Hello blog readers :)
Normally the first thing I do when I write a new blog post is entitle the thing. But since this post is more of a venting-out than a defined statement about anything particular, I shall leave the title till later.
Anyway, I've been posting a lot here for the past few days, I guess because I'm in pain. I don't want to suffer so much alone. I don't want this relapse of depression to be a closed-off experience, because I'm really much happier when I keep myself open. To close off from the world is to tell the world you're losing, and that things are really so serious and heavy that you can't function as a regular-Joe assembly-line automaton anymore. Naturally, I don't want to let the world win. I will continue to be witty and sarcastic and smart and intense and curious for as long as I'm breathing and there's another tomorrow. I want to be open with my depression experience, to say, "This is what I'm going through. It's very real, and it frightens me, but it's a phase. The cloud will lighten in color. The earth does not collapse into itself despite all the crises it has had to witness, and neither shall I."
This way of thinking shows me that people are capable of change, because I have changed. The way I'm dealing with this depression now is a lot different than the way I've dealt with it before, in the past. This time last year, actually, I was completely unable to deal with this weight on my shoulders. I reached a point at which I wasn't operating too well in the real world without having to run off and cry buckets at several intervals of the days. I closed off. Sure, I ate, slept (either too much, or far too little), and drank like a human being, but I was dead. It's curious. I don't really want to talk about this much, at least not right now, and not in this way. I should be writing, and working on the stories I've been up to. But I feel at least for today, I want to focus on my own practical, tangible emotional issues, rather than those of imagined characters.
So anyway, I don't want to derail too much, a tendency of mine. Let's go back to the changes in my coping style. I notice I don't cry as much anymore. Moping about my "misery" has become an outdated tool in my life that no longer serves the purpose of helping me release. I'm observing a newfound aggression in my approach to life. The further I see my happiness slip, the more empassioned I become about maintaining heart and good faith in myself and the purity of my spirit. I know my inner strength, and I don't need anyone to assure me about anything. I have always found my own way in life, and I believe in my experiences and approaches, and the Universal plan for me. I shall continue to live my life the way I see fit, regardless of whether people praise me as right or condemn me as wrong. At least that way I will be real, and present myself with the opportunity to extract valuable lessons from both extreme pain and extreme happiness. And this is why I won't take myself too seriously with this depression, and am not afraid for myself in the long run. If you don't expose your soul to reality, and consequently suffering, then you can live a certain kind of life - the shielded one, protected by all the values of proper, civilized, and utterly mundane society. But you should be aware that, once you choose this life, you also insure your spirit against genuine happiness. What do I mean by "genuine happiness"? I mean the light-mist-after-the-rainstorm version of it, the kind only those who have suffered can know, and understand, and appreciate as a gift from the heavens. I believe in the purpose of suffering. It is because of this belief that I can stomach it, no matter how bad it gets. The purification and maintenance of the soul is not supposed to be an easy, problem-free process. Humans have to actively fight for the preservation of the soul, and its right to assert itself, because such an untamable energy struggles with the confinement bodily existence places upon it. Why, for example, do some people support the idea that "sex without love is an empty experience"? I guess it's because the soul does not process the physicality of sex - this is a foreign concept to the soul, an intricacy of the body. Love, and passionate existence, and the willingness to go through the suffering that inevitably accompanies all great love, is the bridging factor between the soul and the body, the merging of these two elements into an alive human being. I don't know if the soul is quite such an intellectual/rational entity, to be able to process input the way a computer does, but I think maybe the soul energy is innately different from the body energy. And this is where the Universe, and God, come in handy. The greatest vibration the Universe has ever bestowed upon us humans is love. We're not the only creatures responsive towards the love energy on this earth - cats respond to it, plants respond to sunlight, ice melts in the presence of heat. But maybe the reason we're so lucky to have been born human in these incarnations of ours is that at the level of the human, the soul is given the chance for a) awareness of the love energy and b) the ability to harness this love energy in ways beneficial to the human. Now what is the point of all this talk? I, myself, do NOT know. And I don't have to know a certain point for it. Having a point doesn't make something a useful activity or whatever. So many things that don't have a point give people so much joy. If it makes you happy, isn't that it, really? Do what works for you, and be the way that works for you.
Well, the stuff above doesn't bring me around to anything, but my mind is a wonderful instrument that loves to spin around upon itself and navigate me around the oddest ideas at the weirdest of times. It's not the New Year (according to the western calendar) yet, but I have a Resolution worth trying out. And it's this:
For this year of 2013, if God will have me follow through with it, I resolve to examine my relationships, and specifically, the way I relate to people.
