went.  What is the metaphorical gravity here?  Possibly (bringing this back full circle) that numerous (I'm not going to count) major life transitions later, I still haven't "found" myself in any meaningful way.  So I'm going to grow old and be pathetic and when I'm not busily working, I'll be sitting at home surrounded by a large gathering of dogs I will own, potentially crying as I spill my woes onto the internet.  Yep.

This is quite possibly the worst and most self-centered post I have ever written, and I hope it will be the worst I ever write.  More reason to hate me?  Probably.  Do I care?  No, no I really don't.  I won't apologize for feeling like shit and putting it on the internet because I didn't ask you to read this.  So there.

Pleasure

Pleasure is often seen as selfish, but I think the greatest pleasure of all is sharing.

This was said by a man on a television program I happened to see the end of and it really struck me.  I wish I knew who it was or what the program was called, so I could at least give credit.

It seems like just one of those cheesy things you'd say, the cliches that girls in high school have plastered all over their lockers and doodle in their notebooks...except perhaps in slightly more mature terms.  But when you really think about it, I think it makes a lot of sense.

Maybe if we spent less time worrying about ourselves and what everybody thinks of us and what we'll never be happy without, and started worrying about making the people around us happy, we'd be happier ourselves.  After all, happiness is contagious.  It's the sort of thing you hear about everywhere.  If you care about someone, do your best to make them as happy, and they'll undoubtedly do the same.

I think somewhere in there I lost track of this.  I'm guessing we all lose track from time to time, and get caught up in our own problems.  But hearing this made me really think about it for a minute.  So even though it's almost a week into the new year now, and resolutions have for the most part already been made (and likely broken), and I don't like resolutions very much, I think I might make one now.

This year, I want to stop worrying so much about myself and start appreciating the people around me.  I want to show them my appreciation and do my best to make them as happy as they make me.  I know it's vague and I hate vague resolutions, but it's so important.  It's the sort of thing that a few years ago I would have written on a post-it note and stuck above my desk just to be reminded (now that I think of it, that may not be such a bad idea after all).

I've been unsure of where I am in my life for the past couple of months.  I've been insecure about the people in it and the direction of it.  And I think that somewhere in all of that insecurity and worrying, I forgot that these people make me very happy.  And that they deserve to be made happy too.  And if I'm going to spend all of my time nervous and miserable, who's going to make them happy?

I'm still not sure where my life is headed or exactly which roles all of the people in it play, that's not something that gets sorted out...possibly ever, not to mention in a five-minute burst of inspiration over something someone said.  But I've realized that I need to show them more appreciation.  I'll be okay so long as I make sure that they're okay.  I need to learn to trust people a little bit and let them in sometimes.

This is a good note to end the day on.  I'm really glad I saw that.  I hope I'm not the only one who takes those words to heart.

Wounded Satellite

The solar system, well, all of space, really, is kept in order by the force of gravity.  It keeps moons orbiting planets, planets orbiting stars, starts orbiting each other in binary systems or galaxies.  All of it is kept together with the principles of inertia and gravity.  Because of inertia, satellites keep moving forward.  Because of gravity, they are constantly pulled toward whatever they orbit.

People are kept together that way, too.  Sometimes they orbit other people, other times ideas or beliefs or feelings.  There are occasional collisions and changes in course, but people are constantly moving and constantly being pulled one way or another by something.  Except this time that something is not gravity.  It's life.

You can see it in the way people communicate.  They talk about someone being so full of life, someone who radiates it.  There are so many quotes about the difference between living and simply existing.  Some people seem to just grab life and exude a powerful influence over others--they bring people together and give them purpose.  In this system then, people are the satellites, and life is gravity.

There are plenty of interesting interactions that occur as different sources of gravity exert their influence over objects in space.  Some collide, others change orbits, and still others maintain their steady paths for what seems like an eternity. People do the same.  They meet others, encounter the force of their life and either change their course if they are strongly influenced or keep moving forward as they were.

Yet perhaps the most interesting things in space happen when something is destroyed.  There is a difference between death and dying, and the key lies in timescale and effect.  Death is an event.  It is the supernova that blasts a star to pieces, taking so little time yet producing this massive change.  Dying is a slow process.  It is happening constantly.  As a star is using up first all hydrogen, then helium, then heavier elements.  Dying is the march forward through time, the inevitable approach to death.  It is long and often steady, making progress constantly yet hardly ever observed.

People say they are afraid of dying, yet they are dying every day.  Each hour they march closer to death.  Each day their cells become more damaged and less capable of repairing themselves.  But nobody thinks of this until something happens.  Until they are facing death.  Because death reminds us of what the process of dying is all approaching.  That we are constantly approaching this state of not existing.  Of no longer being here.

