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.
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Sunday, July 30, 2017
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.
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.
Thursday, March 16, 2017
and so it goes
Current status: I got a job offer last week. And it was exciting! But it was also nerve-wracking, waiting in a state of limbo for the entire week for them to finally contact me with the offer itself, several days later than originally intended. But I finally got the offer I wanted. And all was good.
Or well, that's what I'd like to say, anyway. To be honest, my emotions have been out of whack for a long while, so the times where I feel like I should be happy, I'm not... really. Or only briefly. Or at least, I don't feel as "excited" as other people seem to think I should be. But I'm not as stressed with anxiety of uncertainty about the future for sure.
But it's not the same as happiness. When all is said and done, a job is a job.
You know what made me happy today? Getting the comics I wanted because I got to the store today right when it opened. Followed by green milk tea with lychee jelly from Sharetea. Followed by getting some plans straight with friends I anticipate seeing in the week to come. Followed by getting lunch with Kuai.
Technically, I still was doing these things to an extent even before the offer came. But I guess what changed this time was that I didn't feel as guilty about pursuing the things that I wanted to pursue-- because I felt secure in my situation now. No more worrying about wasting time not doing enough to get myself back on track. I have time now.
But I recognize that happiness is fleeting, and you shouldn't be pursuing things just to make yourself feel happy. Especially when what makes you happy isn't necessarily what's "best" for you in the long-term... like making spontaneous decisions to buy things rather than budgeting for them ahead of time.
Lately, I've been trying to think about those times where I've been feeling dissatisfied of late, where I feel unhappy when all else seems to suggest otherwise. The little things that brought me into this pit I've been living in in the first place.
People seem to think that my depression was a result of my jobless situation, and that now that I have a job coming, and now that my career is progressing somewhere again, things are looking up. No reason to feel depressed anymore, right?
Wrong. Most of the factors contributing to my mental state existed while I was still employed, and none of the triggers I experienced in the past were job-related at all. It was only recently that my mental issues bled into my job situation.
But now that that's resolved for now, I still have a lot of other issues to deal with. It's more telling to me that even on the day that I got my offer, I had a moment of weakness later in the day after taking care of some logistical things and broke down crying in my car again before dinner. (Luckily, Ryan was able to cheer me up.)
Anyway, it's hard for me to just narrow down one thing right now, so I'll touch on a few things that come to mind:
- Had a conversation with Kuai a couple of weeks ago regarding my interpersonal issues with people. Realized that almost all of the problems I spoke about tended to stem from my perception of how other people see me, and how the mistakes I make might put that at risk even when in hindsight I shouldn't have any reason to worry in the first place. Almost everything we talked about wound up becoming about being self-centered to an extent.
I think the knowledge that so much of what I do in my relationships is really self-motivated makes me have a dim or pessimistic view of relationships in general. If I can't trust myself to be selfless or truly good to other people, how can I expect anyone else to do the same for me?
- Recognizing the limits of community in my own contexts. Some of the things that people try to say to me as way of reassurance come off as entirely alien to what I am actually experiencing, even if I know they mean well, and I don't know how to respond properly. As Michael framed it to me the other day: it often ends up feeling like my friends (or well, some of them at least) don't really know me at all.
Part of it is probably due to the fact that I haven't really let on all of the things I experience. I don't like to "burden" people, and I often feel like a lot of my true thoughts are just too dark or inappropriate to share (where do you draw the line?). I've also apparently been very good at being in denial about things pertaining to myself such that for some issues, it's taken years for me to really admit that I have a problem in the first place.
- Oh, boy, where do I start.
Disappointment in church. In family. In some friendships and the way things turned out (and wondering what I could've been done differently). In my upbringing. In our political system and this country. In humanity. In myself and how I let my situation stagnate for years on end.
Giving up on God answering the big questions that I have in my lifetime while at the same time wondering if I ever really gave him a chance in the first place.
Feeling like the entire life I've built up for myself is just one big construct just to pass the time "distracted" until I die.
Feeling like I can't fully trust anyone anymore and always expecting to be disappointed if I try to raise my expectations any higher than motivated self-interest.
Not trusting anyone in church or living existence to "speak" for God, let alone myself, and consequently not knowing where else to turn to.
