Spending all of one’s days sitting in one’s room, contemplating the mysteries of the universe and the meaning of life, has a tendency to cause one to slowly slip into the depths of unrelenting madness, I’ve found. This is knowledge I’ve acquired over the past six years, after half-willingly enjoying a luxury every teenager dreams of: doing absolutely nothing. When one is deep in the soul-numbing questioning of the entirety of existence and has absolutely nothing to do, it is next to impossible to find the motivation to do anything, let alone go to a party at a near-stranger’s house with a bunch of other near-strangers. But that’s exactly what I somehow did today.
I’ve spent the past two weeks struggling to find the will to do anything of significance. Mostly, my days consisted of getting up long past noon, staying in my PJs all day, watching TV, and gorging myself on potato chips or whatever wretchedly unhealthy thing I could get my hands on. It wasn’t that I was trying to turn myself into a giant, stinky blob, it’s more that I literally did not have any space in my anguished little brain to think up a better way to spend my time. So, yes, any progress that I had managed to amass since my last depressive episode, is essentially gone. But that’s really how my life has been going for so long: make progress, lose a little progress, lose all progress, repeat. To everyone else, I really must look like a spoiled brat who’s given up on life. And maybe that’s the truth. I really have no effing clue anymore. Oh, interesting; “effing” is actually a word. Where was I going with this? Oh right. So anyway, as you could probably discern from my last post, I’m desperately trying to figure out how in the heck I’m supposed to move forward. I’m also trying to process what exactly I’ve been through, but…well, both have proven equally difficult, and I guess that’s because they’re related. I think if I knew just what to make of these past six years, maybe I’d be better equipped to figure out where to go from here. But considering I can’t even reliably remember half of what’s happened, this mess is far from figured out. And that’s scary. Because if you don’t know where to go, how can you move forward?
But maybe the key to it all is imperfection. If I stop trying to obtain the impossible, and just live life in all its chaotic order; if I just relinquish all control, accept the facts, and just move on already, I’ll finally make progress. Or maybe it’s some sort of middle ground, between having everything figured out and knowing nothing at all.
It’s hard, at the root of it all. Life’s just hard. This is just hard. Not knowing, and struggling, and trying, it’s all hard.
But it’s not all bad.
I went to the party, full of near-strangers and so many opportunities to screw up. I had fun; and I got out of the house; and I talked; and I laughed really, really hard. And I smiled and after it all, I got a picture from the big pile of presents we exchanged. It doesn’t match my room, like, at all. And it’s hard to read. And it wasn’t the pretty wind chimes I originally got, or the blue picture and the treble-clef hook I got the second time. But it says “love never fails”. And I like that, ’cause I guess it’s true. I want it to be true. That’s what I want out of life, to love everyone. To watch the ones I love succeed. To watch the evil in this world be wiped out, and to be part of the cause of its disappearance. To feel the joy that only love can bring. For us all, one family, to be triumphant.
It was a good day. It wasn’t a perfect day at all. I didn’t get up ’til four. I only ate two meals. My eyebrows aren’t plucked. I was twenty minutes late. But it was a good day. A really, good, day.
The Place Where I Write Things 