Self-Therapy Experiment #1: The Long-Winded Vent

For some shit's and gigs I popped on here to see my stats. Someone read my blog last month through Facebook. Whoever you are, kudos, because I haven't touched this since April. While I'm here though, I might as well write something instead of stare at the Calculus that I still don't know how to do. I don't know what though.

I keep saying to myself that writing is my outlet, but the weird hypocritical part of that is that I'm not even comfortable enough talking about how I feel on a day to day basis with friends let alone write about it for the whole world to see. It's a strange double-edged sword I've forged for myself. On the one hand I hate keeping everything bottled up, on the other is the crippling fear of someone reading what I write and treating me different because of it. So why write it on a blog? Simple. I feel like if I just write it all in some journal that I'm just bottling it up, just externally. It's still there even if I can't see it. Posted on the internet, it's free to fly, off into the bandwidths of people I will never meet or into the people I see on a daily basis. It's a horrifying thought to be sure, but I'm thinking doing this might just help a little bit. I feel awkward as all hell writing this and knowing I'll click that publish button for all to see, but I guess that's the risk isn't it? Risk the stigma for a benefit of letting it go.

So, where to begin? Well, I'm off the anti-depressants  for one thing and haven't taken a sleep-aid in almost a year. That alone is a huge positive in my life, the fact that I overcame my depression and my anxiety to get help and fight back and fix something for a change.

But I don't feel like it.

It's hard to explain. I don't feel depressed anymore. I'm anxious, that's beyond any reasonable doubt and I really don't think that will ever go away. I almost feel... empty, and to a certain extent like the anxiety has filled the void that depression left when I forced its eviction.

I stopped writing here for a moment. Well, more like a few hours. Even writing this I still don't feel like I'm conveying what's going on in my head. Yeah, I have ways to explain how anxiety feels, you know, the whole "being followed by a voice" deal that haunts you and fills your head with lies even if you know they're not true, but I'm at a loss. I don't even know what to tell people when they ask me "if I'm alright" while I'm off somewhere lost in my thoughts. What am I going to say, really? "Well, I feel empty inside and sometimes I wonder if my life is just going to hit a dead end and I'll spend the rest of eternity slamming my head against some brick wall somewhere and by the end I'll figure out the real kicker is that I bought and have been paying for maintenance for that wall myself out of pocket and now I'm bankrupt of all my possessions except for this goddam wall."

That may be one of my favorite sentences I have ever written and its so poorly constructed it hurts me inside, but I digress.

Instead I shrug, say "I'm fine" and get right back to whatever I was doing. Often times I just listen into other people's conversations (some of which I enjoy immensely) or I get into conversations in my own socially awkward way (or often completely normal way) and feign some sort of fulfillment and happiness. You know that song Jack's Lament from The Nightmare Before Christmas? That's how I feel. That I could give all this education and life in Colorado or Texas up and just go off and do whatever the hell I want and then utterly crash and burn with nothing to show for it but a few fleeting stories of where I've been because all of this just feels like the same old song and dance I've been doing since I was fourteen. "If they only understood, I'd give it all up if I only could." And exactly that, I can't give it all up, and no matter how I explain this I can't even get myself to understand it.

And this leads me to feel bored, of all adjectives, around people that I hold near and dear. And you know how that makes me feel? Like a cynical asshole. My therapist calls it "social angst." I don't know what to call it. I want something new, something exciting. I don't want to keep spending my days hanging out at school, doing work (read: math) that I hate, and coming home just to sit and do nothing because getting anywhere is a pain in the ass without a car and a busted bike tire. I'm an adult goddammit, so why can't I live my life yet? Why do I feel so trapped into decisions I don't want to make, trapped into a life I'm being told I have to live in order to be successful, trapped into a goddamn corner with nowhere to turn.

