Dead to Life

Currently Listening: The National - About Today

So you don't have a problem with solitude. But rejection hurts.

I finished cleaning most of what I set out to clean in my place that isn't papers (add at least a month for all the papers...) or in the garage (ugh) last week, with the help of some Chinese house cleaners who probably got more out of me than I could've haggled for, but whatever.

And then I sat down on my couch. And sighed. And thought to myself,

I don't know what it is I'm living for anymore.

(Usual disclaimer: I'm not suicidal. I still like living. But this is about emotional living.)

For the past while, perhaps for as long as I can remember since my depression period over a year ago, I've been feeling a deadening in my life. Like I can't seem to fully appreciate being alive as much as I used to, back when I was more optimistic about friends and relationships and other things. Like I couldn't just settle down and be... in the moment anymore. And know that I'm here.

Even now, this month, we've been doing this meditation challenge for work-- it comes with its own app (10% Happier, to which a friend said, "What, only 10%?"), with video lessons and guided meditations you can sit through, which is really helpful for someone like me who feels the need for a sense of "progression" whenever I'm doing something. But in the times where I sit down and try to pay attention to my own breathing, thoughts, and emotions for 15 minutes at a time now... I don't feel like I'm really all there even as I'm doing it.

Even when I manage to notice my background feelings and emotions and recognize that these things aren't who I am, that they don't define me, and that I can control how I respond to them in the moment, I somehow end up feeling a bit deader inside after. Like this isn't really what I signed up for, and I'm only doing this out of necessity to survive these days. I mean, sure, this'll help me manage during those ever-increasing span of days in which I find myself trapped alone in my flooded emotional world, but I don't particularly enjoy or appreciate having to do these things. I feel in some ways like I'm forcefully killing a part of my mind in this process, the part that was used to experiencing life in all its good and bad moments this way. Or maybe I'm just doing this wrong. (Or maybe I just haven't hit the lessons where they address these things yet lol.)

And then I have a moment like this past weekend, which was a brief breath of fresh air-- a moment of connection with a good friend, whose presence I hadn't been able to enjoy in a while. I mean we technically still met up for lunch once in a while, but that was always in a rushed between-work context and not so much like the older days of just being. There was always something else going on in the background preventing us from doing much else. Or perhaps preventing me more specifically.

And it suddenly reminded me of what it was I'd been missing lately. What I had felt like I'd forgotten-- what it was I used to live for back in the day. Those moments that I had assumed were no longer feasible anymore, because people in all parts of my life had started fading away for real this time. Moments where I could fully be myself in all the ways I didn't feel like I was allowed to be normally.

Because eventually I had to start respecting people's time and be less extreme and be more aware of boundaries and all the little things I hate about trying to maintain connections with people when they're no longer conveniently within reach anymore... which became even more difficult after I'd starting sinking into the sinkhole of depression and felt incapable of managing myself any longer, let alone managing connections with other people.

And then that was what started to take over my life. Assuming most of the people I wanted to see would just be busy all the time or just weren't as interested anymore. Or that I personally just didn't have the energy to engage with them again with all the emotional baggage I was carrying. And then having to rebuild new relationships from scratch after all this time had passed.

So I'd take matters into my own hands. I'd spend whole days and weekends and weeks to myself, doing the things I'd usually do when I was alone and had nothing better to do, because I always had a never-ending list of things I could be doing when no one was around: walking; catching Pokemon; museum exhibits; shows; concerts; eating out; working; cleaning; studying; games; books; other media; window shopping; looking up things to collect; planning future trips; and so on and so on. Things that had started as ways to occupy time in-between life events eventually became the event in themselves, because I had no other real end to look forward to anymore. I often felt like I was just doing these things as a way of trying to rekindle old feelings from experiences where I did feel something special in the past.

Sure, I'd still keep in touch with some friends and catch up with them in the interim, but compared to the regular flow of my life, these were just one-off moments. I'd always come away after the fact feeling at least a little disappointed, because something wouldn't work out the way I wished it would or I'd feel distant because of some pre-existing circumstance or things would end before they could even begin. And moreover, these didn't satisfy what my therapist calls a "daily shared living experience." Or you know, what most of my friends these days relegate to having with a significant other.

