Decrying Gravity

-So. Compared to previous breaks, this one hasn't been too bad (overall). Thank God I've been working every day; I would have been miserable otherwise. As it is, I've done a fair amount of reading (mostly personal stuff without much application), but it's felt more or less productive.

There were even a few periods where I genuinely felt "good." Or, at least, like things were going alright. I had some solid plans, I had confidence in those plans, I felt like I could do what needed to get done. But, as I go along, I gradually get eaten away by doubts and fears and then I'm back to thinking I'm good at nothing, have no basis to hope for better things, and I should, in essence, give up. Sad clowns playing violins or something, I don't know.

There are times when I don't. There are times when I feel that I should pursue what I want instead of what makes sense.  And, as I've alluded to, I'm starting to do that a bit.  I'm still stuck in paralysis very often.  I still lack confidence and faith.  I still spiral into pretty painful places because I lose that hope, that faith that everything will get better, that I can do what I need to do to be able to do what I want to do (that is one hell of a sentence right there).  But I also have some better periods, too, where all of that is restored.  And that's, at least, a marked improvement.

-Higher education increasingly seems to be better suited for me.  I (and many others) always figured it probably was, but, naturally, my lack of confidence in my abilities has held me back.  That, and my fear of research, which I might even be fairly good at.

But I want my ideas and conceptions to be challenged a lot more than they are now.  I feel like higher education is a better fit to my pace/style.  I'm going to try to do things much differently next semester for my classes, but even then, I feel like I want to try... more before time runs out.  I can always go back to teaching, but the more time passes, the harder I think a PhD will be.

Of no small relevance, I had dinner with a former professor and a cadre of her past students. I got along rather well with the woman I sat across, an MFA teaching film at a college in Michigan in her early 30s.  It was one of the first times I've been attracted to someone significantly older than myself, in a real, immediate sense.  I don't know how she felt about me; we talked for awhile, which I imagine is a good sign.  She asked some of us out to a bar afterwards, but since I don't drink and I'm too shy as is (I was also intimidated by my own attraction, if you can understand that) I deferred.  It was somewhat... encouraging, though.  And I imagine academia is the place where I can meet many more people who can challenge me in the way she did. Which is not to say that those around me aren't engaging.  I just think we're interested in different things.  Maybe that's a sign, I dunno.

I was discouraged, too, though, because I still felt somewhat distant.  I ask questions well, but I don't... invest myself in conversations as well as I probably should.  Which leads me too...

-My counselor asked me to do an experiment the last time we met. She asked me how I would see myself if I was trying to objectively look at myself. And, honestly, it was practically impossible for me to do. My mind immediately rebelled against the notion, practically viscerally. I couldn't do it. I didn't want to do it. The very concept made me very uncomfortable.

And it resonated with something else she mentioned, that, at least according to the way I was describing myself in social situations, it was "as if [I] wasn't really there." It's kind of frightening to think about. It used to undoubtedly be true; I would try to make people laugh or ask them questions instead of being genuinely expressive with them. I think I've gotten a lot better at it. I feel like I'm honest, like I express myself. I've been told I'm rather sincere, which has always struck me as pleasantly ironic.

But I'm still not good at talking about myself. I'm just... bad at it. My stories aren't good, my expressions of my feelings seem whiny and without direction, my ideas are jumbled. I have to react to something, to probe, to question, to talk about it to really come alive. I can't, in and of myself, be myself comfortably.

That is, if I have a self to be. I have some ideas of who I'd like to be (don't we all, heh), but I don't have a very good idea as to how I come off to others. Part of depression is a skewed perception of reality, and, although I objected to my counselor that everyone has an inherently skewed perspective (that what perspective is), I recognize that mine is probably more negative and darker. So I don't know how people regard me. For all my introspection, I don't rightly know how I would regard myself because I can't divorce my hopes from my failures to meet them; they're constantly in flux, and so am I. I've even considered starting to flat out ask people to characterize me, as honestly as possible, good and bad. Maybe it would be worth a try.

Ten years ago, although the specific moment eludes me,  I was in seventh grade at Northwest Middle School.  Unbeknownst to me, I was becoming depressed.  This was around the time I started playing Everquest, the online game that made online games a viable business strategy and played a large part in prompting the creation of WoW.  It swallowed my life for two years, a period where I was largely friendless (to any significant extent, anyway) and hated school.  It did, in some sense anyway, make me feel wanted and needed by others in a unique way.  It was something I'd always wanted, and I still find myself craving it.



High school was something a shock, both socially and academically, but with a lot of effort I adjusted.  My mother and I would work, together, on papers for hours, her at the computer as I tried to construct sentences and she helped me refine them.  It was an agonizing process; it's a testament to her stoicism and love for me that she put up with me.  I didn't do particularly well with writing those first two years, significantly because of my deficits in middle school.  But I struggled through, all the while hiding in my virtual worlds and developing into a confused, scared, angry and shy teenager (probably par for the course for most folks).



As I've written about below, I "woke up" at the beginning of my Junior year.  All of the emotions I'd ignored or fled flew back at me.  I started making better friends, but also started feeling miserable each day.  I had an unrequited crush that tormented me.  I had a significant amount of homework.  Standard high school fare.  I seriously focused upon suicide, using it as a defense mechanism to inoculate myself against my failures and shortcomings.

