It's a lonely business, this life.
My life.
And then there's Maude. Lin.
Believe me, I'm well aware of the myriad of choices one has day to day and moment to moment and by and large one has to take responsibility for the choices that lead them up to where they are right here. Right now. So, I'm down with that. I own all this.
Most days, it's not bad. Many days I choose to carry on and deal with what's right in front of my face. The work. The sleeping. The eating. The washing, laundry, cleaning, dressing, shopping, writing, reading, walking, going, coming, seeing, watching, greeting. The breathing. The living. And just when you get one done, there's another requiring attention. It doesn't end.
Until it ends.
But that's not what I'm talking about.
Some days, like today, it feels like my head is going to pop right off my shoulders. It not just a figurative deal. I rocked a headache so hard and pervasive today it felt like a Very Big Thing with a Very Big Hand had grabbed ahold of the back of my neck. The pressure spread up through the back of my cranium and up around so it felt like my eyes were bulging. All my muscles hurt. I had to keep reminding myself to keep my teeth off each other. They kept clenching, which worked into a frothy vicious circle with the headache thing.
But it's not just today. Lately I've been battling this tendency of apatheticism like I've never known. And yes, I know apatheticism isn't even a word, but I don't even care enough to find a real word.
Some days it feels like everything is futile. I get dressed. I go through the motions, and for what? To what end? It's no wonder my fantastic future isn't manifesting itself because there's no design for an outcome. I've never had any specific vision as to what I'll become. Friends of mine are settled by now, with families and careers, and I remain rootless - and for all intense purposes, lost.
It's true that no matter where you run, you can't escape yourself.
The relationships I've had over the last three years have all been fleeting and have ended badly, and I fear it might be just to demonstrate that at the core of me I'm unable to attract anything good. At low tide I do feel as though I might be broken and beyond repair.
Some days I want to have a closing-out sale. All pretense of caring must go. Matters of the heart are marked for clearance. We're going out of business, my heart and I - except for the beating. We're building a fortress around my heart. Shop while there's still time.
The walk of life
3 hours ago
5 comments:
I am a rock.
I am an iiiiiiiiiii...eyeyeyeyeye...land.
I have my wine
and my pique assiette cat blogging
to protect me.
blah blah blah
it's laughter and it's loving I disdain.
(Well, loving anyway.)
If you can quote Sting, I can quote S&G, which is oddly playing in my car right now. The Best Of CD.
Another one that's been kicking my ass lately:
Still a girl hears what she wants to hear
and disregards the rest.
The Blogger
I mean, The Boxer
Good stuff, those lyricists, huh?
You really are my twin sister from a different petri dish.
I meant to say last week when I read your posts, I was SO relating, and then you got to the "playing with my hair = bliss" line, and my head exploded.
I'm having so much left neck muscle/occipital pain lately that a month of chiro didn't put a dent in it. Next week, I try a long massage. If no results, I shall amputate.
Maybe you should email me?
We might need to dump all over each other for a while instead of our loyal and far less snarky readers?
As a regular reader (every friday or so) but imperfect commenter I might note..
1) annie mosaic cat is a genius of lyrical manipulation. Her grasp of capitalization is. however, slight. ;-)
2)The existential crisis thing is the feature of a certain kind of intellect and is a good thing or bad thing depending on ends. It is similar to Soju in this way.
3) Apatheticism is the hardest thing in the world to battle, because it generates its own proof. It is the creeping evil.
4) Your heart is splattered all over this blog and should not be walled off, shuttered, impaired, of clogged with buttery sauces. Unless, of course, there's some pasta involved.
5) Everything probably IS futile. But also so freaking beautiful, evil, silly, pointless, critically important, whatever.
Listen to some music you love, amc, your stuttering heartbeat. But, you know, don't stop. ;-)
I can't believe I just used an emoticon!
OK, it looks like Blogger may actually let me leave a comment!
Once again, I wish I lived near you and we could go out and commiserate. I've had the same feelings. Life is a tricky thing, but just keep telling us how you feel. I often tell people about you and how much I admire your wit and sense of adventure.
I think folks get caught up in "what's it all for?" questions because they think in terms of goals. The goals themselves are often modeled on the aspirations of the surrounding culture. Here in Korea, for example, you're a freak if you're not married with children by the time you're 30. The pressure is surely worse for women than it is for men.
Do you have a clear vision of your own future? It's no sin not to have one, and if your vision is unclear, then why compare yourself with people who have married and settled down?
The act of marrying and settling down doesn't automatically lead to contentment, after all: someone recently linked to a YouTube video of a commercial that demonstrated this wisdom nicely. In the video, we see a tired father inside a grocery store. His son, perhaps three or four years old, is throwing an immense temper tantrum, running around, kicking and screaming, knocking items off shelves. The father watches all this with a look of utter resignation on his face as other shoppers view the scene with varying degrees of shock on their faces. We get one last look at the world-weary father, then the scene cuts to the commercial's punchline: USE CONDOMS.
Such a life-- marriage, kids, mortgage, minivan-- might be The Answer for some, but it isn't The Answer for all. If you're not sure what your own Answer is, there's no need to compare yourself with anyone else. Just breathe. Just take life moment by moment. Download the script for Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" and enjoy its message about appreciating the Now.
Goals are overrated, anyway. There's a Chinese story that ends, "With one eye always on your goal, you have but one eye left to find the Way."
Kevin
PS: Annie's suggestion that you and she should "dump all over each other" is sexy in a German porn kind of way, so I sincerely hope there will be pictures.
AMC - I'll definitely e-mail you. Thanks.
rwellor - Thanks for your kind comment. It got me thinking.
Sher - you know I wish we were neighbours, too.
Kevin - I don't long for the kids and mortgage and minivans at all. It's not really that I want what other people I know have. Thank you for the reminder to enjoy the now. Sometimes I just feel exhausted. And by the way, you're twisted!
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