Introduction and inane ramblings…

I’ve been trying to figure out how to start this blog for two weeks (since I set the damned thing up).  I’m still no closer to an answer.  So, short of promising nothing except the ramblings of a crazy man, I’d expect this blog will have no sort of organization and structure outside of me trying to stick to one concept per paragraph.  Outside of that commitment, I’m not promising anything.

Here we go…

What’s the purpose?  That’s my question.  And, I mean the question in the most general sense of the question.  I’m not asking what the purpose is for any specific thing (certainly not this blog–I already said you’re not going to find any organized thoughts here).  I want to know what the purpose is of it all.  Everything.  I guess that’s a big question.  The reason I ask is because I feel like I’m the only one without an answer.  I need an answer.  I’ve been asking that question solidly for the past 3-4 years.  The question has nagged at me for the past 8-10 years.  Before that I didn’t care what the answer was.  Before that I was certain I had the answer (maybe I’ll talk about that in an entry some day).  Let me be more specific.

What’s the purpose of living?  I wake up every day and wonder why I bother.  I have every day for all but 30 days or so of the past 10 years thought about suicide–hoped to myself that each day would be my last.  No exaggeration.  But still, I go on.  I don’t know why.  I used to think I go on because I consider myself a hopeful pessimist and I’m expecting something great to happen *someday*.  Now, I think I go on out of morbid curiosity–wondering just how much worse I can feel; how much more detachment I can find from this life and this world; how much more alien I can feel while all the time being surrounded by people.  By strangers.

Everyone is a stranger to me.  Even those close to me are becoming strangers.  I don’t mean to discredit my friends and family.  I’m lucky to have great friends; I am very close to members of my family; and my boyfriend is wonderful.  However, without purpose I find those relationships not being enough anymore to avoid the emptiness I find in trying to answer the question of what’s the purpose.

I just go on–all I do is breathe, eat, shit, work, and sleep.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  I have truly been living in a purely autonomic sense for the past few years:  I eat because I am hungry.  I sleep because I am tired.  Little else besides the animal mechanical motivates me.  I am a robot.  A favorite song of mine from The Bravery called Believe could have been written for me and how I feel.  It is about fear, which is at the core of who I am, perhaps.  But, the chorus is profound in this particular circumstance:

So give me something to believe
Cause I am living just to breathe
And I need something more
To keep on breathing for
So give me something to believe

I’m not looking for someone to save me, though.  I don’t want to be saved.  I’m not sure I could be saved even if I wanted to be.  I’m trying to understand why I can’t seem to find a purpose to anything.  I’ve looked.  I’ve called it “looking for my passion” for the past several years.  I can’t find it.  Either I don’t have a passion or it’s so obscure the likelihood of me ever finding it is ridiculously remote.  I keep on looking.  But, I’m getting tired.  Very tired.  I’m exhausted, in fact.

I do still look–but not as much as I used to–for my passion.  The lack of sense of purpose and passion has taken all the color out of my life.  I’m now putting what energy I have into coping with the grayness that defines my life and fills my lungs with a thickness so heavy that breathing is a burden.  But I cope.

Someone told me once that the reason people end their life is because they’ve run out of coping mechanisms.  I think that’s true.  I’ll go into detail about all the ways I’ve tried to cope in the past sometime later, perhaps.  For now, I recognize this blog is a coping mechanism.  I might never write another entry.  I might write in it every day.  I might find a passion out of this.  I might fill a thousand pages with nothing but inane rambling and wasted effort.  But, for now, it’s a diversion from the grayness.

I’ll be in touch.  Or not.

Hibernation is a good thing…

So, I pissed off a friend of mine.  A good friend.  It’s ironic, actually–the very thing that pissed her off was me doing my best to alleviate any concern on her part for me and it totally–TOTALLY–backfired.  I’ll go into the details, but let me start with the lesson I learned from this:  Hibernation is a good thing.  When you’re depressed and sad and hanging on by a thread, avoid everyone.

