Farther

It’s dangerous – removing myself from everything like this. I can feel it. The world is farther away every day, and what’s worse is that I feel farther away every day. I wanted to protect myself, but I can’t even find myself anymore.

Entertain the Mundane

I think girls are more apt to cheat on their partner emotionally than physically. That’s our high, our rush – our need. We’re all looking for some emotional ride – something new, something – anything – we can get.

Boredom is perhaps my biggest fear – indefinite, impenetrable monotony. It’s different than all other pain – perhaps even worse, in some ways. Because boredom is absence. And we all need our existence acknowledge – first of all by ourselves. But there’s also worse pain – the more ambiguous, more difficult to pinpoint state of feeling less than boredom. The worst thing is to not feel anything. To not even care enough to feel boredom. It’s like not living. It’s like not existing. The thought of an eternity in which I can no longer summon the motivation to feel anything but apathy – that is far more terrifying than the thought of death. I like to think that I could always find something to enjoy, and everything can be rediscovered, and the universe is infinitely creating – faster than I could ever try to keep up with it. But the very idea that I could become an all-knowing or simply perpetually indifferent being is truly petrifying to me.

I think about how I could quite happily dedicate my whole life to being entertained and feel quite reasonably happy. Watching TV, listening to music, attending theme parks and generally not contributing in any way to society – it’s almost fulfilling enough on its own. But could I really do it? Could I really sustain that life? Possibly. If there weren’t the outside pressures, then maybe. They say life is about balancing what others expect from you and what you want for yourself. Sometimes I think the only reason anything ever gets accomplished is because the expectations of others are so strong. If I could turn these off, if I could truly live for myself, then maybe I could live with a life of purely being entertained. Or do I have stronger expectations of myself – expectation that don’t stem from anyone other than me? Or is my goal simply to always chase the next rush?

Infinity

My problem is not that I have the wrong things but that I want the wrong things. I hold onto the wrong ideas. I chase a permanent and lasting happiness, and so I am always sad. I long for love, and so I am lonely. I hold the idea of forever, and so I am always betrayed.

The truth is, actual happiness is something you come by maybe a couple of times a year. And day-to-day, you can find frequent appreciation of life and the miracle of the human conscious, but to expect to live in some continual cloud of bliss is a sadly unrealistic thought. As for the ideas of love and forever, they are worst when held together. If there is such thing as genuine, romantic love, as I suspect there may be, I have no delusions about its length. Few things are eternal, and human relationships are not among them. But if you are lucky enough to receive an injection of nature’s sweetest high, I say love the moment of it, the season of it, but don’t expect more of it or perpetuation and don’t even – if possible – label it. Inhale it deeply, because flowers smell sweet, and flowers prick, and flowers wither. Forever is a dangerous word by itself, though. I believe in forever. I believe in God, in Heaven, in Hell and in eternity. But I also currently live on Earth, and I believe in time and humanity and seasons. The waves of sweet and sour and all the flavors between – they’re all on an invisible clock, and maybe you can’t predict its timing exactly, but you can be sure that it is finite.

I’m having trouble feeling ownership of this body. I keep looking at it in the mirror, trying to convince myself it’s mine, but it looks nothing like me. It’s just some random girl with the wrong eyes and the wrong face. Maybe if I had been given the right body things would’ve made sense to me.

Creative Living

It seems the things which brings the most meaning to our lives also make them the most unbearable.

Why is it that we need creativity so very much? Is it our extreme desire for individuality? Do we derive some distorted meaning from our ability to be uniquely clever? Why is it that creativity is so often accompanied by misery? Life is often ironic and cruel this way: making us need the thing which destroys us. For truly I need to be creative to live, to exist with any degree of satisfaction in this world, and yet the more I succumb to this desire, the more depressed I become, the more drained, the more in need of release from this box we call living. And maybe that itself is the answer. Creativity becomes too great for this world, for this life – leaves us with such intense longing for something much greater than we have seen that it is both depressing and inspiring – depressing because we have not seen it, sometimes believe we can never obtain it, and inspiring because we believe something more exists – even if only in our minds. And yet the more we chase this, the more danger we put our lives in. Because in these lives, it is much easier to succumb to the depressions than the inspirations. And the inspirations we create in this life – the new – that beyond the already discovered, known and created – tends to be still so short of the inspiration that exists – what we know we can create – and the things which yet lie in wait within our heads waiting to be fulfilled. And so creativity is always a constant frustration. For the thing which propels us farther – our dreams – are the motivation for a better self and larger future but also the thing which we do not have. And always want.