I don't feel alive anymore. That's it. When I was first coming out of my depression I saw the light, I felt it, I was in a moment where I felt free and pure and bursting with life and energy. I had so many places to go, so many things to do, so many people to meet and things to see. I was there. And now that I've had a taste I want more, and I can't seem to find it. My therapist thinks that maybe I outgrew college too soon. Maybe that's the problem. It's not a feeling I want to have, but it's there regardless. I finally grew my wings well behind everyone else, and then I was caged. I don't want to go to some house party on the weekend and watch a whole bunch of random people get drunk over themselves like we started doing almost every other weekend. No, I want to go and actually meet people. I want the open world in front of me. I don't want some boring, crowded college party. I'm weary of nights spent watching movies I don't want to see. I'm sick of plans that fall through. I'm tired of relying on other people, of taking their advice too much to heart, that's how I became an unhappy Math minor. I'm ready to be a pillar for myself. I want to hold up someone else for once, I want to be the one people turn to. And I don't mean that in a way of people asking me what the microeconomics homework is for the next class period (for the record, sick to death of that). I want to be the guy. I want my social anxiety to take a back seat because I'm driving this fucking train, and we're gonna go to hell and back and laugh about it when we return.

People always tell me how like my father I am. Is this its final manifestation? That want to go out in my 20s and just find myself wherever the wind takes me? Do I feel crushed because when I look at that reasonably I know that for me its impossible? Do I feel more crushed because I tell myself that it's impossible? Yes. Yes to all of these things. I list out all of these things I want, all these things I'm sick of, and I'm always brought back down by that reasonable thought of, "but you're here now, and there's not much you can do to change it." I can't quit school. I have to get an internship. I have to make a career. I'm "leading" honors students to make a presentation at the RMHC conference in April. I'm renewing this apartment for another year, I need a job to support that. When I'm in classes I enjoy in school, I'm good at it. I'm half decent at writing. I'm good at policy prescriptions. I know that's where my life should be heading, because I know it'll be successful.

And I want to say "no" so goddam badly. Every time I make the "reasonable choice" it leads me to somewhere I don't wanna be. Sometimes I lie awake at night and try to play out my what if's to see where my decisions would have taken me. Sometimes its better, sometimes its worse. I don't regret my choices, but I want to play them out beforehand sometimes just so I have some idea of where I'm going. I'm a boat at sea, and the waters are choppy.

I don't have much else to write, so I'll end it here. You did it, you're at the end of my stream of consciousness of (almost) everything I've been thinking for the last few weeks. I'm terrified of pushing that publish button, but I know that doing this will somehow be good for me. This is really where I'd like to see how my choices play out before I make them.

I'd just like to find a car, nothing special, a cheap P.O.S. that barely runs for all I care, and take off. I want to find myself driving on mountain roads in the snow, driving parallel to beaches I've never visited, I want to find a cliff overlooking the ocean, spread my arms and scream my lungs out because I'm finally free and off doing something that I've dreamed of. I don't want to just exist here anymore. I just don't know how to do it.

Until next time.

Infernal Sunshine On My Spotted Mind

I'm watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and it seems eerily relevant to my life right now. Maybe not so much in the story, but more in the themes. We've got memories, we've got these painful thoughts that cling to us and remind us of everything we hate to remember. Those moments that we regret beyond all else that we'd love nothing more than to erase with a raging night of alcohol or a drug induced haze that claw at us with the utmost intensity dragging us down to the depths that we tried so desperately to pull ourselves out of.

But we regret it.

The morning after we remember everything and we hate ourselves for having wanted to forget in the first place.

When we kill the sad memories, the happy ones go with them. If we're the sum of our experiences then we slight ourselves of part of who we've become or who we're becoming. You get caught up in all the what if's and the "I wish I hads" and you forget where you were going in the first place.

I can't say if I've learned anything. If history is to be believed I haven't. But even if I don't believe things are gonna get better I can stop dwelling on the skyscrapers of mistakes I've made because, in the end, I guess they're the reason I'm here at all.

