To say I'm "depressed" seems egregious. In terms of feeling "bad," in the way I used to feel "bad," I really feel alright by comparison. There is limited angst, there is limited explicit self-hatred, there is little that makes this moment "miserable." I am not miserable. I'm not happy, but I feel .... ok.
And yet. I can't get out of bed. I can't. I lie there for hours, just... staring, sometimes falling back to sleep, sometimes thinking "I should get up, getting up really isn't that bad, come on just do it!" and I don't move. I've always been pretty late to things, but now it's breaching hours late if I even go at all (as long as I'm not "responsible" for the "things" happening, of course). And all I do, instead, is lie in bed.
I get up, eventually. Usually after two hours or so of being awake but still in bed, I get out. And, as predicted, it's really not that bad. I don't feel bad, it's not too uncomfortable. And it used to be alright, as I'd have things to do. I'd go to class or work or whatever. After all that stopped being an option, I started exercising and then waiting til S got home. And I'd play some video games. And I'd do whatever it was that I did to procrastinate on grad applications. And then I went to Boston. And then I stopped exercising and focused, almost exclusively, on doing and procrastinating on graduate school applications. And then I did them. And then I started playing World of Warcraft again. And I started sleeping late, and S was out of commission save for very rare communication, and I just played WoW and used it to distract me from her absence and hoping for her.
And then WoW lost its appeal, at the one month mark (unsurprisingly). And I bought a new game for $7 and it was fun for a day or two, but now it's fun for 30 minutes at a time before I'm done with it again. And I think of S, and I wait for the maybe 15 minutes I'll get to talk to her, and the rest is spent thinking about her and transitioning and graduate school and my mind turns over and over and over again and there's nothing until I find something to read to distract me, and sometimes it really compels me and I think I want to read more, listen to more, learn more, and sometimes I do, but then I don't. And eventually it inches towards 7a, and I know, like a vampire, I need to be in bed before sunup. So I go there. And it takes me ~thirty minutes to fall asleep. And then I wake up. And then I go back to sleep. And then I wake up and lie there. And then I go back to sleep. And then and thenandthenandeaneteantheanthetean
Thinking on it today, I wondered if I liked staying in bed because it's the only place/way (other than "smoking") that you can just "be" and not be expected to "do" anything. I can think and be and the hours pass faster for having been half-slept and eventually I wake up entirely and stare and eventually something inside me just jettisons me into the "day" (which is really night) and I fumble around, hoping S will call, but as the night goes on (especially if I've already gotten a small phonecall or a text) it's clear she won't and I just feel rejected and alone and try to distract myself.
Except the distractions aren't working. Except now, none of my games compel me like they used to. Now, I want to *do* and *be* something and nothing simultaneously. I am purposeless, aimless, *waiting* and although I can come up with a long and vivid list of things I couldshouldwould do, she's at the top of it and the rest just feels like delusion and tedium.
I thought I'd learned, from Laura, that I needed to be ok with myself before I could be ok in a relationship. And I made some progress. I was fragile, I was needy, I hurt, but it was all shielded and protected in a veneer of self-hate, apathy, and the "resilience" so many of us foster to overcome the core to do what needs done. But now, I'm shedding the veneer. And I've nothing that "needs done." And she cracked it. She laid it wide open, for me to need again, that needing was ok again, that desperation was ok again, that I could be damaged and that was ok because someone understood and loved me, not just cared and wished me well, but *understood* and then *loved me* withfordespite it. And she's the only real thing in my life anymore. And she's running away from me, running away from all of it, like I'm running from it, like I'm over it, like I just want to be done with it, except that she doesn't want to or doesn't think she can take me with her.
At the root of my conundrum seems to be the omnipresent but latent dilemma of "purpose" in a well-established existential ontology that has asserted "purpose" cannot exist outside of what one, individually, determines and ascertains. As such, I have seen fit to live vicariously through the feelings of others (particularly in terms of regarding myself) for I've little interest in constructing meaning for myself, in and of myself, if it's always going to be delusional. This is at once selfish and unsustainable, for I become little more than a parasite, latching onto the meaning of others, and once I am rejected, found wanting, or otherwise deemed disposable, I rapidly lose all of the pseudo-meaning I've gathered. But to reconcile my self with what I perceive as an almost irrepressible lack of objective purpose, as I think I charged myself with, now seems impossible. Sisyphus is not smiling, and to imagine him doing so we are still engaging in delusion as much as any other meaning creation is.
I think of how I felt about WoW. It was fun, for awhile, and it had a lot of potential that it rarely lives up to. Ultimately, though, the waiting and the work didn't seem worth the occasional moments of transcendence. Why should life be different?
I have no doubt that better times could come, that things can improve, that things, indeed, have gotten better after previous periods of worse. In fact, I would hazard a guess that there is a positive correlation between time and my happiness, all told. Perhaps I will weather this, as I've weathered all else, and emerge better, anew, continuing this cycle of stripping myself down and rising back up. But so too, I note with no small aggravation, that buying a gun in East Tennessee is a whole lot more complicated for me now than before. It's the little things you don't expect that really make some things hard, ya know? I didn't know how good I had it.
