May 14, 2018 - Recentering
I am indebted to the makers of tumblr. Somebody somewhere is slaving away at a dying platform so that I can continue to look through my thoughts from several years back. Functionally, I’ve used the private posts of Tumblr as a way of re-centering myself. Despite whatever convoluted f*cked up situation I think I am in, I always come back to see how much life has changed. How it has quickly evolved into something I would not be able to recognize, had I not been the one to have lived it.
I suppose all of life is about bouts of highs and lows. But perhaps the lows are truly what make us human. When I think back on the times that I was blissed out of my mind, I feel as if I was inhabiting a kind of numbness. A numbness to introspection, a numbness to feeling, a numbness to empathy or self control. Happiness often comes in the most paralyzing ways — leaving you without much room to think of anything else. In a way, it’s an anesthetic.
I have this really tormented relationship with my failures and depression. In one sense, it sucks because it just sucks. I mean, I’ve failed and I’m depressed — what more is there to say?
Yet in another sense, it’s become a familiar place. Where I’ve often created a home, a place of dwelling, and in rare occasions, where I’ve even grown. I want to be able to grow again. In this season of immense self-doubt, failure, purposelessness, longing, I want to be able to grow again.
Perhaps we’ve seen it all wrong. Perhaps the weakness, the solitude, the tormented days of asking “what if,” the sleeplessness nights, the omnipresent feeling of longing that is so pervasive and so ruthless, were all a guise to rouse us to find our deeper selves. Call me morbid or melancholic, but I think darkness has a sobering effect on an otherwise paralyzed state of euphoria. I for one, would like to inhabit sadness more if only to see the true quality of who I am once more. To catch another short glimpse of the capricious thing we call a soul.
I may be one of the few millennials, or living people willing to admit this publicly, but I don’t know what the hell I am doing. Most days I hate waking up because I feel as if the decision of what to do that day is going to make me implode. It is as if everything is lacking meaning, and I have the sole responsibility of infusing it with desire, passion, and courage. It’s a ridiculously heavy burden. Which is why I love sleep so much, because that is the only place I feel as if I can discard the hefty feeling of shame at reaching or obtaining something I can’t even articulate. Crazy huh, how you may not know what you’re even grasping for and yet the body can still perceive the familiar experience of failure?
I often drift through the day accomplishing meaningless chores, speaking with people, or creating mini tasks simply for me to do so that I can say that I’ve accomplished something. I view the lives of my peers, which all seem iridescent — like a shiny toy beyond a looking glass, that remains always out of my reach. Of course, I know that everyone feels failure. But that mere truth alone doesn’t do much to quell the fear of insignificance that remains at the bottom of your gut.
I would like to be a better version of me. Often times I look back and think, am I making my high-school self proud? I think I am. But most days, I still have to take a moment and wonder. I do have hope though, that who I am will one day no longer just be the accumulation of my successes and failures. And that I, desperate for some cosmic meaning, will no longer always be calculating my life to see if I net positive. I have hope that one day perhaps the presence of my being will be enough to elicit a sense of self and identity, far beyond worldly accolades or man-made validations of my work or personhood.
I have hope that one day I could be free entirely of all these things. And that perhaps that freedom, would be secure and steady. A good thing to rely on. That what I’ve been purposed for is a much higher, worthier call — a demand met only by someone much greater than me. That I would one day be freed of the responsibility of saving myself, and relying exclusively on my sheet of tallied accomplishments and merits to give myself a name, to position myself as a person with meaning.
