Dude. I have been thinking way too much lately. I mean I usually think a lot to begin with but lately the thinking has taken a turn for the worse and it's been really overwhelming. I don't even know the relevance of half the stuff that goes through my mind, but it must be pretty damn important if my thoughts feel the need to invade the otherwise relatively mundane nature of my every day life. I don't know. It just bothers me. I even have a hard time sleeping now. This may be partially due to the insanely hot weather going on right now (am I the only one who wishes it would RAIN every once in awhile? I mean, is that really too much to ask of Los Angeles?) but more of it is due to the annoyingly cyclical nature of my head, I think. See. I'm doing it again. Thinking. Ahhh. It's a vicious cycle. I can't stop thinking any more than I can stop breathing. Maybe I'm going crazy. No. That can't be it. I wouldn't admit to being crazy if I really were crazy. Insanity only happens when people stop trying to understand you. I haven't stopped trying to understand myself yet (case in point, I'm writing all this down in the hopes of some newfound clarity arising in the mist of the doom and gloom) and I'm a person so therefore I am not insane. Yeah that totally makes sense. I'm starting to understand myself already...
I suppose I'm also just really, really tired. On a scale of 1-10 (1 being disgustingly alert and 10 being on the verge of crashing) I am probably a 7 or an 8. I'm probably the most tired I've been in awhile. I think it's just because I had so much class today (along with the lack of good sleep) and that's really a drain on your mental system, attending class after class after class. Reminds me a little too much of high school, to tell you the truth. Okay right when I thought "high school" all these dark images started floating around in my head, no joke. I should move onto something else. Oh, and if my thoughts seem seriously disorganized right now that's because they are. I'm just going to be honest about that.
So. English class. Wow. Having classes as great as this really makes me sad because I know it's all going to end someday. And that someday is not really "someday," as in the general sense of the word, but someday as in someday soon. Soon I'll be out of college and treading upon the well-worn paths of the real world and all this talk about jobs and taxes and insurance and family is really grating on my nerves. I.e. freaking me out. What if I don't want any of that? What if I want to be stuck here forever? I don't mind growing old, I honestly don't. Wrinkles and sagging body parts and hapless diseases don't scare me. Why? Because it happens to everybody. So why freak out about it? You're not going to be the only one. There are plenty of other people who went through the very same things and they came out of it alive. As long as you're alive, you're good. You can still do something about it. That's what I believe. Just stay alive. No matter what happens, survive. That's the important thing. Everything else you worry about later. If you survive, later will come.
No, what I'm really scared of has nothing to do with age. I'm not even sure what it has to do with. Finding a job? No. That might be hard but if you work hard and you have some sort of talent in one area or another then you are good to go. Because even if you start out at the bottom, so what? You have your whole life to get that figured out. I don't predict that the first real job I land will be my dream job. Of course not. This isn't Fantasyworld, this isn't even close. It's good to have ambitions but let's be realistic and not kid ourselves. That's what growing up means: being realistic and not kidding yourself - no matter what area of life you're talking about (school, work, relationships, blah blah blah). Yes, always aim for higher, always try to be better, but at the same time -- chill out. Just chill out. Why can't people just get it in their heads to tell themselves that everything will work out eventually? Why do they have to work themselves into a rut over every single minor detail plaguing their lives? It's LIFE. LIFE HAS PROBLEMS. Okay. Obvious point made. Get over it. Grow some balls. That was totally sexist and I take it back. What I mean is don't expect things to get better just because life sucks and you can't help but whine about it. Whining never did anybody a bit of good. (Except maybe the temporarily lucky few who aren't so lucky now because they never learned to grow up.) So you have problems. Deal with them. Work through them. Think about them. Don't think about them. Do all that, but DON'T act as though you're the only person in the world with these problems and that your life is over just because they exist.
Okay, see. I just had to get that out because I think the person I'm directly speaking to is myself. The whole adolescent egocentric attitude works when you're like 12 or 13 but man, that was freaking ages ago. There's no bullshitting around the obvious now. It's there whether you acknowledge it or not so might as well make it a little easier on yourself and stop lying and/or pretending you don't see it.
You know what I realized? I really don't like talking about my problems with other people nowadays. It's not that I can't open up and spill my guts out or whatever (if need be), but somehow, I just get the feeling that if something is really nagging me on the inside, it's gotta be something I have to deal with on my own. I'm not against asking for advice or getting a second opinion on any decision, particularly the important ones, but ultimately what it all boils down to is whether or not I think I'm doing the right/responsible/appropriate thing. Me. Not anyone else. I have to learn how to take care of myself first before engaging others in my life. This unfortunately sounds like psychobabble 101 (but it is psychobabble I wholeheartedly believe in) but man, it just really hit me the other day how alone we all are. Not alone in that overrated emo sense of the word, "oh it's just me against the world and that's how it's always gotta be *insert nauseating tear drop*" -- no. But alone in the sense that after a certain age you eventually make the necessary realization (hopefully this comes in your mid-twenties and not in your fifties or something) that hey, it's actually your life that you're living and you have to take responsibility for it. If something's not going right or if you're dissatisfied with anything regarding life's many contingencies then you owe it to yourself to do something about it. More importantly, you don't owe it to anyone but yourself. Not your parents. Not your friends, close as they might be to your other half or whatever. Not your significant other(s). Yourself. Because if you don't do something about it, who will? Who has the right to? Who has the obligation to? No one. It's you and you alone.
With that said, I do believe that no man (or woman) is an island. Professor Lopez actually made a really good point last lecture when he asked us to think about how often we thought of other people on a regular basis over the course of the day. So I thought about it and I realized, holy shit, I actually do think of people other than myself a hell of a lot more often than I originally thought I did. Really. Like during breakfast the other day (I was eating Cocoa Puffs) I was thinking about whether my dad was eating breakfast too because he doesn't like cooking for himself and ever since my mom left he's kind of had to force himself to do it a lot more often. And then I started thinking about my mom and how she used to wake up earlier than all of us on weekends just to cook us breakfast. And how that must have really sucked for her because she doesn't even like cooking all that much. (I'm sure she liked sleeping more.) And then I felt a little bad because what if the only reason why I don't really want a family is because I don't want to have to wake up on Sunday mornings and cook for them when they're snoring away on their lazy butts. Because the first time will probably be really heart-warming and worthwhile and a total aww-moment, kind of like those tear-jerking family scenes you always see on TV sitcoms, but by the time the 105th breakfast rolls around you might just be ready to kill them off with the spatula you used to make the pancakes. (And then turn around and go right back to sleep.) ["Why don't you want to get married?" "Well, because I don't want to get divorced."] And then I thought about my apartment-mates and whether or not they had breakfast that morning, and if so, what they ate and how long it took them to make it.
Okay, so I digress. But you get the point. It's not that I deny that humanity has various kinship ties or that we really shouldn't make anything out of them, because I actually believe the very opposite. I think that if you really thought about yourself 24/7 you are probably a very self-centered bastard who needs a serious reality check and preferably a good old slap in the face. And that you probably don't even deserve the people who have stood by you all this time, despite your obvious oblivion to the rest of humanity. But I digress again.
The point is, life is life. And you are you. And while you can and should ask for help sometimes, ultimately it's up to you to make it all work.
And that somehow that's all supposed to make sense in one way or another.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment