I Can't Settle Into My Skin

I still haven't come to terms with myself.

When I think about my life, my identity, I still shiver with memories of depression.  I now have the ability to be happy, but I'm not precluded from feeling sad.  My emotions are, ostensibly, real.  Unfettered by that permanent malaise, but not entirely free from despair.

I'm thinking in a way that should help me become comfortable in my own skin.  But it's still really difficult, even when I have a prescription to help me with the battle that's too deep to fight alone.

I've been doing research, reading, learning.  I want to find the truth.  I want to know my place in the world.

I've been operating under the pretense that my proper place doesn't yet exist, which allows me to think of myself as a spiritual vagabond.  I don't really have a place, so whatever I've been doing is just as good as whatever else I could be doing.  My lifestyle is no better than any other I could have, because the one lifestyle I want is impossible.

But now I'm having doubts about that conclusion.  I'm wondering if there really is a better place for me than where I am?  Maybe I've been wrong to alienate myself from my identity?  Perhaps I'm going about everything in the wrong way?  How much time, how much of my soul am I wasting in my perilous pursuit of perfection?

What I can't do is forego a dream because I'm trembling about its grandiosity.  I can't be scared about pushing through and failing.  Brahms captured that lesson in his Nänie.  That's part of it, I can tell.  But there is definitely legitimacy in my desire to have something fulfilling in my life now.  I no longer feel depressed, but I've been so enthralled with the capacity to feel happy that I've been doing nothing but trying to make myself feel happy.  I've been playing Pokémon nonstop, surfing the Internet, spending time with the cats, doing simple housework, doing nice things for the people around me.  I must, at some point, return to my current career--being a student.  I have to go back to my primary endeavor.

At the very least, I can take solace in the knowledge that an intense gauntlet of schoolwork and academic studies will not be able to inflict depression on me.  As long as I have my newfound line of defense, whatever I make my lifestyle will make itself mine.  My happiness will adapt to the things I do, and my rosy outlook will paint these difficult challenges as pleasurable activities.  I will like doing what I'm doing, even if it's not something that gives me instant gratification.  I will then, because these more difficult activities are incredibly rewarding, find fulfillment.

So I know what I have to do:  cut out distractions, make a plan, follow the plan.  Don't move in circles, don't fret about the inevitable failures.  Do recognize that I can take steps to avoid many of those failures, and when I choose short-term happiness over success, it's largely because of fear.  And fear is the only thing worth fearing.  So:  Fear fear.  Be brave.  Do the data structures homework assignment.  Do discrete.  Read physio psych.  Make an agenda. Write all this stuff into a to-do list.  Look at the to-do list regularly.

Signing off.  Perhaps to write something more philosophical, about what is required for a paradigm shift.

Emotive Babbling

Nothing intellectual, just a diary entry in preparation for tomorrow's biochemistry examination.

:

I've been feeling better lately.

I'm just now catching up to some of the things I've left undone for a long time.

Recently, I've had greater resolution and emotional strength than I could previously muster.  That means I have been able, once again, to plunge myself completely into my studies and work.  Now I can encompass all of the thought processes that are necessary for me to find my way.  I can do things that would have otherwise required too much energy.  I am thinking positive thoughts, I'm having new ideas.

I'm out of the rut.

Mostly.

It's not yet perfect, but it's significantly better.  I am gradually exploring what the future has in store for me, which is necessary because of the immensity of what I'm considering as my set of possibilities.  Each thing that I want to do is enormous, and I can't do it by myself in a single lifetime.

So my debacle is this:  do I set out to do as much as I can to further each of those ambitious potentialities, in earnest and without giving a second thought, or do I step back and consider which of those things I can do?

I think that the answer is that I simply don't know enough to rule out possibilities.  And the cost/benefit analysis, if everything is possible, pushes me towards the most difficult option.

...I wonder if even I will be able to understand what I've written here in a month's time.  Cryptic non sequiturs and emotive babbling.  Ideally, they'll be enough for me to keep track of my life in retrospect, but not enough to convey much of meaning to the observer.