Six years ago, at about this time, I was in the hospital.  I had totaled my first car on Christmas Eve.  The first thought I had when it happened was "Why couldn't it have been fatal?"  After having nothing turn up on the x-rays, we were called on Christmas morning and informed that I had a hole in my lung (a small one, but an pneumothorax nonetheless).  I stayed in the hospital for five days with a tube the size of a garden hose stuck in the size of my chest.  I threw up a lot of the painkillers and was rather weak; it scared the people who came to visit.
 
People did come to visit, though.  Morgan, Rachel, Catherine, more.  I had friends who cared.  Cared more than I could (and still can) adequately appreciate.  Because it's easy to rationalize affection by attributing it to guilt, to habit, to pity, to all manner of excuses because I hated myself so much, it wouldn't make sense for anyone else to like me.



I still dislike driving.  I had nightmares for at least six months afterwards of car accidents (not because of the pain but because of the financial toll and the shame).  I moved on.  I started becoming aware of the world around me, politically.  Started writing more.  Moved on to Senior year.  I started the Cardboard Club, where I met my first and third (of three total) girlfriends.  It's also where I started to become proactive, socially, and it's honestly one of the best things I've ever done.  I started my first relationship.  I had my first kiss about five years and a week ago.  I had my first "breakup" (although it was barely that) about four years and eleven months ago.  At various points, my "best friends" (those who I talked to the most, via, of course, the internet) were seven girls two to four years younger than myself.  I started learning about existentialism, started gaining an appreciation for philosophy and modern literature, started Calculus BC (still probably one of the hardest courses I've taken).  I settled for UTK, to save money and because I didn't want to risk failing to do better.  I graduated high school and got my first job working for my uncle in Virginia for five weeks. 



I started college at UTK as a Math Major going into Secondary Education.  I never took a Math class at UT.  I made many new friends my first few weeks, a not insignificant number of whom I'm still close to.  I was still depressed.  I started counseling.  I learned philosophy.  I became a vegetarian.  I felt guilty and self-conscious all the time (an acute case of liberal guilty coupled with my normal neuroticism and self doubt).  I was blackmailed by my roommate into moving out through a blog just like this one.  I returned to campus the next semester.  I enjoyed the company but was still depressed.  I tried a few antidepressants, unsuccessfully.  I started the UTK Cardboard Club, to an acceptable amount of success.  I hung out with a lot of engineers, primarily because they were nice people who didn't party but still (mostly) laughed at my jokes.  I joined the Issues Committee and met more new people, older people who introduced me to accessible adulthood.  I got my first B+.  I started my second "relationship."  I finished freshman year.  I started my first non-family job, at Target.  It went poorly.  The relationship went worse.  I had my second breakup two months after the relationship started.  I quit my first job at about the same time.



I started my sophomore year more depressed than before.  I was tormented after that breakup, too naive to know I needed to cut off the one I'd overcommitted to, stringing myself along on aborted hope.  I obsessed over suicide.  I tried it (it's hard to do responsibly in a way that won't bring a plethora of complications if you fail).  I failed.  I started group therapy.  I loved group therapy.  I wanted to do that for the rest of my life.  I didn't pursue it because it would be too risky.  I found postmodernism.  I loved postmodernism.  I will never get to teach postmodernism.  I found women's studies.  I found the social construction of gender.  I loved the social construction of gender.  It's still not a panacea. 



 I started writing for the Daily Beacon.  I... liked writing for the Daily Beacon?  I further developed my style, fleshed out my substance, learned more and more, was still miserable.  I saw a girl I thought was attractive.  I, incredibly awkwardly, asked her out.  It didn't work out.  I made breakthroughs in group therapy.  I made significant progress with the relationship with my father and my self.  I started my third relationship with an impetuous kiss from a girl from high school, who was still in high school.  I was still very nervous.  I started something closer to happiness.  I was loved and loving with worries all around.  I applied to be an RA at Governor's School.  I was an alternate.  I got in anyway.  I loved it.  She was there.  I loved her.


My junior year.   Believe it or not, I actually had to do research to find how I felt.  It's tempting, I think, to get nostalgic about the time I spent in love.  That's understandable when you can look at the post below from the period before and see how much of anything positive must have been a sweet respite.  I wasn't happy, though.  My previous livejournal is participation bias, undoubtedly, but it still reads with a lot of discomfort, dissatisfaction, anxiety, and even anger.  I felt apathetic and anxious, again, much better than before, but I'm fooling myself if I say it was perfect.  There was always hunger, frustration, desire.  I had something to look forward to, had the reassurance of companionship, had a great deal.  But happiness?  No.  I was content during governor's school, my social desires satiated with romance a pleasantly recurring interlude throughout.  It approached complacency. I think I felt ok.  But it was never "good."  Never enough, never right.