So, being depressed always makes me want to just stay home and sleep.  I try to avoid everyone.  But, I also recognize avoiding everyone and staying shut in is part of the problem.  It’s a downward spiral.  I know nobody wants to hang around a morose person, but at the same time, avoiding everyone when I’m morose makes me feel even more sad and alone.  Usually, the fact I care for my friends more than I care for myself overrides my impulse to associate with people; but, the fact is that you can’t avoid your friends all the time unless you want to destroy friendships, which I don’t.  My solution is to walk a fine line of contact and avoidance and when in contact do my best to put on a happy face.  I tend to joke around a lot.  Perhaps too much.  It’s a defense mechanism and I know it.

I’ve spent a huge amount of energy trying to cover up the fact I feel like the life is being squeezed out of me from the inside out over the past few months.  I’ve said this before–I can’t find a better way to describe it–I’m exhausted.  Everything seems like it takes all my energy and effort.  I’ve always considered myself a great friend.  I do my best to take care of my friendships.  It’s the one thing in my life that has always came easily to me–it’s been effortless–until lately.  Now, even some of my friendships are faltering–and I’ll take the blame.  I’m losing control, there, too.

This bit of introspection and realization comes from an email sent to me this morning by a friend.  She said she was angry and hurt by some things I said and did in early Oct.  I’ve called her several times since Oct, but she didn’t return my calls.  On the one hand, over the past decade since I’ve known her, I do call her several times before finally hearing back from her.  She’s busy and travels a great deal so ordinarily I wouldn’t attribute the lack of response to anything other than her hectic schedule.  But, I had a weird feeling this time–I don’t even know why.

She was incredibly ill from a spider bite a few months ago.  She’s lucky to be alive.  She said that it will take a few months for the toxins to work their way out of her body–and she’s a tiny little thing so I know it’s even worse for her, which has to do with the subject of this blog entry.

One of the things she wasn’t happy about was me giving her grief about finding out she’d been sick for weeks and in the hospital several times in the form of a bulk email.  She claims I’m one of her closest friends.  She *is* one of my closest friends.  The contact I have with her is so infrequent, that I just can’t apologize for being upset hearing about something so significant via a bulk email.  I understand that it’s impossible to email everyone with all the gory details; but I would have done that for my *closest* friends.  And, to be truthful, it wasn’t even that I heard about it via email–it was that I heard about it a month after it happened.  I guess, the bottom line is if it walks, talks, and quacks like a duck…and I just don’t feel like a closest friend when I hear about a life threatening illness in a bulk email weeks after it happened.  I suppose I was insensitive about giving her grief when she was sick.  I should have worked out better timing–but, as I mentioned, it takes a lot of effort to work this stuff out and I’m exhausted.

I had a reason to be in the same city as my friend about a month after the spider bite.  I was ecstatic when she asked me to stay with her and take care of her.  I was really happy that she needed me.  I had invited her to attend the conference with me several months before.  I had also told her that I was much more interested in spending time with her than going to the conference and that I’d bail on the conference to spend time with her.  She said that she would try to come if she felt up to it.  When I arrived, I sent a text–a brief text–just to let her know I was in town.  I didn’t want to put any pressure on her to see me at her house or for her to come.  I just wanted her to know I was there and available if she felt up to it.  I checked in via text a few times.  She interpreted these texts to be terse and rude.

When we did talk on the phone, I spoke about the conference.  My intent was to let her know it was going to be fun since I had told her a few weeks prior that I wanted to bail on the conference to spend time with her.  I didn’t want her to feel pressure to spend time with me since she felt ill.  She interpreted this as me pressuring her into coming to the conference when she didn’t feel well.

At the same time, I told her I really didn’t want to stay at the hotel.  Again, my intent was to try to be compassionate about her needs.  She had told me she wanted me to stay with her and take care of her.  I wanted her to know that I *wanted* and preferred being with her; but, at the same time, I was trying to be careful not to put pressure on her to do anything.  I wanted her to be able to make whatever decision she wanted without pressure from me.

I utterly and completely failed.

As far as friends and illnesses or hard events go, I always feel like an imbecile in circumstances like these.  I don’t know what to do–my friend’s in pain and needing help, and I am utterly powerless to do anything.  For a control freak it’s frustrating.  For a friend it’s terrifying.  My response was to joke and try and be upbeat for two reasons:  1)  It’s how I try to hide my problems from my friends (and especially since I’m in a bad emotional state these days and it’s the last thing she needed to deal with); 2)  It’s the only thing I feel like I can do–try to cheer them up.  This wasn’t successful–my friend interpreted this as not caring and being unfeeling.

