March of Time: Fear and Loathing

I can’t believe it’s been over a year since I’ve had the chance to actually look to what I’ve been thinking and feeling. I honestly can’t believe it. If I’m being honest, I haven’t looked at my internal process with any sort of depth since July last year.

My god.

It’s a funny thing that bought me here, to be honest. At 10am on a Monday morning, I am sitting in my room trying to find the strength to work through the thousand thoughts racing through my brain. I suppose it’s telling that putting them down in this format seems to make them easier to understand.

I was sitting at my computer last night, wondering what I should be doing with my time. As usual, my creative energy petered out, uninspired about a quarter of the way through something I was enjoying, so I turned to the internet for something to do.

I’m not sure how I got onto it, but I got to thinking about gay themed movies and how I had seen a couple and wanted to watch something that would put me to sleep. I guess I wanted to wind down with a movie or something. I remember thinking that I’d never seen Brokeback Mountain, and that seeing as it was a classic that I’d download it and have a watch.

While I was waiting for it, I googled the top 50 gay movies of all time and had a read. Immediately a couple drew my attention and I downloaded them as well. Reading the synopsises made them sound a hundred times more interesting than a holywood vag fest, so I cancelled Brokeback and got down to two really amazing movies, Mysterious Skin and Latter Day.

I’m gonna skip forward a little. Those movies were profound. I adored them both and they both nearly made me cry for completely different reasons.

What I discovered, sitting in the heat of my room, was that I am completely removed from me as an emotional human being. I never consider my feelings and it’s a good day when I don’t even have to think about it. To be honest, life is a lot like painting by numbers. Green goes there, red goes here, smile there, get up and eat here, etc.

I have never sat to think about what it is that I am actually feeling. And I suppose the last of the two movies, Latter Day, really gave me a good push towards a tiny bit of introspection.

I’m absolutely lost. Honest truth.

The purpose of this post is not to make me feel wonderful again, nor is it to bleed on the blog. I’m so glad I am past the empty pep talks and emotional vomit that used to pollute this thing.

This post is an admission, in writing, by me, to me, that I am completely lost.

I know what I should be doing, and I know that the position that I am is an undesirable one that will lead to sorrow. I know what colours I need to paint to alleviate that sorrow. Make the picture look to all around that all is fine.

But what do I want? I spent so long burying what I wanted under smiles and handshakes and the necessary functional things a person has to do that I’ve completely lost my drive to live. As I am no longer naive enough to think no one will read that, please read the subtext rather than the literal. I am not necessarily suicidal, I just think my flame has gone out.

The flame to which I refer is that quintessential spark inside a person that makes them glow and paints their world in bright colour. It’s a wanky description, but that’s how I see some people. Some genuinely happy people are like that. I think I used to be like that. I hope I did. If this is all I have ever been, then damn, I really need to get a move on.

It’s funny. I’m such a strong and smart person. Conceited, I know, but true. Even dead like this, I knew something was wrong. Work, ever my retreat, was merely a bandaid cure for a larger issue, and my sub-conscious made me a hate a job that for all intents and purposes I think I really liked.

Even without the drive or self-awareness to see what was happening, I moved towards change, knowing that something had to give to give me the chance to sink or swim.

You know, I thought honestly that I had failed my STAT. It feels hollow when I say it, but I was so sure. I feel dead already, like I haven’t a talent in the world. That is so stupid. All I have to do is look behind me, see the proverbial footsteps in the sand, and realise that a stupid, talentless person couldn’t be where I am.

And yet, I am alone. It’s 10am and the medium which I need to pour my heart and soul to is the same damn blog that I’ve been using since I was 20.

Six years, six long, experience filled years, and I’m still as lost as I was when I was 20.

I’ve changed, grown, adapted to the thought of being a complete and utter wreck. I’ve accepted that I will be alone forever and just mentally moved on, setting my emotional self alight and never thinking about it again.

Every time someone brings up the topic, I smile and laugh and go “Oh, you!” and then skillfully (tactlessly) change the subject. It doesn’t make me think or give me pause. I treat it like a hello or a handshake, dismiss it out of hand and move on.

But I don’t move forward. I’ve realised I obviously don’t know how. I guess in a sense I feel a bit trapped by the whole situation I’m in. Every day of my life, I imagine what it would be like to be someone else, anyone else, so that I can escape the truth. I think I kind of hate myself.

Not sure I wanna go into that, because even writing it makes me sound a little crazy. I feel like someone with my talents and abilities should be doing great things. But I’m not. Anyone else would be able to do so much with this, and many many subsist on a lot less, and yet I languish in neutral.

I just don’t know where I go from here. All at once, my personal situation changes, I’m losing all my security and willingly going back to the hardest thing I have ever done. I’m going to be living with new people, coping with new study with no time and no money and I’m having trouble assigning any time to fix the myriad issues that stop me from being happy.

Yes, by allusion, I’ve said it. I know why I am not happy. Were I list person, I could spew forth a dot point list of five or six quantifiable definable issues that would need to be fixed for me to feel right about moving forward.

When I was younger, all of my time and energy went into my friends, I had no time for myself. A few years ago, my time went into my work and I had no time for myself. Now, I’m going into study again and the same predictable issue rears it’s head. No time for myself.

If I don’t have time for me, who does? Friends are moving on, even my core group is leaving. I resent them, all told, but wish them all the best. No malice in that, I envy the way in which they progress to the next stage of their lives, but I want them to be happy.

So I sit, in a field of black roses, midnight draped over me like a blanket, waiting for a dawn that may never come to show me a field of guilt and regret that I would have to work through bit by bit to even move forward.

Obscure analogy, but accurate. I’m not losing hope, I never really had that to begin with, and I’m not depressed, I’m far too removed to feel angry or sad about where I am. What I am, is disconnected. I hope that with some sleep and a rest, I will find some clarity again.

It’s funny though. I feel really really bad at the moment. Like I want to cry but if I did it would be fake. Like my own emotions are just a reaction to seeing people cry in the movie. Sad people cry, so to make this more melodramatic you should cry too, right?

But I just feel this general sense of malaise. This cloying feeling of sorrow, guilt and regret that spurs my words ever forward and feels like it’s not strong enough to be anything “true” or “real”.

You know what? I’d rather feel like this than not at all. This is an improvement. Feeling shit is an improvement. Heh. I really am fucking lost.

Nowhere to go but up right?