I came to an aesthetic/philosophical crisis over my "art" to begin Senior year.  I'd always wanted to write again, longer prose, and I feel I had some good ideas.  But I couldn't find anyone to mentor me, so I had to abandon the project.  Largely, too, the desire.  I like writing and hope I never fully give it up.  Yet I don't want to spend my life trying to measure up to a "greatness" I can't achieve.  I may still harbor some ambitions, but "The Great American Novel," I hope, isn't one of them.

Otherwise, senior year progressed without much comment.  I was busy.  I was anxious, and disconcerted about it.  I had good friends, a fact I'm appreciating more as time progresses, who were available, familiar, and "fit" me.  I was stressed.  And I was beginning to come to terms with the fact that, relationship aside, I was not who or what I wanted to be.

And then the summer, with thank-god Governor's School and seeing Laura every day.  Still not at ease, yet closer to what I wanted than perhaps ever before.  Closer to understanding.

And then the Fall, in too many senses (literal and pretentious).  Afraid to go into work, anxious when not terrified, seeking solace I couldn't find, hiding instead, disillusionment crashing, myself the person I feared and hoped and crushed.  And crushed, so bitterly, and giving up.  And then... endurance.  Grit teeth.  Resolution.  Endurance.

And now I'm growing.  I did this to take stock, as there is a tendency to do in the somewhat arbitrary measurements of time we have.  But it's also a way for me to say "I was there, then.  Look how far I've come."  And I think I have made progress.  I've matured, no doubt.  I'm not nearly as learned, in terms of reading, as I need to be, but I'm beginning to work on that.  I've found a work ethic that feels good because it feels like progress, despite the work.  I'm actually trying to stick with my previous post's resolution to genuinely work for happiness.  How very Protestant of me.

I'll probably ruminate more later (it'd be hard to stop me).  This took a long time to write, and I don't have it in me to do much more than simply be glad I have the sketch for the future.  I'll leave you with a quotation I read the other day that I think reflects a lot of my values.  Or, at least, where I think my values may be headed.  Take care, all.

"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint; therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness." -Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History

While "researching" old entries for my decade retrospective, I came across this from 12/15/06:

"So I spent 30 minutes sobbing, and now I'm at the contemplation stage.  I've unscrewed the screws on the window bar so, if I want to, I can push it wide enough to jump out.  I probably would have earlier, but I thought of all the people who would blame themselves if I did, and I was dissuaded.  It also doesn't help that I'm uncertain about the fatalness of the fall.

Now I get to decide whether to jump or not with a relatively clearer mind and a distinct lack of violent chest heaves.

I'm practically positive that my emotional state is contigent on the hope that I will find someone who will not let me be abused/work actively to stop it (ie, protect me), will be patient and communicative and forgiving, and, most importantly, will not leave.

This is, of course, impossible.  My hope depends on the impossible.  Without hope, I have no drive or energy.  Eh, screw logic.

I could call so many people.  I could email more.  I could contact complete strangers at number designed just to "help" in these situations.  But, honestly.  No one will be able to convince me that I shouldn't be so terrified of other people.  No one will be able to convince me that I'll ever be loved.  No one will be able to convince me that someday I really will feel consistently content without abusing escapism.  I'm angry.  So fucking angry.  At my father, at my mother, at society, at the educational system, at other people, at all people, and, of course, at myself.  I've tried, I really have.  But there's nothing to soothe the rage.  There's nothing convincingly positive that makes me think "maybe there's hope for joy yet."  I'm tired of feeling so manipulated by myself, but I know if I don't I really will be perpetually lonely.  Not that there's much difference, eh?

Even if I don't tonight, it'll happen again.  Even if I fall in love and am loved, as soon as it's gone, just like my father, this will happen again.  And, eventually, I'll probably just do it.  But the question is, is tonight the night.  Even if it's not fatal, I can at least be real.  I can be a lonely, bitter vegetable, a brussel sprout or something.  Maybe I'll get brain damaged and turned into someone so simplistic that I can trust and love and be innocence without experience again.

Rachel just called to offer me a place to stay.  I've been offered quite a few, which is really nice, but I know I couldn't accept.  I feel like a burden enough as it is, sleeping at my grandparent's house.  And as I was talking to Rachel, I was thinking "Would she feel more guilty or betrayed if I did this?"  It's now occurred to me that the thought that I was gone would be painful.  The reason I didn't jump earlier was primarily guilt about other people feeling guilt.  Hell, part of the reason I'm writing this is to assuage possible guilt if I do end up deciding on this.  But me valued as a person, in and of myself, well, it didn't even enter my mind.

I'm a burden.  As a child, I'm a responsibility.  As a friend, I'm a source of amusement that turns into a morbid guilt-trip and incessant worry once you see past the first mask.  What do I have that makes me valuable?  Time and time again, it seems to come back to me as nothing sincere, nothing significant.  I mean, if I did have good qualities, wouldn't someone love me?  What the hell is wrong with me?  What isn'twrong with me?  I'm so full of depressed desperation and barely contained rage that it's quite clear I'm one of the "crazy ones" everyone warns you about but that you need to experience for yourself.