Which I always struggled with, because I never felt like that specifically was the mold that I was aiming for with my life. Especially not now, not with my own emotional volatility and instability stemming from my own pre-existing relationships already. People would talk to me as if a significant other would solve my issues and I'd scoff, because really, the risks that could come with an unhealthy relationship (given what I'd seen happen in my own circles), and the notion of having to be fully present for another person when I already struggled so much with myself, would just make my problems even more worse. I already feel broken inside from all of my personal issues and then on top of that my interpersonal ones, not to mention the more specific problems I've been having even more recently with some of my closest friends. But sure, just add one more fucking relationship to that equation and surely my life'll fix itself.

Add in a summer of extreme interpersonal distress in a place really close to my heart. I remembered Sarah asking me last year if I'd been exhausted from the feeling of continually being disappointed by people, and thinking I'd already hit the worst of that feeling. But of course, as with all of my past problems, it just got even worse from there. Worse than I was willing to imagine.

I don't bother asking how low my expectations can go anymore. I just don't expect anything. It's easier that way.

Days, nights of living in a daze.
Being unable to fall asleep or waking up in the middle of the night and suddenly being trapped with these thoughts again for hours until I'm dead tired again at work.
Restlessness, constantly getting up and away from my desk and people and just thinking, "I don't want to be here right now."
Tears at times when no one else could see, because I didn't feel like I could do this in public or even in front of my friends who I did see, even while at the same time wondering when someone else would finally see through my facade for once. (I apparently have a reputation for being stoic.)
Eventually debriefing with some friends and then still crying over it overnight and then the next day and then the next night, because forcing myself to be openly vulnerable and explain what I've been going through is like repeatedly taking a knife and stabbing myself in the same places again, just so people can see what kind of hell I'd been having to live with, the things that I've been wanting to forget, just so that they can finally understand for once why I've been distant for so long. If they even can understand.
But really, I can't forget if I'm still re-experiencing the impact somewhere in the back of my head continuously to this day.

And on top of that, worrying if what I'm feeling is even reasonable, only to reassured by my therapist and others that given the specific circumstances I'd experienced, my feelings are actually reasonable... but that still sucks.

Because right now, the only solution I have to avoid deadening further is to try again with a process that's already seemingly failed me multiple times. To rely again with establishing relationships when I feel like I have plenty of reasons not to. And I'll be honest, there's a part of me that fundamentally just doesn't want to trust people anymore, because that is the naturally human thing to do when forced into circumstances where people close to you break your trust.
And not just one time, but over. and over. and over again.

But the conclusion I came to in the midst of last weekend was, I don't want to live a life where I've given up on living itself, on the little things that used to inspire me and get me excited. And more specifically, the times where I felt like I could actually be more empathetic in spite of the limitations I felt that I was having in that area personally. Now that I know for sure that I'm still capable of experiencing these things just yet.

I feel like I'm on the edge of a new season of my life, starting now. Of learning to still have hope even in the midst of my greatest disappointments, and whatever I still have yet to overcome. Of not just making do with who or what I can still see, but somehow making something more out of it, even though I don't quite know what that is yet.

But maybe, for me, right now, that means learning to have patience with those who are still in my life, even when they aren't quite ready to meet me in the places where I wish I could meet them. And knowing that even if a loss does occur (as far as these things do still happen from time to time), that it's not the end for me yet either.

Maybe I'm just trying to make the most of what ultimately feels like a bittersweet feeling for me right now. I can never have exactly what I want, but at the same time it feels like this is what I need right now. Because even though I wouldn't say I'm happy currently... I think I finally know what it means to still be content.

I'm still hurting, but I'm still standing. I'm still alive. And I can finally feel it now.

And that's the best thing I could have asked for in this moment.

Current favorite anime openings

I'm doing an appended update to this post. 2018 edition!

(I'm doing this now instead of cleaning my house as I was planning to do tonight because I'm feeling restless and this house cleaning is basically a multi-week project at this rate. Ugh.)

The list:
Boku Dake Ga Inai Machi (Erased)

Asian Kung-Fu Generation is still alive? Damn.

Danganronpa 3 Despair Arc

*spoilers for the DR 1-2 games*

Sousei no Aquarion

First Youtube comment: "Giant robots fueled by the power of orgasm. Only you, Japan."

