Time Flies

Time flies at a far swifter pace than I can forge wit and so months of my life wave past unaddressed in this journal. Reoccurring themes get to know newer ones as I grow older and the un-expected happens as life reminds me of its unpredictability. I try persistently, stubbornly to understand how to do it all properly—how to live.  I’ve learned that patience applies to more than just waiting in line, but I struggle none the less. My new weapon has been flexibility. Breathing and flexibility. My resolve to be more flexible has been challenged and I have been called to let go of things I thought came default. We really can’t take anything for granted. I have firmly come to believe that when we do let go we’re rewarded with much in terms of the new and fabulous. I consider loss an upgrade from the status quo and so I am able to sleep soundly at night.

My advice: go to therapy. Since abandoning whatever residual pride I had left after decades of living and started going to therapy my life has improved immeasurably. Once a week I meet with my new friend and we dissect and discuss my fears, frustrations, hopes, and dreams, victories and perceived failures. And we laugh. What’s so funny? Well, it’s the irony. In therapy we learn that we’re not as damaged as we thought we were all along. It’s beautiful, really. Beautiful and funny.

After nearly four years of writing I have come to the magnificent conclusion that life is about far more than meeting a girl who will let me melt into her and forget all the homework life set in front of me to begin with. Another irony since it was my one and only goal for so long and yet while I could accomplish so much I could never accomplish that. God truly does save us from ourselves. I find myself dwelling substantially less in the country of resentment and depression because of this realization. And I perceive that there is less of a rush to find her and much more of a rush to find me.

Good.

Even I can’t deny that I have grown up a bit. Honestly it doesn’t feel so magical at any given time when I’m in the thick of it, but when I take a step back to survey my work the obvious is brilliantly clear and my heart feels light. Yes, all the signs point to it all being alright, a prediction I never thought would belong to me. But, flanked by the affection of my family, esteem of my friends, and guidance of my therapist I have finally come to agree that the best me is yet to come. 

Coloring in the Lines

I lay out tobacco and dark liquor in hopes of luring out inspiration to write. I sweat because work creeps up closer and closer with every minute that passes and dammit, I still can't write. But my good friend, Hana, won't hear such excuses-- she says to leave what I feel on the paper ("paper") and stop waiting for the right moment. I know she's right, and I fight off temptation to apply that 2-minute lesson to other areas of my life. One battle at a time I tell myself.

I disgust myself for as much as I can feel others' misery, and my much smaller portion of it, I can never seem to connect with my own good fortune and blessings. It's as if I were to realize how fortunate I am, I would wake up from this dream, and so I act accordingly. Though, I can empathize with the cruelty of this neurosis because I also know how hard I worked and how much I wanted exactly my position once upon a time. But for as long as I can remember I haven't known pride nor its little brother, confidence. After all, I think, my eyes are entirely too large to not see the luck-- or divine intervention-- in my life. So I devour the days as they come as if they were prepared for me rather than if I had whipped them up myself. So if someone compliments my cooking I feel compelled to tell them I had nothing to with it. And perhaps the first lesson of the coming fall is to take my fair share of the credit. The truth is I'm afraid to embrace the reality-- my education, my job, my friends, the girls who find something worth seeing in me-- I'll never feel worthy. And that bit of uncertainty, restraint they sense in me is just that-- guilt, while I want their affection I still feel like I'm misleading them. Like they are buying something defective.

My ideal self doesn't just sit there and watch on, he yells that I can do better. And for such a contradictory and troubled person, I've done a good job of not destroying my life. And the way I see it, I have an outline that simply needs to be filled in with substance. I have interests that can be pursued, I have a job that I can learn to build a career out of, I have friends that I can appreciate more, I have a family that I can communicate with more, a healthy body that can be better taken care of. I take comfort in the fact that whenever I am mentally ready, a stable, healthy, and successful life awaits me. And I am racing against the clock before the expiration date on my outline passes-- I drink or smoke myself to illness, I lose the opportunities I've been blessed with, my friends find someone more reliable.