Those who fear dying are fools.  They are doing it every day.  Dying cannot be prevented.  But being afraid of death?  That's a different story.  Death has a tendency among humans to appear when it was not being expected.  With stars you can at least see the changes that signal the end is near, and even with a collision you see it long enough before it happens that you can at least prepare.  But humans don't have the luxuries of the cosmos.  For us things sometimes just happen and we have no control over them.

And once a star is gone, there is nothing left to orbit.  Sometimes it destroys its satellites on its way out.  But always, there is nothing left of nearly the same intensity that there previously was.  With nothing left to orbit then, the satellites go off in different directions, some propelled by inertia from their orbit alone, others having been imparted momentum by the death of what they once orbited.  So people are left to move on past death.  There is no longer life from this source to keep them on the path they followed, so they must choose another.

Some move forward from where they were, following a course as similar as possible to the way they lived before.  Others are shocked and altered by the experience and change radically.  Some may have been destroyed at the end of the process of dying, but previous to death.  And others find themselves lacking enough momentum to go anywhere, so they hover or crawl close to where the life had been, until someone with more life comes by and starts their orbit anew.

Searching for something, I couldn't find at home

Do you ever have those moments when the world seems to snap suddenly into focus and for an instant, everything makes sense?  It's like you're in a fog with all of your thoughts floating around you, and then you look away and everything clears.  It's the strangest feeling, and it always seems so perfectly clear and rational and devoid of emotions until you look back at it.

Some moments just shouldn't be analyzed.  Especially moments like these where for a second everything works.  Because as soon as you look back on them and you analyze them and look at everything, it stops making sense.  Suddenly you start thinking about an emotion you thought was there and then you can't tell if it was or wasn't.  Then you start contemplating how you feel about it, and the moment is lost.

It's like a crystal.  It's perfect, and looking at it makes you really appreciate its beauty.  But if you keep going over it, keep touching it and turning it, you mar it.  You add too much of yourself to it, so it loses the brilliance.

I wonder if it's the same with dreams.  I had a dream two nights ago that was so realistic that I had to wake up and check to see if I'd done what I thought I did.  I can still sense the thoughts that were going through my head in that dream.  And I want to keep thinking about it, keep mulling over it, keep analyzing the situation.  But I can feel it slipping away, as dreams are prone to do.

I've always wondered at the significance of dreams.  Everything you read on the subject says something different.  My mother used to never remember her dreams, but the ones she did foretold the future.  They were all very common-place and small events, but I have to wonder how that would work.  For that matter, I wonder if she ever remembers her dreams these days.

Supposedly dreams are supposed to help sort the occurrences of the past day.  And I guess that is reflected in the subject matter most of the time (in my experience), but not always.  Sometimes, though, it seems as though dreams come out of absolutely nowhere.  And I feel like they have to mean something, be in your mind for some reason.  But I have no explanation.

I don't like when things don't make logical sense.  It bothers me because it means I don't have control over it, and I like at least knowing that I have control if not actively exercising it.  So I need to understand...

Locked Up

I want to just throw thoughts down.  I want to write.  But I don't think I can be coherent right now, so I might just write them.

--> Someone left a comment on one of my posts (which was appreciated)...and for once I don't know who it was.  I'm not sure I want to, although my curiosity begs to differ.  This is for a number of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with blogging or anything rational.
--> I miss my creative writing class.  I don't miss the people in it or the things that were going on in my life at the time, but I miss the class and I miss the teacher.  That's the one time I really wrote anything even remotely resembling fiction.  And I liked a lot of what I wrote.
--> I don't know what to do with myself right now.  There are literal stacks of work lying around me and I just can't bring myself to do it.

Really, I just want to put something down.  Words.  If I could, I'd do something like:

[Insert poignant emotion here]

I mean, technically it works.  Except for the fact that this tells you nothing about any of the emotions I might want to put into that space.  

There are too many thoughts buzzing around my head right now that I can't put into words.  Mostly they're feelings.  I think I need to find new people to talk to.  I know that wasn't related at all.  I hate being alone and I hate being around people.   Always one or the other...if I'm alone, I want company, if I'm with people, I want to be alone.

People are stupid.  We're never happy with what we have.  We always want this or that or something more.  I'm not sure I want to understand why this is the case.  This is a terrible post.  It's even worse than usual.  Am I the only person with a mind that jumps this much?  It's not even when I can't focus, it's just a constant thing.  One minute I'm thinking one thought, the next it's completely unrelated.

