I don’t know if it’s just the anhedonia, or if things have just become increasingly meaningless lately. So it’s 2007, and the new year doesn’t really feel all that new.
It’s amazing how fast time goes. It just occurred to me that we’re fast approaching the end of the decade, what with it soon being 2007 and all. Not quite how Stanley Kubrick or I imagined it. (Where are the flying cars, huh? Or the shuttle flights to Jupiter, hmm?) But then again, I never imagined anything like the Internet, or Google, or the ubiquity of cel phones. Certainly nothing like the iPod, or Wi-fi, or even the PS2.
Was it just hanging out with my family? Seeing my oldest friend? I don’t know what it is that decompressed my soul lately. I remember being all tense and aggravated and doubting myself before Christmas, and that all seemed to have melted away. Maybe it just took me a week to recover from my last month at work, where I was working 80 hours a week. I guess that can kick the shit out of anyone.
What definitely kickstarted my imagination was Final Fantasy XII, which my brother is currently playing on the PS2. (No plans on getting the PS3. That seems overhyped and overpriced.) This is the first game in the series that actually revisits one of their imagined worlds. (The land of Ivalice figures in Final Fantasy Tactics as well) Just comparing it to Final Fantasy VII (the first Final Fantasy on the original PS1), the improvement in graphics and gameplay is staggering. This game series brings back a lot of memories shared between me, my brother, and even my sister. Final Fantasy VI was the last game on the Super Nintendo and reminds me of one Christmas break at home during my time in college. We played Final Fantasy IV the summer before I actually started college. And the one that started it all, Final Fantasy I, was actually on the original 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System, back when we were still all at our local parochial school.
I don’t know why, but FFXII makes me think of the imaginary world I’ve spent the last 18 years creating. I used to always spend the last few hours of New Year’s Eve trying to stay awake by redrawing one of my multitude of maps, further refining it, and creating the back story. It’s probably about time I came back to the world of Darunaig. I still lack the inspiration to actually set a story in this world, but I guess I just need to wait, and let it come to me. Eventually.
But right now, I’m listening to mp3s. Me and my friends from college used to have this tradition of creating playlists for the year, and giving copies of our compilations to each other. I think the last time we all did this was maybe five years ago or so. I actually do have playlists for all the intervening years, I just haven’t had the will to actually burn them to CD. I’ve always used music to keep track of time. Songs will frequently evoke vivid memories of events that occurred when the song first came out, or at least, when I first heard the song.
I’ve also been thinking about how I am bizarrely brain-damaged, what with this executive dysfunction syndrome. I really can’t seem to properly prioritize things, or plan things more complex than two or three steps. It’s really amazing how far I’ve managed to get in life with these issues. It’s a wonder I wasn’t maimed or killed during my childhood, really.
One of the other symptoms of this syndrome is the inability to keep track of time. Now that I think about it, I kind of wonder if normal people can accurately estimate how much time has gone by? For me, it’s a struggle to tell the difference between 5 minutes going by, and 30 minutes going by. I’m frequently always running late, always running out of time. I now kind of wonder if I haven’t just adapted to my shortcomings. If I can manage, I try to get to things early, and I often end up getting to things ridiculously early. And I seem to have survived test taking by learning how to do them quickly, which has been facilitated by learning how to read really quickly. In all other things, I definitely have problems with pacing. Either I go too fast, or I go too slow. I can never get it just right. (Heh, my own version of the Goldilocks problem.)
So I wonder if my obsession with music is simply another adaptive mechanism to overcome my weaknesses. I’m really not that good of an auditory learner. I learn mostly through text and especially pictures, most especially abstract diagrams. Layout and structure is really important for me. But I digress. Anyway, since music is something that occurs through time, it pretty much acts as my external clock. I know that the average song lasts a little less than five minutes, so I figure about six songs makes it about half an hour. Twelve songs to an hour. Music seems to keep me on better track than just looking at the clock. It’s really amazing how the hours can suddenly melt away if I’m not careful.
In any case, there are only four days left in this year. I feel like I never really got used to 2006. This is the first time where I’ve felt like the year was ending too quickly—typically, I’m not a big fan of December, mostly because of the diminished number of daylight hours, in addition to the frequently inclement weather, and now that the holidays seem to have lost their shine for me, I would think I would dislike it even more.
Then again, maybe it’s just that I’m not ready for January. It’s like starting over again, and the thought of getting to December 2007 is actually kind of daunting.
But one day at a time, I guess. As usual. Small, non-threatening things. Bite sized chunks. You know the drill.
Here’s to a Happy New Year, another year for new opportunities, for inspiration, and for staying in touch with the important people in my life.
Good times for a change See the luck I’ve had could make a good man turn bad So please, please, please Let me, let me, let me Let me get what I want this time
Damn it, I had written a hopeful entry in my delirium last night, and as luck would have it, Wordpress decides to send it to the utter void. I guess it’s for the best. I was kind of blasphemous post. I’d try to reconstruct it in its entirety, but I can’t remember what I wrote. All I’ve got are snippets.
I remember on Christmas Eve while sitting at midnight mass, I started thinking about how what we’re celebrating is the fact that Jesus has come to be with us. I still have that line echoing in my head: “Do not be afraid.” This is what he’s telling us.
I’m still mired in the depths of my crisis of faith. Even the continued assurance of Jesus’ presence in my life has not kept me from wallowing in the vast pits of despair of my own making. I’m trying, I’m trying. I recognize that it’s true, God can only help those who help themselves.
But I still have to blame the institution of the Church for at least part of this mess. Their continued intolerance of homosexuality, their refusal to accept the necessary reality of birth control, and their continued marginalization of women from positions of prominence leave me cold and empty, and I can’t help but think that Jesus would actually be all for these things. He wasn’t a guy to give in to traditional authority. He was all about being inclusive. After all, he really only had two requirements: Love God with your whole being, and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. Nowhere in there is there mention of why homosexuality is intrinsically sinful, or why women can’t be priests, or why you can’t have sex if it’s in the context of a loving relationship with the intention of being chaste. And chastity probably isn’t what you think it means—it actually just means staying faithful. (After all, you can’t expect fucking around, cheating on your girlfriend, and just overall deceiving people to fall under the concept of loving your neighbor.)