I'm tempted to believe I can turn it all around in one day, but I have to remind myself that is simply the mood's unrealistic allure. And to get too excited would only mean a nasty discouragement on a bad day or setback. So I've been learning to grow at a slow, steady, and deliberate pace. Although, recent lessons have not been lost on me, and I haven't missed my little graduations. One very notable one is the lesson of letting go. My inability to let go is the reason I started this blog in the first place. Back then to find my own affection unreturned was an accost to my very being, and I would react viscerally. Now, I am happy to report, I've come to let go far easier. I realized that if I graciously decline the courtship of one girl, I must be prepared to be graciously turned away just the same. I found a certain beauty and fairness in the circle of love-life. And I found that I could now relate with my never-to-be-paramour's position far more easily as I would most likely have to play the same part in the future just as I have had to in the past. Now rather than looking to my unilateral feelings for a girl as the signal that that girl is worth fighting for, I wait for a mutual agreement before falling in love. It makes the pursuit of the girls I have an affinity for all the more pleasurable and the bad news that I deliver to others bearable as I truly believe now that no one really loses-- at worst, we're all forced to wait for that bit of heaven a little longer. But my degree was not only in the area of relationships, but also in the visions I had for myself. For example, I've learned to let go of a dream I stubbornly had when I was younger, to allow it to be replaced with something new and foreign. I used to see that as giving up, now I see it as simply growing up. Of course, I'm still only a student, and in certain areas I still have trouble, I still get frustrated, I still muster false hope for a lost cause, but I know-- oh I know, that no matter what I feel like I lose out on, there is something just as good I will get in the future and so my pangs of jealousy, regret, and frustration are merely flare ups of a disease that I have just about defeated.

Yes, in accordance with the previous post, something is growing in me once again. My therapist and I agree that my depression was no illusion, but he believes that it can be the intermission that leads to a far better second act. And though I'm tired of hearing the words echo in my head, I do still want to be a good person. And lately, too many people have been treating me as if I already am. I won't take their faith in me in vain. For an eternity, I have had this ultimate vision of who I want to be. At one point in my life I thought I was working towards it, I thought I was on the right track, and soon enough the weight of the world showed me how little I knew and how unprepared I was to be that person. I went through a phase where I was convinced I would never become that person-- indeed that there was no such thing as good in the first place. Now, I am emerging from that quiet despair and seeing the path in a way I didn't see it before, better yet and somehow, I find myself in an even better position to attain it. A rare occasion where I'm glad to feel like a hypocrite.

good

I write with the same urgency as if I had escaped some prison and had gotten a hold of a scrap of parchment and pen. In four months, I haven’t been moved to write, though, with the exception of a few months, I wrote at least once a month since I started my blog. I seize this moment now, unsure of when the next time I will feel drawn to write will be. The truth is I’ve been trapped within a dark time in my life. It comes as no surprise after the last few posts in which I become more desperate while searching for answers and more honest in digging through my mind and past. But right now, I have reached a hiatus in the desert that has become my life, and I can write a brief message as myself, or as the person I believe myself to be.

I don’t know when exactly or how I lost my way; though one day I awoke to find all that I drew comfort from to be washed away with the morning tide. I learned the true meaning of building one’s house upon the sand; and where once my warm and familiar home lied, now was nothing but uncertainty and fear, loneliness and disillusionment. I came to believe that all life had to offer was work, anxiety, and rejection all the while I was tasked with avoiding any one of the endless number of ill fates that could befall one through their own fault or the faults of others. I became bitter, and further indignant that life had forced me, once such a bright and cheerful young man, to become bitter. And I have been languishing in these feelings for a couple of years now, using most of my energy to keep me afloat in school, though even in that, no one will ever believe how close I came to failing multiple times.

I was saved. I was saved by an unlikely motley crew of people, some I’ve known for what seems like my whole life, others a couple years, and still others I have only known for a few months. Through my interactions with them, I have been able to begin to piece myself back together. And perhaps they will never know how much of an effect they have had on me at such a crucial time, still even if I expressed my gratitude towards them they would only be uncomfortable. To them they were merely venting, or defending their beliefs to me, or being themselves and weren’t trying to have some sort of profound effect on another human being on some arbitrary night when they were in a bad mood or just felt like talking.