And I'm so scared of being "that person."  I'm so scared of being a burden, not to mention thoroughly worthless.  So I tell jokes.  Oh boy.  Other than that?  Other than that ploy, that mockery of the melancholy I can barely conceal inside?  I'm utterly interchangeable.  Maybe you are too.  In fact, I'm quite sure that I don't apply the same scale of worth to you as I do myself.  But that's how this sort of thing works, isn't it?

So I'm a worthless, unwanted, still walking contradiction.  Signs point to plummet.  I don't even want to be valued anymore, because I know I am.  It's just not enough.  I still feel irrevocably flawed.  And really tired.  I really don't want to have to keep fighting.  I really don't want life to be a "fight" in the first place.

Something is wrong with me.  I'm afraid.  It's a quintessential Catch-22.  I can't ask someone to dance because I'm not comfortable/confident/good at dancing.  However, I can't become comfortable/confident/good at dancing unless I ask someone to dance.  But if I ask someone to dance while I'm not comfortable/confident/good at dancing, they'll get bored/turned off because of this.  And it's the same with my relationships and, oddly enough, suicide.  I can't commit suicide because I'd burden others.  However, I want to commit suicide because I am, ultimately, a burden to others.  So, in order to fix this, I have to break the cycle.  This means I have to stop being afraid.  This means I commit suicide.  Of course, then I won't need to commit suicide because I'm not afraid anymore.

I don't understand love.  The very thing I damn my father for.  But I am not my father.

I need hope.  I need something that will make me real, not so worried about everything.

So, here's the solution:  One semester.  If by the end of Spring semester I have not had a satisfactory relationship and am significantly unhappy/despairing, I will attempt suicide.  I will not tell anyone about this plan until it has been discarded or I publish this posthumously.  I will not attempt suicide until the end of Spring semester.  I will upholdall of this.

-Dylan"

Anyway, the point is, this type of person, that is probably much more prevalent than I care to ponder, is the type that easily starts relationships in the first place.  This distresses me.  It disconcerts me.  It boggles my mind.  I know why it's true (more or less), but it's so repugnant I want to rage against it with the same passion I rage against the educational system and genocide (the two are related, I assure you).  I want to scream, I want to positively explode at the sheer injustice.

It's as if I'm the Salieri to the world's Mozart, except Mozart is worse than me, he just has a better agent.  And I have no idea what to do about it.  I'm so used to taking responsibility for myself, changing myself, improving myself that I naturally assume the fault lies with me.  And, somehow, it must.  So the contempt, the ire, the what-have-you is directed internally because  I know life isn't fair, but if it's not me then what the hell am I supposed to do?  I'm twenty years old.  Intelligent, creative, witty, ideologically charged, compassionate, empathic, hardly socially inept (unless I'm reallymissing something, in which case, for the love of whatever, please tell me), and forgiving.  Yes, I have... "nerdish" hobbies, but I have a good explanation for all of them, and refuse to fall into any fake "label trap" of a cheap excuse.  I am, agnosticism aside, by most accounts a "good person."  More people than I can name like me.  And I honestly like them!  Hell, I like me. I like who I aspire to be.  I love the me I want to be, and the me I want to be is no pipe dream.

And yet.  And. Yet.  Look at the me of a few nights ago.  Look at the bitterness, the hate, the genuinely suicidal urges, the depression, the negativity.  I'm terrified, I'm insecure, I'm constantly fighting for energy.  I feel like waves crash against my "Fortress of Self" and I "suck it up", endure, and try not to collapse.

This is not how I should be!  I think of positive me, me with energy, me with a zest for life that any capital "R" Romantic loves.  I love my future!  I love my aging!  I love humanity, I love my job, I love my work, I love love love!  It sounds like mania, I know.  It sounds like an idealistic, naive young man before he meets THE REAL WORLD. But no!  My God, no!  There will be ups and downs, but you know me.  You've met me.  The one you would never guess glances out his window and seriously wonders if the fall would be fatal, because a dime removes the screws, and it's a fast fall to Hell from there.  You know "The Sides."  Can you imagine me not depressed?  Can I imagine it?

I want it.  I want it so fucking badly.

So what's stopping me?  Why is this "relationship" thing the linchpin?  So many reasons... I've never felt safe?  A word, a glance lights my father's fire, and all my mother does is watch (thou doth protest, but thou doeth no more; the UN to Darfur).  I've never felt... really loved.  I mean, I know you all care.  I really do.  And I care back, undoubtedly.  But loved?  Loved is when I'm not afraid.  Loved is when I trust more than my words, but my "self" to you.  When you do not only listen to my woes, but act.  But think and care and say "This is ours to overcome."

Loved is not leaving on a breeze.  Friends leave and it's hard and you cry and you move on.  Loved leaves and you are less than whole.  Loved leaves and there are so many pieces, so many pieces.  Loved leaves a wound, a scar you couldn't hope to heal.

Loved is bending.  Loved is compromise.  Loved is forgiving, repenting, and healing.  Loved is a dance, missed steps and all.

Alone is pavement in a hurricane.  Friends are tents in the storm.  But loved is the warmest bed, the arms around you, the nowhere-else-in-the-world as you stare, in the dark, through the rain, into their eyes, no-other-time-but-now.

I want to be loved.