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

Loving the comics x comedy theme.

Yu Yu no Hakusho (OP 2)

I don't know how I missed this the first time around.

Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso

(getting weird Kids on the Slope vibes)

Inuyashiki

Elderly man who basically turns into a robot. I don't know how to explain why I like this.

Shokugeki no Souma Season 3 (OP 2)

What is this show even about again? Cooking?

Yuri on Ice

I only know of this series because of the rabid fangirls at Comic Con... but I can see the appeal lol.
Also for a moment I thought the line at :26 was "Joseph you were insufferable." Engrish is weird.

Charlotte

I finally found an Angel Beats successor aka I'm a sucker for Lia.

Lupin III (2015)

Modern jazzy take on a classic theme.

Honorable Mentions:

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water

Ah, so that stereotype of people running in openings has been around this long? Great song though.

Boku No Hero Academia OP 3

No real comment other than solid shounen.

Death Parade

The dancing in this one.

Soul Eater

This entire video feels like an on-rails ride.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Season 5

It's Jojo.

Guilty Pleasure:

Naruto Shippuden

For all that I’ve shit on Naruto in the past (basically ever since the rescue Sasuke arc lol), an opening like this can still give me the feels.

And finally, felt the need to make a nod to some classics (in the order they influenced me):

Digimon Adventure


Sailor Moon Sailor Stars


Dragon Ball Z


Card Captor Sakura OP 2


Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki


Detective Conan OP 8


The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya


Cowboy Bebop


Durarara!! OP 2


Clannad After Story


One Piece OP 13


Hunter x Hunter OP 6


Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Season 4 (OP 3)


Technically I'm excluding other classics (Evangelion, Naruto OP 2, FMA OP 4, etc.) since I don't feel those hold up as well for me personally anymore (and this list is long enough), but I may bring them back at a later point.

I also have a longer guilty pleasure list (including the likes of Gundam 0079 and Akazukin Cha Cha) but I'll save that for another time.

But for next time: endings.

On coping

Currently Listening: What Lies at the End - Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
(I just reached chapter 4 of this game and this song comes on... I like.
The final section almost reminds me of the last section of the Heimdallr theme from Trails of Cold Steel, although it doesn't actually get there or have any relation otherwise lol.)

---

I know I said I was going to do less serious posts... but psyche.
(Or as an old high school friend once wrote, "sike.")
Today was actually a decent day, but this has been on my mind for too long now.

Where to start.

I realize I haven't really been tracking the progression of my "recovery" in the past year and a half, so to speak, if you could even call it that. I have called it "learning to cope" in recent months, only not the happy kind of coping. It's really more like "meh I'm coping" if anything, because it has meant learning to accept situations that I've never really wanted to accept in the first place.

...the side effect being this ever increasing insecurity that I've been struggling with of late: the sense that my voice, or my sense of self, has no meaning or power. That I have no real agency in my life.

Well, I technically still have agency in the ways in which I can respond to situations I have no control over (until I stop trusting my mind, that is), but I don't have agency in the areas that matter to me more.

For lack of a better term, I'm sick of compromising.

The way I'm describing this so far, it makes it sound like I haven't really accepted anything yet. But really, I acknowledge that there are battles in my life that aren't worth fighting, things I want that might actually be unhealthy for me, people whose behaviors I have no control over, and dreams I have that will probably never realistically happen. I've said my peace with those things already, and I'm being purposefully vague here because I don't really have the capacity to elaborate in detail right now, nor do I really want to.

It's more that the process of "making peace" with those things has kinda drained me of a lot of the optimism I used to have. If anything, I was probably too naively optimistic about things I could do with my life in the past, and even now I still find myself having random bursts of wanting to re-initiate those things, though not as strongly as I used to.

But eventually, when situations turn and people don't live up to my apparently unrealistic expectations, I end up reinforcing behaviors and thoughts I never really wanted to have in the first place:

- "I have to keep a distance in order to protect myself."

- "It's not worth my energy or time to argue over this."

- "Just deal with it."

I never said my means of coping was healthy.