Flipping Feelings

After watching a TED talk about how unhealthy it is to believe that stress is unhealthy, I've been wondering how many negative feelings are really just the malperceived counterparts of some positive emotion that we can take advantage of and be fulfilled by.  If redefining how you look at stress can physiologically change the body's stress response to one of courage, then how many other responses are there that can be perceived in a new kind of light?

Another thing I've been wondering is if there's some convenient way to transition from one emotion to another, leapfrogging from feeling to feeling, to lead one's self out of a state they wish to escape.  It's nearly impossible to think away a feeling, and going from something like misery to ecstasy is just unfeasible for somebody who's crippled by longstanding unhappiness.  But maybe it's plausible that I could work out a strategy for making myself bitter instead of depressed, angry instead of bitter, indignant instead of angry, and courageous instead of indignant.  I am coming up with various things to do during the good spell that I'm in now.  It's so much easier to think of solutions to problems like these when you're not experiencing the problems.  And by now I realize that the weeks of normalcy have no meaning to my chronic disposition.

I'm curious to flesh out this hypothesis.  I'm sure that there are meditation techniques for doing this kind of thing?  Perhaps.

Current feelings:

~A good week.  I've noticed depressive auras nearly overtake me, and I've certainly been agitated because of deep-seated frustration about my lot in life.  But I've been able to numb my mind just enough that I could block the thoughts which depress me.  I haven't been indulging in spontaneous, spurious feelings.  So that's been okay.

~I take solace in seeing myself as not merely an animal with feelings, but an agent with dreams.  I have things to do and I have time to do those things.  I can't nearly fit all of the things I want to learn into my 4 years of college, and I have to delay the experience of certain aspects of my youth until I simply have more time to explore what I should have while younger.  I have to accept this and simply let it be.  I want to make my college experience a positive stepping stone for a life of learning what others have discovered and exploring the universe on my own terms.

Honesty

Part of me wants to be a completely honest person.

Another part of me looks at all of the cases where reality is too dark.

I used to look in the mirror and understand what I saw.  I could read my eyes, see my emotion.  I knew exactly what was looking back at me, and not because I was monitoring my internal mental state, but because my face was legible.  My eyes were telling.  The window to my soul was ajar.

Now, when I look in the mirror, I can't read myself.  I'm so covered up by complex experiences and emotions that the sheen over my face, especially my eyes is opaque.

It's disconcerting.

What I Need to Eliminate

What is worth noting today...

This is just random babble, so please ignore everything contained on this blog post.

I have a habit of getting caught up on things, and letting them fester in my head for a really long time.  I keep thinking about the same small selection of things in a tiny little cycle.  I guess I keep thinking about these things because it's important that I do something about those thoughts.  But then I end up with too little time set aside to do any of those things.

So where is the fluff?  Where is the time that I'm wasting?  What am I doing to take away my productivity, my efficiency, my happiness?

Prayer of Hope

Fire
My Spirit is Fire
Deadly
Contained by my body
The force of my nature

My spirit is
Pride, Fear, Love, Vengeance,
Unhindered Desire, Elegance,
Despair, Suffering, Wisdom,
Imagination and Infinity.

Spirit,
Be driven by my hope.
Fire,
Be driven by my hope.
Earth,
Be driven by my hope.

Hope,
Let me guard you,
I will protect you and guide you,
My body
and my mind
and my desires
and my decisions
and my actions
and my success
will keep you safe,
will give you form,
will give you strength,
will light your way,
will set you free,
will give you peace.

Fly!

Fly!

Fly!

Let the fire of my spirit
Be the wind that supports you
And save my soul
From fear and despair.
Bring light to the world!
Extinguish the miasma!
Bring respite to the Damned!

Hope,
I will hold you dear,
And my courage will propel you.

Finding the Dynamo

I've played the Mass Effect trilogy three times now.  Each time, everything was more poignant and meaningful.  I got something new out of each run.  And each time that I returned to an emotional experience, it grew even more powerful.

This culminated so much that, in my final moment, after I made my last decision, I broke down.  I was consumed with tears.

