My car absolutely sucks. I can’t even say the number of times it’s been towed and in the shop in the past ten months–I’ve literally lost count. Strangely, the car’s issues have tended to coincide with the ebb and flow of one particular relationship; when something “bad” would happen there, my car would break. I’m not saying I believe there’s any causal relationship whatsoever, I just find it a little funny. Or obnoxious.
Anyway, it decided to die again today. I managed to get it started to get to class, but it had no intention of turning on once I went to leave. I tried jumping it to no avail, so I called my insurance company for a tow truck. I was told it should be forty-five to fifty minutes. Four hours later, I was still waiting. Just…sitting in my car in the school parking lot, afraid to go inside on the chance I’d miss the driver. Naturally, I had a lot of time to think. Helpful side note here, it was my birthday. (Thanks for the gift, car.) And all I could think about was how badly I wanted to hear from one person, this girl. I had texted her earlier in the week to see if she would get dinner with me, but she didn’t respond. Not that I expected her to, mind you. But even if she didn’t want to actually see me, I thought she would still maybe IM me or send me a text just saying “happy birthday.” Birthdays are kind of a big deal to me–I went all out for hers last summer, for example. Not that she “owes” me anything because of that, just…birthdays mean a lot to me.
I thought about my birthday last year. I was hoping another girl would reach out to me and was crushed when she didn’t. It’s funny, I remember that Lost was on that night, and I was really frustrated because Jin and Sun finally reunited after what felt like forever, and since I over-identified with Sun and projected this girl onto her, it kind of made me feel even worse. Dumb, I know.
And here I was again. Pining for someone else to just show me she gives a shit. Growing more and more disappointed as it got later and later. Just in case it isn’t evidently clear from the tone here, I didn’t hear anything from her. Shocker. And I just…I don’t know anymore. I feel like I define myself based on my relationships. I see myself through other people’s eyes. It’s a mixed bag, really. On one hand, I try to be kind of awesome to people because I want them to think of me as awesome. Not for vanity’s sake or anything, but…just to be a good person in their eyes. To be someone they can trust, talk to, depend on. Whatever. On the other hand, when relationships fail–as so many of mine inevitably tend to do–I’m left without a view at best or a very negative one at worst.
And it’s been like this for as long as I can remember. Certainly since high school–maybe earlier, I don’t know. And while it’s true I do this with everyone, it’s usually just one person I focus on. The last three years it’s been three different girls. And things went south in each of those relationships, albeit one rebounded pretty decently. I defined myself based on how those relationships were going. When they went poorly, I thought poorly of myself. When they went well, I thought I was the shit. And when they seemed like they were about to irrevocably implode…well, drastic decisions were made because I couldn’t handle the person I saw when I looked in the mirror.
Clearly, this isn’t working out. I don’t want to constantly be up and down based on someone else’s emotions. When I was finally on my way home tonight, I kept thinking of a scene from About a Boy. Hugh Grant says something like, “You have to mean things to help people. Fiona meant Killing Me Softly. Killing Me Softly meant something to her. Me? I didn’t mean anything, about anything, to anyone.” It’s not exactly spot-on, but…I don’t know. It’s important to mean something to people, it’s important to do your best in relationships, but…when I don’t mean anything to anyone (an exaggeration), what then? I can’t just keep spiraling into this pit of depression. And I say this, and I want it to just be true, I want to stop doing this, but it isn’t that easy. I don’t really know where to start or what to do differently. I don’t know how to control my feelings. Kind of at all.
I’ve felt very withdrawn these past few weeks. I’ve tried to fight past it the best I can, mostly with relative success actually. But the last four or five days, that success has diminished. Abundantly. I’ve not been sleeping at all, I’ve been sleepwalking through the days, and I’ve had no inclination to engage the world at large. I’ve ignored phone calls, failed to reply to texts…I’ve kinda sucked.
