Decrying Gravity

I was watching Office Space last night, and it struck me how much I envied the job the main character had.  It seemed so... quaint, having one's primary concerns being the mundanity of work and the threat of getting "hassled" by bosses.  Compared to my day, where I was run over by a pack of teenagers who should know how to act like adults but instead insist on being immature and taking advantage of whatever situations are presented to them and then had the wonderful prospect of spending most of my weekend working on planning/grading and dreading Monday (not to mention pondering my wanton failures)....  "Hassles" and "paid mundanity" did not seem that bad.  At all.

Of course, I know that I'd feel a profound sense of underachievement, stagnation, and abject selfishness by being in a comparable situation.  On Friday I also had a student actively seek me out for help with her senior speech, unprompted.  I have various sophomores who come to me doing the same thing, and, really, I think they might have some decent Othello essays before all is said and done.  There were some highlights.  There are some students who like me.  I am helping a few students, or at least making it evident that I give a damn about them.

And if I stuck with teaching, perhaps that would increase.  Perhaps.  But I have never felt busier, more exhausted, more defeated, more disappointing, more directionless, more trapped, more overwhelmed, than I do now.  I've compared it to Sisyphus and his rock, except I'm certainly not smiling in this hell.  It's infuriating, too.  I feel like I have good talents, skills and capabilities that I excel in and could do great things with.  And yet I'm stuck and I worry that I'll lack the luck, ambition, and vision to find where I can best put them to use.  Round 2 comes after May, when I step up my graduate school search.  If that fails, I have no backup plan.  I really don't.  I'll be 25, jobless, with two degrees that don't mean much of anything.  And maybe I need to just find a job, anything at that point, that would be sustainable and... tolerable.  And then I work there awhile, 5 years or whatever, until I'm thirty and I can reevaluate and see whereever life takes me.

I'm not tied down by location, and hopefully the economy will have somewhat recovered by then.  And I dunno.  We'll see. 11 more weeks of pushing this damned rock.  And then the purgatory/cocooning starts, waiting for judgment from forces beyond my control.  11 more weeks.

The model for modern Western drama, in almost all its various forms, is Shakespearian.  It is Hamlet, pondering whether "to be or not to be," two vitally important and distinct choices which he, alone, has the power to make for himself.  In most of our drama, and indeed much of our lives, we are focused upon the individual's rights, the individual's concerns, and the individual's power to control their destiny.  It's an essential part of American identity, myth-busters aside.

My last post, with Iago's words "I am not what I am," highlights this distinction.  Iago puts on a front, deceives everyone around him, consciously strives to undermine and harm almost all of those he comes into contact with.  He makes the decision to not be what he is: an angry, jealous, hateful person.  I took a "Which Shakespeare Character are You" quiz and got Viola from Twelfth Night, the woman who cross-dresses to be closer to her love.  To add to that delicious irony, she too says "I am not what I am" with an obviously different meaning than Iago.  Yet she still makes the choice, she still takes hold of her destiny and tries to follow her heart.

But Western drama started long before Shakespeare's time in Ancient Greece.  Grecian theater was distinct in many ways, but one hallmark was the very powerful role and presence of the Gods.  Unlike in Shakespeare's tragedies, where characters agonized over decisions and fell prey to tragic flaws, the characters in Greek tragedy were often doomed before they were born.

I speak specifically of Oedipus the King (aka "Rex"), which I saw tonight at Clarence Brown.  I'd heard before about this difference between Shakespearian and Grecian drama, in reference to The Wire which tends to follow the latter (a notably odd development).  But as I've been reading Shakespeare for my English classes, Oedipus Rex made that criticism really click.

I thought about it, as I was walking back from the play, and I began to object.  I remembered that Macbeth, like Oedipus, received a prophecy that, despite his best efforts, turned out to be true.  How were the two different?

In Macbeth, Macbeth's knowledge of the prophecy spurs his actions.  Macbeth chooses to kill King Duncan, chooses to have Banquo killed, chooses to try to ruin Macduff and his family.  In Oedipus, Oedipus doesn't know he's killing his father or marrying his mother.  He's arrogant and confident, but those aren't portrayed as "Great Sins" like Macbeth's paranoia and ambition are.  If anything, his confidence and wit are lauded as what enabled him to free Thebes from the sphinx's riddle.  Oedipus acts in ignorance; Macbeth acts in knowledge.

I have my students debate who's ultimately responsible for the death of Duncan, and the line (at least from the class last semester) was split between the witches and Macbeth.  A few target Lady Macbeth, but I'm more sympathetic to her in my own interpretation and that bleeds through, so they're not as likely to call her out as other classes might be.  But just like Othello v. Iago, there is a line drawn between those who urge action and plant ideas and those who actually do the act.  Most decide that Macbeth wasn't "fated" to act: he could have stopped at any time.  And that's Shakespearian drama.  You, the individual, call the stops.