Again, utter failure.

She said she was angry and hurt.  She told me I was uncaring.  Unfeeling.  She said she was having a hard time seeing my “positive intent” but was getting there.  She said she wasn’t ready to talk to me.  She said she didn’t want to get rid of me.

Well, now I’m pissed.  I’m exhausted and I’m pissed.  I’ve waited for communication for weeks after initiating communication several times without question and always assumed positive intent.  I’ve heard her talk of texting her friends daily, while I have very infrequent communication–and I’ve assumed positive intent.  Now, it’s an effort for her to assume positive intent on my part when had she bothered calling me or emailing me over the past few weeks to ask me what the hell was up she would have known it was mostly all positive intent.  And, she’s not ready to talk to me.  I feel the same way.  I could have told her what was in this blog but I’m not sure it’s worth the effort I’m so tired.

I really am grateful for my friends.  They’re the last thing in my life that I hold on to–the last thing I’m proud of.  But, I really am exhausted…I’m going to hibernate for awhile.

Webcam and Suicide

It’s an odd feeling to wish for death.

I read an article last week that has given me things to think about.  A teenager in Florida commited suicide and streamed the event over his webcam.  A lot of discussion has taken place about how something like this could happen.  Some of the reasons have been that people didn’t think he was serious; others claimed they tried to talk him out of his decision; still others watched out of curiousity.  I won’t even get into the fact the legal side of the discussion.  I just wanted to talk about how I am guessing the kid felt.

Practically every day of my life for the past decade I’ve wished for death.  It really is a strange feeling.  At first, you’re struck by the pain it would cause those who care for you.  It gave me pause when this happened to me.  I asked myself questions like, “How could I be so selfish?”, “How would person Y deal with it?”.  After a while, the pain gets so bad questions about how others might feel become irrelavant.  All you want is an end to the pain–the darkness.  Eventually, you become so exhausted with the desire for the darkness to end and the robotic movements of walking through life your thoughts morph again.  I started thinking others were selfish for wanting to keep me here–encouraging me to tough it out, find help, “look on the bright side.”  Fuck, I hate that concept.  Look on the bright side.  As if I hadn’t thought of that–as if I’d not tried every day to do that very thing.  Find some reason, some bright light, that would make sense of my life and give me a reason to take another breath.  It’s a waste of time.

Here’s what I know, I walk an edge as sharp as the blade of a razor every day trying to find a good reason to keep going.  I’ll take anything:  waiting for a good movie, enjoying a new cd, taking care of my animals, going on a trip.  Lately, it’s been going to the gym (the past two years).  And even more recently it’s been reading the Twilight series.  I use anything just to keep my mind off the darkness.  Any diversion will do.  But, the darkness is always there.  I always feel it lurking.  And, it always returns.

So, when you wonder how a kid can stream a suicide over the web, think of this–he was probably screaming for one person to give him any reason not to take his own life.  He was looking for one good reason.  He was smothered in darkness, and nothing diverted his mind from those thoughts.  But, he couldn’t find a reason to go on.  I understand that.  I wish I could have helped in some way.  I am not sure what I could have done, but I wouldn’t have doubted his resolve–that should have never been called into question.

It’s an odd feeling to wish for death.  It’s an odd feeling to finally give up hope.  It’s an odd feeling to no longer care how others will be impacted.  It’s an odd feeling to welcome the end.

Ugh…

I’m stressed.  I finished the books I talked about yesterday.  Even though they’re not exactly my type of book (teenage girl porn), I feel empty.  Depressed, which is always ironic.

An aside:  I’m depressed pretty much all the time, so when I get more depressed it’s tangible but redundant.  I think my baseline is set lower than most.  Like I have an emotional scale of 0-10 where 0 is very depressed and 10 is very happy.  I think most people live in the mid range (a 5) with occasional blips up or down on the scale.  Their baseline is 5.  I think my baseline is 2.  I’m a 1 on my scale today.  Stupid books.  Or, rather, stupid me for getting so caught up into fantasy.

Anyway, the books provided a diversion–they kept my mind off how I feel at the moment and let me focus on something else.  Of course, I’m borderline OCD, so it wasn’t enough to buy the four books and enjoy reading them over the course of several weeks.  No, I had them read in a several days.  And, now that I’m done, I am pissed there’s not more to read and depressed that while my brain was occupied elsewhere my life didn’t miraculously turn into sunshine and daisies.  There I go again, hoping for miracles.