It’s really been bothering me that I seem to get close to people who just shut down when things start to go in a way in which they aren’t superbly pleased. That so isn’t who I am at all; if something is bothering me, I want to talk about it, I want to figure out why it’s happening, what caused it, and how it can be remedied. And if it’s not something that can be “fixed,” then a way to understand it. I don’t throw up my hands and give up on the situation, on the person. People deserve better than that.
And yet, that seems to be the response from a decent number of people. Total avoidance. Just because I have an opinion about something that is drastically different from yours, I should just be avoided, cut out? Run away from? Literally, in some cases? What is it about being confronted that scares people so much? It’s not even a matter of something being the “right” or “wrong” thing to do. People live their lives and they make choices as to how they’re going to do that. If you have people in your life who care about you, sometimes they’re going to think those decisions are colossally wrong for you. I’ve made decisions–many of them–which my friends thought were monumentally stupid. And pretty much every time that’s been the case, my friends have been all too willing to let me know what they think about what I’m doing and why it may not be the best idea. Do I always agree with them? Well…no. Rarely if ever. And it leads to uncomfortable conversations that sometimes escalate into arguments and things are tense and unpleasant for a bit. One of the reasons that’s the case is because it’s rare for someone to approach a situation like that on an even keel. I know I don’t. When someone I care about is doing something I think is bad for them, I approach it emotionally. “What the hell. What are you thinking?” Quite accusational. They’re doing something that, to me, is so clearly not what they should be doing and I can’t fathom why they don’t see that too. It isn’t until after the “Have you learned nothing?” kinds of conversations that I actually am able to realize that people don’t just do things to hurt themselves. Typically. And when my friends have come to me in that manner, after my initial whiplash response of anger and indignation, it eventually turns into a conversation where I try to get them to see where I’m coming from and why I’m doing what I’m doing. That doesn’t mean what I’m doing is objectively good for me, just that I haven’t gone into it without giving it some thought first. And that I have a continued rationale for doing it. I think that eventually, though you may not agree with someone, you can at least see where they’re coming from.
Of course, that’s only the case if, when someone reacts to something that you’re doing negatively, you don’t decide to just ignore the situation and run away from any sort of conversation. “This is what I’m doing and I’m not going to say anything else about it.” It isn’t that you have to justify yourself–it isn’t about justification. It’s giving someone who cares about you, who worries about you, an opportunity to understand what’s going through your head. What you’re thinking and feeling. Friendships–relationships–can’t just be a loose series of interactions without any sense of what’s going on inside. There’s an emotional core there, an intimacy, that you can’t just take away at will. It’s unfair and unhealthy. It isn’t “I’m right and this is why.” It’s “you need to look at it from my perspective.” And if someone cares about you, they’ll be able to do that. They still may not agree with it, but they’ll understand it a bit better.
Running away from contrary opinions is no way to live. What’s the benefit of someone who just placates you with every decision you make or, maybe worse yet, just doesn’t care about how the way you’re living your life may be affecting you? The people who love you aren’t just automatons who tell you whatever you want to hear because it’ll be easier; I’d wager people who do that don’t actually love someone much at all.
Fair warning: I’m utterly drunk right now so this may not be the most coherent of posts.
People are moronic. Seriously. There’s a girl…even though she shouldn’t, even though I realize it makes no sense, she means the world to me. I met her at a point in my life when I thought that things would never be able to be anywhere near good again and she made them amazing. Of course, little did I know she’s a tad fucked up. Didn’t throw that one out there in our first few conversations, kept it relatively close to the chest. Didn’t bother sharing with me that she, this twenty-two year old girl, was dating someone more than twice her age, older than her father, this skeevy, lecherous fifty-five year old douchebag. Nope. Kept all of that to herself. Made me think she was…not normal, but, you know, close. And moron that I am…started to fall in love with her. She knew this. She saw it happening. I vividly remember falling asleep one night in her bed, telling her in that half-sleep, half-dream state you sometimes get into when you’re exhausted that I was falling in love with her. Her response? “I know you are.” She also knew what I’d just gone through, how…hard it was for me to trust anyone. How, frankly, extraordinary it was that I was able to trust her so fully.