And yet. I can't get out of bed. I can't. I lie there for hours, just... staring, sometimes falling back to sleep, sometimes thinking "I should get up, getting up really isn't that bad, come on just do it!" and I don't move. I've always been pretty late to things, but now it's breaching hours late if I even go at all (as long as I'm not "responsible" for the "things" happening, of course). And all I do, instead, is lie in bed.
I get up, eventually. Usually after two hours or so of being awake but still in bed, I get out. And, as predicted, it's really not that bad. I don't feel bad, it's not too uncomfortable. And it used to be alright, as I'd have things to do. I'd go to class or work or whatever. After all that stopped being an option, I started exercising and then waiting til S got home. And I'd play some video games. And I'd do whatever it was that I did to procrastinate on grad applications. And then I went to Boston. And then I stopped exercising and focused, almost exclusively, on doing and procrastinating on graduate school applications. And then I did them. And then I started playing World of Warcraft again. And I started sleeping late, and S was out of commission save for very rare communication, and I just played WoW and used it to distract me from her absence and hoping for her.
And then WoW lost its appeal, at the one month mark (unsurprisingly). And I bought a new game for $7 and it was fun for a day or two, but now it's fun for 30 minutes at a time before I'm done with it again. And I think of S, and I wait for the maybe 15 minutes I'll get to talk to her, and the rest is spent thinking about her and transitioning and graduate school and my mind turns over and over and over again and there's nothing until I find something to read to distract me, and sometimes it really compels me and I think I want to read more, listen to more, learn more, and sometimes I do, but then I don't. And eventually it inches towards 7a, and I know, like a vampire, I need to be in bed before sunup. So I go there. And it takes me ~thirty minutes to fall asleep. And then I wake up. And then I go back to sleep. And then I wake up and lie there. And then I go back to sleep. And then and thenandthenandeaneteantheanthetean
Thinking on it today, I wondered if I liked staying in bed because it's the only place/way (other than "smoking") that you can just "be" and not be expected to "do" anything. I can think and be and the hours pass faster for having been half-slept and eventually I wake up entirely and stare and eventually something inside me just jettisons me into the "day" (which is really night) and I fumble around, hoping S will call, but as the night goes on (especially if I've already gotten a small phonecall or a text) it's clear she won't and I just feel rejected and alone and try to distract myself.
Except the distractions aren't working. Except now, none of my games compel me like they used to. Now, I want to *do* and *be* something and nothing simultaneously. I am purposeless, aimless, *waiting* and although I can come up with a long and vivid list of things I couldshouldwould do, she's at the top of it and the rest just feels like delusion and tedium.
I thought I'd learned, from Laura, that I needed to be ok with myself before I could be ok in a relationship. And I made some progress. I was fragile, I was needy, I hurt, but it was all shielded and protected in a veneer of self-hate, apathy, and the "resilience" so many of us foster to overcome the core to do what needs done. But now, I'm shedding the veneer. And I've nothing that "needs done." And she cracked it. She laid it wide open, for me to need again, that needing was ok again, that desperation was ok again, that I could be damaged and that was ok because someone understood and loved me, not just cared and wished me well, but *understood* and then *loved me* withfordespite it. And she's the only real thing in my life anymore. And she's running away from me, running away from all of it, like I'm running from it, like I'm over it, like I just want to be done with it, except that she doesn't want to or doesn't think she can take me with her.
At the root of my conundrum seems to be the omnipresent but latent dilemma of "purpose" in a well-established existential ontology that has asserted "purpose" cannot exist outside of what one, individually, determines and ascertains. As such, I have seen fit to live vicariously through the feelings of others (particularly in terms of regarding myself) for I've little interest in constructing meaning for myself, in and of myself, if it's always going to be delusional. This is at once selfish and unsustainable, for I become little more than a parasite, latching onto the meaning of others, and once I am rejected, found wanting, or otherwise deemed disposable, I rapidly lose all of the pseudo-meaning I've gathered. But to reconcile my self with what I perceive as an almost irrepressible lack of objective purpose, as I think I charged myself with, now seems impossible. Sisyphus is not smiling, and to imagine him doing so we are still engaging in delusion as much as any other meaning creation is.
I think of how I felt about WoW. It was fun, for awhile, and it had a lot of potential that it rarely lives up to. Ultimately, though, the waiting and the work didn't seem worth the occasional moments of transcendence. Why should life be different?
I have no doubt that better times could come, that things can improve, that things, indeed, have gotten better after previous periods of worse. In fact, I would hazard a guess that there is a positive correlation between time and my happiness, all told. Perhaps I will weather this, as I've weathered all else, and emerge better, anew, continuing this cycle of stripping myself down and rising back up. But so too, I note with no small aggravation, that buying a gun in East Tennessee is a whole lot more complicated for me now than before. It's the little things you don't expect that really make some things hard, ya know? I didn't know how good I had it.
Juliet, keep hope!(This is the shortest days and longest nights of the year.) What is this about buying a gun??? Are you trying to get one???
As insignificant as it may seem in the grand scheme of things, Happy Holidays my dear. You mean the world to me.
Sincerely,
Reid