I bring up memories that have irked me in the past with multiple people in my life, situations that have actually triggered me (and God, I hate using trigger as a verb or the fact that it even applies to me), and they don't even remember saying what they said or doing what they did, so it's effectively as if the thing never happened in the first place. Or worse, they call my memory of the account into question, so it's basically as if I was getting upset over literally nothing. Then why did I get so fucking upset about it in the first place?

One person told me it's because I'm too "sensitive."

Please, learn how to empathize with and understand victims of abuse, even if you don't know anyone else personally who has experienced it, because that language is one of the worst things you can say to someone who has experienced abuse. Even if it's just "low level abuse over a long period of time," as my therapist has called it. Just like how my dysthymia isn't as severe as real depression, but still persists long enough for it to affect my ability to function at work and in my day-to-day at random moments when I least want it to.

It's abuse that's made worse by my own mind repeating those words over and over again, long after their originator has stopped saying them, to the point where I've internalized their voices in my head and still subconsciously torture myself with them mentally when I'm not self-aware enough to realize it. And people will never know when that's happening because I never voice what I'm thinking in those moments until it's too late and I explode and then they think I'm suddenly overreacting over nothing.

This is what it feels like to feel powerless, to feel like you're being silenced no matter how loud you try to scream. Because what you're screaming might not be worth screaming about anyway.

That time a year and a half ago when I screamed into my pillow in the middle of the night, in the midst of one of the worst nights of my mental life, asking for God or someone else to come, and no one came. I stopped believing in hope that night.

Well, it was my fault for expecting anyone to come in the first place, because I never actually asked anyone else for help in real life like I was supposed to.

But I was depressed, so I literally didn't feel capable of asking for help at that moment because that's what depression does to you. And I couldn't trust my mind either, as I didn't know how I would react if the people I went to for help responded in a way that might actually make me worse, as has already happened before. And has still continued to happen to this day even after I supposedly got better. So why would I still trust people after all of this?

It doesn't matter what your intentions are, even if you never intended to hurt me, because I still feel consequences from your actions anyway. I just have to fucking deal with it. Like I deal with everything else in my life.

I realize that I've been making large-scale generalizations about people, and that most of my friends and family aren't the way I've been describing, but my mind has this tendency to magnify the worst of my experiences until it's all I can ever think about. Such that when I do experience a legitimate negative moment or interaction, it becomes all the more worse instantaneously and I literally don't know how to process or react in that moment, and end up living with two+ weeks worth of depression instead.

I have to ask myself everyday if what I'm thinking or feeling right now is reasonable, because at any given moment the thoughts I'm having could suddenly become "unreasonable."

And that's what I have to learn to deal/cope/what-have-you with.

(That said, it's nice to have someone validate your thoughts once in a while so that you know it's not you who's going crazy.)

Another Update

Currently Listening: Porco Rosso - Joe Hisaishi in Budokan
(if I could describe what bliss feels like, it would be this song. amazing live.)

I recently (as in, yesterday) just got off a two week depression period that came with not really wanting to do anything (aside from playing Pokemon Go in distracted I'm-walking-40,000-steps-today bursts), and now I feel like want to reclaim my life again.

I also randomly had a feeling that I wanted to write more often again, but I don't necessarily feel like doing long-form posts as much right now because it takes too much of a [mental, emotional, time] toll for me to write them right now... and a lot of what I'd have considered writing in the past has become too personal/interpersonal to publish here, so I'm going to revert back to a little more frequent but less serious format akin to how I used to post back in the old days; most of my thoughts tend to occur this way anyway. So let's see how this goes.

I'm also bringing back the Currently Listening feature I used to have back in my livejournal days, because it's nice to keep track of what I'm listening to in a non-automated way sometimes. Although this may be less "currently listening" and more "currently stuck in my head," as I've been wanting to know where my involuntary recollections have been taking me lately.

Ambitious

I feel like I'm too ambitious for my own good-- not in the professional sense of the word, but more in terms of experiences and wanting to see things.

Take this past month:

- Chicago trip
- LA trip
- SFMOMA + Simon's party + board games in one day
- NYC trip including 2 Museums, 4 Broadway shows, buying 6 more books at the Strand, Sushi Nakazawa, and an Andrew
- catching up on 15 movies
- SF concerts immediately before and after NYC trip and another concert this past week
- Comedy festival in SF
- suddenly getting back into Pokemon Go and hunting down Mudkips at a park where I had to pay $6 to park
- Ryan visiting

And now I'm sick with a disease that mainly affects children (Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease... bleh), knowing nothing about how I got it. But it sucks. (cue Dr. Mom joke: "Maybe your body still thinks you're a child.")