But then…then it started to come out. “I’m not going to be able to see you Friday night, I forgot I told my friend ages ago I’d go see this concert with him…you don’t mind, right?” I didn’t. After all–I trusted her. Fool. The concert came, she went–texting me throughout the entire thing telling me how much she wished I was the one there with her, how much more the show would have meant to her if that were the case. We saw Toy Story 3 the next day in IMAX; we went to a park beforehand and laid on some sheets we bought that day in the grass. Well, we bought the sheets at Bed, Bath and Beyond–we then put them to use in the grass. In case that was unclear. She apologized to me that we hadn’t had sex yet. It seemed as though she thought she…owed it to me or something. Like it was expected. I told her it wasn’t. That I didn’t remotely mind. She had some issues with…relationships and physicality, and I knew that early on. That’s totally something I was okay with. I told her that it was okay, we would move at whatever pace she was comfortable with. “You’re more than worth the wait.” She stared at me for a few moments and started to tear up. “No one’s ever said that to me before.” It was a good day.
Then the next weekend she went away with that “friend” again. Found out some more about him. 55. Has kids older than her and her age. A normal person would have run, I suspect. But…I’m not normal and, well…I was falling in love with her. I thought that, in time, things would work out. We were happy when we were together. So that’s how it continued for a bit. She dated both of us, I suppose. She seemed to lean toward him more often; I just kept hoping. Eventually she said that she wanted to be with him and that we would just be friends. I accepted it, to an extent. I was willing to accept that she didn’t want to be with me. I couldn’t just stand by and watch her drown in this river of self-destruction–this relationship was a far cry from good for her. Of course, her saying that the two of them were dating wasn’t really accurate. Things still happened between her and I sometimes. And he, of course, was living with his girlfriend of twenty years. Supposedly “sleeping on the couch”…convenient how married or committed men always manage to find young girls they can prey on at a time when their relationships are supposedly on the rocks.
Things continue. They’re together. She…kind of treats me like shit a lot. I take it, coming up with excuse after excuse as to why she does it. Some may not be excuses; some may be the actual reasons. She’s used to guys who degrade her and treat her like shit. Who care long enough to fuck her, but when she’s not around? Not really a concern. I don’t treat her like that. I go out of my way to show her how much of a shit I do give, how much she means to me. She tells me that it scares her a bit, she doesn’t know how to react to that. That no one’s treated her that way before.
Then the shit kind of hits the fan. He apparently is talking to some other random twenty-year old girl online about this entire situation. Talks about his relationship with her and her relationship with me…says really shitty things about the both of us. I mean…seriously terrible things. I guess he pisses this girl off, because she mails me the transcript. She was able to do this because he was nice enough to direct her to my Facebook profile and I guess a few Google searches with the information gleaned there is enough to get a mailing address. I show it to her, so she can see what he actually thinks about her. It’s a somewhat traumatic time, made worse by the fact that she and I are supposed to fly to another part of the country the next day as a part of her birthday gift to see her favorite band. Tense weekend, to say the least.
She ends it with him. He goes back to his twenty-year relationship. She kind of…falls apart a bit. I worry about her a bit more than that. She pushes me away. Thinks I’m too wrapped up in everything that happened and she’s trying not to think about it or doesn’t want to be reminded of it or something. I’m not happy about it, but I give her her space; I want her to be okay again, and if her not talking to me seems to help that, fine. After a week or two, she starts to let me back in a bit. Eventually we talk about everything that happened, he’s calling her constantly, showing up in her yard at three in the morning like a crazy stalker person, being an overall unbalanced crazy person. She tells me that she realizes how bad the situation was, how bad of a place she was in without necessarily realizing it at the time. “It’s for the best everything happened…I dodged a bullet.” I agree with her wholeheartedly for…a plethora or reasons.