And does it sound so fanciful?  Does it really sound so farfetched?  For someone searching for the one who always agrees, who never mistakes, who's the smarteststrongestgrandestrichesteverything they ever wanted, yeah, it is.  But I don't want that.  I don't need that.

So why is it I can't manage loved?  I wish it were a matter of patience, but isn't college long enough?  Isn't 20 long enough?  What is wrong with me that makes this so hard?  What do I have to do?  How much longer do I wait?  What the hell is so wrong?

*sigh*"

There's so much that I want to write and say.  I have an ever expanding list of topics of concern, ideas swirling around my head that I need to get out, need to elaborate upon, express, expand, enunciate.  I think better with writing, with talking.  I'm an oft-awkward, introverted social creature that craves craves craves company, hungry for others because I'm not real enough myself.  No wonder I'm draining; I need so much that although I want to give, I take by virtue of desire.  I cannot simply "be."  I'm a thought in a world of solipsists: when you turn around, look away, I'm gone.  Gone for you, gone for me, disappeared into the ether.

I wrote this poem For Caroline, my counselor.  It tells too much, and part of me hopes you don't read it, but there's something dangerously exciting about honesty for me.  I want it out, want it all out, want the waves and waves to crash forth and if you make the choice to jump in, I don't have to weep for your drowning.  Though I will anyway.  I worry I'm too heavy, in my thinflabby frame.  I think I scare, and justly so, but I've never "been" and been ok enough to know.

Caroline told me, she told me that yesterday was the day after the longest day.  The day of lesser darkness than the day before.  She told me and I laughed because we both thought it was cute and wry and true.

Or the wishful facsimile thereof.  Maybe you've noticed I'm not the who I'd like to be.  There's a pretension in paranoia.  I cannot say just what I mean to eat a peach and disturb the universe.

***

I want peace.  I don't know what it looks like.  Yet I can close my eyes and imagine not sunny beaches, not friends and family, not wealth and fame but simply a slightly altered me, gliding through a life not too removed from this one that seeks to share its blessings.  I think happiness will follow, but, if not, my sad smiles will have a warmth not shrouded.  And that, I think, would be enough.

I'm working on it.  One of my friend commented upon my strength of idealism and hope, a strange thing for someone to see in a self I often think of as so grim.  But they're there.  What I lack in faith I make up for in hope: the desire for better things without the belief they will come to be.  I can see a life so beautiful it hurts to believe, for the fear that it stops too short of true.  Yet I have said the same thing of a body, and it's a wonder what one shaved leg can do.

***

I try not to give too much credence to tests, but I can't deny that I like the validation sometimes.  For instance, and I really don't mean to brag, but my 800 on the verbal SAT gave me enough confidence to pursue English instead of Math.  It's not like it mattered; I did well on the Math, and it was probably harder anyway.  But it's the little things you cling to when you want to believe something but can't muster the will to make the change on a whim.

Right now, the Myers-Briggs is that kind of test for me.  I don't want to buy into it.  Reading the entries, much of the ideology behind it seems to be finding the awesomeness in everyone and the distinctions are often too subtle to my untrained eye.  It's also prey to the "horoscope syndrome," where you can fit what happens to the prediction instead of the other way around because you want to believe in it.  It's also rather amusing to read different descriptors and note how many times they say "one of the rarest of types."  The desire to make the reader feel special with adoring praise for unique capabilities, encouraging the reader to buy into the test's mythology seems, at least to my cynical eye, as much a marketing ploy as an ideology or thrust at "science."

So take that disclaimer for what it is: me acknowledging that this isn't perfectly rational but probably just a rationalization for what I want to believe.  There's probably nothing wrong with doing what you want, but I need reasons, and this is one I'm latching onto.

Anyway.  According to the probably unreliable internet test I've used, I'm an INFJ, tantalizingly dubbed "The Counselor."  "The Teacher" is labeled ENFJ.  The difference, of course, is the intraversion/extraversion axis.  And yeah, it's not a huge deal.  But I've noticed that teaching drives me crazy because there's so much going on.  I want to focus on one thing, one person, quietly, and yet I have this wild classroom with all kinds of demands and problems. It's not unmanageable; I like floating around and helping.  But I'm much more geared towards supporting the leadership of others than assuming it myself.

I like focusing and probing.  And I really like questioning.  One of the things I do well, I think, is ask questions (in discussions and conversations).  I try not to be a very prideful person, yet I can't help but feel good when, the few times I've had a chance to in my college courses, other students respond to how much they enjoy discussions I lead.  I genuinely enjoy it, too.

One of my more enjoyable collegiate experiences was participating in group therapy.  The questioning, the exploration, the desire to help and love and grow in a safe environment where everything mattered because it meant something to someone.  I've always liked learning the details behind the lives of others.  I'm not always good at eliciting them, but it's something I'm working on.  I need that safe, secure place, where there aren't worries about being someplace else, interruptions, chaos in general.  And it all makes me feel good, regardless of how well I am at it.

All of this is to say that it's been a secret desire of mine to be a counselor since high school.  Teaching made the most sense and seemed much more accessible, but the choice was as much a function of my low self esteem as it was a love for learning.  I never believed I could be good enough to compete in a smaller field, never believed I'd genuinely be able to help others with their own issues because I had so many miserable ones of my own, never believed it could work out because it was something I liked and wanted and seemed too good to ever be true so it probably was.