I really want to write something meaningful and worthwhile.  I can't come up with anything right now.  I know a few people who actually read this.  If anyone has any suggestions for things they think I could actually write about (preferably well), let me know (remember, I like comments).  I'm going to stop trying to pour thoughts out when clearly they're not coming.  I'm sorry to have wasted your mental capacity.

This is the dawning of the rest of our lives

Being depressed is...complicated.  It's easy in some ways and difficult in others.  If you haven't read it, I highly recommend this particular 'analysis' so to speak.  I've spent the past couple of days meandering through various stages of that.  Getting up has been...difficult.  Doing anything productive?  Not happening.  My eating habits have gone to hell, my sleep pattern is completely disrupted and I find it difficult to move faster than a snail.  If I managed to get up to do something, it was always slow and with a limp, because somehow being depressed makes everything hurt more, even physically, which in this case means my already-pained hip.

It's been that kind of week for me.  It's had it's bright moments, too, but they've been drowned by the overwhelming amount of numbness.  The weirdest thing is that I know I did this to myself.  I've gotten good at understanding where my moods come from and regulating them.  And I don't want this to stop.  In some sick way, I'm enjoying floating around in a sea of self-loathing.  I don't really want to be functional...I just want to lie here and look at pictures of how my life will never be on the internet.  That's just been the course of the past three days for me.

And then something interesting happened while I was pulling dog hair meticulously out of the rug.  Sitting there on the floor, putting the entirety of the small amount of energy I could muster into pulling fur out of the rug where it was so comfortably lodged, I hit the bottom of the Hyperbole and a Half analogy.  I hit the point of "I don't care."  It doesn't matter that my life could fall apart at any moment because that's always the case, even though it doesn't usually feel like it. I had this brilliant realization that nothing was going to last forever.  A sort of "this too shall pass" moment, expect with less hope and more relief.

So no, I don't care.  I don't care that people hold the opinion that I'm a terrible person because of reasons which are perfectly valid.  I don't care that people know so much more about certain aspects of my life than anybody ever needs to. I don't care that this might not last forever, because that's not at all how I walked into it and I don't know why I started thinking it might.  I don't care that I'm bitter and jealous and arrogant and flawed in so, so many more ways.

I'm not perfect.  I'm never going to be perfect.  I fuck up.  Often.  Just like any other human being.  And sometimes my mistakes are small and sometimes they're really not.  But they don't define me.  They don't make me a terrible person.  They don't mean I'm not capable of having friends or being happy.  Because of my flaws, I am no better and no worse than anybody else.  It doesn't matter what people think of them.

And somehow that makes me feel better.  Because even though I still feel like shit about myself in many ways, it's just me.  I could be okay just staying here alone for the rest of my life.  And it's been a really long time since I've felt secure enough in myself to say that.  So no, I'm not really okay.  But yes, I am feeling better.  That's enough.  I don't need to be more okay right now.

Never Enough

All of my thoughts are getting spilled into the wrong places.  I don't remember how to write coherently.  Maybe that's just the lack of sleep.  Which, as with everything else, is my fault.  Let's see where my thoughts have wound up lately, directly or otherwise.

Some of them are put down line by line, to be remembered for now but never after.  Some of them actually get expressed to real people.  Some of them get drowned in mug after mug of tea.  Some of them are evicted in spasmodic shaking that I can't prevent.  Some of them turn into compulsive things like fidgeting and nail-biting.  And some of them just become part of this curtain of dull pain that keeps the amount of self-loathing fairly stable.

I'm really good at making myself fall apart.  And you're going to hate me for this, because you're just going to keep blaming yourself for making me feel like shit.  Which is not at all the problem.  I got over the shit-feeling.  I generally do.  Probably more quickly than I should.  Now I'm just tearing myself to pieces because there's something I really missed about being broken and this is letting me get back to it.

I'm drowning myself in the things that make me hurt, and it's not just because pain makes me feel, but also because for some twisted reason, I like the way it feels.  I'm tired of fighting my destructive impulses, so I'm letting them wreak havoc with me for the next four days because I can.  There is probably so much wrong with me right now...

Cross The Line

Have you ever played the game called Cross The Line?  It's where everyone starts lined up on one side of a line drawn on the floor and a moderator reads a statement that starts with "cross the line if..." and if that describes you, you step over the line.  Then everyone steps back to the same side of the line and the moderator reads another statement.  I've seen it used in classes and groups to make a point about diversity.  I've also seen it done in such a way that it reveals a lot more about people than what they'd ever tell you.

It can be so simple.

Cross the line if your favorite color is blue.
Cross the line if you like drinking coffee.
Cross the line if you've ever been out of the country.
Cross the line if you have siblings.