Continually being disappointed in myself.
Being unable to maintain composure when wracked with the pressure of having to figure out how to function normally while my sleep schedule, mood swings, and mind are all over the place and consequently experiencing frequent debilitating migraine-level headaches.
Being fed up with some false conception of what society considers "normal" and how much I don't fit into that picture.
Wondering why I have to settle for what little time I get to share with some people, and why I can't selfishly want to take up more of their time.
Wondering if it's okay to simply be sick and tired of humanity in general.
- Current thoughts:
To be human is to know suffering. And joy. But more so suffering.
Even when I'm not happy about something, that doesn't mean I don't want to be happy. Emotions just aren't something you can force yourself to feel when the situation calls for it.
I wonder what I'll think five years from now.
Or well, that's what I'd like to say, anyway. To be honest, my emotions have been out of whack for a long while, so the times where I feel like I should be happy, I'm not... really. Or only briefly. Or at least, I don't feel as "excited" as other people seem to think I should be. But I'm not as stressed with anxiety of uncertainty about the future for sure.
But it's not the same as happiness. When all is said and done, a job is a job.
You know what made me happy today? Getting the comics I wanted because I got to the store today right when it opened. Followed by green milk tea with lychee jelly from Sharetea. Followed by getting some plans straight with friends I anticipate seeing in the week to come. Followed by getting lunch with Kuai.
Technically, I still was doing these things to an extent even before the offer came. But I guess what changed this time was that I didn't feel as guilty about pursuing the things that I wanted to pursue-- because I felt secure in my situation now. No more worrying about wasting time not doing enough to get myself back on track. I have time now.
But I recognize that happiness is fleeting, and you shouldn't be pursuing things just to make yourself feel happy. Especially when what makes you happy isn't necessarily what's "best" for you in the long-term... like making spontaneous decisions to buy things rather than budgeting for them ahead of time.
Lately, I've been trying to think about those times where I've been feeling dissatisfied of late, where I feel unhappy when all else seems to suggest otherwise. The little things that brought me into this pit I've been living in in the first place.
People seem to think that my depression was a result of my jobless situation, and that now that I have a job coming, and now that my career is progressing somewhere again, things are looking up. No reason to feel depressed anymore, right?
Wrong. Most of the factors contributing to my mental state existed while I was still employed, and none of the triggers I experienced in the past were job-related at all. It was only recently that my mental issues bled into my job situation.
But now that that's resolved for now, I still have a lot of other issues to deal with. It's more telling to me that even on the day that I got my offer, I had a moment of weakness later in the day after taking care of some logistical things and broke down crying in my car again before dinner. (Luckily, Ryan was able to cheer me up.)
Anyway, it's hard for me to just narrow down one thing right now, so I'll touch on a few things that come to mind:
- Had a conversation with Kuai a couple of weeks ago regarding my interpersonal issues with people. Realized that almost all of the problems I spoke about tended to stem from my perception of how other people see me, and how the mistakes I make might put that at risk even when in hindsight I shouldn't have any reason to worry in the first place. Almost everything we talked about wound up becoming about being self-centered to an extent.
I think the knowledge that so much of what I do in my relationships is really self-motivated makes me have a dim or pessimistic view of relationships in general. If I can't trust myself to be selfless or truly good to other people, how can I expect anyone else to do the same for me?
- Recognizing the limits of community in my own contexts. Some of the things that people try to say to me as way of reassurance come off as entirely alien to what I am actually experiencing, even if I know they mean well, and I don't know how to respond properly. As Michael framed it to me the other day: it often ends up feeling like my friends (or well, some of them at least) don't really know me at all.
Part of it is probably due to the fact that I haven't really let on all of the things I experience. I don't like to "burden" people, and I often feel like a lot of my true thoughts are just too dark or inappropriate to share (where do you draw the line?). I've also apparently been very good at being in denial about things pertaining to myself such that for some issues, it's taken years for me to really admit that I have a problem in the first place.
- Oh, boy, where do I start.
Disappointment in church. In family. In some friendships and the way things turned out (and wondering what I could've been done differently). In my upbringing. In our political system and this country. In humanity. In myself and how I let my situation stagnate for years on end.
