paradoxes.

Updated note: So I wrote this entry about a week ago and never got around to publishing it cause part of it didn't really sit right with me. Now it's a week later and I might say that I don't necessarily feel the same way I did when I wrote this, but as a snapshot of a moment that's become more typical lately whenever my mind is lucid enough, it still stands I guess.

Original note: I seem to have a habit for having not so uplifting thoughts while driving alone at night for an hour... and another habit for forgetting the contents of said thoughts the moment I get out of the car. But this is my attempt to recall said thoughts regardless. I really should have a recorder on me or something.

Words are all that I'm capable of thinking in, but words do not suffice.

Once you acknowledge that there will always be a barrier between yourself and other people to some extent, that there will always be some level on which you can never really connect, your view of the world (at least in my case) grows incredibly dim. You stop seeing opportunities in the conversations you might have but then decide not to, because why bother if it won't really go anywhere anyway? If, at the end of the day, you'll just go your separate ways, and then probably not talk again for another day or two or three or week or month or couple of months or half-year or year or so it goes on. So life goes on. And then maybe one or two or four or all of those times one of you might lament how you wish you had more time when you clearly don't and never will have any, so why bother bringing up a pointless subject to begin with.

And it's not even about just that fundamental inability to fully connect which is kind of inevitable anyway, because it's also about your own personal ineptitude. Your own inability to appear happy on command, because looking grim just happens to be your default face and smiling actually hurts more than it sounds even though it somehow uses less muscles than frowning. You can't mask what you're feeling because you like being honest with other people, but at the same time you're having trouble acknowledging or recognizing what exactly it is you're feeling in the first place, so when people call you out for not looking happy you respond that you really are happy and just suck at showing it. Which may also be true, but you really don't know.

All you know is that you aren't satisfied, and you can't figure out how to go about becoming satisfied because you don't believe you ever will be. Faith is believing in something despite that fact that you might not ever see it in your own lifetime, because Abraham had faith in a promise that he personally never lived to witness. And in your own case, it'd wind up being more selfish to simply give up and move on with your life than continue to hope for something you possibly [probably] will never see happen, even though to be frankly honest in this case you'd rather take the selfish route because you feel like you have a right to being content with the way things are. And any more talk about this subject is just continuing to beat on a dead horse that you silently killed years ago.

And clearly, thinking negatively in this fashion isn't right either, because other people will then call you out for not being your normal self because you clearly need help and need to cheer up. But why can't it simply be normal to regularly have negative thoughts of this sort? Isn't the majority of life as it is technically mundane for most people anyway, if you really think about it? Why can't you just acknowledge that and just be okay with the fact that you can't always be happy all the time? Why can't you just be content with the fact that you're not totally satisfied right now? And why the hell does that sound like a paradox when it makes sense in your head?

Is it weird that I find myself drawn towards negative thoughts and emotions? That I love being bleak and depressing sometimes and for the record like talking to other people even when they're also feeling that way? [As my coworker likes to tell me: "You revel in that shit."]

That said, it's not like I don't want to be more pleasant sometimes either. I often do wish I could be that person that brightens someone's day just by being present. I wish I could simply be fully open and sunny and likable and easily approachable and always present and all those other positive-sounding adjectives, inside and out.

But I can't be someone I'm not, and I'm not a genuine happy-go-lucky open and inviting person all the time. I am not someone who likes to draw attention or who is capable of making other people happy when I'm often incapable of doing so for myself. I am not popular or a center or attention or completely inspiring or ambitious or full of dreams for the future or much of a good role model for that matter. And for that matter, nor do I possess any real concrete interest of becoming that person, at least not for everyone or even the majority of the people I actually still see around. Even though I did actually wish for something along those lines at one point, until I realized what folly it was to hope for so much. Because if I really were fully all of those things, I wouldn't really be myself anymore.

If there's one thing I've been hearing a lot, it's that it's better to be an honest asshole than it is to be nice and disingenuous. And I've also been realizing lately that it's becoming increasingly more difficult for me to actually be genuinely... nice with most people. Instead, I notice how jealous I can be when I don't want to be, how apathetic I can be when I shouldn't be, and how self-serving I can be when it comes to me. The me of previous years would've been upset with the me of today, whereas now I don't really seem to care as much anymore except to... lament me, I guess, because I'm fine with lamenting things at least. It fits within my range of low-key emotional capability.

And apparently I'm also fine with choosing to be upset with things I don't really have to be upset over. Or it might be more apt to say that I often end up choosing to focus on the bad rather than the good, because for some messed up reason I sometimes like to feel as though I've been wronged and deserve to be vindicated or something, when in a lot of these cases, I really... don't. It's like saying I want to feel sad so that people will pity me when there really isn't anything to be pitied about (unless you consider it sad that my mind winds up resorting to this state, I guess).

Deep down, I secretly crave attention, and yet I simultaneously hate being the center of attention. I want to be pitied but I don't want to be noticed when I feel pitiful. I want to be close to people but at the same time I don't want to be bothered by them. I want to believe, but I don't want to really believe if it means that I'm lying to myself. I want this entry to be read but at the same time I don't know if I actually want anyone to read this.

I feel like I'm trapped in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance, as if I'm suffering some sickness of the mind, but it also feels terribly normal and expected, as if that's just the way things are and always have been and being not sick is actually abnormal. I lament the fact that I'm even in this situation to begin with, that I couldn't simply just shut my mind off for once, except that the thought of shutting my mind off sounds terrifying and undesirable because I feel like I'd be betraying my own values in the process, by running away from my own problems. A mind can only take so much, but my mind doesn't want to stop taking.

And when my mind isn't lucid enough and people ask me about these things, I just shut down further. I can't truly think about them except for times like now when I'm alone. The moment someone else confronts me about them in person, I feel incapable of answering them honestly because I feel totally apathetic about it when they ask. And then when they're not around, I don't feel apathetic anymore. But I want to be able to still talk about these things when people are around, rather than continue skirting them under the rug... but I don't want to bother people with them.

There are days where I want to be apathetic [about life, the universe, and everything], and then there are days when I don't want to be apathetic, and then when all that is done and over, I can't decide which was the real me speaking, because while one clearly sounds better than the other, both feel equally desirable to me now, in the present. More likely I really am saying both and just keep teeter-tottering from one end to the other, because I can't just settle for one impression or feeling; I have to experience both extremes.

The reality is, sometimes I actually don't mind having depressing thoughts as much as I do mind having them, and that notion is both comforting and disturbing to me. I feel this pressure to conform to a society that values one side over the other, and I stress over the fact that I don't presently feel the same way, but at the same time I don't really want to worry so much over something (my tendency to experience depressing thoughts) that feels so much like just another typical facet of life. Or at least, mine own anyway. Because I would rather be a realistic pessimist than a delusional optimist.

I suppose you could call this my quarter-life crisis.

(yes, I know it's possible to be a realistic optimist or simply just a... realist, but I'm still a ways away from that point.)