Late Night Melancholies...
:) When I can't sleep, I probably shouldn't listen to electronic indy emo music. It makes me thoughtful and doesn't aid sleep in the slightest.
I've noticed lately how my life can be divided into pretty clear periods. And that friendships tend to not carry over from one to the other. I move on, become a different person, and lose touch with even the best of my friends. Seeing this pattern, does that mean that all my relationships will be transient? Does that make the joys I experience in those few revealing moments any less real?
I wonder a lot if what I really want is a streak of uninterrupted happy. I wonder if there's some sort of mental state where I can find contentment and happiness, some sort of "final stage" of my life that I'm progressing towards. Each evolution so far has been a good one: I've become deeper and more complicated, stronger and smarter with each era I've passed through. I've lost innocence along the way. I've lost tolerance and the broad acceptance of humanity that seems to only come from the very young and the very religious. I don't mean acceptance in the sense of "I'm okay with you doing whatever you want." I mean it more in the sense of... having the capacity to love someone regardless of their talents, past existence, or what have you. Finding joy in everyone. I miss being able to do that, but I don't know how to reconnect with it.
I'm always ready to move on before the period of life I'm in is over with. My last year of my undergrad I had already checked out mentally. In my head I was done with high school the summer before my senior year. The year before that jump to the next stage was always built up to be trepidatious: Junior High will be far more difficult than grade school. High School is where things really get serious. College will shape you more than anything else. Graduate School is going to be super tough.
And it's yet to be accurate. If anything, school has gotten progressively easier as I've gone along. Less busy work, fewer assignments for more points. More self-directed work. As I go on, I find myself surfing on the event horizon of failure without a second thought of falling. I worry about little petty things and get caught up in emotional quandries. I think myself out of being happy and am constantly dissapointed in myself in spite of successes that I should be damned proud of.
I test high, on everything. My grades have only gotten better as school has gone on. Straight As this first year of grad school. I graduated Cum Laude in the Honors college in my undergrad. Top 10% of my high school class. Gifted programs all up through school. And in spite of it all, it's never made me feel special or important. I've never felt like anything I've done has mattered. And the only ways I've found I can find happiness are through doing small, gratifying things for myself: playing video games, reading, enjoying quiet thoughtful time alone. I never reach goals. I never celebrate my successes. Because every waypoint I hit just causes the next to pop up. I grab the flag, but there's always another one. The road never ends, and a thousand people have been down it before me. All I'm ever doing is figuring out what someone figured out years before me.
And I'm wondering how I'm supposed to find gratification or achievement considering all this. Or if those are things I need to be happy.
I'm tired of being special just like everyone else.
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8 commentsReplies
Previous Toast said, (64 days ago)
@CM- I'm bad at projecting myself back to truly remember the joy of the moment. All I can seem to come up with is "I was happy once, I'm not right now." I know that's pretty immature/childish, and I'm trying to figure out how to get past that.
The work hasn't gotten easier. I've just gotten better at doing it. I wouldn't say that I've become more interested in it... honestly, I've never been super interested in most of the things I go to school for. I've just been good at them. It's fun doing things I'm good at. One of the things I've been struggling with is figuring out whether that is how I experience interest.
I'm sure my grades will still be good this coming year. But I'm pretty well checked out. I've decided that this is my last year of school for a while. I'd stop going now if I was the sort of person who could quit halfway through a project. I'm always looking for the next big thing, and I'm worried that I'll never get to experience "good enough." It's fun for a year or two or four but then I have to uproot and find someplace new to be a stranger in.
I've never felt like I've had a home. Splitting time between parents and grandparents growing up, having at one point 4 bedrooms in different houses, and different rules depending on where I slept. My room now has no art, no personal stamp. Just functional stuff. My walls are completely blank.