Giving up on God answering the big questions that I have in my lifetime while at the same time wondering if I ever really gave him a chance in the first place.
Feeling like the entire life I've built up for myself is just one big construct just to pass the time "distracted" until I die.
Feeling like I can't fully trust anyone anymore and always expecting to be disappointed if I try to raise my expectations any higher than motivated self-interest.
Not trusting anyone in church or living existence to "speak" for God, let alone myself, and consequently not knowing where else to turn to.
Continually being disappointed in myself.
Being unable to maintain composure when wracked with the pressure of having to figure out how to function normally while my sleep schedule, mood swings, and mind are all over the place and consequently experiencing frequent debilitating migraine-level headaches.
Being fed up with some false conception of what society considers "normal" and how much I don't fit into that picture.
Wondering why I have to settle for what little time I get to share with some people, and why I can't selfishly want to take up more of their time.
Wondering if it's okay to simply be sick and tired of humanity in general.
- Current thoughts:
To be human is to know suffering. And joy. But more so suffering.
Even when I'm not happy about something, that doesn't mean I don't want to be happy. Emotions just aren't something you can force yourself to feel when the situation calls for it.
I wonder what I'll think five years from now.
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
status
Still alive!
Okay, I'm not sure what I'm getting all excited for. I'm actually the opposite of excited right now. Life is rather ho-hum hum-drum right now, and I couldn't think of a better way to say that (sorry).
I've been stuck in the midst of another writer's block rut for a long while now, and whatever I do end up putting out tends to feel too painful to read (in the not-good writing sense, not the emotional one); cue past discussions I've had on writing frustrations from before.
But I mean when it comes down to it, it's just frustrating to not be able to articulate what you're feeling, especially in the more intense moments that you partly don't want to forget but partly do because this hurts too much. What's the point of suffering if you're only going to forget it later? And for some reason that feels like such a privileged millenial thing to say.
Anyway, the past year has been... rough. I get the feeling (unsure how realistic this is) that some of my past entries have felt melodramatic even though they felt perfectly real enough to me at the time-- it's just more that my mind tends towards the depressing and cynical, and once it senses a downward spiral it just wants to go all the way to the bottom. Think the worst thoughts you can think. Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! (sorry Dr. Seuss)
In the two months leading up to the election last year, coinciding with the last few entries on this blog, I basically went through a series of emotional breakdowns (read: sleepless nights while sobbing at home regularly) for reasons that would basically change every two weeks. Random things friends and family said or did, or more often than not my own mistakes and mishaps, would just trigger me into going off on yet another one out of a long list of long-term developed insecurities. I would be fine one moment and then in the midst of an uncontrollable mind-death-spiral the next.
Around the same time, my therapist diagnosed me with dysthymia, a form of depression that essentially is less acute than severe depression but tends to be more chronic and cyclical. In other words, it's less intense, but it lasts a lot longer-- typically on the order of years.
I'm not going to go into full detail about everything that's happened since then, but basically, I've gone through more ups-and-downs while slowly trying to discern for myself how to get back into a normal mode of living again. What originally had little to do with my job situation (read: original reasons for depression) has been starting to affect it in the past couple of months since I've begun searching again, and I'm not happy with how slow the process has been, but that's just something that I've had to live with.
If anything, I've been trying to learn to be patient with myself, because I think a lot of my issues and insecurities stem from lacking patience with myself and the subsequent disappointment that I've felt inside.
I find it difficult to be patient with myself when I can see something better already, only to find that I am blocked by my own inadequacy and fear of failure. And even when I do attempt things and fail, the experience of failing itself and manner in which I perceive others responding to it has in some ways done more to reinforce the anxiety and despair that I've felt in the long-term. Especially when I'm told that my situation isn't really "all that bad"; when I can see how much I could be doing right now, but for some reason just end up not-- insert how much of a "noob" I am for all those stupid little things I won't mention because they really are that petty (and yes I've internalized all those times I've been called that even though they were jokes and I know I shouldn't have).