Oedipus couldn't have stopped.  I mean, he technically could have, but he didn't even know what he was supposed to avoid doing.  He tried to live virtuously, he saved Thebes, he tried to avoid fulfilling the prophecy once he learned of it.  He didn't succumb to temptation or vice.  He tried to do what was right, but the gods, for their own reasons, saw fit to doom him anyway.

The personal connection, and, since this is me writing there has to be one of those, is that I have always felt like a Hamlet or Iago.  I have always felt that pressing question of "to be or not to be" (in so many senses).  I have always felt that "I am not what I am."  And it has always been the source of so much anguish, so much tortuous angst because I have struggled for more than a decade with choices of how to "be."  It has never occurred to me to simply accept what I am, be it by biology or deeply scribed and inscrutable psychology.  I have never "been" without making a choice of how to "be."

But as I walked away from Oedipus's grim ruin, I felt a kind of peace.  I am who I am.  The gods, or the secular equivalents, have seen fit to bless me and curse me in various ways, and it is my role to accept some things and adjust appropriately.  That is not to say that I abdicate my responsibilities.  Yes, the prophecy of my genetics is there.  I am what I am.  That doesn't mean I need to gouge my eyes out, punishing myself for my inherent baseness (and goodness knows I would love to do so).  I, like Macbeth, still have the power to shape my destiny and do it ethically.  But I do not have complete power over myself and my world.  We have our gods, no matter how we wish otherwise.  And there is something to be said for accepting those limitations.

Before Laura, I was convinced that my own personal path to happiness lay in having a romantic relationship.  It probably took me some time to really understand why I felt that way, and there's no doubt that social pressures at large (and my selfconsciousness over failing to "keep up with the curve") were significant.  But it was the singularly important issue in my life.  It's what I focused on, what I obsessed over, what tormented me more than I let anything else.  I so wanted to be loved, so wanted to be thoroughly accepted, so wanted to have someone who would forgive all my multitude of failings and just love me with a breadth and passion that would make up for the lack I found in my family and myself.

It was not about companionship, although that was an undeniable bonus.  It was not about physicality/sex, although that was tantalizing.  It was about esteem, it was about acceptance, it was about finding a purpose in my life since I, in and of myself, was not enough to justify living.

In short, it was unhealthy.

I came to realize that while I dated Laura (and I apologize for bringing her up so often; it was a revelatory period, what can I say?).  Laura was sweet and affectionate, but the acceptance wasn't there (significantly because there wasn't a sufficient understanding of what was there to accept).  When she left for Lollapalloza and I was a misanthropic wreck, hating my body/self as much as I hated everything else, it was clear that I was fooling myself if I thought a romantic relationship was a panacea.

There has to be a fundamental level of self-love, for lack of a better phrase.  It's something I've never had.  My body was expendable, my feelings were meant to be raked over the coals (by myself and others), and I was worthless.  I was guided not by personal desire or what felt "right" but by an abstract logic that dictated what should fit and work, what was safe and easy, not what genuinely felt appropriate.  I was meant to suffer, and I needed someone else to be happy (largely because of my involvement with them) to have vicarious joy since I was so incapable of it myself.

That's not fair or sustainable.  There is something to be said for humility, but self-abasement is a different game entirely.  I have to find a love for myself, a genuine joy of life, before I can realistically expect to be an authentic and reciprocating romantic partner.

And I'm working on that.  I'm not at a place where I can do that yet, of course.  "I am not what I am," as Iago says.  My hair is growing, but everything else is just waiting.  Infuriating, frustrating waiting.  But I suppose I've gone this far, what's another few months?

All that aside, although I've learned this lesson, it doesn't negate the desire for a romantic relationship.  I want companionship, I want that acceptance and understanding, I want that intimacy.  It's an intense desire, poignant to the point of pain at times.  A relationship fills your life in a way that nothing else can compare to.  That's not to say they're the end all, be all.  But it's undeniable, at least for me, that life is incomplete without them.

 I'm resigned to being single for the immediate future.  I don't want someone to fall in love with a person who won't (hopefully) exist in a few years' time.  And then there's the persistent dearth of viable possibilities that has plagued me since I first began to desire seven years ago.  Those are self-imposed limitations, of course.  But they are nigh-impenetrable barriers nonetheless.

So the question is, how does one make do without?  I've grown to rely on my family and friends more, of course.  Intimacy has always been difficult for me, with that cocktail of trust and low self-worth making so many of my past relationships one-sided affairs.  It's still nowhere near a substitute for what I'd want in romance.  Yet.  But I suppose I have some hope that those are walls I can continue to erode.