But mostly, priests now just creep me out. I know it sucks to generalize to all of them, but even the possibility that that dude in front of the altar used to molest or maybe even still molests little boys and girls is just sick. I know were supposed to be forgiving and all that, but it’s hard to be forgiving when the Church continues to put up the high and mighty act, still claiming the moral high ground, all the while refusing to be inclusive. I mean, come on.
Basically, I think Pope Benedict and the more sycophantic cardinals need to practice a little humility. The Pope is, after all, supposed to be the servant of all the members of the Church, not some kind of emperor or judge.
But yeah, that pretty much sums up the reason why I’m still alienated from the institution of the Church.
In any case, now that the days are getting longer, I think I’m starting to feel better. I mean, we just have to see. I’m trying to take small steps. If I can at least do maybe 25% of all the things I want to accomplish, maybe I have a chance. It’s certainly more than the 0% that I’ve got right now.
I think, I hope, that it’s just the darkness that’s killing me. About an hour after the sun went down, I had to put my head down. I don’t know what I want to do. I can’t deal with all this free, empty time. I can’t even think crazy thoughts any more. I’m just…spent. I don’t know how else to put it.
Christmas doesn’t have the same cachet that it use to. I don’t know what it is. I guess it’s just the fact that things in my life have failed to change after all this time. Yearly celebrations are like that, I guess. I tend to feel that way about my birthday, too.
I suppose I ought to be grateful. At least I have my family. I guess there’s that.
But one of these days, I’d like things to be different in a good way. I need to grow out of this abyss that I’m finding myself in. It’s been a good decade or so, and it’s not until now that I realize how miserably emotionally stunted I am. The trick, I suppose, is that I need to not be afraid. I can’t wallow in this pit of despair and worry myself to death about how the walls are closing in, and how the potentiality of my life grows less and less as I persist in my maladaptive behavior over time. Given enough time, patience, and maybe a little luck, this can be overcome. I just have to keep striving.
There is another part of me that is just exhausted. Hopefully, like I said, this is related to the time of year, and my seasonal affective disorder. Hopefully, as the days start to lengthen again, I’ll get better, I’ll feel this weight lift from me. Because right now, I stare at the long climb ahead, and I just want to give up. I feel like I’ve been striving desparately all my life, and I barely manage to keep my head above water.
So I was eating by myself at a restaurant the other day, and for some reason they were playing all these late ‘70’s/early ‘80’s songs, like “I Say A Little Prayer” by Dionne Warwick, and then “How Deep Is Your Love?” by the Bee Gees. The latter especially took me back to my early childhood. My dad used to own a blue AMC Concord and it had an 8-track tape player and I think he had tapes of Neil Sedaka, Kenny Rogers, and the Bee Gees.
This lead me to the notion of how impermanent magnetic tape is as a storage medium. All it would take to wipe it out is a moderate burst of electromagnetic activity, something that can be readily managed by solar flares, or an EMP weapon. And the more worrisome thing is that we still rely on electromagnetic storage—specifically, your hard drive.
Which led me to thinking about how I should backup my hard drive.
Which led me to thinking how quickly I might be able to get my Linux box with 8 hard drives up and running again.
Today, I had a discussion about how, in this country, we have allowed ourselves to be led by technology, and have failed to address the ethical quandries therein. I am referring specifically to medical technology. What were once thoroughly fatal diseases just one generation ago, are now survivable. It used to be that a heart attack was frequently an instant trip to the morgue, as was a stroke. All we could do was cross our fingers, give you a slug of morphine, and maybe an aspirin, and wish you luck. Now, people, for better or worse, are surviving seven, eight, nine heart attacks, are having multiple bypass grafts and stents, and still they don’t modify their diets or stop smoking, and, as the medical bills mount, with no relief in sight, sometimes with hospitals having to eat the cost, and as hospitals continue to go under, leaving the underserved with basically no health care, we have to ask ourselves, is it worth it to try to salvage those who are basically unsalvageable?
My thoughts then strayed to the NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit, where we manage to artificially sustain what used to be known as an aborted fetus. This is not without terrifying consequences. Many of these babies, weighing little more than a pound, suffer injury from oxygen-starvation, frequently ending up with severe brain injury, and sometimes intractable seizures, sometimes unable to eat without having a tube jammed into their bellies. And we can keep them alive for years, to the point where we transfer them from the pediatric service to the internal medicine service. There are children who continue to live by completely artificial means, where it is questionable whether they lead meaningful lives. And, seriously, I wonder if some of their lives are even as meaningful as my dog’s life, who at least can move around and exercise some volition. Do we really know how much these kids might be suffering?
And I stopped to think why the U.S. alone has failed to address the notion of rationing care and the concept of futility. Sure, there’s the old canard about how we’re a capitalistic society, and if you can pay, you should be able to get whatever you want, but clearly this is no longer the situation. It turns out that almost no one actually pays for their health care. How many of us could actually afford to pay what a CAT scan actually costs? Or even an ER visit? Hell, some of these miracle drugs we have are barely affordable (and many simply can’t.) Somehow we’ve found ourselves in this bizarre tangled weave, where the government has mandated that businesses provide health care insurance, when in fact it’s a misnomer to call it insurance. Getting ill is not a chance proposition, like your house catching fire or getting washed away in a flood. Getting ill is an inevitability and the only way you could possibly avoid it is if you died instantly instead.
And I stopped to think about the Puritanical origins of this country, that twisted form of so-called Christianity known as Calvinism. Hell, maybe it’s even a twisted form of Calvinism. There is this idea that your external appearances and circumstances are the end result of your virtuous or sinful acts. So if you were ugly or crippled, it must be because you deserved it. In this Puritanical world-view, nothing was left to chance, everything had a reason. (I suppose this presaged Deism.) And the reasons were reached by teleology.
So I kind of wonder if that’s not the real reason why the so-called religious are loathe to let people who cannot possibly lead any meaningful existence continue to exist. Because they have this kind of sick, self-righteousness where they imagine that you have to suffer and pay for your imagined sins. When clearly a one-pound baby couldn’t have possibly had any chance to commit a sin. When we know for a fact that many illnesses are caused by microscopic organisms and something that God has created as punishment.