Sicknesses aren't usually supposed to be that big of a deal, but something about this one has been really irking me lately.

Maybe it's because of this sore throat that still freaking hurts like hell after 5 days. I haven't had throat pain this bad since that killer flu I got from China three years ago-- although that time my head also hurt regardless of whether I was lying, sitting down, or standing, and I was sleeping so much that I got sick of sleeping.

Maybe it's because of this stupid rash I now have on my hands and feet (no mouth thankfully) that's been making it painful to walk cause it hurts almost like blisters. Ryan had a good laugh at my expense cause I was creeping around my own house in lieu of losing my ability to walk normally without cursing myself.

Maybe it's because of the anxiety in my mind that just seems to get worse when I'm sick. I have a tendency to magnify the worst of my feelings and emotions when I'm sick to the point where I can't tell if I'm just being extremely paranoid or seriously having illness complications.

Maybe it's because I wanted to do so much else this weekend and couldn't. And not so much doing, but even just being present, and feeling like I couldn't just be.

When the serious questions came and I couldn't answer them the way I wanted to, because I never got the chance to reflect in the past month... even though I've technically had plenty of time to myself by now.

If you look at my list of the past month, it looks like I've been really social, but in reality more than half of that list was done alone. And lately, I've been feeling a strong sense of isolation even when I'm around people, like nothing ever really clicks with them the way I want things to click. Let alone the isolation I already feel on a day-to-day basis.

"What do you want to do most today?" - I've pretty much structured my day-to-day life around this question already, and have found that at the end of the day, I still feel empty. All of those things I've done are great and all, and I'm glad I got to do them, but it's not enough to just do all the things you've been wanting to do in your life. There's more to living than that.

Because as my therapist put it, it's not about what I want-- it's about what I need.

And my own inability to answer that question honestly.

Xenoblade 2

Haven't been in the mood to write much about personal stuff lately, so in the meantime I'll settle for random impressions. First off:

Finished the main story the other day. This game gets a lot of flak for regressing into cringey anime-cliche territory (especially compared to previous Xeno games), and while I agree with the overall criticisms, there was a decent amount of stuff I actually liked:

- The music. I haven't heard Mitsuda put out new game music in years, and he apparently collaborated on the soundtrack with the people who did the music for Xenoblade 1 which was decent as well. I like Gormott's day theme more than Gaur Plains now, and the choral arrangements (specifically Indol and Tantal) are great as well.

- The setting. It wasn't as awe-inspiring as the first time I was climbing the titan in Xenoblade I and trying to figure out which body part I was on, but seeing each of the different titans in II and how they functioned in space relative to each other along with the World Tree was pretty cool. In some respects I actually like the setting more than the one in Blade I, given that it felt like you were seeing more of the entire world and not just limited to one main "continent."

- The whole concept behind blades (their relationships to drivers, their life cycle) and how the main plot actually explored the implications of their existence thematically when it could easily have been limited to a gameplay gimmick, which it actually felt like at first when I was still trying to figure out the whole complicated mess of a battle system lol.

- Rex, even though he was more or less a standard generic JRPG/shounen protagonist (aka naively optimistic and impulsive teenage male). He actually had sass at times and matured a good amount by the end of the game, which was enough for me... or maybe I'm more forgiving of him because I actually like his in-game design, stupid outfit and all? Lol. (But not so much the official art.)

- Random references to past Xeno games. KOS-MOS, the gear designs, the concept behind Pyra and Mythra, the ties to Xenoblade I, and other story elements reminiscent of Gears/Saga (specifically thinking about the Zohar from those games). I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff.

- Having played most of the Xeno-games since the beginning (Gears, Saga I-III, Blade 1... skipped X just cause), it's been interesting to see how Takahashi's directorial style has changed over time. Some of these developments I've known about for a while; especially the tendency towards lengthy cinematic action cutscenes as was happening in Saga III... but it feels more appropriate here; I wasn't into Saga for the action.