I worry I'm too emotionally distant, too reserved.  In high school, I didn't even like being touched, a desire founded, I think, in the idea that no one would do it of their own volition unless they did it for my sake, so I would spare them the trouble.  They certainly wouldn't benefit from it themselves.  I intellectualize my emotions, too, here and elsewhere.  Reading over some of my previous writing, it seems positively cold.  There's no fire, no life to it.  I worry there's no warmth to me, that I tilt at windmills thinking I'm engaging others but merely going through motions while others know better.

And yet, I've grown to like being touched.  Just like I'm afraid of revealing too much about myself for fear of driving others away, I don't engage in it much.  But I want it.  Just like I want to be vulnerable and warm and loving.  I want to be pleasant.  I want to be enjoyable.  I want to be so many wonderful, beautiful things.  I want to be a beautiful person.  And there's tragedy in that beauty, there has to be.  But there's an enduring, earnest warmth too.  And I want that.

Significantly, I think I'm going to start pursuing what I want instead of what makes "sense."  It'll take a long time, if it works at all.  But the lies my darker demons whisper in my ears haven't led me to happiness; they're led me to a base pragmatism, happiness by committee.  It's time to embrace aesthetic, appreciate desire, actually work for something that might mean nothing when the final totals are tallied.  I need to grow again.  I need to be organic.

And I think I'm on my way.

I remember the moment of my "defeat" rather clearly: it was when I realized that free will was impossible.  I think I was in seventh grade, and I recall immediately descending into a very pained depression.  It's a realization that fundamentally negates accomplishment, removes responsibility, and turns life into nothing but an elaborate machination at best and a stupid, ugly series of dice rolls at worst.  It was liberating, in a sense; I had always struggled with expectations and the disappointment of my father/myself at the assured waste of whatever talents I may have possessed.  This freed me from that responsibility.  But at the same time, it guaranteed life's worthlessness.  For a lonely seventh grader with no genuine friends in a persistently bad home situation, that's quite the fatal(istic) blow.

I've recovered, somewhat.  To make brief what I may eventually elaborate upon, that was also about the time that I became "addicted" to online games (hardly a coincidence).  I'd always wanted to feel needed and wanted while playing with others, and with the onset of the internet (on our blasted 56k), I found it.  I continued this habit for about four years, when I found myself in lull during Junior year.  It was the year I fell in love for the first time (unrequited, I don't need to add), the year I read Catch-22 and found my inspiration, the year I started writing obsessively, the year I started making real friends, the year I read the Awakening which mirrored my own brutal transformation and inspired my love of English all the more, and the year I started wanting to kill myself daily as I spiraled into a self-loathing depression.

The rest is recent history which I won't rehash (although, of no small coincidence, I'm soon approaching the sixth anniversary of my first kiss/date).  Suffice it to say, though, the ramifications of determinism are still affecting me today.  Utilitarianism and other ethical philosophy helped me fight the demon of pointless existentialism to the point where I could tolerate existence, as ugly and stupid as it was.  But the damage to my ambition, the damage to my desire has never been undone.

That sounds melodramatic, and it probably is.  But I feel an intense passion so often, an almost manic energy that rages inside me, an anger, a fear, a pain, a potential for joy, that I know I'd feel better if I had enough drive to find a meaningful outlet for it.  As it is, I find it difficult to get excited about very few things.  My thought process is generally along the lines of "What's the point?  All my accomplishments and all of the work I ever do are ultimately meaningless, so the effort it takes to put into them isn't worthwhile."  It's a defense mechanism, on one level, that helps me deal with my insecurity about failure and inferiority, as it applies equally to the accomplishments of others too.  But it has also turned me into a derelict, a furnace heating an abandoned house.  I have little direction, little outlet for my energy; I find myself constantly stressed and disappointed because I don't care enough to try, but I do care enough to want to do well.  I don't hold myself in high enough esteem to think I can have a significant effect on others or do good things for them, but I do hold myself high enough to consider myself a disappointment for not trying anyway.

It's a vicious cycle.  My counselor routinely remarks on my perfectionism and my polarized views of it, which I find rather perplexing.  I always think that I see so much nuance in so many situations, but I suppose, when I view myself, it's a rather bleak picture.  I think that's a significant part of my paralysis; I'm afraid of trying because that means I'll have to face all my sundry imperfections and deal with the consequences.  The excuse of "waiting until the last minute" is enough to assure me that, should I apply myself, I could do so much better. And it's a familiar one.  But it's also agonizing and limiting.  Just like the self-hatred.  Just like the chastisement for my inability to shake the negative emotions from life despite being in this cycle for years.  Just like my bitter resignation towards my body/gender.  I've internalized fatalism for so long that I've neglected to see myself as capable of making a significant impact, as an agent of change rather than a cog in that machine.