Hell, this attitude of many Americans has been revealed by their reaction to AIDS, blaming it on homosexuality and sexual promiscuity, and by their reaction to other STDs, and their refusal to allow the use of protection for sexual intercourse.
Then, since it’s almost Christmas, I suppose it’s natural that my thoughts should stray to thinking about Jesus Christ. And for some reason, I started meditating on the commandments he was supposed to have given. Namely, (1) Love God (2) Love your neighbor. And I stopped to think about it. I think he actually left another one: Do not be afraid.
So I feel like the average American “Christian” is a big hypocrite, wishing ill-will on their fellow human beings, and mostly, by being afraid. The fact that they let terrorists affect them is a sign of their lack of faith in God. Didn’t he say “do not be afraid, I am with you”?
I read an intern’s blog post about a patient dying, and it sort of recentered me.
How do my trifling tragedies compare to the aching drama of death?
I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t like people dying. I intellectually recognize that death is a normal part of life, that death is not pathological, that death is not the enemy. (The enemy is suffering. There is no such thing as necessary suffering, only sometimes you can’t avoid the cold, hard facts of physical law. All suffering is tragic. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would disagree with me, though, especially on religious grounds.) But death still gives me the heebie-jeebies. It’s the whole mortality thing. You weep not for the dying, but for yourself, knowing that you’re going to die sometime too. At least that’s one way to interpret it.
There is also this: someone you love is now gone, and isn’t it natural to miss someone you love? Especially since were talking forever here (or at least for the rest of your life, if you believe in an afterlife.) To miss someone forever has got to rank up there in the top ten examples of extreme suffering.
Sometimes I recognize it’s a good thing that we are mortal, and that life is finite.
It’s also a good thing that the average human brain can’t really even imagine eternity. It is literally incomprehensible. Try it. Not just the word “infinity,” but the actual infiniteness (or apparent infiniteness) of the universe. Try to imagine the trillions upon trillions of stars. Even “trillion” is pretty much an abstract concept. No one really experiences the world directly at that magnitude of order. We can only work through abstractions of theory, using indirect tools. Sure, you and I are each populated by about a trillion cells, but could you actually physically count every single cell that you are comprised of? And we’re populated by even more bacteria than that. And then we get into metaphysical things, like the national debt. What does it mean to owe trillions of dollars?
So today started out well enough. It was, for the most part, a good day. And then I decided to read my evaluations, and I was dismayed.
There is a sad, pathetic part of me that always wants to be liked, that crumples at the sign of the least bit of criticism, no matter how warranted.
Another aspect of this patheticness is that, really, my only source of satisfaction is my work, and to be described as lacking in that makes me wonder what the hell I’m even doing with my life.
That lasted for no more than an hour though. I cheered up watching a Flash Animation of a cartoon character blowing his brains out. (Yes, I am a sick monkey.)
But what we are talking about here is resilience. Something that I severely lack. That one-hour episode of soul-searching and wallowing in self-loathing cost me.
I’d like to ascribe it to the depressingly short days. I hate going to work when it’s dark and then going home and it’s dark again. And this is pretty much as far south as I can get in California. I can’t believe I actually contemplated staying in Chicago for another four years. I’m not sure if I could’ve survived another winter, let alone four.
Clearly there is something wrong with me.
They say depression has cumulative effects. Your first episode of depression may be the most profound, the most disruptive, but what it does is predispose you to the next episode, and the more episodes you have, the easier and easier it is for you to get depressed.
The thing that kills me is that it’s stupid little things that pull the rug from out under me. I mean, come on, it’s an honest evaluation, and while I thought I was doing OK, I know I wasn’t doing stellar. Inside me is that kid who still needs to get all A’s on his tests, and I haven’t completely managed to snuff out that self-destructive tendency towards perfectionism.
What I need to learn is the concept of enough. I don’t have to be the best. I don’t have to be the brightest.
Or, in computer programming philosophy, ”Worse is better.” Something that works almost but not quite perfectly, but can be done relatively simply is far superior to something that is perfect, but requires a horrendously complex pathway to achieve. You will actually finish the former, and if my life thus far is any indication, the latter usually just turns out to be a pipe dream. Hell, even something that works 75% of the time, but fails the other 25% of the time, as long as that 25% isn’t completely fatal, is probably still superior to a method of perfection.
Some things, I’m a lot less forgiving. For example, my writing. Except for blogging (which is generally recognized to be throw-away material), I can no longer write. It’s not because of a lack of ideas, well, not because of a lack of vague ideas. I just can’t flesh out the details. And I don’t want to even try because I know it’s going to suck.
Maybe the problem is that I have some sort of kinesthetic learning disorder. I can seem to learn book knowledge, and in particular, useless facts quite easily, but I can’t seem to put together complex actions in a meaningful way. Things that require more than 2 steps will frequently screw me up.
Surely part of this is evidence of some subtle, undiagnosed executive dysfunction, some nearly imperceptible damage of sort to my frontal lobes. God only knows when this happened. Whether it was actual transient hypoxic injury from when I got my tonsils removed, or whether it’s just well-described sequelae of depression (the first part of the brain that falls to pieces is the frontal lobe), in practical terms, it just doesn’t matter.
The question is: can it be fixed? And if it’s like most medical problems, the answer is no. I just have to live with what is essentially brain failure. It’s like idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy. No one knows why some otherwise completely healthy people develop enlarged hearts, which eventually fail. The money is on the idea that it’s simply some subtle ischemic process that can’t be detected by coronary angiography, but I digress yet again.
Most people, when they think of brain failure, generally think about (1) CVAs (cerebrovascular accidents, or, colloquially, a stroke) or (2) dementia. The popular conception of dementia is probably focused mostly on memory problems. This is the symptom that frequently raises the concern for Alzheimer Disease, when in truth, there are a lot of other subtler abnormalities that begin to develop.
But I’ve got to say, not being able to sequence things in a logical order is pretty damn disabling. In retrospect, it’s so damn obvious. This is why I always end up procrastinating and fucking myself over. Sure, I can ascribe it my despairing perfectionism, or my chronic depression, but the symptom that I have the biggest problem with is making plans.