Then things start to get bad between her and I again. She’s constantly pushing me away, treating me like shit. She does something kind of screwed up, I get angry about it, we get into an argument eventually, she says she doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. Despite that I was angry, I still care about this girl–she’s my best friend, honestly. Sad, I know. I tell her I’m here for her when she’s ready, I want to be a part of her life. We stop talking. This is early November. I’d already started working on her Christmas gift by this point and I’d bought her a thing or two already as well. Christmas comes, we’re still not talking, so I take her her gifts. It goes better than expected, we talk for a few hours…it was another good night. She tells me she isn’t ready for me to be a part of her life again yet, but that she’ll let me know when she is.
A few weeks pass. I get a thing in the mail for a gym that has a location both near my school and my house. I join. I run into her there. We talk, smoke a cigarette, go to dinner. I drop her back off to her car…and we’re still not talking. But I continue to wait. A few weeks ago, I win a competition at my school. I text her to tell her–she’s one of the first people I want to talk to when I’m happy about something, and I decided to just go for it. After all, how often does something like this happen? She replies, we start texting fairly regularly…it seems like things are finally going back to normal.
Maybe a little too “back” though. After a string of happenings that kind of give me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach–which I ignored because I thought I was just being paranoid–she tells me tonight that she’s seeing him again. I ask if they’re dating. “Something like that.”
And…that’s where I am. That’s been my night. Well, coupled with a decent amount of chardonnay and, after that ran out, rum. I don’t even know what to think. She won’t talk to me for months as though I’m this terrible person, but decides to get back into a relationship with a guy who talked about her like she was just some common whore? Who doesn’t like who she is now but knows that, with time, he can change her into who he wants her to be. As screwed up as some of the decisions that she’s made have been, I’d never try to change her. I’ve encouraged her to try to get help to work out some issues that she has, but I feel like that’s kind of different. I don’t know.
People seem to wonder why this girl continues to mean so much to me when she’s made me feel fairly terrible and treated me relatively poorly. They don’t understand. It’s like…yes, she’s flawed. Extremely so at times. But…I guess it’s kind of like a rose. You can look at it and say, “Why does something this beautiful have thorns, something that is markedly not beautiful and capable of causing a fair degree of pain.” I guess that’s a perfectly acceptable way to look at it, and something similar could be said about her. But I look at her and…I guess I wonder how someone with so many flaws and capable of hurting me so much can still be so markedly amazing and beautiful.
I feel a little guilty that I’ve slacked so much on writing here. I mean, I suppose there isn’t anything actually wrong with that–I’m under no obligation to write, and if I have nothing to say then I have nothing to say. On the other hand…well, I suppose after last year, when I would write practically every day, sometimes more than one time a day, to go a few weeks in between just seems like I’m doing it “wrong.” Plus, it isn’t as though I haven’t been inclined to write a few times. I have. I think I’ve been unsure of what I wanted to say or, more accurately, what it is I’ve actually been feeling. I’ve felt kind of strange recently, honestly, but I can’t pinpoint how or why.
I’ve been feeling relatively depressed again. Sort of. I’ve been acting like I do when I am really depressed, but I haven’t actually felt that way. I rarely can get to sleep before five or so. When I do sleep, I end up wanting to never actually get out of bed. I’m tired regardless of how long I sleep. Although I’m not disinterested in the things I care about, I do have a sense of boredom regarding most everything. I lose track of time really easily, where I’ll suddenly realize hours have gone by and I’ve done absolutely nothing. But, despite all that, I don’t…hurt. I don’t feel that “depressed” or whatever, not to excessive amounts like before, and not necessarily for prolonged amounts of time, either. I feel pretty detached, actually. There are things in my life that I very much wish were different, and although I often hope they’ll go my way, the fact that they don’t doesn’t make me “sad.” More numb. As though…I don’t know, like I’m waiting. It’s like after you’ve gotten through security at the airport, and you’re sitting at your gate waiting forever for your flight. You just…zone out. I think even that expectation is similar; you know they’re bound to start boarding eventually, so the spacing out is really just a waiting game. I feel that, eventually, things will be more closely aligned to how I want them to be, but in the meantime…just waiting. (I feel as though the comprehensibility of my stream-of-consciousness may have lessened a bit since in the time that I’ve been writing significantly less.)