And, through counseling, I've been reminded of it.  I'm slowly but surely developing my humanity, forgiving myself the banal transgressions of genuine, illogical human emotions, and actively seeking ways to make myself responsibly feel better regardless of whether it "logically" (whatever the hell that means) makes sense.  It's inspiring in a way that teaching was, in the "I want to do that sort of thing too" kind of way.  I've never been a leader; I've always wanted to cheer from the sidelines.  To question and support, not to guide.

That's another entry, though.  For the purposes of this one, I'm fighting fate.  Or embracing it.  I don't know.  I'm looking at what gives me happiness in terms of results regardless of the cost and effort, and I think I'm noticing improvements.  Happiness takes work and sacrifice, and, for whatever reason, I'd never learned that.    My father was never happy, my mother's "put up or shut up" stoicism was effective, ostensibly, but I think it stopped there.  And, for whatever reason, I'd convinced myself that "work" was equal to "suffering," which isn't true.  Imperfection is what hurts. That's a fact I simply have to accept, though.  I'm not and will never be perfect.  There are going to be people who are smarter, prettier, wittier, more empathetic.  And that inferiority is going to make me feel worthless.  But if I'm going to embrace an unconditional positive regard for humanity, I'm going to have to apply it to myself.  And that includes forgiving my failings.

Easier written that done.  But unlike the optimistic postulations I often flung out in the more manic moods of my teenage years, this seems to have a bit more realism attached to the hope.  I know the effort is going to hurt, and I know I'm going to feel insecure.  The crux of the matter is how I handle it, and that remains to be seen.  Free will may not exist, in a "metaphysical" sense, but I need to find meaning somewhere even if it won't be perfect.  I need to find a passion and embrace it.  Here's hoping I do.

I really like my counselor.  She makes good observations and has the ability to outfox my intellectualized demons.  It seems like every week, she says something I haven't thought of or considered before, and it's genuinely helped me in ways I never expected (or at least realistically hoped) from counseling.

For instance, I've been feeling full of self-loathing.  Worthless, to the point where I feel like my disappearance would be of little significant impact to anyone.  Like I don't add unique value.  I'm disposable.  Much of that's related to teaching, where I feel like I may as well not bother half the time.  Even when I am able to help those that pay attention, I often wonder whether I'm teaching them something worthwhile.  It's along the lines of a self-fulfilling prophecy: "I'm bad.  If I'm doing it, it can't be good, because I'm bad and little that I do is genuinely good.  So what I'm doing is bad.  I'm doing bad things.  That makes me bad."  Insert "incomptent" or "lackluster" or whatever the hell you want.  Point being, my self-esteem is at its usual low.

This is coupled with what I'd describe as a haunting.  It's like a ghost Laura follows me through me life; I see her in my mind's eye, doing all the things she used to do, yet I'm as alone as ever.  The emptiness is poignant, palpable, painful.  It's a constant reminder of how things were/should be.  Everything's just so... empty.

My counselor suggested that I use the self-hatred as a method of distancing myself from the other emotions I feel.  A lot of this is based on how I raised.  My mom's approach was to "put up or shut up."  Either do something about a problem or don't complain about it.  It's why she stayed with my dad for so long, because she wasn't going to divorce him so she would just stoically endure.  So I tackle problems similarly: I try to figure out how I can fix it and, if I can't fix it, tell myself I shouldn't worry about it.

But I still feel bad.  And then I feel bad about feeling bad.  I feel pathetic for feeling bad.  I feel desperate and useless and needy and alone and I feel disgusted for feeling all those things.

So my counselor said she believed it was ok just to feel bad.  To allow myself to feel hurt or to mourn or to pine.  In essence, to suffer without restraint.

It's not something I've done much of, for a lot of reasons.  There's always felt like there's so much pain that if I let a bit through a dam will burst.  It burst when Laura broke up with me, when I wailed and cried in pure, unadulterated pain.  And she was scared and distant and didn't reach out, didn't comfort me, didn't say much of anything.  After two and a half years of saying, practically daily, that she loved me.

And I'm scared of that.  I'm scared of driving people away with the intensity of my sorrow.  I'm scared of so many things it practically makes me neurotic sometimes.

But maybe my counselor's right.  Maybe I need to just feel, to call someone and just let it out and hope they won't run away or shrink or shrug and utter some platitude before changing the subject.

It's daunting.  But so much else is..  And the hell of winter break is upon us, so I know I'll get the opportunity. Oh, but that's a jeremiad for another day.  The diaries of a depressive.  Good times.

"I think I'll try
Defying gravity" - from "Defying Gravity," Wicked


"Gravity always wins." - from "Fake Plastic Trees," The Bends (Radiohead)




My counselor asked me, in one my first sessions, whether I could ever remember being "happy."  For lack of a better answer, I said no.  This is not to say my life is one endless misery after the next.  I have had my good times and bad, like everyone, and I certainly don't believe my various mental maladies are particularly noteworthy or deserving of special sympathy or attention from anyone save myself.  But I consider it fairly pertinent, when attempting to assess myself, my life, my potential, my failures, my whatever, that I cannot think of an "ideal" time where things were demonstrably better and I felt genuinely "happy."