I think it must be sheer serendipity that has allowed me to get as far as I’ve gotten despite this particular handicap. The flipside is, however, this: Imagine what I might have accomplished with my life if I had a functioning frontal lobe? Then again, maybe my propensity for learning is simply a compensatory mechanism, maybe my wide range of interest is yet another manifestation of my primary problem.
Prioritizing has always been a big problem for me. It’s weird to ascribe this all to subtle brain damage, but I can’t figure it out any other way. I mean, I’m no dummy. I’ve figured out harder things than this. I’ve managed to obtain an advanced degree. (Luck? Perhaps. Better lucky than good, right?) But for some reason, order and sequence continue to elude me.
I don’t know what else to say. It’s once again midnight. I should just go to sleep.
Being a Person of Greater Mass™ myself, I understand the discrimination against fat people. (I think the epidemic of anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder among women is another thing entirely, and very bizarre and disturbing, but that is another tale in the telling. Seriously, though, there are way too many women who are either healthy or dangerously underweight who continue to claim that they’re too fat, and sometimes I have to repress the urge to send them all to the inpatient psych ward on the grounds that they are a danger to themselves.)
On the other hand, being a health care professional, I can’t deny the reality that being overweight or obese puts you at higher risk for deadly diseases such as diabetes mellitus type II and coronary artery disease. Too many studies show time and time again the definite association.
Part of the problem is the crap that is cheaply available in the U.S. Starting with the bizarre farm subsidies from the USDA where the government actually pays farmers not to grow food, the food pyramid is completely inverted in this country. Whereas in most of the world, red meat is sold at a premium and is not frequently indulged in, we eat entire cows for breakfast. It is the unfortunate truth that the poorer you are, the crappier you eat. In developing and undeveloped countries, if you aren’t starving or malnourished, you’re typically eating basic staple foods: unprocessed grains, vegetables, maybe fish or even chicken if you’re lucky. In the U.S., you’re eating hamburger meat, McDonalds or Burger King, and it’s still cheaper for me to buy a big slab of beef that to buy decent vegetables.
The big problem with obesity is that, genetically, many of us are cursed with metabolic efficiency. Meaning, some of us tend to store calories more efficiently than others. In prehistoric times, before the Agricultural Revolution, this made a lot of sense. You would eat meat rarely, but when it was available, it was important to eat up as much as you could and store it up as fat, and try to subsist on grains and roots and whatever fat you managed to buildup until the next major kill came along. The less efficient metabolizers would tend to die off during long, hard winters. But in the age of fast food and being able to order pizzas without leaving your computer, this will kill you.
The group of people where this seems to be the most evident are the Pima Indians in the American Southwest. Straddling the U.S-Mexican border, there have been studies that have demonstrated that, despite sharing the same genetic predisposition to obesity and diabetes mellitus type II, Pima Indians in the U.S. are fatter than Pima Indians in Mexico and it seems that the more sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy diet available in the U.S. is what literally kills them.
Efficient metabolizers. What can I say.
Now the discrimination thing sucks, because it’s about the disease, not the person. (There’s that damned Calvinistic thing going on again—this disturbing propensity for teleology and relating it to spiritual salvation that is what is completely wrong and un-Christian about religious fundamentalists in the U.S.—blaming the victim for their suffering, essentially, but I digress.) But the thing that’s different about obesity than, say, being dark-skinned, or being female, is that you can actually change the fact that you’re obese. (OK, sure, you can change the color of your skin or switch genders, but those are honestly quite extraordinary cases.) Sure, it’s not easy to lose weight, exercise, and eat healthy—far from it, and who am I to talk—but, come on, there are people out there who have given up smoking crack, people out there who have given up shooting heroin, hell, people who have given up cigarettes (nicotine being the most addictive substance of all these drugs.) It can be done. You just can’t have an all-or-nothing attitude. There’s no need to lose 30 pounds in a week (unless we’re talking about morbid obesity here, but honestly, that’s not that common.) Seriously, just losing 5 lbs in a year decreases your risk for stroke and heart attack by an impressive margin.
Interestingly, this comes on the heels of reading about why motivation by external rewards does not work. And negative feedback—motivation by threatening consequences—certainly does not work. The example of how the threat of death rarely motivates patients with terrible cardiac disease to change their lifestyles is invoked as well. It is impossible to motivate someone. Motivation comes from within, end of story.
So for all those fucked-up people who think that fat people need to be told repeatedly to lose weight and who deserve dirty looks for being large, give it up. Live and let live. Or mind your own damn business. You’re just lucky you have a wasteful metabolism that manages to burn up all that extra fat and sugar you’re eating, but, guess what, unless you actually eat healthy all that shit will still clog up your arteries, and you can still get Mad Cow disease, so there.
Here it is, 1:30 am, and I need to wake up in 4 hours.
The conclusion I came to tonight is that I have to learn to allow change to happen—that’s the only way I will progress and grow as a human being. This means not being afraid.
I’ve known this for a long time, and yet I still can’t seem to internalize it: the only sure thing about luck is that it will change.
I think I might actually get somewhere if I can stop believing that I am hopelessly doomed.
(In reference to how seriously fucked-up I am.)
I’m randomly surfing the web instead of doing what I’m supposed to be doing, and here I find The Hot Librarian which is, from what I have read thus far, a highly entertaining blog. It is amusing (in a car crash sort of way, or more likely, in a getting caught masturbating sort of way) to find her post about why a lot of guys find themselves in the Friend Zone™… which is that most women aren’t rude enough to tell you why you suck to your face.
Now I’ve thought this for quite some time now, although mostly it’s because I have major depression and also some serious self-esteem issues. When I’m in my saner moments, I try to console myself with the thought that there’s some other reason for why I always get rejected other than being fat, ugly, boring, and probably creepy. (That is the key turn-off right there—creepiness.)
On one hand, it’s nice to know that I’m not always delusional about being despised by women. On the other hand, well, I might as well give up, shave my head bald, and take a knife to my testicles. Tibet here I come. I’ve always wanted to be a Shaolin monk.
But it is interesting how the Hot Librarian alludes to the core matter: why some guys get these weird complexes that frequently lead to a lot of misogyny—by transferring blame from his own shortcomings to the women who despise him, a misogynist can feel justified in his mistreatment of women. And so the cycle of violence continues.
