ada

Why do I persist in dragging myself through endless self-defeating circles? Why do I have to go through the same soul-searching bullshit every few months or so? This ridiculously banal dissatisfaction should not be defining me. Can't I get past this crap? Aren't I a grown-up now? Aren't I smarter than this? It ceased being interesting back in the days of angst-filled middle school notebook rantings. I roll my eyes when I read other people's boring self-centered depression-fueled monologues about life and their place in the universe... but then I'm sitting there in the bathtub, staring at the wall and crying quietly for unarticulated reasons, running all the same shit through my head and I'm just as pathetic-- worse, because I'm aware of how trite it is and I'm still fucking doing it. I used to think-- god, KILL ME if I ever have a Livejournal-- a bunch of whiny boring juvenile twits posting obnoxious unoriginal essays on every trite inner conflict and waxing poetic ad nauseum on every slightest shred of a philosophical thought that happens to pop into their otherwise vacant heads. But I've been keeping a journal here now for over a year-- congratulations-- you've, inevitably of course, become what you despise. I've never been able to keep a journal for any length of time-- I get disgusted at my lack of originality and inability to sustain a dialogue to the extent that I actually go anywhere with any of it. I've managed to avoid that with this one so far, mainly by writing in it very infrequently and leaving the self-analyzing bullshit out of it.

But now and again you get that feeling where you're overhwhelmed by a series of thoughts or a conclusion or the weight of some realization (or lack of one) and you find yourself reaching out into the ether for validation/acknowledgement/symapthy/understanding from some random fuck you've never met and have no obligation to. Is the sympathy more real because it comes from a stranger? Or does it's lack of connection to you make it render it meaningless? Would you rather be validated by someone sitting across the table from you? Or someone across the country?

But back to the self-defeating subject that got me started of all this to begin with. I TRUELY BELIEVE THIS: that human interaction is what life is all about. It doesn't matter what kind of grades you got in school, what your job is, what kind of things you own, how many books you've read, how pretty your cheekbones are, how interesting your record collection is. It's not about accomplishments or money or success or status. What makes you a good and worthy person, what makes you happy and satisfied with your life, is love and friendship and having close meaningfull relationships with the people around you. Okay? Okay. But why have I chosen to define happiness and fulfillment and the goal of my life with something that I have such trouble attaining? And not in a self-aware, potentilly usefull, "we all strive for what is out of our reach" kind of way-- just in a "this is what really matters" way. Human beings are social animals, our interactions define us. Period. But personal relationships have never been easy for me. I'm shy and socially anxious, prone to avoidance and depression, lazy and unmotivated when it comes to making/keeping friends. I was just laying in the bathtub thinking "I hate that I don't have any friends-- I don't have anyone with whom to share this funny thing that happened at work today, or my frustrations about my roommate or whatever." But I'm presented with opportunities to make friends, and I avoid them. I don't go out, I don't call people back. I feel like I'm surrounded by a fog or a haze or something that insulates me from the outside world and particularily other people. I can see vague shapes moving around, and I hear them talking, but my own thoughts echo and overpower them and I get distracted. If I do try and reach out-- the fog doesn't dissipate, it moves with me-- muffling voices and obscuring faces. I feel very self-consciously trapped inside my own head. I feel like I can't ever fully be present in a situation-- there's always this invisible barrier that makes me feel like I'm set apart.

Why do I choose to define my life by something that I FAIL at?

The irony of me sitting in class, silently writing in my notebook "human interaction is the most important thing in life" while around me the rest of the students are having a dialogue and socializing and INTERACTING and I'm just fucking sitting there... When I was in school, I blamed it on being in school (and in all fairness I went to an obnoxiously intellectual school with the most boring and socially retarded students ever). Since I've been out, I've blamed it on not working and being kind of isolated. I told my dad a year ago that I wanted to go to therapy and he told me"You don't need therapy-- you just need to get out of the house and do some stuff." I told him six months later "Dad, it's really difficult for me to say this, but I'm depressed and stuck in a rut and I dopn't know what i want to do with my life and I can't seem to do anything about it. I really think that some therapy might help me work through this." And he said "You're not depressed! You don't need therapy-- you're just LAZY. Stop being lazy." And I was of course very put off by this, but he's right: I AM lazy. I could be out there doing all kinds of things-- but I'm too lazy to make friends, too lazy to try and get a good job, too lazy to go back to school, TOO LAZY TO TRY AND FIGURE OUT WHAT I WANT OUT OF LIFE... so I just say "human interaction," sigh, and resign myself to being unfulfilled.