Or it can be so much more complex.

Cross the line if you're broken.
Cross the line if you've been hurt.
Cross the line if you wish you could change something in the past.
Cross the line if you don't know where you're going in life.
Cross the line if you're afraid.
Cross the line if you don't know who you are.

It's the sort of thing that really opens your eyes.  It makes you look at people in a different way because it's so much easier to just take that step instead of explaining what happened and how it happened and why you feel that way.  It's a way of showing just how much we aren't alone in this world.  And it's the sort of thing that's absolutely fascinating in the moment, but so hard to talk about later, because if you brought it up, you'd have to talk and you'd have to explain.

The format of stepping over a line makes everything into a yes or no question, and if you're not sure, you go with your gut.  When everything is condensed to black and white, it's a lot easier to reveal something about yourself.  Maybe that says something about human thinking--that it's so much easier to generalize than to actually talk about the way we feel.  Everything has to be positive or negative.  Even if we admit that it has traces of both, it's always a question of how it was on the whole--good or bad?

It's strange to me that something so simple can reveal so many complicated things about people.  But I guess that it shouldn't surprise me.  Few things really do anymore...unfortunately, perhaps.

Knees are weak, hands are shaking, I can't breathe

The problem with intelligence is that it's too hard to delude yourself into believing that everything is okay or good or working when it isn't.  You can see the things that are wrong.  And you can't just block them out.  Once you see something wrong, you simply can't go back to pretending you never noticed it.

I've known too many intelligent people who have tried.  Some people drink to avoid the truths.  It's been tempting.  By which I mean I almost did, myself.  Sometimes I honestly think it would be nice to forget the world, to let it go to hell and just not care.  I guess it must work.  I don't know of any other reason why someone would repeatedly pour poison into their body, wake up feeling like hell, and resign themselves to not knowing what bad decisions they had made.

The bravest thing I ever did was continuing my life when I wanted to die.
--Juliette Lewis

Sometimes I want to feel like this god-like creature for not being addicted to something yet.  Because the world is full of filth and unfairness and sometimes everything just hurts, and it would be so easy to do something to forget.  I want to feel special because I see it and I understand it (or like to think I do) and don't try to blot it from my brain.  But I know that it's nothing special.  Countless people do the same every single day.  Many of them see more and understand it better than I ever will.

It's hard to accept that I'm not special because I grew up being praised for how good I was at things, and how diligent I was, and how I could always be counted on.  I know that in most ways, if not all, I'm no better than anybody else, even the people I look down on for their habits or their behaviors or their seeming lack of thought.  It's just a difficult concept to really wrap my mind around.

"I am deep and I am weak and I am pitiful" is how this whole post reads to me.  And I know I'm not deep, and I hate admitting I'm weak, and I really hate being pitiful and try hard not to be.  I'm throwing words at a blank space on the screen because I've come back to seeing writing as a sanctuary.  I use it to work out my thoughts, even if they don't flow, even if they don't make me or anybody else happy.

I've written so much in the past few days and I don't want to stop.  I want to spend the rest of my life putting thoughts down into words because I want to understand how my brain works.  I want to know why things hurt the way they do and I want to understand why I sometimes feel like I have to say the things that I don't want to because they aren't necessary and I know they'll hurt.

I really don't know what else to say.  Apologies.

It ain't the mark or the scar that makes you one

I've been curious about you since I found out that you existed.  Which is a really odd sentence, generally.  I'm not sure why, but the discovery of another person's existence just seems odd to me.  But that's precisely how it went.  I heard the story, and then I got a name.  The rest is history--assembled delicately from jealousy draped loosely over a frame of pure curiosity.

Because from the very beginning what I really wanted to know was why it was you, and why I wasn't good enough to be there instead.  I never had any major reason to dislike you (although you certainly had many to dislike me), and so always, I was curious.  And when I was particularly busy pitying myself, I let myself be jealous, because you had what I wanted most of all but couldn't get.

I walked into something when I got involved in this.  I wasn't just a friend to one party, but rather a spectator to how the past played itself out anew, years later.  There were factors in your interactions that I still can't fathom because I wasn't there all those years ago when everything that led to this really began.  And for that, I almost hated you.

Almost, I say, because I didn't.  I just hated that I wasn't you and never could be.  I wanted to know as much as I could about you because it seemed like you had a magic key of sorts that put you into that position.  That made you special and loved and everything I wanted to be.

We saw very different sides of the same person for a few months.  I heard doubts and concerns that you were never privy to, and you saw such careful attention and certain sides of personality that I had no idea existed.  And even though I knew that there were things you didn't see, I wanted so badly to trade places, which I guess eventually we did.