Now I’m not trying to blame the victim here—regardless of why misogyny develops, it doesn’t matter if you start violently beating up on people. That’s just plain wrong. But I can see why there is a lot of political and social tension locked up in this issue.
As a guy, you hear it all the time, really. I’ve been the guy-friend for so long now, I assume the role quite naturally and rather comfortably. I’ve given up on the keening pining, the lost nights of sleep, the missed meals, the sense of having your heart squished and mangled. It may be entertaining in the beginning, but in the end, it can be exhausting, so I tend to skip that part and meander straight into the Friend Zone™.
But even the level-headed, realistic women I’ve met will let it slip once or twice. They want a guy who is hot, and who knows how to fuck. And I suppose there is a lot of cultural baggage attached to just proclaiming that honestly. Most women are brainwashed into thinking that it’s not right for them to be expressing such things. But unfortunately, this socially-programmed dishonesty ends up sending a lot of mixed messages to guys who are more naiéve. (Yes, yes, I admit it. It is the guy’s fault for being such a putz and not knowing enough to untangle the social cues.)
There is a part of me that longs to be liked for who I am now. It grates that I will probably have to change my outward appearances in order to be liked. I mean, such is life and nature. Our most long range sense is, after all, vision, so it’s natural that outward appearances account for so much. And I guess it is true—some guys may think that while their outward appearance may be average or worse, there are a lot of good things about him underneath it all. If you take the Hot Librarian’s judgement at face-value, it seems that most guys who think this are wrong about that.
While looks can be deceiving, and all that is gold does not glitter, and all that, there is something to the idea that the outside tends to reflect the inside. You can tell by a person’s face if they are generally healthy or if they spend a lot of time smoking and boozing and even sleeping around. Sometimes just by looking in their eyes. And simply put, obesity suggests sloth. (Yes, yes, I know, there are evil things out there like McDonald’s and candy bars and potato chips, but I doubt someone is actually putting a gun to your head to eat these things. I shouldn’t be one to talk given my own lack of dietary vigilance, but, no matter how addicted you are to something, there will always be an element of personal responsibility. Even for the smack addict, despite the fact that heroin is one of the most addictive substances known to humanity—bested by probably only nicotine and glucose.) So I understand that you can’t just neglect your outward appearances.
But nevertheless, I think there would be fewer misunderstandings if women threw off the Puritanical chains of sexual circumspection. I mean, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like a good orgasm. It’s your body, it’s your life. And it’ll get us creepy guys off your case, because we know when we don’t have what it takes in that department.
Yeah, most guys may think they can be romantic, they may delude themselves into thinking they’re sensitive and caring, that they’re spontaneous and fun. But most sane men know deep down inside that they may not look so hot. They will never admit it, certainly never to each other, but they keep it buried deep in their heart of hearts, trying to pretend it doesn’t matter when we all know it does.
I think the reason this happens is interesting (and rather convoluted.) Guys can’t use looking good as currency among other guys, unless they happen to be gay. No heterosexual male, no matter how non-homophobic he is, is going to tell another guy that he looks good, or that he doesn’t. This is in stark contrast to how women are able to treat each other’s appearances. Women will honestly (and sometimes quite brutally) critique each other’s looks, will give each other advice, will tell each other what makes them cute, what makes them look fat. Straight men are programmed never to do this sort of thing, even if some of us may be thinking it in the back of our heads. You know, like when you’re listening to your best bud describe this woman he met, and how he can’t get her to go out with her, and he doesn’t understand it, what’s he doing wrong, and in the back of your head, you’re thinking, it’s ‘cuz your a fat and ugly slob, bro, but you can’t say anything like that because guys are not allowed to comment on other guy’s looks.
Now onto another topic: you know how they say that when you’ve hit bottom, at least you can’t go any lower? Well, I don’t think that’s true. Or, more likely, most people have no idea how deep that abyss actually goes. It’s the kind of hole that you can fall in and be dead before you hit the bottom because of the G-force. I’ve learned this in the past seven years: they can always hurt you more. So it kind of worries me that I’ve stopped feeling a damned thing these days. Oh, there have been rejections, but they are always expected, I always know it’s my fault, that I did something wrong, or I didn’t do something right, or I’m just an inadequate human being, and if I were a more optimistic person, I’d do something about it. I’d realize that I could change and be a better person.
Call it laziness, call it depression. I just can’t do it. I’m stuck.
There’s a truth to this whole process of life that I’ve known for quite some time now. It applies to individuals as well as to whole species and is in fact integral to evolution. The maxim for all life is this: Change or die. And since I can’t seem to change, there really is only one alternative.
Then again, it’s really hard to will yourself to die. You’ve got to be really suffering to hope for that. I think I’ve suffered some, but probably not quite that much, because I’ve never actually tried to kill myself. So I can’t imagine the magnitude of pain one must be experiencing in order to attempt suicide. (But I guess if the bottom is almost infinitely far, you can always fall pretty far no matter how high you climb up…) These days it’s more like this low-grade wearying misery, this grey, cold mist that clings to me as I try to muddle through each day. I can never seem to finish anything, and it’s all I can do to keep the most important things from falling to the wayside.
I feel like I’m just barely competent to perform my duties at work, and I frequently let my financial and personal matters spiral out of control.
Clearly this is not healthy.
So—to tie this all together—I guess I do think I’m a nice guy—who can’t get laid—but clearly I’ve got serious issues I need to tackle, things that I’ve been struggling with for several years now, making little-to-no headway, and that alone makes me pretty toxic to sane women, nevermind my outward appearances. Still, I suppose, like most things, it’s all about small victories. Like someone once told me, the medications don’t really make you happy, they just make you stop wanting to kill yourself, and I suppose there is some respite in this. I can at least dissect these issues one by one, and examine them dispassionately without growing hysterically disgusted with myself. This is who I am, and as horribly flawed as that is, if I can’t learn to love myself unconditionally, then how the hell do expect anyone else to love me?
It may be fun for a little while, but then you realize you’re only fucking yourself.
It’s now 11pm on a Saturday night (A Cure song pops into my head, as well as the noise of a dripping faucet. Drip, drip, drip, drip.
Instead of cleaning up my apartment—which looks like something literally exploded inside it—I’m screwing around my blog and uploading pictures to Flickr. And trolling Consumating, Myspace, and Friendster. And refreshing my RSS feeds.