The sleep thing is really starting to bother me. I don’t understand why I can’t sleep. I’ve always been a night person, yes, but…well, I was doing really well for a while. For almost a month, I was getting tired at appropriate times and actually going to sleep soon after. I would sleep for a much-more-healthy-than-I-normally-get six hours. I actually felt rested when I woke up. I felt motivated. But then…I don’t know, that just seemed to disappear and I went back to this. It’s quite frustrating, especially knowing that I’m capable of being “normal.” It’d been a long time since I remembered that it was possible to be really productive and get a lot done all before noon. When I wake up now, unless I have to rush to get to class, I won’t do anything for the first few hours I’m awake. And, like always, when I finally do something, I’ll wonder where that time went. I tried having some wine every night around the time I’d like to go to bed, and although that was putting me to sleep for three or four days, it didn’t last. I don’t know. I’d really just like something to change here.
I’m actually doing decently in school though in comparison to recent semesters. I’m essentially caught up on my reading in all of my classes, only really falling behind when I have a lot of work to do for one class. I’m actually kind of excelling in some academic areas too. It’s weird. I think I’d kinda forgotten I was capable of being really good at things rather than just alright.
I’ve come to realize that I sleepwalk through my life pretty often. Kind of. It’s not as if I don’t engage in things, not that kind of sleepwalking. More like I…live life like it’s a rerun. Like I’ve already seen it all before and so I know what’s coming next; there’s nothing overly exciting, nothing to take me by surprise. Maybe this is more a testament to how boring my life is rather than some sort of universal truth–it’s completely possible I’m just monotonous. Either way, it’s probably something that should bother me. Unfortunately, I rarely even notice it.
I wake up in the morning and go about my routine, whatever it may be for that day of the week. I allocate time for things, I know what I’m going to be doing and where I’m going to be; I may make some random decision to alter that or add to it as the day goes on, but for the most part? Every day is the same. I have no expectations. I have no…sense of wonder. It’s all-too-often just checking items off some invisible checklist before I can finish my day and…nothing. Mill about. Sleep. I don’t wake up and ever think to myself, “I wonder what today is going to bring,” instead, if anything, it’s “I hate how much is standing between me and getting back in bed to go back to sleep tonight.” What kind of way is that to approach life?
I can go on like this for…well, a while. I’m afraid to lowball an estimate, honestly. But sometimes? Sometimes something unexpected happens. Every once in a while, I snap out of it and realize that I haven’t already seen this episode. Some totally random event, something you’ve maybe hoped for in some form but not actually expected, can make you realize that not knowing what’s going to happen next can be kind of awesome. I don’t know. I feel as though this is maybe something that should be obvious to most everyone and I’m just slow. Maybe that’s true.
I’m not saying I can change this or anything–especially not immediately–but it’s stupid not to realize how strange living actually is. Everything only happens once and no one ever knows what’s coming next. When I actually think about it, it kind of blows my mind. (Also, I feel like I should be stoned right now, ’cause I think I kinda sound it…) You may drive the same way to work, day in and day out. It may seem like there’s nothing worth noticing there, it’s just totally rote. But…it really isn’t. Even if nothing is different, something really is. You just don’t see it. It’s just perspective, right? Even though I go through each day expecting nothing of consequence to happen, that doesn’t mean it’s actually true. Maybe it just means I’m closing myself off from seeing it when it’s there.