Of course, I was quite close.  The two and a half years I dated Laura (my ex) were as close to happy as I've come, and our break-up does nothing to diminish that.  That's part of the reason it's hit me so hard and seems to be the focus of so much of my thoughts: my relationship with her is the only working model I have for a period of time where I felt truly glad to be alive.


That might be a startling statement for individuals who probably don't know me particularly well.  
(Just as the relative sincerity of my tone in the majority of these entries [and most to come] may be off-putting to those who seek some form of wit or irreverence.  It's one of my contradictions that, for all my ostensible flippancy, I take so much so seriously, using humor as a guard against pretension and narcissism moreso than a consistently applied value.  Humor makes introspection difficult because, by its very nature, it diminishes the impact and import of its subject.  It's a tactic of evasion which has its strengths, especially if one seeks to avoid the impression of takine one's self too seriously, but I think I'll let my body of work speak for itself instead of consistently reaffirming that I'm only doing this jazz because it be effective at organization of thoughts and emotions, yo.  So I'm, regrettably, left with a rather somber tone and far, far too many words.  Consider this a warning.  Digression: Accomplished.)


Ahem.  Lord, my writing is a veritable frame story within a short story collection within an anthology, isn't it?  


Where was I?  Ah yes.  The will to live.  Or lack thereof, as the case may be.  I'll probably take a trip of nostalgia at some point and visit the halcyon days of utter self-loathing and daily depression that left me a tormented husk of a person.  It's good times, really, and if you haven't tried spending the majority of three years daily considering suicide (and even attempting the damned thing), I highly recommend it. Come for the angst, stay for the despair!


Point being, I've never been a happy person.  I started counseling again before I had any idea Laura was going to break up with me, because I knew that I was dependent upon her for my own happiness and, even then, found myself anxious and dissatisfied.  There are some pretty good reasons for that dissatisfaction, but that doesn't make it easier to bear or something I'm willing to simply accept.


Indeed, as evidenced by my entrance into counseling and this very blog, I have not given up on the prospect of happiness. I'd say there's no small degree of hope guiding me, despite its shroud of cynicism and its veneer of perennial pessimism.  I continually defy my depression, continually find news ways to hope, new opportunities for change, new chances to overcome my petty sufferings and free myself to focus my wanton energy outward instead of letting it gnaw upon itself inside.  I defy the gravity of my situation, to tie this stitched abomination of an introductory post together.


And yet, as alluded, the gravity has always won.  Antidepressants, which I've been on for about two months, have been a great weapon in the battle, but they merely make life tolerable where, in my eyes, it should be pleasurable.  I would like to think that I should enjoy my life, not merely settle for not being dead.


But I have few illusions that my more cunning, more insidious demons will be dissuaded from undercutting my efforts.  Writing is a catharsis, but it also fighting fire with fire; I must dispel the sickness by reveling in it first, a draining process for me and, at the very least, an uncomfortable one for you.  I can defy the gravity, the depression that always seeks to pull me down, to clutch my wings, hunch my back, drag me into its sordid nest of sadsack nettles.


So it is that, more often than not, I am left unsuccessful.  Yet still I rage, resist, regret, what have you.  To put it punly, I decry gravity even as it pulls me down.  And, in so doing, there is a tacit assertion that I do not believe this is all there is, I do not believe life is a bird tied to a string tied to a post thrust into the ground by some cackling, malicious boy-child of a god.  I may not believe I shall break free of my restraints, but as I flutter and flop, like Sisyphus grinning ear to ear, I'd like to think I have a chance of someday finding a peace inside the struggle.


So there you have it.  I am not out to find a resonant triumph over the grim facts of our reality.  I am not out to concede the fight to existential despair or my own self-savoring wendigos.  I am out to rage and remonstrate, wail and weep, ponder and pity, analyze and abstract, engage and elicit, alliterate and stop alliterating, write and read and respond and, hell, think and feel.  I'm fighting a battle I know I'll lose while I seek to find a way to let the effort be enough.


So that's that.  I will say I greatly appreciate comments and tend to respond to them.  But I also know that my walls of text are far too often insurmountable for even the best intentioned of my compatriots.  My thanks, regardless.


Alright.  Let's do this thing.

It's a point of fact, for many people, that the weekend is as much a survival tool as it the conclusion to a week of work.  I can't say I blame them.  For years, I've looked forward to the respite, to the lack of immediately due tasks, to the promise of sleeping late (or, even better, not alone).

It's interesting that, as articulate as I sometimes might consider myself, I really don't think I'm a very good public speaker.  I dialogue well and generally respond well to the ideas and questions of others, but when it comes to just presenting information, I'm not good at it.  I need lots of feedback or a space to better organize myself, like writing.  Just something I'd do well to remember, I suppose.  Know your limitations and all that.

Well, here I am again.  It's been awhile since I've consistently blogged (unless you count weekly op-ed columns "blogging"), and I can't say I'm particularly pleased that I'm starting again.  Of course, it's not as if someone is forcing me to start blogging again.  Instead, though, my misgivings stem from the fact that there seems to be a distinctly negative correlation between how happy I am and how often I write.  In other words, if blogging is mostly a cathartic activity for me, then my desire to begin again indicates that I actually have something to catharse (which is not a word, but should be).