- All that said, I hate the gacha system for rolling blades. Most of the rare blades themselves aren't very interesting imo, and all the time you have to waste to try getting all of them doesn't really feel worth it.

- I have to agree that in many other respects, this game doesn't respect your time much either. I don't know if I could do another game like this one for a long while.

Final verdict: I want to play Xenosaga again. Or at least ep I-II DS (if that game ever gets a translation) + III because I don't really have the patience for the mess that was the original ep II anymore.

Unequal Exchange

So I haven't really been able to put this into words for a long time, but I've been thinking about this on and off lately until just last night when the apparent root causes suddenly came into focus after reading a tangentially unrelated FB post (which is another story). To be honest, this didn't really come out as coherently as I'd have liked even after all that, so please bear with me.

The closest analog I can think of to what I've experienced (which I also experience but that's also another story) is imposter syndrome, but that's a term that's usually relegated to professional contexts. In this case, I'm thinking more about social contexts-- more broadly speaking, about having participated in multiple communities at least semi-regularly over the course of some years, but never really feeling a true sense of belonging in most of them. And why that is so.

And wondering if I'm just turned off now by any notion of participating in a larger community, to begin with.

There isn't a real starting point to this, so I'm just going to list off some things that may not actually be all that related to each other and probably aren't the best examples of what I'm trying to express, but seem just as relevant to me with regards to what I'm talking about.

1. The time when the Left Behind book series came around and popularized a [specifically dispensationalist pre-tribulation interpretation of] phenomenon in Christian circles known as the Rapture. And the paranoia that inevitably came about when I started wondering if I really truly believed or not-- which hasn't ever really left me since. (I could go on about how stupid this understanding of the Rapture is but meh.)

2. Nathan and I going over all of the occasions in the past number of years where he didn't remember me being present when I actually had been there all along.

3. The moment at Sunday service that prompted me to write this post.

4. When I said bye to Steven at Camp Jitterbug last year and thought, "I may not be back for a long time." Because at that point I was already feeling, "I can't keep up with this anymore."

5. The fallacy of how I somehow can feel up-to-date with another person's life just by keeping up with what they've been posting on social media when I really have no idea what's actually going on with them.

6. Lately, I've noticed that I've started forgetting how I interacted with people I used to know in high school but haven't kept up with since. And started wondering if I ever really knew them even back then, although my understanding of what it means to really "know" someone has shifted a lot since back then anyway.


The one thing that springs to mind for me right now after listing all of this is a sense of unequal exchange. In some of these cases I feel like I've sacrificed a not insignificant portion of time in my life to at least be present -- at Hilgard, at church, at swing (could even add Cisco-friends, IV, other roommates etc), and at the end of the day, I often still feel like a stranger, or that it's not that much different from me not ever having been present anyway.

But the more I think about it, the reality is... I probably actually haven't really been all that present after all. I mean, I haven't been to swing in over a year, Sunday service in a couple of months, and most of my other friends I see irregularly every one-to-few months or so. I am actually making what I've been feeling a reality at this point, and I don't really feel much different. If anything, I still feel just as tired these days as I felt when I was more socially out there in the past.

It may be that my stamina for being social has gone down a lot in the past couple of years. But I feel that what I had to start with as a base wasn't that great in the first place. I feel like I gave what little energy I had just to be able to be around people ("I go to parties just to be an introvert at them."), but that wasn't really enough to sustain a longer-term presence or relationship in the community that I would have liked to have, so I end up feeling exhausted at the end of the day and wondering what was the point-- other than the impression that these experiences might have left on me.

Which leads to where I am now. I went through a bunch of extremely low periods between last summer and this one, and only just now have felt like I've recovered enough energy to possibly reinitiate some of these things and be more social again. Only now, I actively experience feelings of resentment at the notion of returning. What exactly am I "returning" to anyway? Why should I be sacrificing more of my time to places and relationships that haven't really borne fruit from all of the time that I did commit in the past, even though that time may not have been as substantial or meaningful for other people as it was for me?

If anything, all that last thought tells me is that I'm not cut out for these communities. That I don't have what it takes to really be part of an active community again, because I don't have the patience or fortitude to work through another period of potential disconnectedness and heartbreak. It also reinforces another feeling that I've been having for a long time now.

"I'd rather be alone."

I don't know if I've really recovered at all.