I don’t know. This sounds very carpe diem and whatnot. Like I said, I doubt this thirty hour realization will make any drastic impact on the way I live my life. But right now, in this moment, even if things don’t always work out the way I’d like them to, I realize that just because I’m bored doesn’t mean that things are boring. Maybe I’m just missing opportunities. Choosing to alter your routine, break yourself away from what you would normally do…sometimes the results can be surprising.
My father called me randomly Saturday night. Typically, I tend to get a phone call from him for an exclusive set of categories: he needs some sort of computer assistance, my sister needs a ride from his house to her mom’s because he has to work, or…okay, two categories, apparently. It’s not that we have a strained relationship or anything, we just don’t talk much; we’re not all that close, I suppose, despite my having lived with him for twenty-some years. We’re very different, and because of that, I don’t think he really knows what to do with me. I wasn’t into sports growing up, I was more content to sit inside and read rather than go outside and play…stuff like that. Definitely not the stereotypical son I imagine a decent amount of fathers normally envision.
So anyway, he calls me Saturday, but he doesn’t need to know how to reply to an ad for a truck on Craigslist or print something, nor does my sister need a ride anywhere. Instead, he tells me I have some mail there. I knew something was up–I always have mail there. I pick it up fairly regularly, but it’s never anything pressing. Beyond the relatively random reason for calling, I can hear an edge in his voice. Because we aren’t really close, I don’t actually know how to engage him on an emotional level, so I just kind of roll with this awkward conversation, knowing that whatever is actually on his mind will most likely eventually come out. He asks me if I have school Monday, or if I have off for Martin Luther King Day; I tell him I’m off. He asks if everything is alright, which I find somewhat amusing based both on who made this impromptu phone call and who it is that sounds as though something is wrong. I say I’m fine (always my answer, regardless of the veracity of the claim). Then he starts talking about everything that he has to do at the house–paint my sister’s room, paint the kitchen, clean out the basement, which is definitely a total clusterfuck and has been pretty much since we moved in eight years ago. He talks about how overwhelming it all is, and he just doesn’t know where to start. It’s just my dad and my brother there now; my sister lives with her mom and comes over some weeknights and every other weekend, although she’s at that age where she’s never actually home, always at her girlfriend’s house a block over. My brother is twenty-one and never home. I moved out the summer before last to go to school. So…for the most part, it’s just him there, alone. He and my stepmother divorced eight years ago or so. He took it pretty hard and, though I can’t be completely sure of this (and I don’t know how he’d feel about me saying so), I don’t think he’s ever actually gotten over her. He’s struggled with depression for as long as I can remember, unfortunately more unsuccessfully than not. Not that he’s crazy despondent or anything, but there’s definitely a lot of just…laying in bed, in the dark, with the TV on all day. Sleeping constantly. Anyway, he’s talking about all this stuff he has to do around the house, how he doesn’t know where to start, how, when we lived alone before he married my stepmother, the house used to be spotless and he could have people over whenever he wanted (this is true, I used to hate having to clean so often). Now, though, he’s ashamed to have people over because of the way the house looks. This frustrates me, honestly. The house isn’t that bad. It’s cluttered. It’s not dirty or anything, everything is quite clean (well, there’s some dust in the basement, but whatever), there’s just a lot of stuff. I’ve been to people’s houses that were much worse, that were kinda skeevy–he really has nothing to worry about. Of course, you can’t convince him of that. But whatever, his house, if he wants it spotless, then…he does. But yes, going on about how he’s ashamed to have people over now, and he starts crying around this point. Now, my father? He’s a crier. Definitely no shame in breaking down for that man–nor should there be, by the way, I hate the stereotype that men can’t cry. It’s crap. Even though I’ve seen him cry numerous times over the past few years, over my stepmother, over…my debacle last year, it’s never gotten any more comfortable for me or anything. I never know what to say. I tend to just repeat “it’s okay,” presuming I say anything at all, of course. He apologized eventually, said that he was just venting, I didn’t need to worry about anything, whatever. I told him I knew. Then I said I’d be over in the next week or so to pick up my mail and try to go through anything of mine still there–kind of a decent amount of stuff, actually.