I've also kept quite busy, which, as covered in my previous entry, is an increasingly problematic solution.  I constantly have so much to do, so much of the time; if I was more focused, perhaps if I was more passionate, it might not be so bad.  But I cannot find much motivation, and thus fall into all too familiar patterns.

But those patterns are what I need to break.  Those walls towards platonic intimacy, those self-defeating escapist routes, those self-hating and self-denying tendencies.  Once I work on those, once I begin to become the me I need to be, then I can go back to seeking romantic fulfillment.  Unless serendipity strikes first.  I'm not holding my breath.

"every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end"

It is exhausting being so bad at something as I am.  I really am a bad teacher.  I keep on trying to make high school classrooms college classrooms, and my students simply can't handle it.  I try to reason with them, try to be democratic, try to be respectful of their autonomy and they run all over me.  And I know that, in order to have a functioning classroom, I have to assert power, to use violence upon them and their immaturity.  I need to. But it's so damned hard when all of my ideology is screaming no.  The only type of authority I ever want is that of information and assessment (and even that is questionable).  Whatever made me think that I could handle physical authority, I don't know, but it's clearly not working.

And so I'm stuck, for another four months, doing something I'm just bad at.  I've been mediocre before, like with playing instruments at school, and that was ok since no one else really cared.  But now, I'm actively disappointing people on a daily basis, and it's heartrending. I'm getting numb to it, but it's almost as if I'm in a shell or a bubble, barely alive, just trying to breathe and sleepwalk through so I can avoid utterly collapsing.  I'm a wreck, a disaster, lonely, unloved, so encased in a shell that I feel emotionally inauthentic.  I feel fake.  I don't even know how to tell anyone about it, for fear that all my failure and shame will overwhelm me and they'll not know how to do anything but utterly pity me.  And I don't want pity.  I don't want a pep talk.  Because I can't do this, and I know I can't, and I'm just stuck here until it's over.  I want to be accepted and forgiven.  I want out of this godforsaken shell.

But I can't get out.  Not until May 24th.  I'm trapped in my failure.  And it would destroy me if I let it.  God, a hard rain's going to fall when this dam breaks.

I've been fairly worried the past few weeks, and not without good cause.  But my counselor on Friday made the point that I'm finally taking risks and part of the calculus of those decisions is that I actually really, really care about what happens.  I don't want to settle for less.  I don't want back up plans upon back up plans.  I want two things, specifically, to work out over the next two years, and they're both very much in flux and unsure, but they're also what I want.  There's not really much doubt that I have left.  I want them.

There are times when I'm in love with life.  When the word seems beautiful and full of potential, when every person seems like someone I could find interesting and love, when I feel like there's so much out there and my main crime is a lack of ambition.

And then there are times like right now, when I wonder if happiness, as a sustained concept, is a myth.  When I wonder if I'll ever be satisfied with my life, with whatever profession I choose, with my contribution to humanity. For all of whatever talents I may possess, I feel so worthless.  I muddle through each day, battered and bruised because I refuse to embrace the authority I am expected to embody, and I find myself a failure.  I have accepted this failure, internalized it, if only because I always figured it would happen.  But, on a larger scope, I find myself all the more worthless because I've made so many efforts to not be.  I've planned, I've tried to be a good person, I've tried to take precautions and form backup plans upon backup plans, and yet I'm still, essentially, worthless.

I happened upon Laura today, walking back from one of my campus groups, and we talked for a few minutes.  It didn't hurt as much as the past few times; the pain was more of a dull sense of resigned loss instead of a more poignant rage or regret or sadness.  But God, it was like I wanted to love her so much, I wanted to embrace, to know her and be with her as I had because, in her absence, I'd forgotten how wonderful she was.  And I wanted love, I want love, so so so much.  For all my introspection, I am a private person.  I carry myself, carry my weights, and it's difficult for me to let another person shoulder them.  It doesn't help, of course, that when I tried to let Laura help me she crumbled under the burden.  I know I have support, I know I have people who care for me, I know there are plenty of people who like me.  And yet, at the end of the day, I feel so distant, so... blocked.  I can't let others in, can't accept their feelings and let my weight be shared.

It's probably because I'm not the me I want to be.  That fundamental incongruity means I have a wall built up, a barrier that makes the "real" me inaccessible because she must be protected.  It'll hurt too much when she's not, because she's real, unlike the shell.  If she's accepted, though.  If she's loved, if she's cared for... I don't know.  Maybe that will be real.

Yet I worry.  Is happiness a myth?  Is Laura the best, maybe the last love I'll have?  Am I ever going to find something I enjoy and can do well and can help others at?  It sounds like such a feeble complaint, in many ways.  But I refuse to live my life simply to survive.  I just don't know if I'll ever really find the chance to live it any other way.