There is something clearly wrong with me.
Fix it, damn it!
So can you really fall in love with someone’s profile on a social network? Now, don’t get me wrong, I have actually made very brief acquaintance with said person, but I think I may have said no more than two or three words to her, if even that.
Never mind. I’m clearly going insane. She is cute, though. Whatever.
Someone put me out of my misery.
Just make sure you actually get the sedation and the potassium chloride in my vein, so I don’t end up like this guy.
If you’ve been reading this blog for long enough, it’s probably clear to you that there’s something not right with my brain.
Seriously, though. Besides my propensity for becoming depressed even when there aren’t any precipitating factors, I’ve been having serious memory and concentration problems. I can’t seem to keep things in order lately.
Do you think it’s (1) mad cow/Creutzfield-Jacob Disease (2) major depressive disorder (3) drug-induced delirium (4) transient hypoxia while I was under anesthesia when I had my tonsillectomy as a kid?
Probably a combination of all the above. (I don’t know why I don’t stop eating beef despite the fact that every time I do, I increase the probability that I’m going to end up demented some day.)
OK, I lie, I think there are precipitating circumstances that are kind of getting me down. I suppose it’s the season. Everytime the planet rounds the bend during the Winter Solstice, my thoughts are inexorably drawn towards the notion of Family and Home. I mean, I am planning to go home the weekend of Christmas to see my mom, my dad, and my brother, and my sister will be back on this Coast from school.
But then I keep thinking about the Christmases to come. Where am I gonna be 5 years, 10 years from now? (When did I start thinking so far ahead?)
And so I went to a Christmas party the other day and it hit me how so many people my age have pretty much completely figured out their lives. Career all set. Married. Even some with kids.
And I suppose it’s not the domesticity of it all that I’m longing for. It’s just this absurdly idealistic, romantic notion that someone might want to take this journey through life with me. I won’t have to spend so many hours all alone locked inside the chamber of horrors that is my skull, my brain, my consciousness. I would feel connected, however tenuously, to the rest of humanity, and I wouldn’t brood over this sense of desolate alienation that haunts me from time to time whenever I stop moving, and stop thinking about the arcane, abstract, ethereal concepts that consume me at work, or that manage to grab my attention as I geek out in front of the computer.
Life outside of work? Hobbies besides blogging and reading?
Sad.
The problem is mostly one of frustration. I lack the discipline and the ability to concentrate which would get me from point A to point B. When I was just a little younger, there were lots of things I would’ve given my life for, would’ve died trying to achieve. There are people whom I would lay my life on the line for, uncaring of my own annihilation.
I just don’t think anything or anyone could ever capture my passion in this same way again.
I don’t know why I’m so certain that this will never happen.
OK, I guess I’m catastrophizing again. Catastrophizing is one of those highly maladaptive behaviors that depressives often adopt. Instead of thinking that I’ve lost this game, but next time I could win, I just assume that because I lost, I must be a loser. Instead of thinking that she didn’t want to go out with me because the timing wasn’t right, there were other circumstances in her life, and my lifestyle isn’t conducive to having a relationship anyway, I just assume that she rejected me because I’m fat and ugly and I suck as a human being. Instead of thinking that this is just a single setback, and I should be able to regain my groove in no time, I assume that this is the end of the world, my life is a complete failure, and maybe I should just kill myself.
Clearly, this is no good.
I’m trying though. I’m trying to catch my malformed suppositions about myself and correct them. There was once a time that I would’ve thought that looking at silver lining was just sophistry and deluded rationalization, but I recognize the falsity inherent in catastrophizing. I mean, how the hell do I know how it’s going to turn out? Highly improbable things have already happened in my life, so what’s to stop other small miracles from occurring?
The thing that I’ve been manuevering around, the thing that I haven’t been able to break through, is the idea of asking a girl out on a date. The longer I fail to do it, the more unlikely it will be that I ever will.
Part of the problem is my strategy, or, more accurately, my lack thereof. I almost naturally gravitate to the Friend Zone™, lost in its murky depths, never to be heard from again.
I have just enough vanity to actually accept the fact that women may very well find me interesting—much like how people can’t help but fail to gawk at car crashes—but no, seriously, I mean, I think I can be interesting and funny, witty and entertaining. I can (most of the time) find something to talk about for at least a few hours. And I’m not averse to exploring and trying new things. I mean, I can be a good time. Sometimes. (My faith in myself starts to waver as I examine these statements, but no…)
It isn’t so much that I fall apart when I’m in the presence of a woman whom I’m very attracted to (although there is a tendency for that to happen) but the fact that I can’t seem to change my own trajectory. I mean, sure, there’s the whole chemistry thing, and the fact that she would need to be physically attracted to me on some level at least, but even ignoring those factors, I can’t seem to make my intentions clear from the outset.
Let’s be perfectly honest here. Let me be frank. I’m a chickenshit.
So until I somehow break through this neuroticism, or until I find that one person whom I would sacrifice everything in my life for, who would light such a burning passion inside my soul that to deny her would be like trying to stop my heart from beating, I’m going to find myself in these depressing non-situations, hanging out but not dating, platonic friends, nothing more, listening to her talk about the guy she’s dating now, and about how great he is, all the while further eroding my self-confidence and my will to live.
This is the great gigantic wall that I’ve been staring at for the past several years. My mind has been scrambling trying to find a solution to this conundrum, trying to figure out how the hell I’m going to get past this. It’s all amounted to nothing thus far. Sometimes I get angry enough with myself that I try to do something about it, but it seems that my adrenaline wears off too soon, leaving me in a cold sweat, but bone-weary and spent. Most of the time I look at this monolithic Wall and throw my hands up in despair, turn around, go home, and go back to sleep.
Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.
But seriously though, everything else in my life is starting to feel like a distraction from this problem. I mean, sure, I’m fulfilled at work, I like what I’m doing, but I don’t know what my next destination is. Like I said, there isn’t anything that stokes the fires of my passion anymore. There are things that look like fun for a few hours, there are things that can be comforting the way going home can be comforting, but you know that that isn’t where you belong. It’s just a respite, and then it’s back to the world at large, dealing with continual confusion and loneliness. Like I said, distraction. Samsara.
At least, that’s my life.
