Posts tagged with "reflection"

Why, Vera?

I just fin­ished read­ing A Hero of Our Time again. It’s the book I’ve read the most in my life, and I’ve lost count of the num­ber of times I’ve gone straight from cov­er to cov­er through var­i­ous trans­la­tions. Every time I’ve read it for the last eight years, I’ve grown a lit­tle more. Certain parts that I may not have under­stood before become clear and relate­able.

One par­tic­u­lar pas­sage struck me this time; Vera’s final let­ter to Pechorin.

For three hours now I have been sit­ting at the win­dow and await­ing your return…But you are alive, you can­not die! The car­riage is almost ready…Farewell, Farewell! I am lost — but what of it? If I could be cer­tain that you will always remem­ber me — I say noth­ing of lov­ing me, no — only remember…Goodbye! Someone is coming…I have to hide this let­ter…

I now ful­ly under­stand Vera’s final wish, hav­ing since wished the same thing myself. Yet it’s some­thing I can­not explain, even when I myself share this feel­ing. Why this need to not be for­got­ten? Why does remem­ber­ing mean so much?

Is it the need to know that I am impor­tant to some­one, even if it was some ephemer­al rela­tion­ship or some per­son­al mis­take? Is it so that I can believe that I was so spe­cial as to be unfor­get­table, an ego­tis­ti­cal or per­haps inse­cure shroud to fool myself? Is it to give my life mean­ing, a sort of pur­pose to know that I can indeli­bly change the lives of oth­ers? Or maybe it’s to know that the feel­ings I expe­ri­ence, how­ev­er bathet­ic or affect­ed, mean some­thing to some­one. I usu­al­ly pride myself in being able to per­fect­ly under­stand the feel­ings I go through, but this idea has left me at a loss. I won­der if oth­ers have ever felt the same way. I remem­ber not under­stand­ing this desire in myself at the time, but believ­ing that I would even­tu­al­ly.

Now I’m not sure if I ever will.

Garrulousness

I recent­ly renewed my con­tract with my cur­rent host for anoth­er year of ser­vice. I’m a lit­tle sur­prised that this page has­n’t fall­en into desue­tude over the last year. I sup­pose it’s only now, at 22, that I’m able to find mean­ing in almost all aspects of my life, that I have enough to write about. My pre­vi­ous sev­en or so pages have been rather emp­ty, although there was more vari­ety in the con­tent. I don’t think I’ve ever had a lay­out last this long.

It’s usu­al­ly when I have a neg­a­tive emo­tion that I’m able to write, but the last year has been a series of ups and downs, although most­ly ups, and con­sid­ered to be more sta­ble than pre­vi­ous years. Sometimes I can read back on pre­vi­ous entries and re-expe­ri­ence the emo­tion I was feel­ing at the time of writ­ing them. I’m sur­prised that I’m not embar­rassed about some entries, how rawly I’d express myself, and what I was think­ing at the time. I find that I’m usu­al­ly embar­rassed by how igno­rant, stu­pid, and idi­ot­ic a per­son I used to be. Aaron explains to me, of course, that it’s all just a mea­sure of how far I’ve come, but it’s some­times it’s dif­fi­cult to think of what I was like and not feel shame.

I remem­ber the nights I spent, after all class­es were fin­ished, com­ing home, cook­ing a meal, tak­ing a show­er, all I’d have left was to sit in front of my glow­ing mon­i­tor and write. When all I want­ed, at the end of the day, was to be able to turn the lights out, write until my eyes felt too tired to focus, and go to sleep sat­is­fied. I’m not sure if I remem­ber those nights fond­ly or not.

And per­haps there are more to come.

Modesty?

Sometimes I hear some peo­ple described in a not-so-com­pli­men­ta­ry way. Some of the descrip­tions are much worse than oth­ers, but there are ones which always stick out in my mind. Things such as “creepy”, “igno­rant”, “des­per­ate”, “arro­gant”, “obnox­ious”, “unre­li­able”, or “rib­ald” are the last things I would want to be described as, and these have stuck with me ever since I gained cere­bral con­scious­ness.

However, I real­ized recent­ly that it would both­er me if some­one thought of me as a per­son who fish­es for com­pli­ments. I sup­pose that if there was some truth to this fact it would­n’t both­er me so much. Of course, I might in actu­al­i­ty be unaware of any false, inse­cure actions I may be per­form­ing, being a gen­er­al­ly inse­cure per­son in the first place.

I’m not sure why some­thing like this would both­er me so much, as opposed to some­one telling me that I’m untrust­wor­thy. Of course, some­times the fault of believ­ing that some­one is untrust­wor­thy lies in as much as the fault­er as the fault­ee. After all, a thief sus­pects a thief.

Perhaps peo­ple mis­take my attempt at mod­esty as false mod­esty. Modesty is such an impor­tant thing for me that per­haps I over stress it and it ends up back­fir­ing.

I guess the only way I’ll find out what I’m real­ly like is if some­one I trust were to tell me.

Fighting Oneself

Exhausted. Quite, but caf­feine fills me with its clever aware­ness. It is night and I can­not sleep. I feel the goose­bumps on my arm and know that I’m still alive. My mind is filled with com­fort­able, famil­iar emo­tions again. Ironic, that such som­bre feel­ings can make me so hap­py. Have I become a pris­on­er in my self-ful­fill­ing world? Will I remain trapped in this prophet­ic exis­tence for­ev­er?

I can­not tell.

Yet I fight against it.

Emotional Cuirass

Yo.

It’s been dif­fi­cult to write late­ly. Sometimes I peruse oth­er peo­ples’ blogs, note their wit and style, and wish I could write as inter­est­ing­ly as they do. Then I remem­ber that I only write for myself any­way and that it does­n’t mat­ter if I sound bor­ing or pre­ten­tious. Nevertheless, my writ­ers’ block has par­tial­ly been due to the fact that I’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing some odd mood swings. It’s not even so much due to the ephemer­al nature of my emo­tions, but more relat­ed to the fact that I don’t under­stand what I’m feel­ing.

Some things make me hap­py. Some things make me depressed.

I think I’m most­ly just con­tent, which is a feel­ing I’m not quite used to yet. It’s almost as if I’m float­ing in a pool of luke­warm liq­uid, unsure of what my sens­es tell me. All I know is that my dys­thymic phase has long left me. For now, I have resigned myself to expe­ri­enc­ing such emo­tions with an open mind, with the hope that I will some day under­stand them.

I remem­ber want­i­ng to keep my emo­tions in check a long time ago, want­i­ng to become a com­plete­ly cere­bral per­son. Nowadays, I’m not so sure that this was such a good idea, not that I’ve been able to ful­ly suc­ceed in such a mon­strous task. Perhaps a bal­ance is need­ed in some­thing such as this as well. A lack of emo­tions may cause a bet­ter appre­ci­a­tion for the few emo­tions one expe­ri­ences, or vice-ver­sa.

My ratio­nale has changed on this because my expe­ri­ences have changed. Growing up in a chaot­ic world of con­fu­sion and pain, I want­ed an emo­tion­al bar­ri­er to pre­vent any fur­ther men­tal agony. Now, I’ve accom­plished more, loved more, been loved more, and felt more. Perhaps I now feel that hap­pi­ness is worth the pos­si­bil­i­ty of men­tal anguish. Sometimes it feels as if I’m wait­ing for a ter­ri­ble inci­dent to revert my views. Life, how­ev­er, seems to be get­ting bet­ter.

I just wish I knew what I was feel­ing.