It was all terribly selfish, and I even knew it then.  But I wanted to be you, so badly.  I was so jealous, and I wanted to know why it couldn't have been me.

Then that summer we all got tangled up in a complete mess.  And I'll take responsibility for starting it, because I could have just as easily put an end to it (if I'd been willing to).  More than ever, I felt like I was intruding on something that wasn't mine to partake in.  So I wanted to know more.  I wanted to understand it because I wanted a part of what you had.  We all did things we shouldn't have that summer.  We all said things that probably would have been better left unsaid.  And so I'll leave that there.

That explains why I cared so much then, which is the easy part.  What it doesn't explain is why even now, I still want to understand you better.  I want to know as much about you as a person as I can, even though you've never, in any tangible way, been a part of my life.  I think, though, that I might have been able to start making sense of it a few days back.

The central reason for it all is that it defined me.  That summer, and all of us who were directly involved, and everything leading up to it and trickling out of it--that, more than anything else that's happened in the past few years, is why I am the person I am today.  It ultimately changed the way I interact with people, altered the way I handle emotions, and generally set my life onto a course I would not have expected.

So this fascination with you, this obsession with what exactly happened then, it all stems from my desire to understand why I turned out this way.  It happened so quickly, and so emotionally, that I couldn't tell up from down in the middle of it.  Looking back on it now, from this safe distance, I can analyze it to shreds and try to piece together why everything happened the way it did and how each action by each person affected who I am.

In a way, it's really an interest in who you were then.  The decisions you made and the thought processes behind them.  But I like people.  I like knowing everything I can about them, and you've caught my attention by brushing up against my life repeatedly and significantly.  And that translates into an interest in not only who you were then, but also who you were when it all started and who you are now.

This is unabashed curiosity.  I want to know absolutely everything about you.  I want to know how you're like me and how you're not.  I want to know how you've changed since then and how you've remained the same.  People, as a whole, fascinate me.  And I want to know as much as I can.  I want to know stories and moments, pieces and thoughts.  I want to try assembling a personality from the things I learn and seeing if I can really understand the thoughts that led things to play out as they did.

I am curious.  Perhaps excessively so.  There are two things I can promise.  One is that I will never push.  And two is that I will always listen.  If there are stories to be shared, I'd love to hear them.  Please.

Looking Back

It's odd to realize just how much of an effect people can have on you without realizing it.  How the smallest moments come to define the greatest portions of our lives.  The fact that the people we're closest to were once strangers and some of the people we would have given our lives for in the past...are nothing more than faces in the crowd.

My ex took pieces of me.  Not in any literal or physical sense, of course (that would be strange), but in a way that made me really reconsider who I was.  And it was a much needed bit of consideration on my part, because I had become quite the asshole.  But that's not all that was taken from me.

Mostly, it was self-respect and trust.  In that relationship, I'd compromised many of the things I'd once thought I believed in.  Maybe for the better, maybe not.  The things that were said about me once that relationship was over, though, possibly took as large a chunk out of me as anything that had ever happened between us (and for anyone who knows the history even briefly, you know that there was an awful lot in those four short months).

One of my friends told me that they'd heard x, and y, and z going around, none of which were true.  Then his new significant other confronted me about saying shit about both of them.  At that point, I almost lost it.  Because rumors?  Fine.  Outright lies?  Pissed me off a bit.  But going so far as to say that I was spreading bullshit about someone I didn't care about?  That was a tipping point.

I know a lot of people who have avoided their exes.  Unfortunately, in as small an environment as we were in, avoidance was difficult.  It got to the point where I was terrified of seeing this person.  It wasn't even conscious (and to be fair, part of it could be explained by...other things that happened while we were together).  It wasn't the most pleasant way to spend two years.

The worst of it though, I think, is how much I couldn't trust anyone.  I had been so used to putting all of my trust into this one person, that once it was shattered...I didn't know where to go.  I put up barriers around myself like crazy.  Few of my friends even knew the full extent of my thought process on anything.  I still have trouble opening up to my current significant other, despite the trust that is there, for fear of being seen as pathetic.  It's not nearly as bad now as it was then, but moments like this it strikes me just how much one imbecile managed to take from me.  How easy I was to take apart.  How long it's taken me to put myself back together.

This is why it's so hard for me to trust people.  This is also why I feel the need to be completely self-sufficient, no matter how close to someone I get.

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I apologize for the disjointed nature of this post, but I wanted to write and wanted to put some of this down while I was thinking on it.  I know it's shitty writing.  I'm sorry.