March 18, 2010

Spring Worth Loving

I went to get a hair­cut. It was the mid­dle of the day, and the warmth of the sun felt so unex­pected against the win­ter I was liv­ing in. I guess I hadn’t been out of the house in a while. It was mild enough to drive with the win­dows down, and The Alchemy Index (Air/Earth) was on but I felt noth­ing. The com­ing of spring has always light­ened my mood, but warmth wasn’t enough to reach inside me.

This numb­ness haunts me. It’s like my emo­tions have died, and I can’t tell if I like it or not. You know in Fight Club when the nar­ra­tor says, “After fight­ing, every­thing else in your life got the vol­ume turned down.”? This inner strug­gle has def­i­nitely put my life on mute. Sometimes I won­der if I’d jump out of the way if a car came bar­rel­ing towards me, whether my reflexes for self-preservation are still working.

People have been sup­port­ive in very cre­ative ways. Passing on music, notes, rec­om­men­da­tions, per­sonal expe­ri­ences, and other acknowl­edg­ments of the pain. They walk around me as if on eggshells, unsure of what to do. I’d tell them if I knew myself. I feel guilty and unde­serv­ing of the atten­tion, but touched at the same time.

I’ve been stay­ing away from every­one because it’s get­ting harder to keep up the façade. I’m too tired to pre­tend like every­thing is fine. I don’t talk to any­one but John, who acts as if noth­ing hap­pened because the whole sit­u­a­tion makes him uncom­fort­able. I’m not work­ing from home any­more, so I hide in my office at work. I wear the same clothes every day and no one seems to notice. I can’t remem­ber the last time I shaved but I think it was over a week ago.

The hard­est part is try­ing to accom­plish things when I’m so unin­spired. My cal­en­dar has filled out to the mid­dle of April — projects I took on and plans I made when I needed a dis­trac­tion — but now all I want is a nice chunk of free time for some hedonism.

I feel frag­ile and sta­ble all at once. It’s not like I’m in a cri­sis, but nothing’s been resolved either.

For about three days last week I couldn’t stop writ­ing. Now I don’t know what to say anymore.

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April 11, 2009

Protected: Flirting With Disconnection, Part 2

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April 11, 2009

Flirting With Disconnection

I had been writ­ing non-stop for weeks. I’m not sure if it was rest­less­ness, or if I had too much to get off my chest, or what. Sometimes I wrote two or three entries at the same time, because my mind went off in so many dif­fer­ent direc­tions. It’s always been a habit to over-analyze things.

Then at some point, the world stopped mak­ing sense. My mind went blank, leav­ing me with noth­ing to say. It’s like my brain had given up on try­ing to fig­ure it all out. I guess it’s bet­ter than think­ing too much.

I feel so dis­tant from every­thing now. A strange numb­ness, unlike any­thing I’ve felt before. The things that used to mat­ter don’t seem impor­tant any­more. Or maybe I just stopped caring.

Every now and then, I get a surge of emo­tion, and I’m unsure of whether I should fight it or embrace it.

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August 14, 2007

i love you but i don’t know you

i felt dis­con­nected all day. dis­tant. dis­jointed. another bee in the hive. i don’t know why.

when i stepped out­side get­ting off work, it was grey, breezy, devoid of sunshine.

the bass in my ears moved me. dri­ving the beat of my heart. walk­ing my feet.

the sun slowly came out, mixed bit­ter­sweet with the clouds.

and then you showed up. black and white across the street.

i kept my head down as you walked by, care­ful not to ruin that per­fect image in my head. it was enough to keep me going. to make me smile when the most i could feel all day was neutral.

i love you but i don’t know you.

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January 15, 2004

The Uncertainty of Complacency

What do I have left to do today? I’m not really sure. I’ll roll my frozen choco­late mix­ture into truf­fles tomor­row. I should shower tonight. Fold up some clothes. Throw expired trans­fers in the garbage.

Sometimes it feels as if my life has become sim­ple, and all I have to do is turn on auto-pilot. I don’t really have any­thing to worry about. Money, com­pan­ion­ship, school, health, every­thing I used to think about con­stantly before have all ceased to be prob­lems for me. I even have peo­ple that I would con­sider friends.

Lately it feels as if I’ve reached a sort of equi­lib­rium, where any­thing can hap­pen but I’ll be able to deal with any prob­lems that arise. This is quite a change from before, where I was always wor­ry­ing, turn­ing over in my head the things that both­ered me.

It’s almost a form of com­pla­cency. However, this is a sense of total com­pla­cency, unlike even my pre­vi­ous com­pla­cent feel­ings. I’m unsure of whether or not this is a tem­po­rary thing, and how long it will last if this is true. Being com­pla­cent means that the excite­ment I used to feel, from the strug­gle to con­trol unde­sir­able emo­tions, to the ner­vous­ness asso­ci­ated to attrac­tion, to the sim­ple uncer­tainty of pass­ing a course, has mostly lev­eled out. These were all scary things, but exhil­a­rat­ing nonethe­less. This com­pla­cency is dif­fer­ent from feel­ing numb because it’s on a dif­fer­ent level. Numbness deals more specif­i­cally with emo­tion, whereas com­pla­cency refers to life in gen­eral, includ­ing emo­tion. This means that com­pla­cency is not nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing.

I’m just not sure what to make of it as of yet.

December 16, 2003

Reversal: Part 2 (The Floundering Mindset)

Out of the storm of life I have borne away only a few ideas — and not one feel­ing. For a long time now I have been liv­ing, not with my heart, but with my head. I weigh, ana­lyze my own pas­sions and actions with severe curios­ity, but with­out sympathy.

—Pechorin, A Hero of Our Time

When I was younger, I decided that I wanted to cast all my emo­tion aside, because at the time I knew noth­ing but pain. I set this as my goal, and started to work towards a ster­ile, cere­bral mind­set. I wanted to feel noth­ing, and this idea fol­lowed me through to university.

At this time, I never believed that I was com­pletely suc­cess­ful; I still felt too much. However, as my sit­u­a­tion changed, as I met new peo­ple with good hearts and minds, I expe­ri­enced what hap­pi­ness was like. I was never sat­is­fied though, never happy enough, and always wanted more but could never achieve it. Suddenly, it felt as if my cere­bral goal was too suc­cess­ful, and I was stuck, I was numb.

I’ve gone from one extreme to the other, from want­ing noth­ing to want­ing every­thing. In both cases I was a fail­ure, but it’s only now that I real­ize that suc­cess would have assuredly meant no turn­ing back. I believe that when a cer­tain extent is reached, one becomes igno­rant to any­thing that could pos­si­bly change one­self. Now I under­stand the bal­ance, the dichotomy that absolutely must exist in order to have a healthy mind.

And things are much bet­ter this way.