Thing is? I don’t know how much of that was really prompted by the state of the house. I mean, okay, yes, to some degree I’m sure it was part of it. But I kind of get the sense that he’s just sorta lonely. Like I said, he never got over my stepmother in my opinion and, although there was one woman he was dating for awhile, he finally realized that she wasn’t going to get out of her horrendous situation anytime soon and ended it. (I think, anyway; like I said, we don’t talk, so I tend to have to reconstruct what I think my father’s life probably is.) My sister is never there when she visits and, if she is, he’s often working. My brother is I suppose an adult now and has his own life, even though he lives at home. My father doesn’t make much of an effort to keep in contact with his family, so that avenue isn’t really there anymore; my aunt died in 2000, and she apparently was the glue. I don’t think any of us realized that until after the fact. So yeah–he’s lonely. And I don’t really know what to say or do to make that situation better. What can you do to combat loneliness? My best idea was to call my brother a few minutes later, tell him the broad strokes of the conversation I’d just had, and try to get him to agree to help me paint my sister’s room sometime soon; I figured if we did that, maybe everything that needed to be done would seem less overwhelming and he’d be able to focus on the rest of the house. A project is certainly a good way to distract yourself from the fact that you feel so alone. We were all there Sunday and…I don’t know, my father said he felt sick and was pretty distant and unenthused, nor did he really do much–he nixed the painting idea, opting instead to have us work on the basement, but, other than my room which I totally rocked in essentially emptying, not much got done. I don’t know what else to do.
Then there’s my grandmother. She’s called me a few times in the last month or two and ended up in tears. My grandfather died the summer before last and that’s obviously been hard on her. She lives in a mother-in-law suite at my aunt and uncle’s house, so all of my cousins–her grandkids–are there and everything. You would think that’d be good for her, but for some reason she seems to think no one wants her around. I guess that can be common for older people to think at some point, but it’s not true. It’s hard because I kind of see what’s happening when I’m there visiting–she thinks she’s not wanted in their house, so she doesn’t interact with them that much, they don’t understand why she never comes over when they try to include her in things…there should be an easy fix to this, but there isn’t really. And when she calls me, she says over and over again how lonely she is. Just like with my father, it’s frustrating; I don’t know what I can possibly do. I try to go down there as often as possible, cajoling my brothers into doing the same, but, even though I think I’ve seen her more in the last year than I had in the previous four or five combined, it’s just a temporary fix.
Loneliness is terrible. It starts off as this annoying pang–there but unfamiliar, and you don’t really pay too much attention to it. Then it grows. And grows. And grows. And eventually all you’re left with is yourself. That shouldn’t be too terrible, I suppose, except…I don’t know if this is universal, but I start to resent myself for it. Like it’s my fault there’s no one around, no one to abate the loneliness. I’m stuck with me, and it’s not like anyone else wants to be, right? I know on an intellectual level that isn’t true, per se, but when you’ve got nothing but time to think about why you feel the way you do, it’s hard to really believe it. And what starts off as just a feeling becomes ever-more encompassing, until all that there is is that feeling. Loneliness is like cancer, it metastasizes, and eventually…it’s how you start to define yourself.
