Wednesday, December 21, 2011

If You're Feeling Worthless, This is Your Reminder: You Are Someone's Glue.

It's 5:06 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

I'm laying in a bed 30 miles outside of Chicago and can't seem to fall asleep. I guess I just have a lot on my mind.

Do you ever just get sick of yourself? I ask because right now, I'm sick of me. This isn't necessarily an uncommon or unusual feeling, and I'm sure everyone feels this way at some point, but it still, to be quite frank, totally sucks. I've been feeling like this a lot as of late, and I'm not entirely sure why. I have great friends. I like my job(s). I play in a band that tours pretty frequently. I make enough money to eat what I want. I have all of these wonderful privileges, yet I still can't seem to come to terms with how I am as a person. Although I don't know the exact source(s) of these feelings, I do, however, have a few ideas.

Hypothesis 1)
Because the people I have in my life are so great, I hold myself to a higher standard on a personal level. This bar is set so high that even the smallest, most minor inkling of a failure can sometimes throw me into a deep state of disappointment. Disappointment, coincidentally, is one of my biggest, deepest fears. If I'm not living up to expectations, either my own or those of a significant person in my life, I often find myself feeling like a complete and utter failure not worthy of interacting with other human beings (who are all clearly so much better at everything than myself).

Hypothesis 2)
I really need a change of scenery. In recent years, I seem to have (over)developed a sense of wanderlust; I long for a peripatetic lifestyle. Any time I stay in one place for too long I start to stagnate and begin to feel like I'm wasting my time. To get rid of these anomic feelings, I think I need to move on. Sure, tour is nice, but it comes far to infrequently, and I want to travel with even fewer confines and constraints.

When I stay in one place for too long I also feel like people begin to get sick of me, which I guess is understandable; sometimes I get sick of people too. I fall into the same, predictable patterns that tend to be repeated over and over and over and over again. I'm not sure why I feel this always seems to happen, but I can't seem to shake ennui's tight grip when it creeps up every few months.

Hypothesis 3)
I am artistically dry. I've had a lot of stuff happen to me this year, both good and bad. I've seen a little more than these green eyes can handle, felt more than my tiny heart has strength for and am here with the scars to prove it. With all of this potential inspiration, I can't seem to put anything together, whether through music or visual media. This is very frustrating to me, as art is my outlet for emotional release. I can't seem to get everything out on paper the way I feel it inside my head and heart.

Another facet of this hypothesis is the inability to share my art. Due to various mishaps, inflexibility and my desire for things to come out exactly how I want them to, I have little to show for my artistic endeavors. I need some way to validate my feelings; I need to know that I am not as alone as I think I am sometimes and that other people are going through the same things as me. I think I just need to relate and know that someone, somewhere is in emotional solidarity with me, and that everything is going to turn out fine.

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I know I haven't posted here, or honestly even thought about this thing in a very long time, but tonight I did my generation's version of flipping through old notebooks -- reading old blog posts. Sure, it tore open a couple scabs that were almost healed and reminded me of some scrapes and bruises that really hurt at the time (but really weren't all that bad after awhile), but reading through these posts really showed me how I tend to work in cycles.

It's an old adage, "Life is like a roller coaster." This phrase stuck around for a reason -- it's pretty darn accurate. Life has a lot of ups and downs. Sometimes it seems like you're careening straight into the ground, and the next thing you know, you're going up so fast it's hard to really tell what your surroundings are or how exactly you got there, but it's nice regardless. It's really fun to live "on the edge" and take your hands off the restraining safety bar, but sometimes you've just gotta hold on tight for fear of being slung out of the seat.

Basically, I think what I'm getting at is that life moves fast. Sometimes it's hard to keep (and sometimes catch) up, but I've always managed to do so, and I refuse to let this be the year that changes that. Sure, I've seen a lot of things that no one should have to see, but I can't let that bring me down. I can't wait for anyone else to "fix" my life, I have to do it myself, how I want and by my own means.

One old entry I read tonight really stood out to me, not necessarily because of the post itself, but an anonymous comment instead. The commenter said that my post made them feel better about the mistakes they have made and reminded them that they are in control of their life, to make changes as they see fit. To you, anonymous commenter, thank you for somehow stumbling onto a post I made a long time ago when I was sad and confused, much like I am right now, and reminding me that no matter how bad things may seem, there is always time to turn things around. We're in this together. I don't think you'll ever read this, but if you do, please know that you're not alone, and you're not a "pathetic freak" either. Everyone feels pathetic sometimes; believe me. And if you haven't yet, say hi. You don't have to tell me that you're the anonymous person, but I don't want anyone to ever be afraid to talk to me about anything.

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Tonight has been very confusing. I'm sorry if none of this makes sense. I need to make changes and make them soon. I don't know if I'll ever post here again, but doing this helped, so who knows. What I do know right now though is that despite everything, I refuse to sink.

To anyone that's ever doubted it: You are beautiful. You are worth it. You are not alone.