So yeah, I envy all those folks who have everything figured out. Sure, they have their own struggles, it’s not like they’re home free, but there’s just this gaping emptiness sitting in my soul, and no matter what else I do to try and fill it, nothing ever changes.
I just need to stop. Hahaha. That’s what I’ve been telling myself for God knows how many years now, and I’m still here, the very same place, stuck in front of this great impassable wall, and here I am with the emotional maturity of a 17 year old.
Well, whatever. Either I figure it out, or I don’t.
Greg of Futility Closet writes about sentences composed entirely of one word. I think these are rather arcane, though. My favorite is Tagalog, where an entire conversation can be composed entirely by one syllable, and it’s something that has more common usage:
1: Bababa ba? 2: Bababa.
(Translated: 1: Is it going down? 2: It’s going down. — in reference to an elevator)
In fact, an entire article on Wikipedia is dedicated to homophonous phrases.
There is a good kind of tired, and a bad kind. The good kind lets you know that you had a good, full day, that you were productive, that you made fairly decent choices. The bad kind is like getting kicked in the face after you’ve already been shot a few hundred times. (I am thinking of the Jersey tollbooth scene in “The Godfather” with James Caan.)
Tonight I have the good kind, which is in itself rare. I guess I’ve snapped out of my funk a little, but everytime I emerge from this shadow, I’m afraid that another wave will overtake me.
Why is the worst always the first thing that comes to mind?
But that’s the depression talking. I can’t help but wonder what my life would be like if I didn’t have to fight with this madness, but you know what they say, there’s a fine line between genius and insanity, and lately I’ve been spending way too much time on the latter and not enough in the former.
Is it too much to ask? Each day that I live life unoccluded, experiencing moments with all my senses. No darkness weighing me down, no sorrow holding me back. What would life be like?
Do I have a chance?
Hope. It’s the thing that’s gotten me this far.
Kind’ve lost in transit right now, not sure what’s up, what’s down, what’s left, what’s right. Just going with the flow, fast and free on one hand, slow and languid on another, the eddies and the swirls drag me to the bottom of the deeps.
It’s too much, and yet it all keeps spinning.
Perfectly under control
| Your Birthdate: September 13 |
 However, you are able to love many types of people. You can bring out the best in almost anyone. Love surprises you often. You never know when or where you’ll find it next. Number of True Loves You’ll Have: 1 Number of Times You’ll Have Your Heart Broken: 5 You are most compatible with people born on the 4th, 13th, 22nd, and 31st of the month. |
How true. However, it seems that 5 is a gross underestimation.
Now I’m a big fan of rewriting and reinterpreting mythology and fantasy. My initial ambition as a college freshman was to take Southeast Asian myths and rewrite them in the vein of Western European myths. I’m totally into China Miéville’s subversion of the fantasy genre and using it to explore the sometimes faulty assumptions we make about capitalism and Western Civ. I really liked Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead, which is a version of Beowulf told from a quite-unexpected viewpoint, and even liked the movie that it became, “The 13th Warrior”. I sometimes think that this is what underlay my childhood obsesssion with Disney animated films. I grew up listening ad nauseam to the soundtrack of Disney’s “Robin Hood” where Robin Hood and Maid Marian are foxes, Little John is a bear, and King John and his brother Richard the Lion-Hearted are literally lions. (“Oo de lally!”) I was enchanted by “The Little Mermaid” and especially “Beauty and the Beast.” One of my more recent ambitions is to write a novel based on Middle Earth after it has been completely industrialized and paved over, dealing with issues of urban sprawl, pollution, and global capitalism. As for a more small scale project, I’m trying to write a story that is really “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “The Hobbit” mashed-up together and set on a nanotechnology-permeated, post-Roman Empire-like society.
But for some reason, when it first came out, I never really got into Gregory Maguire’s book Wicked, nor his various re-writings of Western European classic fairy tales. It isn’t until now that I recognize Wicked for what it is: the story of the Wicked Witch of the West recast as a revolutionary, demonized by the Powers That Be. Kind of like Che Guevarra, except a woman, green-skinned, and in a mythical universe.
I kind of want to watch the musical now.
If only I could go to London and watch Idina Menzel in the starring role.
And this song:
So if you care to find me
Look to the western sky!
As someone told me lately:
“Ev’ryone deserves the chance to fly!”
And if I’m flying solo
At least I’m flying free
To those who’d ground me
Take a message back from me
Tell them how I am
Defying gravity
I’m flying high
Defying gravity
And soon I’ll match them in renown
—”Defying Gravity” from “Wicked”
becomes a shadow dancing on the line thread upon thread twirled into the mist beneath the shattered steel the dull gray concrete I walk warily banner unfurled sword unsheathëd dawn creeps nigh
becomes a shadow twisting and twinning come split and asunder blades clash like lightning forks come rushing thunder blast dim echoes the riders come
banner waving in the wind night fading away into the west like sleek velvet like blood red wine sword held high star on brow we dance the unending battle
come lightly, come heavily there is darkness and then light charging onward creeping backward spinning sideways the sun peeks above the horizon
rays of light, laughter and the shadows melt away in the morning there I walk the field of battle all empty weapons cast aside
in the light, the shadows and fog the grey mist of dawn burns away like paper kindling awakening from dreaming and forever wondering
Apparently not tonight.
Damn insomnia.
I don’t know anymore. There are a million things that I need to say in a particular order, and it’s all coming apart at the seams. There’s just too much information out there, it’s like looking for a way to pick up one molecule of water at a time out of the ocean, making sure to pick each one up in a particular sequence.
It is, surely, madness.
And here I am wrapped up tight in indecision, wrapped up tight in irresponsibility. I want nothing, and so nothing ever comes true.
Is there a song tied around this loop-de-loop, this neverending ouroborus eating its tail. Waves upon waves, the way the light reflects off the waves, the waves of protoplasm and electricity coursing through my fevered mine.
Hanging on tangentially to this sense that something has got to make sense, even as I ramble and blather, recognizing that it is only just quite, just barely. I’m groping at something in the dark, trying to feel for a thread of hope, a thread of meaning, without crushing the life out of it.
Damn it.