And none of them could have done it alone, but together, the snippets of their stories interconnected with my own mended a series of lessons that seemed so particularly tailored to coerce me out of my depression—to guide me out of my pessimism, gentler at times, more forceful in other instances.

The lessons taught me that the hope, or good that I thought I lost—that I came to believe was never really there to begin with—still existed. They illustrated to me that my perception, heavily influenced by disappointment and fear, showed me a false reality. I became disillusioned because I had a make-believe idea of what the world ought to be like. Once I left the safe womb of college I was put in shock by what I perceived to be reality. At first I couldn’t understand what my problem was, and the descent wasn’t immediate. It was gradual, taking place over a series of months as one after another my expectations were ignored and life continued on, indifferent to how I believed things were to play out in my life after leaving college and entering the pearly gates of law school. Unable to defend myself against a world that I never imagined to be so cruel, and in some places, downright evil, I lost all hope after seeing the true beast. Out of pure terror I rejected the idea that there was any room for good in such a visceral world and turned my attention to the serious business of mourning the loss of any joy or happiness I could have ever hoped for in my life. I also took time to feel sorry for those who seemed to see good in a world where I couldn’t because I knew one day they, like me, would be crushed.  

My rehabilitation came in the form of getting to know a number of new people and others, who had been around, better. In some instances I would be a direct actor in the conflicts and scenes in their lives, in others I was merely a confidant, others still, an advisor. In their stories and the stories that we share I saw good people longing for good. They looked for companionship, they looked for love, they looked for success, they looked for validation, they looked for simple friendship at times, they looked to just be understood by those who didn’t know them that well at other times. They all had their own unique weaknesses and baggage, collected from childhood through their teenage years and college. They all had their strengths, traits that I am in awe of and challenges they overcame that I feel would have crushed me.

I’ve watched them go through good times and bad. And when times get hard, if they look to me for advice or comfort, all of a sudden I can summon words of positivity and hope that I honestly believe. I believe they will get through this or that or find that girl they’ve been looking for or make friends that are trustworthy, get the job, or make their parents proud. All of a sudden, when I see life through their eyes, I can imagine how everything will fall into place and how they will have a happy ending, but when it comes to me… When it comes to me I only see gray and dark skies.

How many amazing people do I have to meet that are doing their best before I believe that good still exists? I watch on as a person who I once knew as a boy, now a man, wrestles with the same disillusionment, while growing deeper in his relationship with a girl he adores. I can see the contrast between the joy that she helps to create in him alongside all others he loves and the fear, frustration, and confusion that the state of the world produces in him. I don’t think he believes that life is as bleak as I would, left to my own devices, but he certainly can see the monsters under my bed. He wouldn’t say it’s “just your imagination” and tell me to “go back to sleep”. Nevertheless he would remind me that this world isn’t entirely made up of villains, idiots, and the apathetic, there are still people who are trying to be something positive, to be something good in the lives of others—and who are longing for something good in their lives—lovers, community, success, friends, contentment, simple understanding.    

The realization doesn’t fix all of my worries and concerns in life, but still it is a sapling rising out of what was once believed to be salted earth. I still have to rebuild my perception of life brick by brick, remaining cautious not to allow some past childhood or adolescent trauma to falsely color it, nor to allow individual and insidious acts of hatred and evil destroy it either. But not too long ago, I thought there would be no good in my new perception. I was wrong. The evidence of good I have missed for so long was always there, though in my disillusionment I became blind to it. And yes, the world is a lot darker than I had imagined it to be—the officials are more corrupt, states war far more easily, the media is far more unreliable and ridiculous, sexism, racism, homophobia, and hatred are far more blatant, prevalent, and institutionalized than I could have ever expected from humans with the ability to empathize and a conscience. And it is truly terrible, but the good that I have seen is enough to make this harsh state of affairs tolerable, at least for as long as it will take me to find more. This rediscovery of goodness is enough to give me hope that in readjusting to reality I will find far more good than I thought could possibly exist when my perception of the world was first shattered.