Thoughts for the Long Nights Ahead

Some days it really hits me how bad things can really get, even when you've think your day has hit rock bottom and you're struggling to reach the surface. When life pushes everything on you at once, one after the other, first with doubt, then confirmation of doubt, and then it shows you how happy everyone else around you is, what do you do? I don't even know how I honestly feel about this anymore. I laugh and joke and interact normally with everyone, but I'm not sure if that's honestly how I feel or if I'm just automatically doing so to protect myself and others. I wish I didn't have so many self-protective measures. Then I could work on other ways to get out of this mess. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately in a sense, my mind closed those paths to me long ago, and there's no way to vent in that direction. I fear that writing will be the only way out, and I hope that in all of my madness, I can at least produce pieces that are worth keeping and treasuring. How ironic that the very people who are the reason for my plight actually side with me... And that my outlet is one I learned from the loss.

It's been a while...

Yeah, over a month since my last post. Feels like far longer... Anyways, enough with the reminiscing, it's time for a blog post. Today, I looked inside of myself. Not literally, just mentally. It's been one of those days when nothing outside is really putting up with you or getting you involved, so you sort of retreat into your own little world for comfort and peace. Inside, I found... nothing. It was as if everything that I appear to be, everything that everyone else has seen in me was really only ephemeral, evanescent, transparent. Like there's no real substance to who I am. I realized that however colorful or dull a personality I may appear to have to other people, I could not find anything inside to show it. I'm not empty as in devoid of life or thoughts, as I have plenty of both, but there's simply no... divine spark, no soul. I feel like a shell of a person, a mere puppet who does not even know where his own strings lead. I simply can't decide what defines me as who I am. For that matter, I don't really know who I am anymore. I suppose that over the years, I've always been defined by who I've been around and what I've been doing, with the actual substance of self not actually changing, but who and what is that core being? I don't think I really know... Do you?

Driving Through Slush

Have you ever had one of those days when it seems like everything and everyone is falling apart around you, and all you can really do is to just barely hold everything up and together? When you go through the day with dozens of things to do, but a couple of things are just on your mind so much that you simply can't concentrate on anything else? But due to certain circumstances, those things you just can't work out for the life of you. It's like driving through slush-your tires get some traction, you seem to be making progress, until you hit a hill and simply can't go any further, or even start rolling backwards.

So yes, this is about a girl, one I love dearly, and one who is having a bad day. I just felt like posting this because I had things to rant about, and I've decided that people may as well be able to see my rants, as ranting in my head doesn't seem particularily productive. Some days I just wish that she could see that me not getting mad at her is just... something I do. I don't see anything wrong with what she does, so I don't get mad at her, it's as simple as that. If I were to get mad at her everytime she had a mood, what sort of person would I be? Certainly not who I am and claim to be. So, my point in this post is, I suppose, to just express my frustration with needing to show that I'm upset in order to let people know that I care. I don't think I should need to get angry or frustrated with the things people do in order to let them know that I care. Isn't it still caring if you try to understand, to listen, to console instead of to berate, to yell, to criticize? Just my little rant of the day.

Life, the Universe, and Everything

Besides 42 for the Adams fans out there, what do those three words mean to you? Does a person, a face, an object, or an event come to mind? Or perhaps nothing more than a mere thought, an instant of consideration on what I mean by the title. In truth, it is really nothing more than just a springboard of sorts for me to gather my thoughts, and something I just wanted to have my readers, few as they may be, think about. Indeed, I have so little natural creativity that I need some sort of... starting point to build off of, to branch off from. And here we go:

The most basic fact of all forms of life is interaction. Whether you are a squid, a coelacanth, a daisy, cyanobacteria, or any other form of life, you interact, not only with your environment, but with other creatures as well by eating them, playing with them, helping them, etc. As humans, we interact with each other socially, through speech, writing, drama, and other forms of expression. This sort of necessary social interaction combines with our natural need for organization to produce social units of interaction, like a family or society as a whole. At which point, however, does one progress from one unit to the next? We are all born into a family of some sort, be it a fractured one or one that no longer exists. For the more fortunate among us who manage to retain at least one person to guide us through the earlier stages of life, that person or those people, whether related to us or not, essentially become our surrogate parents, provided that they were not our parents to begin with. These people.... as we progress through life, they appear to become less important to us in a sense, as the onset of puberty and eventual maturity brings us to a stage of semi to complete independence, in which we no longer need to depend on these people for comfort, food, or shelter, leaving that basic biological bond behind. How does one truly decipher what is left of the familial relationship then? There can be no real prior experience to show you how to proceed, and you flounder, looking for the right balance of affection and aloofness, wanting to be self-sufficient and your own person, while sometimes still seeking the warmth and comfort you know to have been in place, all your life, with the people who raised you. Is it a crime, then, to say that one does not feel a real connection with one's family then? Is it criminal to feel free after being released from the shackles of bonds formed from biological needs? There are few things that one could ever do to repay the debt of people spending years in their lives raising you, yet if a person simply does not feel a real, lasting bond with them, is the appropriate course to talk with them, trying to work out a way less painful than simple rejection of the people who raised you, or to accept that the years spent together were merely biological in nature, at least on one side of the family? It may seem callous of me to ask, but how much of human emotion is really based on biological instinct, and how much on conscious thought, on higher thinking and well-defined feelings? Having stated the above, I find that it is much simpler to accept that emotions are things that simply cannot be reasoned with, much less thought about logically-this goes against their very nature. One can only wrestle with their own feelings for so long... Eventually you either give in, destroy those feelings, or go insane. There are few alternatives, aside from perhaps repressing the emotions or dismissing them, but these are only temporary solutions for a larger problem.

Please do excuse the rant above... It is rather late in the night and I had an urge to write, so I got on the keyboard and saw what sprung from my fingertips given the title. Perhaps I'll go back to it at some point, to either go on with the title or what I've said in the wall of text above. Feel free to comment on everything I've said, whether you disagree, agree, or just want to say something. You're also welcome to comment with your own reactions to the title, as it is rather open-ended.