This is the simplest possible version of my one Resolution. Here is where I'll expand upon it. I realized this about myself recently: for as long as I can remember, I've been rather passive and uninterested in the way I communicate with the friends, relatives, and lovers I've known over the years. There's a sort of "que sera, sera" attitude I've adopted towards people. Maybe it's because I never believed I have much say in the way things go between me and people, that I can't truly steer my attachments in the directions I would wish them to take. A part of it has to do with being a woman, but I don't want to get into feminist issues right now - my mind is too tired, and I'm hungry. It's a fear of going after what I want, because I've tasted rejection, and it's pathetic. A lot of it has to do with my Dad walking away. Not really. I wouldn't be doing that relationship, or lack of relationship, justice if I just said that. My Dad traveled back and forth when I was a baby and little kid, so I never got to develop a strong friendship with him. He's always felt more like a distant stranger to me, coming and going and visiting in our home in Lebanon. Then my parents got a divorce when I was eight years old, and that process stirred no emotion in me at the time (I do, however, remember moments of feeling out-of-step with the way of the world at that age, after the divorce. But then again, I've always been a little out-of-step). The divorce didn't really cross into my mind until much later. I didn't start to think or feel seriously about it until I was fifteen, maybe sixteen, even.
I resent the feelings people have forced me into regarding the divorce. The first thing people will usually tell me once they find out about it (it has to be "found out", like it's some dirty secret) is a generic, bland "I'm sorry". What have you got to be sorry about? I'm not even sorry about it. I didn't know the guy, goddammit. Whatever confusion and frustration that I've felt, and feel, about my Dad leaving the family, is not my own. A lot of it is my mother's left-over resentment, and the stereotypical reaction society preaches to children of a "broken home". As far as I'm concerned, my home was never broken - Dad has always been excluded from the family fold. But still, you can never completely prevent these "how-to-behave-after-something-like-that" notions society throws upon its children from seeping into you. Case in point: I look for my Dad in every relationship I have. I look for that sense of acceptance, that approval I was supposedly denied, the approval that never belonged to me in the first place. Yeah, I resent the way I was brought up to hate someone I barely even knew, whose face has been all but wiped off the slate of my memory. To be more accurate, in all my relationships, I'm just looking. And in my opinion, it's not wrong to look for affection, and understanding. It's a human need. But there are ways to look for it, and then there are ways.
I've always been highly impulsive in the area of love. It takes me about five seconds to become infatuated with someone, and it usually follows that I'm "in love" with more than one person at the same time. I think I've hurt some people's feelings with this impulsive approach. And I have to ask myself, "Why don't I take my time to fall for a man or woman?" I take my time with everything else. Actually, that's an understatement. I live on my own time, meaning to say, I'm sometimes stuck, other times happily floating along, in "slow" mode. I'm coming to wonder if the reason I latch on so blindly is a fear that if I don't latch on immediately, and "get it before it's gone", it'll be exactly that - gone. Before I even have time to process the "loss". And I would have to go through a re-run of all the crappy feelings of rejection and abandonment, yes, abandonment, that were spurred on by my dad leaving, and my feelings of emotional detachment from my mother.
So you see, all this is very good news. I'm finally being able to understand why I do the things I do. Understanding why things work a certain way is the key towards manipulating them to work any other way you please. Now that I'm aware of this unhealthy dynamic propelling my relationships towards potential friends and lovers, I can begin to catch myself before I jump too far down an empty well with no flooring to fall back on. It's not romantic, to jump into someone's arms if you don't even have an inkling of who that person is - it's sickening. Because otherwise, I'm an independent, open, and free soul. I want to get the root issue settled before I start "falling in love" with people whose essences I'm not truly aware of.
This doesn't mean that I want a relationship with my Dad. The time for that has passed. I don't have the need for a father in my life. I never did. My mother filled the roles of the male and female parent well, and now I'm emancipated. I've grown up, in a way. And it's mighty embarrasing for this grown-up to go on living in the parental nest for much longer, figuratively speaking (since I don't, after all, live with my parents).
So I guess the key word of my Resolution would be "examine". A teacher of mine, whom I hadn't seen in a while prior to that time, once asked me if I was still a questioner. And I reply to that, "YES." I am a questioner, and a discoverer, and an uncoverer of truths, about myself, and about others. And when it comes to the area of human relationships, I want to know a given relationship is something I can believe in before going any further than my usual interactions with people. I now understand why so many of my friendships and loves have failed - because I failed to believe in them. I am currently failing at what my mind deemed "my two best-friendships" because I don't believe in their value anymore. And I guess in my heart there was always a big "NO" where these two friendships were concerned. And that's a major area I have begun to work on in my life - I don't want to include in my life people who don't want to make things work, who are negative about the chances of a friendship surviving and providing nourishment for the spirits involved. A friendship always has a low chance of surviving. But odds are established, only to be beaten. And these are the lessons I wish to reacquaint myself with in my time to come.
So, blog readers, I'm done for today. This has been a nice release for me, and I hope you guys can relate. I hope this gives joy to some, pensiveness to others, a little sadness, a hint of laughter, and maybe nothing at all. But I'm giving myself the right to live, and that's a nice thing to do, especially around this holiday season :-) I hope the sarcasm isn't lost on you. My e-mail: bemgcasrbaquarian@gmail.com
Have a nice evening, morning, or whatever-it-is in your country when you're reading this.
Signed, your friendly Water Bearer.
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