I stopped to think about all the people I know who are married or are in fulfilling romantic relationships, and I realize that I’m jealous, but what are you gonna do. If it’s not going to happen, it’s not going to happen, and I’ll slog on by my lonesome, trying to keep fighting the good fight.
The thing that I’ve been mulling over is the fact that there have been so many Septembers in the past where I’ve been ever hopeful, with the intent of making a change in my life. And while I know it would be hard to convince many of you, there have been times that I’ve actually acted upon this impulse, only to be rebuffed, or even worse, only to be faced with puzzled indifference.
So I face this particular September with just a little trepidation, fearing that the buoyancy I feel in my spirit is the exact same misguided feeling: thinking that things are going to change, only to be faced with exactly the same disappointment and sense of failure as last time.
And I recognize, perhaps for the first time in my life, that this is the exact feeling that I need to overcome, this sense of déjà vu, this sense of fatalistic futility, that it’s all going to turn to shit anyway in the end.
I don’t know that. Maybe it could, and maybe it won’t.
Who knows?
So what I’m trying to cultivate here is this sense of possibility. No matter what happens, bad or good, things will be different, if only for the simple fact that I am a different person (I am channeling Heraclitus right now, I suppose, you know, that saying about the river and the man and all that.)
And I think I know exactly what’s bothering me: I’m afraid of facing the unknown. It’s easier to face guaranteed failure than unpredictable success, I guess.
What I have to tell myself is this: tomorrow is not only going to be different, it will be better than today. Because tomorrow will be the sum of today plus even more new experiences, and maybe those experiences will be shitty, but I guess it all comes down to Nietschze after all. As long as it doesn’t kill me, I can learn from it, and if I can learn from it, then I’ll be a better person for it. Or some rationale like that.
Bah. This is just sophistry, endless, unexhaustable sophistry, and too much mental masturbation.
Tomorrow will come whether I want it to or not, whether I’m ready for it or not. I say: bring it on.
The idea was that I was actually going to sleep early today, but somehow that failed to happen. I’m going to try yet again to wake up in time for work, although I’m not all that hopeful.
I find myself driving aimlessly around San Diego at around this time of night a lot. Well, maybe not aimlessly. I did have errands to run, such as dropping off rent at my landlord’s, and buying a t-shirt from Old Navy. And in the end, I ended up eating, even though I kept telling myself that I shouldn’t eat so late, and that I should just go to sleep.
There are just a million, billion ideas flitting through my head, and I can’t help worry about my sanity.
And I thought once again about the imaginary landscape that fills my head: a world that is like and yet unlike the world I’ve traversed thus far. I had yet another dream about it last night, except this time it was filled with existential dread. I kept thinking my dad was having CHF or another MI, and I guess that’s what I’m worried about these days. I just don’t want to get a phone call out of nowhere telling me that something is wrong, and I think that’s what I fear the most about tomorrows.
Accepting the inevitable is a lot harder than I thought it would be.
In any case, I figure I ought to write a story about this world I keep on dreaming about. It is, once again, September, and it always brings me back to The Lord of the Rings which starts off in September. Somehow, if I traced the convoluted tracks in my mind, I would find that my impetus to write is linked to this magnificent piece of fantasy, and I can honestly say that I’ve been working on my own Tolkien clone since I was 12 years old.
But, other than scraps of so-called “poetry” and maybe these demented confessions that I spew upon the ether, my productivity is about as close to nil as you can get and still possibly call yourself a writer.
And these days, I wonder “what if” a lot.
I also dreamt of M the other day, whom I seemingly have lost touch with, and dreaming of her made me think of Chicago. And I kind of wonder if this weird kind of nostalgia I’m feeling is simply the fact that that is a part of my life that is done with, already a relic of my younger days. I wistfully remember all those snow-filled days, those crisp winter mornings, and I can’t help but think how ludicrous it seems that I would actually want to experience them again.
And still, still, I wonder “what if” a lot.
Then there is a particular September I recall some six years past, and I guess it really didn’t make a damn difference, I don’t know why I perseverate about impossibilities.
The problem with my memories of love, or of what I think is love, or of what I misunderstand as love, is that almost all of it is mostly in my mind. I am the master of the unrequited, I guess. And the small fraction that wasn’t unrequited ended in such glorious disaster that I really don’t have anything positive to say about the whole experience.
I recently made up a playlist chronicling the summer, with songs that remind me of my recurring journeys up and down the coast of Southern California, and two of the songs—“Looks Just Like the Sun” by Broken Social Scene and “Little Thoughts” by Bloc Party—are from my cousin’s wedding slideshow, and I just think of his wife J talking about the evolution of her relationship with my cousin, and I can’t help but wonder, is there any chance in heaven or hell that someone might feel even a fraction of that for me?
Not the aching drama of unrequited love that I’m all too familiar. Not the melodramatic and almost perverse intensity with which N pursued me after it all fell apart, leaving me always wonder, “What the hell?!” I’m talking about that purity of spirit that I witnessed between R and J, that wonderful clarity of having found that person who is willing to journey through life with you.
Now, I recognize that I haven’t been the best friend to anyone lately. I’ve been too wrapped in my own world, in work, and in my mental instability. But as the summer begins to fade, marked with the passing of the Labor Day Weekend, I can’t help but feel like I’ve been abandoned.
And yes, this is an overly melodramatic thing to say, but I can’t help it, I’ve got to ask: would anyone give a flying fuck if I died tomorrow? I figure there will be the generalized sadness that people feel when someone they know bites the big one, and I’ll have a decently attended funeral, but will anyone miss me? I figure, not for long. Whose life do I touch these days? What difference am I making in this universe? Bah.
I don’t know why I’m feeling sorry for myself these days. I just got done resolving to grab the future by the balls, and take each day as they come, and here I am moping.
And still my universe contracts, and maybe I’m just doomed, and damned, to spend my life alone, and not just alone in terms of never having a romantic relationship, but alone, as in there is no-one around who cares anyway, and this is just fucking dispiriting.
I would like to change, somehow. I wish I knew what it would take for me to become a well-adjusted human being. Times like this it just seems like this awful impossibility, and maybe I just have to accept the fact that I’m only quasi-human—human in form and function, but likely subhuman when it comes to relationships and emotion.
There is something seriously wrong with me, and I wish there was a way to fix it, but I fear there isn’t, so I’m just going to spend the rest of my life bungling around like an idiot.
Feh.
I had thought that I’d experienced the worst that life has to offer, in terms of loneliness and despair, but at this very moment, I have to honestly say, I don’t recall ever feeling this calamitously shitty.