It wasn't, of course, it only seems that way in the same way that someone being tortured in hell would remember a different, less painful circle of hell as "not so bad."
Because memory is a weird, fickle, and untrustworthy mistress. But here I am again.
I think maybe the idea to begin journaling again probably began germinating weeks ago, actually, when watching an episode of Community where the ever-optimistic Annie asked the ever-jaded Jeff if he ever just journaled, something only for himself. He also ruined it by immediately sharing it with a documentary film crew.
It could be just that, this journaling thing, but I never quite understood the concept of writing for only myself. I can't really quite fathom a form of art, expression, whatever without an audience in mind, even if that audience is just an ephemeral, faceless, and possibly non-existent thing. And people are probably sick of my social media posts anyway, so maybe this will be where those thoughts and expressions can live, to be found only by someone who cares to actually click a link and look.
But probably not.
The therapeutic nature of journaling is not lost on me, which brings back the beginning of this admittedly messy return to journaling: I felt more even when posting thoughts on livejournal, whatever was on my mind. Even got praise for it on occasion, called an expressive and thoughtful writer. Not that I'm fishing for that. In fact, it appears I'm far rustier than I thought I'd be. Life was easier then, or at least it felt easier in comparison to now, even though it was largely the same. Except I had my own bathroom. Sorta.
But that is the purpose of this mess. Maybe I can find some sort of relief through this form of expression. At the very least, it may help me to further understand myself in my far more advanced age and stage of mental health, which is far worse than it was twenty-plus years ago when I used to make comic book references in posts about Rocky 4, or mope about my loneliness, or how I got a bank to send me a cease and desist letter. Because they're jerks.
And also it can serve as a tracking device, a chart: how was I feeling yesterday? Last week? Last Month? And maybe if I start this now, when feeling properly motivated, and make it a habit, perhaps it will allow me to sort of chart my depression cycles, triggers, patterns and anything else that may help me to improve myself. Maybe entertain a person or two as I do so. Hopefully not engender pity. I never wanted pity or sympathy, only to be understood.
So, that is the point. Write about whatever is on my mind in some sort of attempt to further understand myself and express myself to you, the audience (whomever that may be).
Welcome to Notes From The Depression Years, which is a reference to both a BoySetsFire record and a Dostoyevsky novella, because I am a hack.
Also, my coworker and I have been implementing a new system where we both get longer breaks, so I figured I'd go back to my roots and write at work. I'm sure I'll get better at this again.
.....
The other night, I had some moments of introspection. Nothing terribly earth shattering, but it made me more fully realize something that I believe to be true about myself.
I was walking to the train station the day after Valentine's Day and saw a discarded rose on the sidewalk, and it made me profoundly sad. Just the image of it: wet and cold and discarded on a sidewalk. Not in the sense that I saw the rose as a unique object, only seeing it's meaning and the way that meaning had been dismissed.
Here was an object that had a connotation, a metaphor, a purpose one day and then rotting on a sidewalk the next, and I imagined it had been given with love in mind...but even more likely it was part of a bouquet and just fell off, something not even remotely as dramatic as the possible scenarios I my over-active imagination can (and often does) come up with it.
But it made me sad. A symbol of love one day, refuse the next. And I admonished myself briefly ("What a silly thing to feel sad about," I muttered to myself, like a character in a Tom Waits song) and then thought "well, sadness is kind of my natural state."
It's quite a thing to be sad all the time. To have that be your default. And I don't necessarily think that entirely has to do with anything diagnosable, either current or potential, but rather with a philosophical state of perpetual empathy that I have felt since a young age.
When I was in 7th grade, we had a field day and I played with a baseball bat and the teacher took a photo of me smiling and swinging said bat. Like a low angle closeup. A few days later, she gave me the photo in a frame and told me she thought my Mother would like it, because it showed me being happy.
Now, this is a nice gesture, but it made me realize even then that something was "wrong" with me, because the gesture and the meaning behind it meant that, if this photo was somehow special because it depicted me happy, then that meant I normally wasn't. The teacher believed I wasn't happy and, by extension, believed my Mother also knew I wasn't normally happy.
I have no idea what happened to that picture.
Anyway, the point is that it has always been this way.
But as I was walking away from this discarded rose, thinking about the eternal, enigmatic sadness that I have always carried in my chest and on my back, I found myself thinking about how the fact that I am perpetually sad does not alarm me nearly as much as the idea that other people aren't, and that is a strange thing to realize. The world is a really sad place (even beyond modern politics), filled with tragedy and emotions that most of us really don't want. They say everyone is going through a challenge no one else knows about, and that's true, so why isn't everyone experiencing this weird melancholy that I am? Don't you see how very sad this existence is?
Maybe some do. I'm sure some do. But I can't stop seeing it, and I can't stop feeling it.
There were a few stray pieces of thought that came to me in those few moments, mostly 1.I often feel guilt at not having fun as often as other people (in fact, attempts to create fun often make me feel worse, because I cannot seem to enjoy things the way others do, and I worry I am damaging the fun others are having), 2. I find media that may be heartwarming to some others very sad (I thought about a montage in a Futurama episode: Leela discovers her parents are mutants and not aliens, and it depicts her parents had always been there behind the scenes, loving her even though she didn't know they even existed. This is meant to be sweet, but it made me very very sad because it meant Leela had lived a very lonely life. And don't even get me started on the fucking dog) and 3. I have empathy for damned near everything so much that it hurts, and all that comes down an idea about identity. I found myself thinking about how the hardest scene in the hardest movie ever (Martyrs) was when a tortured girl had her hair shaved off. The character is literally flayed alive at the climax of that film (spoiler alert!), but the hair is the hardest part for me. She has no idea what's happening or why, but this symbol of her identity is stripped from her.
I frequently feel extremely isolated because I feel badly about every bad thing I've ever done, about how others feel, and about how others feel about me. But it has more to do with the idea of doing harm to someone emotionally or psychically that keeps me awake at night. Physical pain often can subside, but emotional pain is eternal. It leaves real scars. And I work so hard to protect others from that scarring that I sometimes find I no longer know how to even express myself properly, nor how to protect myself. I'm just exposed all the time now. So I try harder to close myself off?
This has not yielded a single positive result for anyone. In fact, I begin to suspect that my cautious, aloof nature has made me far more alarming to a passive spectator than any rudeness or aggression could cause, and it certainly doesn't help to make me feel any less isolated, nor am I actually further protected.
I often say I hate people. And I do. But I also love people. I can't not love people, at least on some sort of basic level. Of course I do, otherwise I wouldn't be twisting myself into knots trying desperately to not offend, bother, hurt, or otherwise do harm to literally everyone I ever meet or talk to.
I have no idea if this makes any sense whatsoever. But I guess it doesn't have to.
I guess the idea overall is that I need to work on expressing myself? So maybe this journaling thing is a good idea? I don't know. But I know I have an easier time being understood in writing. It's far easier than speaking. And maybe there is a correlation to be made between the livejournal days and a stronger feeling of connection to the world outside of my small, isolated one. I know that, if nothing else, I have worn myself out as an audience to my own thoughts and so they need to go somewhere else, even if that somewhere else is nowhere else.
Maybe I can exorcise a demon or two here.
There are millions left to go, but maybe I can have just a few less.
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