I registered this domain name about a week ago (well, I actually registered it months ago on wordpress.org, an endeavor that was quickly halted due to my total lack of knowledge on how to use the site without some sort of outside help, resulting in a cancellation of the domain within thirty-six hours), and yet, though I’m aware it need not be said, I’ve yet to actually write in it. Granted, part of that reason was because I am desperately attached to my whole “song lyric titles and mp3s within” schtick and I wanted to wait until I got my financial aid disbursement before paying the fee enabling the posting of music. But it wasn’t the sole reason, nor even the motivating one. I don’t really know what I’m doing here, writing this. Not really. I’m not writing to anyone anymore–that ship has sailed–and I feel like, without that conceit, this could end up simply being some sort of vague narration. I also worry that I’ll feel as though I have an overinflated sense of importance; my previous foray had a purpose and, although it was read by a number of people I find as perplexing as it is staggering, it was for someone specific to see and read. Now, yes…at first, I didn’t expect she (“She”? I feel as though that topic may deserve capitalized pronouns on the, hopefully, infrequent occasions when it arises…) would see it. How would that ever happen? I was writing, showed it to no one initially (a number that expanded to…maybe five people eventually), and it was cloaked in total anonymity. It wasn’t me thinking I was so interesting that there were bound to be people out there that would want to know what I was thinking and feeling. “Now I write when I’m away, letters that you’ll never read…” As much as it was for me, an outlet for the pain I was feeling, it was maybe even more for Her. And, in effect, I was able to overcome my relatively unfair bias against blogs.
The problem is that writing was helpful. It allowed me to take my life and look at it from a different perspective. It certainly flushed a lot of those negative thoughts and feelings out of my system, at least to some degree. Honestly, I don’t know how I’d have gotten through last year if not for writing. Eventually, though, I stopped hurting so much. I didn’t want to just wait for Her to decide She maybe wanted to give me another chance. (Also, ew; I’m dropping this whole capitalization thing for pronouns, I don’t like it. Failed experiment number one.) I thought about her less. Now, I didn’t stop thinking about her or anything; I still think about her, actually. Daily. But it isn’t nearly as painful as it was before, nor is it anywhere near as consuming. My point here is that the need to write to her diminished to the point where I’d maybe be writing–maybe–once every blue moon. However often that is. The desire to write, though…the urge to just kind of word vomit and marvel at the ideas and emotions on the screen in front of me because I had no clue that that was what had been floating around in my head…that I missed. And so…here we are. New outlet.
Writing here is, I predict, going to be relatively difficult. That common thread was helpful as a…framing device, so to speak. I do not want this to turn into a recitation of my day, a list of events. Screw that, because, really–who cares? I don’t even care that much, and it’s my life; I certainly don’t expect anyone else to either. What, then? Well, here’s what I’ve come up with so far. “The Languor of Life.” I find life to be…well, quite often listless, if we want to go straight to the definition. Mundane. There are times I feel almost hyper-aware of it; though it could quite simply be an undiagnosed and untreated anxiety disorder, I all-too-often have an ever-expanding tension in my chest. It’s a feeling that there has to be more than this, more energy, more…life in life. And it’s in those moments in which I want to write. To find some kind of meaning, some purpose to my existence. Because, in all honesty, I often feel purposeless. Now, I don’t mean that to read as…nihilistic or suicidal at all–those days are long gone, thanks–but merely a bare assertion of fact. I just…exist, it seems. The world rushes around me, and yet there I am, surrounded but still. Languoring.
Rereading that, it sounds ethereal. I can discern no true mission statement out of it. Whatever. If it helps me to write, I’ll just write. If it helps you (Oh man, this is a big deal for me–this is the first time I’ve addressed any potential reader other than one specific person. Craziness.) to read it, by all means, read it. If you’d like to comment, have at it. I know it bothered some people before that I didn’t reply to comments…well, okay, I know it at least bothered one person because someone who doesn’t respond to questions posed to him about a writing is not a writer. Or something. But yeah, if you seem to be soliciting a response, I won’t be as adverse to that as I was before necessarily. After all, this isn’t for anyone in particular anymore. A lot of people read my last blog, as I already mentioned, and honestly, I was kind of touched that I seemingly affected so many people. And, I feel it should be said, I expect absolutely no one to read this–again, I do not think I am so interesting so as to warrant people investing their time in finding out what it is I decide to blather on about at any given moment. But, if you do decide to invest your time in this and, in a way, me? Thanks.
(Oh, also, I suppose I should include this…in case someone stumbles across this and has just no idea what the hell I’m talking about, my prior blog can be found at Messages to Nowhere.)
The Languor of Life 