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot? The world forgetting by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, each prayer accepted and each wish resigned."

Dedicated to Dani, Jessi, Spencer, Wren, Joe, Sean, and Jordan

I'm in Class and Wanted a Quick Distraction

I haven't updated in a while, so I've been compelled to write something as opposed to the absolute nothing that I've been writing. But I don't have any single topic lined up, so I'll just do a few headings, call it good, and then not post again until I feel like it again.

No idea what these headings are going to be, so let's see what falls out of my head first.

Yeah, I've got nothing.

There's plenty to write about to be sure, but I've lost any drive or organization in order to do so. I still like writing in this blog, but the passion is just gone. I'm not down in the dumps, I'm feeling rather excellent for the most part, but maybe that's the thing. Maybe I'm too happy. I wrote at my best when I was upset, and when I'm not upset about anything I'm willing to share then what's the point?

Well, this is making me upset. Upset in that I really do love to write, but having no drive or feeling to do so. Maybe it was a lightning in a bottle and I should look for a new hobby. Or maybe I'm just in a dry spell as far as life goes. I don't know the answer to that, but I think I'll just take a break from searching for something to write about and forget about blogging for a while. I'm thinking that'll get rid of whatever burnout I'm having and I'll come back to this eventually. Or never.

Time to toss the sticks into the wind and see where they land. Kinda strong winds today, maybe they'll actually get far this time. I don't know anything right now, but maybe that's a good thing.

Until next time?

The Past Makes The Man

“You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.”

All of us come from somewhere. Doesn't matter where it is or was really, but what matters is that it happened. Through hardship, insecurity, mistreatment, doubt, or any assortment of factors, some thing has happened to us. What was it exactly? Abuse? Abandonment? Misspoken words or some mistake for an event long past? Could be. Regardless of the cause, we carry those effects on our back every day that we're alive. Like it or not, our past has turned us into whatever being, be it twisted or quasi-normal, that we are. It all comes down to what you choose to do with it, I suppose. Some of us don't look at the past, we move forward regardless. You don't forget it, not by any stretch, but you take it as it is.

"Hey, this happened to me. I'm here now, what's passed is past."

I don't know, I mean that makes sense to me for sure but I can't prescribe to it. Yeah, it's all in the past, but that doesn't mean your demons still don't hover over your shoulders like vultures waiting for the off chance that you let your guard down if only for a moment. The past is always watching, waiting for a moment that it relates to in some way and pounces on it, ruining everything. Come to realize that every action, every event, well, they just move in concentric circles to one another. They coincide, they separate, but they're always there. You can't escape them. Historians always say that those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it, but history moves separately from our own experience. Hell, history repeats itself for people who understand history anyway so there's little to no chance that recognition is the problem.

Fatalistic thought of the night: We're doomed by our circumstance. The moment we take a step forward, that step echoes through everything. If you don't have that you don't have anything at all. What good does the next step count if you never took the first? Anything you've already done is all that matters. It doesn't matter what you do right now because odds are it's been done either by you or someone else. But what lead you to that? The past, right? Exactly. You can't escape it, no matter how hard you try.

I wear my past like a suit of armor. If my hardships and "tragedies" ever come to repeat themselves, boom. I'm guarded. I've used that hardship to brace me for my future. Does that make me cynical? That I believe so strongly that you can't escape your circles so you just live under the shadow of the looming threat waiting for it to occur?

Short answer: Probably.

I don't know any remedy to that. Not yet anyway. Do I need to remedy it? Should I? Again, probably. But you know, one day it might be nice to stare into that madness of time long passed and realize that it's gone and over with. One day we'll all stare it in the eyes piercing into it with a sharpened blade, echoing Syrio Forel in saying, "Not today."

But for now, I'm going to sleep. I'll let the day become a part of my past, and we'll see just how much it matters come tomorrow.

Titles Are Overrated Anyway

Hello all!

