There were some things i established at the beginning of this blog that i wouldn't discuss because i don't feel that they are relevant to what my life is like now. That's actually false; of course they're relevant. they shaped who i am today and still affect me. I will still not discuss those here because i don't feel that it would be conducive to what i want to accomplish. although, i'm not too sure about what that is yet, either. I suppose i just didn't want to dwell on them. I tend to do that sometimes, and I feel pretty awful when i do; a lot like i'm feeling right now.
I talk about what i'm doing on this blog. eating, exercising, but not really what i'm thinking or feeling. i don't like talking about myself. it sucks and it's not something i have ever really done before. but i reasoned at the beginning that maybe if i try to do that, then i would feel better. I'm not sure if it's working yet. In the spirit of trying, and taking a little inspiration from my heroes, i want to let you, if you find yourself reading this, into my brain a little. I think that through my brain, it will, if nothing, tell you a little bit more about me. I hope that maybe by helping you understand me, then maybe it will help me understand me.
Imagine that you are in grade school again. You're in class, and the teacher is going through her lesson. Something she says reminds you of something you read about, or maybe it makes you think of some strange word. You explore what it means, where you would find it, how it could be applied, what you would do if you found it, or whose life you could save with it. you're suddenly a hero, or a wizard, or a villain, or a monster, you're in a strange place, or you're being chased, or rocketing to another planet.
Just as suddenly, it's fifteen minutes later, the last letter you scrawled in your notebook looks like a graphite slug trail and you have no idea what the teacher is talking about as she erases the board. You missed the example again. You don't raise your hand because you don't want the attention. you don't want people to look at you or whisper or the teacher to scoff and tell you "you should've been paying attention" again.
You miss the example, make a D on the test, and try not to worry about it. You go home and do homework, or read, or whatever to distract you from having to try to pay attention to anything because it's so hard to do. This goes on every day you're in school or in college. you scrape by, taking as few steps outside the lines as possible, because you're afraid you'll screw up or will lose interest again and drift listlessly back into some other world because whatever's going on right then just doesn't compare to what you experience in your head.
That might sound normal for someone still in school and not out in 'real life'. But now you're 25 and you haven't changed at all.
As a result, life becomes this haze of am-i-here-or-there, on a fast-forward track to a destination you neither know nor care about. you don't understand what it means to focus on something for more than a few minutes; you just drift off again because reality just blows. you can't focus long enough to get anything really done; you don't learn how to get into a good major because the math scares you. you never finish any fiction you've tried because getting from point A to point B in the plot is so easy in your head and impossible on paper, so why bother? it's not like anyone will read it. you're mediocre at best because you cant focus long enough to actually practice your writing.
Through the series of unfinished attempts and and wasted time you call a life, your only permanent possession is an ever-present feeling of worthlessness. You hate what you're doing for a living, but you can't do anything else. you live weekend to weekend, losing yourself in movies and cartoons and the internet; you haven't been able to focus long enough to finish reading a book in years.you feel trapped and empty. you're 25 with absolutely no evidence, other than your material possessions, that you were even alive. that you ever really did anything.
and still you just day dream. drift out of reality and into something else, and something else, and something else, and something else, just staring dead-eyed while everything is stuck in your brain. you can't articulate it well enough to share; you'd rather just not say anything, anyway, it's probably not worth saying. and you just drift on. why even be?
That's what my brain is like. It's a haze of one daydream after another it's so difficult to focus. i'm utterly shocked that I've been able to stick with the exercise that i have thus far. it just became ritual, i guess. I'm followed daily by a cloud of nothing and a shade of worthlessness. it hurts to talk about. I feel pathetic and silly just putting this down here. I'm not looking for pity or sympathy, i really hate, HATE, to be one of those people. i hate attention.
But that's what it's like to be me. as best as i can describe it, anyway. I don't know where i'm going, i'm really very lost. I'm not doing anyone any favors here. i'm sorry if this really wasn't worth your time.
i hope one day i can change. I just don't know.
Oh honey, I think you crawled inside my head for a bit there.
ReplyDeleteThe trick with fiction, at least in my experience, is NOT figuring it out before you write it. That way it holds your interest. I once made it through an entire NaNoWriMo attempt by not having a clue what word I was going to write next.
The thing about emotional/psychological issues is that they're always relevant to everything else in our lives, especially our daily habits and our weight. You don't get to be overweight because you're physically hungry, or even because you really like potato chips. We gain weight because there is some other hunger inside of us, one that we usually don't recognize and can't identify, until we seek it out.
Yes, it hurts to dig it up, and it's damn hard. That's exactly the problem. It's easier to say, "Oh, I just need to count calories and get to the gym" than it is to say, "I really need to figure my shit out." It's more comfortable (at least temporarily )to hit a drive thru than it is to have a cathartic cry, or a cathartic boxing session, to work through your emotions.
Does it get better? It can, but only if you do the work to make it better. It's not going to resolve itself. The first step is being aware.