It wasn't sad.  I did the right thing, and I accepted the sacrifice that I made to obtain the outcome that I thought was best.  I changed the galaxy in a huge way, but I don't believe that the gravity of my last action was nearly what got me so worked up.  It was something underneath the surface, something that I couldn't pinpoint that was assaulting me emotionally.

Summer Changes Things

I've been feeling really good lately.  I've been playing games, having good conversations, eating my own cooking, spending time with phenomenal housemates, reviewing basic Spanish, reviewing cell biology, presidenting the glee club, clothes shopping, cleaning the house, and learning Java.

I'm... happy.  It feels weird to say that anymore.  But I think I can get used to this feeling.  I feel free.  I remember feeling like this years ago.

Ha!  I've been laughing.

I'm still aware of what prevented me from being happy.  But now it just doesn't hurt so much.  I have enough positive things in my life to keep me going, and I have hope for finding more.

And if there's one thing I have to do, it's to protect hope.

Direction for an Art Project

I found an interesting introspective essay about a man's journey in overcoming his depression.

It is interesting.  I like the idea of giving one's unhappiness a face.  Especially when it acts as its own entity, completely independent from what you know is your own agency.  There's something to be said for the process of creating a partition in one's mind.  Distinguishing the parts from one another.  As complexly they may be interwoven, they still operate with some independence.  There is localization of cognitions.

I've been telling myself that I'll do art.  Now I think I have a project that can give that nebulous ambition some direction.  I will give form to the parts of me that I can't stand, the parts of me that I love, and the miscellaneous parts of me that I feel deserve some kind of shout-out.

So I'll do a little reading, organize my materials, then get started on the easy stuff.  I'll work my way up to the more nuanced and difficult parts of this project as I develop a way to think about and do this internal analysis.  Now that I've settled into my new home, I'm regaining some of my old skill at reading myself.

I have two hopes for this:

*Develop some sort of voice in visual art.

*Overcome my... feelings.

Foggy Brain

I've been really busy lately.

So busy that I haven't really been able to introspect as much as Brian. But that's OK. I'm not as cool as him, anyway. i like to eat poop. a lot of poop.poop is so yummy. i like yummy things. like poop. When poop gets multiplied by a fundamental constant, it becomes introspective -- like me, but not as much as Brian is. 

(thanks, Brian and Dana, for your insightful assistance)

...as much as I normally do.  I think this is a really good thing!  My introspection has been going down a bad path.  I'd been getting less and less happy with what I was finding, because I was continually reinventing standards for myself that were unrealistic.  The introspection had become purely deleterious.  I hadn't been 'doing' things insofar as realizing tangible, positive consequences.  I wasn't laboring in a way that produced things I could reap.

Vaguely.  I feel like there's a giant block of sludge stuck between my eyes and my mind.  I've been acting more or less normal, but I've felt less aware and less conscious lately.  Incapable of integrating my cognitions.    I don't know exactly what it is, but I do know the effect is that I've been focusing on the world around me more, too.  Instead of fighting inside myself, I've been experiencing things that make me happy.

I'll still get moments where I feel like I'm about to sink into a bad place.  I'll start to drift inwards, into the aura that precedes a bout of depression.  But then I think to myself:  I am not in despair.  I can be happy.  I have reasons to be happy.  I am happy!  And then I actually start to feel good.

I'm grateful to many people for this becoming possible.  Foremost, I'm relieved that I made the decision to live with the people I do now.  I know that they're good people.  I've been laughing like never before, for each of the few days I've been living here.

I know myself much better because of last year's internal tribulation.

Now, I promise to myself that I will stay healthy.  Happy.  Safe.  I'm going to make life decisions that keep me sane, and do my best never to put myself in such a rut as I did before.  Life happens, and so does shit, but at least I promise that I will watch out for myself.

Listening to:  Pink Rabbits by The National

Return

I went back.  I wanted to go back and I didn't know why.  Now I'm back and I don't know why I'm here or why I wanted to be.

It's easy to fight.  But what happens when I'm fighting myself?

*sigh*