It's been awhile since I last posted and... not a whole lot has happened since then. Fall semester ended and spring semester is only just beginning. Nothing too difficult yet, just trying to adjust to a new schedule. You know, I don't think there's anyway that I could write an entire post on what I've been up to. The gist of that whole thing would be my exuberance over books I've read and have been reading and the whole renewed enthusiasm over "The Lingering Storm" which has since been titled to "King of Nothing." Trust me, this title will make the book. I'm really too excited that I'm finally fulfilling a dream of writing a novel to convey it in any accurate way.

With that in mind, why exactly am I posting? I wanted to try something. My mind is a constant torrent of ideas and thoughts and as a little experiment I thought of writing whatever thoughts I've had recently or that I've been having progressively. Of course in between thoughts I'll start a new paragraph, I mean, I don't want this to end up as confused as my thoughts can be.Or you know, it might be just as confused because of the nature of this post. I guess we'll see.

Time waits for no man and one day you wake up flat on your back staring at the ceiling as an old man wondering where the time as gone. You can't waste a moment, and yet we spend a lot of our time trying to waste time. We waste time trying not to waste it. Since we're constantly afraid of wasting time, all our time is wasted in the end. No solution to that, really, since time is infinite and we're one of the most finite things on this planet. Maybe that means we should learn to like every moment instead of counting the ones we have left.

I find that I feel the same as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Well, I mean, not in the sense that I want to besiege an entire city, but in the sense that a fear of death is what makes us strong. If you ask me it leads to a stronger survival instinct. I don't want to die, so I'm gonna fight like hell to survive. Living sounds a heck of a lot better to me than the infinite void.

My roommate is playing Mortal Kombat
Liu Kang is like Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee was in Enter The Dragon
Enter the Dragon is a Kung Fu movie
The Savage Killers is a Kung Fu movie
Kung Pow uses footage from The Savage Killers
"You may call me Betty nyah nyah."

I am so ludicrously happy the Ravens are headed to the Super Bowl. This will be the game we deserve.

We're born waiting. We're all waiting to die. We wait for our paychecks, wait for our doctors, our emails, our phone calls, our downloads, our crushes, our television shows, our diseases, our check out lines. All life is is one big wait with no line, no true measure to the end until we're diagnosed with some fatal affliction.

I'm watching A Serious Man, and in the beginning they talk about Dybbuks and old Jewish curses and I keep thinking of The Possession. As terrible as that movie is, I can't help but wait for a sequel where instead of pulling from Jewish or Christian holy texts they pull from Islamic. Now that would be one hell of a movie.

So about that waiting business; we wait, we wait, we wait, we wait, and for what? A whole lot of nothing. All of us just sit back and await our fates like lambs to the slaughter. I envy those that break the chain and act on the opportunities presented them. See what you want? Take it. Don't wait for it to come to you. When you wait everything fades away and slowly becomes so far out of reach you can't hope to get a firm grip on it. Maybe if we act on those moments, the lines'll become shorter.

You know what I don't get? Moral aversion to sex. That's what our bodies were made to do. Seriously. I'm not a guy to jump into bed with the first girl who walks in front of me, but come on people, I can turn on the news and see innocent people blown to bits in the crossfire of some foreign conflict but any two people consent to a natural act it's suddenly a crime against humanity. Things like that drive me nuts. (God, that could be a great pun.)

If I ever run for Congress I'd run on the policy of limiting our terms in Congress and the Senate. I will never be elected.

Existential Crisis 1: Nothing we do matters.

I had a dream once that I was piloting a Black Hawk helicopter. Soon after I added "Become licensed helicopter pilot" to my bucket list.

Larry Gopnik's wife just used the phrase "Whoopsie Doopsie" and I chuckled to myself.

as I keep writing this I keep wondering how I can end a post structured like this. I mean, I could just stop writing completely, but that leaves it open ended... even though everything I've written is open ended. Endings. That's what I have problems with.

Why? No reason.