On Holidays and Things (except not really)

I just don't understand how anyone lives life without being constantly depressed and hopeless.  I don't see the point.  I just don't get it.  There's nothing to look forward to because I don't believe in the kingdom of heaven or the glory of god.  And sure, there are cool things coming up in my life.  Places to see, people to visit, things to learn.  But then after that it's right back to the constant, agonizing grind that is work and everyday life.

And I just don't understand where you find the motivation to combat this.  Days like today I can't bear the thought of doing this for the rest of my life.  I'm trying to relax and have a good time, but when I'm not working I'm bored, and when I am working, I just want to be done and have some free time.  When everyone's doing something else and actually having a good time (for the most part anyway, I hope), I hate being alone, and I'm beset by dreadful loneliness.

I need to read more, right now.  I need to crack open a good book and get sucked into something new because this is unbearable.  I've tried to do a number of different things but no one is around or interested.  So here I am, all by myself, not knowing what to do.  And I'm dreading the return to reality that Monday will bring, with the stress of work, the pressure of success, and the utter lack of any sort of end for this feeling. 

I was so excited to be here, but now I'm just lonely again.  Everyone finds people to spend time with except for me and it's once again back to self-loathing.  I hate this inability to find or maintain happiness, and especially the issues that stop me from meeting/befriending people, because god damn it I miss having people to do things with.  I miss knowing that if I wanted to do something, I could call someone, or I could at least find someone to talk to.

But now I've got nothing.  It's just me and the demons of loneliness and inadequacy and it fucking sucks.  I really don't know how people lead their lives like this.

Repeat after me

The things you have tried do not make you a great or terrible person.  They are just things. 

Hello again, old friend

It's been a while, hasn't it?  I have too many blogs to keep track of now.  Many of them are shared with people in one way or another.  But this one?  This one is still mine.  All of the content is original.  It's all me.  I don't know if anyone checks anymore.  I don't care.  That's not the point.  It's here for me to write and that's what I'm going to do.

I'm at a point where I'm grasping.  Staying awake is difficult.  Concentration has become nearly impossible to maintain and tomorrow is important.  But then again, when isn't it?  And even harder than staying awake is going to sleep.  The anxiety is tremendous.  The thought of having to face a Monday kept me awake significantly longer than it should have last night. 

In case you couldn't guess, being functional is difficult for me right now.  So back to writing I go.  I run back when I need it.  So when I'm too tired and need to do entirely too much work, I write instead of doing the work.  But it seems to help.  So I know this is scattered and disorganized and in case anyone reads it I'm sorry, but here it is.  I'm back, for now at least.  And maybe I'll stick around for a little while this time.  Or maybe not.  We'll see.  I hope that's okay...

Like the devil's got your hand

He thought he was dangerous.

And for a while I believed him, and I was afraid of him.  Because he was physically stronger than me, and he was intelligent, and it seemed like there was nothing he couldn't accomplish.  And then for a while I scoffed at this belief.  Because what could he do?  Punch me out?  Break a few bones?  Which isn't great, but by then I'd learned that some of the worst wounds someone could encounter are self-inflicted.  And that unlike broken bones, even if properly treated, they may never go away.  And so I believed that he couldn't hurt me, or anyone.  Not in ways I hadn't already managed to hurt myself.

But then, we're all dangerous.

It took me a long time to reach that realization.  Probably a lot longer than it should have.  I'd been so busy digging myself into and out of holes, though, so it's not too surprising.  But anyway...

We all have more power to do damage than we give ourselves credit for.  We are all thoroughly capable of hurting ourselves, and of hurting others.  Just as we are capable of being hurt by others, we are no less capable of hurting them.   I think that's something that maybe we don't expect, don't think about terribly often, because we don't see ourselves as horrible evil people who cause others harm.

And maybe if we remembered a little more often that we're dangerous, that our words can cause pain, that our reactions can have horrible consequences for someone, then maybe there'd be just a little bit less pain, a little bit less suffering in this world.  Maybe the key isn't to change the world, but just to be there for one person at a time, to not destroy them carelessly as would be so easy.

I saw you. Angels came to light your path.

This is a story about how an album changed my life.

Now let me make something absolutely clear.  I'm not a music person like some people I know are.  I don't know discographies forward and backward, I can't recite the history of a band, and I usually don't even know the names of the members.  I don't talk about my musical tastes because 1) I feel like I don't know enough to explain what music I like (what the hell determines which genre something is, anyway?) and 2) I don't want to be judged, sue me.  All I know about music is that there are songs that make me feel very deeply.  And that's good enough for me.

But then, this wasn't always the case.  The first time I really started listening to music is when you said your favorite band was AFI.  And because I liked you as a person, and I was probably already starting to fall for you, I went and I started a new Pandora station with AFI as the seed.  So I got a mix of AFI, Rise Against, The Offspring, with a smattering of Incubus, Evanescence, and Red Hot Chili Peppers, among other things (like I said, I don't know genres, so I'm not going to try to explain in those terms).  And it was weird and different for me, because I grew up with very traditional music in another language.  But I warmed up to it, eventually.  I grew to like it.

I woke up one morning with a song burning holes in my brain.  It was chilling and it was beautiful and I knew I'd heard it but I couldn't remember the name.  All that stuck with me was the beginning "Pull the top down, use your knees to drive."  And just like that, I was hooked.  I spent weeks listening to End Transmission on repeat.  Something about it made me latch on.  It appealed so fundamentally to a part of me I'm not sure I even knew existed at the time.

"If there's discretion that you've not abandoned, now's the time" became a motto of sorts, though ironically if anything, I did the opposite.  I waited.  I spent months waiting and I tried to make sure you didn't figure it out, because that wouldn't have been fair to you.  And I spent as long as I could not saying anything to anyone, though it was like a shot to the chest when she asked if we were dating and left it at "no."  But I waited, and I started listening all the way through Crash Love, and I waited some more, and every time you made it clear you weren't interested (intentionally or not), it hurt a little more.

Then I turned to Okay, I Feel Better Now.  And I let the music wash over me like waves.  It was my therapy, my escape.  It was better than trying to explain how I felt.  And even a year later, even though everything was different, I still turned to music every time it hurt.  I had a lot of coping strategies back then.  I tried many different things to get the aching to stop.  And sometimes it did, and sometimes it didn't, and some habits were better and some habits were worse.  I found some demons in those years that I still bump into sometimes.  But I also found music.  I don't know where I would have wound up if I hadn't found a way to deal with it.  I don't think it would have been good.

The thing about music is that it didn't make me pretend, it didn't make me ignore it.  It let me accept the pain as a part of me without letting it destroy me.  There are still mornings when I wake up and don't know how to deal with a day normally, functionally.  But it's not as bad anymore.  My demons don't have the same power to hurt me anymore.  It doesn't really matter, but that's alright.


They won't leave until I'm gone.  I'm gone.