Would I undertake such a journey? To the outer reaches of humankind’s experience, to the brink, a thousand light years through vacuum, the tenuous spaces in between, only to come within reach and fail? (Doesn’t all life eventually fail, in the end?)
What would keep me from the madness, outside of the gravitational grip of my mother star? How would I stay coherent? How would I maintain even a semblance of sanity?
The biggest problem of all is that I stopped believing, and I don’t know if it’s possible to start again.
The ludicrousness of some of the things I had hoped—sometimes I just can’t help but laugh. Who wishes for these things that can’t possibly ever come true? There is clearly something wrong with me. As if that weren’t blindingly obvious.
(I’ve always been a fan of the subjunctive mood. I can’t wait until proofreaders start marking me wrong.)
(The track that is currently playing is “The Perfect Kiss” by New Order)
On the way to work this morning, at the junction of the I-5 and I-8, I gazed at the orange-ringed sky and suddenly thought to myself, “I’m gonna die.”
Not that I was in any imminent danger. It was just the juxtaposition of the enduring beauty of sunrise with the fleeting pleasure of driving too fast, somehow reminding me of my mortality.
I have just watched “The Fountain”, which is a work of vision by Daron Aronofsky (whose resume includes “Requiem for a Dream” and “Pi”) The layers of allusion and symbolism presented in this film have really worked their way into my brain, and have gotten the wheels spinning round and round. I think it would make an English major cream themself, and would certainly warrant at least a scholarly paper or two. And it isn’t the facile symbolism and self-conscious cleverness that M. Night Shymalan tends to exhibit in his work. This is the real deal, tapping in on the literature and philosophy of Western Civ, with a few bits of Mayan ethnography appropriated here and there.
The major theme that resonated with me was the need to accept the finiteness of human life, something that I am forced to confront every so often at work.
Despite what I do, and despite everything I try to avert the final end, there is a stark realization that Death is not a disease. It is a process in of itself, a necessary stage of Life. Without Death, there is no life, not because of some imagined law of conservation of symmetry, but because it is the way the multitude of processes that govern life itself work. Ultimately, we are doomed by the Laws of Thermodynamics, which governs the very molecules, the very electrons and photons, that make up the ultracomplex, multilayered process we call life.
There are probably at least a hundred thousand different chemical processes that occur in our bodies, some as simple as combustion—turning sugar and oxygen into water and carbon dioxide—and some as impenetrably complex as the assembly of intricate lattices and scaffolds that allow the replication of DNA and ultimately the generation of new cells. All chemical processes are beholden to the laws of physics, down to the quantum level, and ultimately, the laws of physics obey the principles of entropy. Entropy ever increases. Because of this, all things, all processes must come to an end.
There is a scene in the movie where Hugh Jackman’s character Thomas Creo says to himself, not grimly, but almost joyfully, “I’m gonna die,” and while this statement is simple and obvious, it also felt like an epiphany. It was enlightenment.
I’ve begun to believe that if we all began to understand, I mean truly understand, that we were all going to die someday, and that if we started living our lives without thought of a possible afterlife, maybe there wouldn’t be so many atrocities committed against each other, maybe we would actually start trying to coexist instead of trying to kill each other. Naiéve and idealistic, I know.
But at the same time, I can’t help ponder how people have warped the prospect of the afterlife into a cudgel to beat the unsuspecting into fearful obedience. Some people wield religion like a weapon, used to persecute and oppress others. (I suddenly think of John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards, not to mention the buffoons and ignoramuses who pass as ministers on the television these days. Pat Robertson, you twisted fuck, I’m calling you out.)
It’s a treadworn cliché: Life is precious. But people don’t seem to give a crap. Until it’s their life at stake.
While Death can often times be a messy, brutal process (although no more bloody or wrought than being born in the first place, and having witnessed both many times, maybe death is less chaotic than birth), I have perhaps had the fortunate opportunity to see people die with dignity. In peace. Not kicking and screaming, not writhing in agony or twisting in agitation, but with a sense of calm sanctity. We will send you off to the unknown, like the maidens who accompany King Arthur to Avalon. We are with you in those last moments, in that final silence when the mind knows no more, and the heart beats ever more slowly.
I suppose there is that. When you die at the hospital, at least you don’t die alone. I’d rather not die by myself sprawled face down on my bathroom floor, but I guess I don’t necessarily fear that outcome. But it would be nice to have someone at my bedside making sure I didn’t go out anxious or in pain.
One of my patients died today. It wasn’t unexpected. We knew early on that his prognosis was pretty poor. Maybe we didn’t think it would happen as fast as it did, although it still took several hours. I’m still learning how to comfort the still-living, though. That, too, is part of the process of Death. Maybe there isn’t always comfort to give. But we try.
Intellectually, I understand the necessity of Death. I understand that it isn’t pathological in of itself. But even at this late date, I still get the willies. Maybe less so than before.
But I still wish it didn’t have to happen. Even when what life there is is full of suffering and pain without the redemption of joy and triumph. But I suppose, mercifully in those circumstances, Death does happen.
I’m still twirling the idea over and over in my mind.
There are few ties that bind me to this mortal coil. While I know there are a handful of people out there who love me and would care if I keeled over, or if I offed myself, I can’t help but feel that I’m missing something. Other than family and long-time friends, other than a sense of duty to my profession, and perhaps a pathological sense of curiosity that I haven’t yet managed to suppress, there’s a sense of emptiness. I’ve tried hedonism, I’ve tried distraction, I’ve even tried asceticism, and this hole still lingers. Perhaps nowhere near as painfully as before, but it’s still there. There is a void that my fragile paper-thin life seems to collapse upon.
I’ve given up on hoping that someone would magically fill this void for me. I know, deep down inside, that it’s up to me. If I never find the kind of love that I think is what I need, than I’ll have to do with the love that I do have. There are my parents. My brother and my sister. And hopefully some day, my nieces and my nephews. There are my dear friends, and a few new friends along the way. It’s something with which to fill the void with, even if only partially.
*sigh*
We don’t always get what we want, and perhaps fulfillment is ultimately a utopian fantasy of youth, something that I will perhaps gladly shed some day. Still, even still, it would be nice to have someone at my side on this long, slow journey to that finish line that I know awaits me somewhere down the road.
But like I said, I guess there’s always the hospital. At least I needn’t die alone.