Yeah, I know I said the books (at least the first one) made me re-hash old issues, but that’s not a bad thing.  I don’t really tend to regret much in my life–at least I try not to regret much–so re-hashing reaffirms the decisions I’ve made.  For better or worse, I usually make good–or at least appropriate–decisions.  The re-hashing wasn’t much more than an “aha!” moment when I understood the similarities in challenges between myself and Edward.  For the most part, the Twilight series was just a mindless read–a means to escape for a while.  I miss it.  I miss the escape.  I feel like a good friend just moved to another country.  Ugh.

I need to find some new books, which is always a challenge for me.  it’s like everything else in my life–I over analyze it to the point I’m unable to make a decision.  Analysis paralysis.  There are millions of books on the market, and I won’t be able to make a decision on which one to read because there’s too much to consider when deciding which one to start.  Ugh.

Any suggestions?

the end…

I finished a book series I’ve been reading.  I’m embarrassed to mention the name–Twilight.  I’d like to say I was somehow forced to read the books–tied to a chair and the words forced into my eyes through my optical nerve directly into my brain but it would be a lie.  I’d initially heard the books were full of teenage girl romantic fantasies–not anywhere near my first choice for subject matter.  But, my sister convinced me to read them by giving me four good reasons:  1.  It’s about vampires, which is a favorite topic of mine for books and movies; 2. Part of the book (at least the first book) takes place in Phoenix, which is where I live; 3.  The author, Stephanie Myer, graduated from my Alma Matter–BYU; 4.  While the books were written for adolescents, I did love the Harry Potter series.  Sounded reasonable to me.

Well, the first book was exactly what I expected.  My friend’s wife calls it teenage girl porn.  Ha!  Yeah, I think she got that right.  What held my interest in Twilight, even though I was having trouble wading through the puerile aspects of the book, was the dynamic twist Meyer created:  A vampire falls in love with a human who’s blood drives him mad with thirst–he can barely stop himself from killing the object of his romantic desire.  I wish Meyer would have tackled this plot in a book designed for adults.  Very interesting.  But again, it wasn’t so much the plot that drew me towards the book–it was how I related to the plot on a personal level.  I know, a little weird, a little freaky–let me try to explain.  (This has nothing to do with vampirism).

Edward, the vampire at the crux of this romantic love vs. prey/predator paradox has essentially given up ever finding love.  He has moved forward through his immortal life without having someone to share that part of his life.  When he finds this love, because of not only the strength of his hunger but also his characteristically vampiric physical strength, he still must maintain a distance from the object of his desire less he cause harm to the frail human.

I remember the day I decided my life would take a similar path–accepting something that was profound, but knowing I’d always have to maintain a distance.  It was the day I had decided I couldn’t pray myself into being a heterosexual.  I realized gay was permanent.  While I’m sure Stephanie Myer never intended for someone to relate to her books this way, I found the story nonetheless profound for me.  So much of my life was based upon my religious beliefs.  So much of what defined me as a person came from being Mormon.  At the conclusion of my undergraduate studies, I’d realized I’d failed in my quest to change; but, at the time, I couldn’t abandon my faith.  I have a gay friend who is also an ex Mormon who says the only option the LDS church gives to gays in the church is either celibacy or suicide.  He’s probably right.  He was certainly correct for me at that time–I chose celibacy.  I accepted I was gay but recognized I still had a profound faith in my religion.  I could accept the fact I was gay and deny myself the realization of those feelings because of my beliefs.  Celibacy.  I could live with that.

(Yeah, right.  That lasted about three years–but that’s another story.  Another blog entry.)

But, back to the books and Edward…

My point is I understand.  I can relate to Edward.  I know what it feels like to have life present you with an impossible situation and know the only way through it is pain because the alternative is unthinkable.  The book stirred up all sorts of issues and memories I’d dealt with and tucked away.  I am always amused at myself when something triggers a revisiting of past demons.  I was certainly surprised this book did that for me.  As for why I read the other three books plus an unpublished/unfinished manuscript for a fifth book–I have no idea.  Maybe I like teenage girl porn.  <shudder>