CocktailsMalIntent said, (64 days ago)
i know what its like to feel like you've never had a home. the apartment i have here is about to become the place i've lived in longest in my life. i have a few things on my walls, but not much, and most of it is just to break up the white monotony.
i think a lot of enjoying a moment is in trying not to replay the emotions of it later. all experience is transitory, and trying to relive it later isn't going to work, and its not going to feel right to do so.
i dont know what to tell you about the interest/good at thing. i started off going to school for something i was good at (programming) and switch over to something i actually liked (writing) my sophomore year. after that, things didn't feel like work any more, it was just something i liked doing that had a deadline.
fun for a year or two seems pretty good to me. runs that long have been few and far between for me. its not that im complaining, im happy to have a run of good stuff last that long, but little lasts longer than that, and if you find something that does, hold on to it as much as you can.
things get more stable as you get old, in my experience. i mean, high school for me was 4 very different years, then college was like two different lives, then grad school was one, and now i feel like my life has stabilized now that i'm out. part of it is that there's less turn over, people stay in one place longer, groups of friends solidify more, but that might just be my experience.
my only advice, which is no better than anyone else's, i'm no kung fu master, is to enjoy the good things while they're around, but don't regret them when they fade away, just enjoy them while you can.
Previous Toast said, (64 days ago)
@CM- I'm bad at letting things happen to me. :) I have so many control issues, and some nights I just rage against the fact that real life has no narrative mandate. It's just one damn thing after another.
I'm sure my days are filled with lots of tiny joys I've been overlooking. But I'm finding it hard to connect into that anymore. I find myself pretending more and more, retreating into my head more and more. Inventing things and creating stories. Like stackable overhead projector slides. Layering colors over my vision. Different lenses. It's like I'm making my own rose colored glasses to view the world through, and every time I peek past them I see how raw and ugly everything is.
I like to pretend there are stories and reasons for things. But it's getting harder and harder for me to see the beauty around me. I feel like I ping pong ball in a clothes dryer. All I've done so far is react and go to the next step.
Of course I was going to go to college after high school.
Of course I was going to go to grad school after college.
This next year coming up, I'm hoping that breaking away from academia and getting to try and "find myself" in a new social situation (and quite possibly a new city, I may go try and live somewhere else after this) I'll finally see what living is about. I'll feel like I have some control over my direction (whether imagined or not, I can't say yet). The longer you stay in school, the narrower it seems to get. But the "real world" is filled with endless possibilities.
Or so I hope.
I'd really like to know what it means to be okay with where I'm at for more than a day. To have a space that I can really call and make my own. That I can be proud to show to others. Find that happy medium between "THIS IS ME AND YOU WILL TAKE ME AS I AM GODDAMNIT" and "I will change anything to conform to what you think you are looking for."
I don't think I should feel this worn out at 23.
Previous Toast said, (64 days ago)
*I feel like I AM a ping pong ball...
I've been stuck in a social microcosm for too long. But I'm worried about going out into the big scary world because the serious, important friendships I have left have migrated far away from me (both physically and emotionally). I'm sure they'd bloom and become important again if we could get in the same damn zip code for a month or two, but when big important things are happening to you and your friends every day, and you're not a part of that... well, naturally things are going to grow apart.
And I'm just not finding anything to replace them with.
Previous Toast said, (64 days ago)
Guess I should try and go to bed again. :) Everyone else seems to have. Happy 4th gang.
bizzy said, (64 days ago)
After reading all of that, I can honestly say I some of what you might be feeling. You might be over talking about it now because it's a new day and whatnot, but I just thought I'd let you know it felt pretty damn good to see someone else put words to something I've been experiencing for most of my life.
I've never seen someone express it so well on the internet, or at least, I've never known how. So thanks.
well, i disagree. many roads are similar, but none of them are exactly the same. you can learn lessons from those who trod roads like yours before you did, but none of them match up exactly.
all experiences are real in the moment, its reflection that makes them less so. remember the joys of the moment and not the transitory nature of the joy. man, that sounds fucking daoist, doesnt it?
school does get easier the farther you go in it, but i dont think its because the work gets easier as much as it is that you get more interested in what you're doing, so it feels less like work. that's been my experience anyway. technically, grad school should have been an ass kicking, but i liked it too much for it to feel that way.
gratification and achievement are where you find them, and are markers that you set for yourself. the flags are meaningless unless they matter to you. and until they do, they'll feel empty.