This song seems appropriate for today.
It’s one of my favorite sad songs ever, and today, I feel sad.
So, no different that yesterday, really. I feel listless and restless and depressed. I feel like my life is beyond my control and headed in entirely the wrong direction. I feel vulnerable and miserable and have a sense of dread that I just can’t seem to shake.
So, not a good day, mood-wise.
The lower Paxil dose might have something to do with it. I am pondering going back to 35 mg for a day or two to see if that helps. But I think I am dealing with something deeper than that.
And there is no point in turning up the anesthetic now if I am dealing with some shit that really needs to be dealt with. I might as well just ride it out and come out the other side of it stronger and more stable for the effort.
Still, the signs are not great. I find myself saying “I hate my life!” to myself a lot lately, and that is always a bad sign. I feel like everything in my life is pointless and stupid and futile. I long to just leave everything behind and start my life over again.
Push reset and start over again with what I know now. I mean, I could hardly do worse, right?
But life is not a video game. You make your choices and then you are stuck with them, no matter what. There are no save games to go back to and there is no reset button to press when you realize you have made a whole bunch og mistakes and it would be easier just to start over.
You are where you are and nothing can change that. If you want to get back to where you were before, you are going to have to do at least as much work to get there as you did before. Probably a lot more.
And to be honest, the journey is likely futile anyhow. The moments of our lives are about not just where we are but who we are, and who we are is always changing.
It might not seem like it. For very good reason, we always think of ourselves as the same person we have always been. Anything else would be too big a threat to our sense of self, and our sense of self is the basis for our entire identity, which is in turn the base of our entire personalities.
So it is easy (and probably wise) not to notice the way each day changes us. But you are not the same person you were yesterday, and neither am I. Every moment of our lives changes us just a tiny bit, and like erosion, those little changes add up to enormous ones given enough time.
Think of a candle. Whether it is freshly lit or nearly burned all the way down, it is the same candle. And yet, it changes so much as it burns.
Ergo, even if you get back to exactly where you were before, it will not be the same. You are a different person now, and that means that, sadly, you truly cannot go home again.
Our only hope in life, then, is to face forward and constantly seek a better situation for ourselves in the future rather than fall into the trap of facing backwards and longing for that which can never return.
Still, sometimes I wish I could just walk away from everything I know, sell all my possessions except what will fit on my back, give away what I cannot sell, and just head out on the open road in search of some place where I can be happy.
Someplace where nobody knows me and I have no history, and so I can start over, deciding who I am going to be all over again. Make up an entirely fictional past for myself. Cover up the fact that I have been nothing but a loser my entire life. Pretend I was somebody, once. And then work on becoming somebody again. Erase my mistakes and start over again. Push that reset button.
I do not really have a point I want to go back to, not really. College, I suppose. I was pretty happy way back then. I had courses and friends and felt like my life was going somewhere.
And if I had the opportunity to go back to school, even at my advanced age, I would jump on it in a second. I would complete my studies in psychology, become a therapist, and set up a nice little practice somewhere, and spend my days helping people get through their own problems.
I would like to think that I have a special insight into the world of the depressed. After all, I have been living there for nearly two decades.
Or maybe I would take creative writing. I don’t know. I suppose if I am dreaming, what I would really like to do is take a writing for television degree at a broadcasting college and then get into the biz. Writing for television is my greatest dream.
And you know what? It’s good to dream. Dreams bring hope, even big fluffy impractical dreams that you know damned well are never going to happen. They still help fill your world with a sense of possibility.
Of course, eventually you have to put away the dreams and start to strive. And it is that striving part that I have trouble with so far. Picking a direction and sticking to it until you get somewhere.
Instead I dither and wobble and walk those long slow sad circles.
But who knows, maybe it is all just a chemical imbalance in my brain, not enough norepinephron in my brain for me to be truly motivated to do anything.
If so, come the beginning of next month, I might just finally get what I need to succeed.
And then, maybe, I can forgive myself for being such a loser.
Or at least get on with my life.
I’ve been very depressed and feeling like my life is going the wrong direction today, too, though with more of an external reason than usual. The mechanics did not listen to me and did not do something I asked for, and they fucked up my car, and overcharged my dad (accidentally) by about $300. Safeway was out of peanut butter M&Ms, Sharpies, and the kind of deodorant I use. McDonald’s screwed up and gave me someone else’s food and also would have charged me for the free McNuggets my coupon entitled me to, if I hadn’t caught the mistake on the order screen. And a week ago the gas station that forgot to give me back my Save-On-Foods points card threw it out. I can get another one, but the one I had for ten years is now sitting in the garbage somewhere, wondering why I abandoned it.
But this hasn’t left me feeling like it’s the rest of the world that’s incompetent. Instead, it’s reinforced my own sense of self-hatred. There are not only too many things that go wrong by themselves; there are also just too many things I suck at, and I’m not at all functional. I can’t even get my shirt to come down all the way to the underwear I pull up over my stomach anymore. I can’t organize my belongings or get my zine done.
Also, while going to Safeway, I suddenly remembered a bit of science fiction I read as a child. In one of Niven’s stories, there were the Freezeout Kids, a young Generation X-like group who came of age, saw that the world was not a place where they were welcome or wanted, and went into cryogenic suspension, to be awakened in a better future. Decades went by and they got declared dead so the government could harvest their organs. I can’t have been much older than 10 when I read this and already I knew that I sucked at life and identified with the Freezeout Kids—whom Niven evidently did not want us to sympathize with, judging by the hero’s narration.
So I realized tonight that I didn’t just become depressed. I was a really fucking depressed little kid, too. I still pinpoint the exact moment it became more severe at age 11, when I was in grade six math class one day and realized I was going to be a failure in life.
Even so, I can’t help but look backward and long for the past. It wasn’t perfect, but it was safer and more innocent. I will never give up trying to recreate the good parts of it.
Forward doesn’t work. I just gain ten pounds every year. Some things never pass.