I know I shouldn't care so much about what other people think, and yet, I do. I know that my life situation really isn't all that bad relatively speaking, and yet I can't help but feel a sense of despair and disillusionment with life- no, living, right now, and no, I'm not suicidal; I just don't feel like doing anything a lot of the time. And I honestly can't help but feel disappointed in myself when I can often see some solutions to my own problems but otherwise feel too helpless to actually do anything about it-- a helplessness that at one point culminated in convulsive sobbing after an otherwise 'reassuring' phone call, while screaming, "WHY WON'T IT STOP WHY WON'T IT STOP WHY WON'T IT STOP-"
Because the one thing I couldn't control, when I needed it the most, was my own emotions.
I have moments where I start to see how everything in my life is a construct of some sort (society, work, church, "normality," what-have-you), and I start to wonder, what's the point of all this. It frustrates me when I'm told that things will get better when I have a job, or perhaps someone else will be able to make me feel better, or that God will just make things work out in the long run; honestly, to me, this runs much deeper than that, and these kinds of suggestions strike me as lacking awareness in how to engage with individuals struggling with mental illness (although to be fair, not that I would know much better either).
I don't have faith in such simple solutions; ones that strike me more as trying to cover up the symptoms rather than deal with the cause: a deep brokenness for which I have no other words to describe, and even just calling it that sounds juvenile and trite to my own ears. (It's an affectation from all those church years.)
The annoying thing about trying to write all of this, is that I don't think there are any real words for whatever this is. Words can only mean so much if you haven't felt the source for them for yourself; all I can describe are the symptoms and try to rationalize something out of them, something that ends up coming across (at least to me) as reductive and a poor reflection of what it really feels like to experience an overwhelming sense of hopelessness when all other social and personal indicators seem to be telling you otherwise.
Maybe I'm trying to give this more weight than it actually has to begin with. Or maybe- you know what, never mind. I give up trying to wonder about these things. I honestly don't know. I'm just tired, man.
I'll try to have more faith in myself and other people and the world when I wake up tomorrow.
Okay, I'm not sure what I'm getting all excited for. I'm actually the opposite of excited right now. Life is rather ho-hum hum-drum right now, and I couldn't think of a better way to say that (sorry).
I've been stuck in the midst of another writer's block rut for a long while now, and whatever I do end up putting out tends to feel too painful to read (in the not-good writing sense, not the emotional one); cue past discussions I've had on writing frustrations from before.
But I mean when it comes down to it, it's just frustrating to not be able to articulate what you're feeling, especially in the more intense moments that you partly don't want to forget but partly do because this hurts too much. What's the point of suffering if you're only going to forget it later? And for some reason that feels like such a privileged millenial thing to say.
Anyway, the past year has been... rough. I get the feeling (unsure how realistic this is) that some of my past entries have felt melodramatic even though they felt perfectly real enough to me at the time-- it's just more that my mind tends towards the depressing and cynical, and once it senses a downward spiral it just wants to go all the way to the bottom. Think the worst thoughts you can think. Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! (sorry Dr. Seuss)
In the two months leading up to the election last year, coinciding with the last few entries on this blog, I basically went through a series of emotional breakdowns (read: sleepless nights while sobbing at home regularly) for reasons that would basically change every two weeks. Random things friends and family said or did, or more often than not my own mistakes and mishaps, would just trigger me into going off on yet another one out of a long list of long-term developed insecurities. I would be fine one moment and then in the midst of an uncontrollable mind-death-spiral the next.
Around the same time, my therapist diagnosed me with dysthymia, a form of depression that essentially is less acute than severe depression but tends to be more chronic and cyclical. In other words, it's less intense, but it lasts a lot longer-- typically on the order of years.
I'm not going to go into full detail about everything that's happened since then, but basically, I've gone through more ups-and-downs while slowly trying to discern for myself how to get back into a normal mode of living again. What originally had little to do with my job situation (read: original reasons for depression) has been starting to affect it in the past couple of months since I've begun searching again, and I'm not happy with how slow the process has been, but that's just something that I've had to live with.
If anything, I've been trying to learn to be patient with myself, because I think a lot of my issues and insecurities stem from lacking patience with myself and the subsequent disappointment that I've felt inside.
I find it difficult to be patient with myself when I can see something better already, only to find that I am blocked by my own inadequacy and fear of failure. And even when I do attempt things and fail, the experience of failing itself and manner in which I perceive others responding to it has in some ways done more to reinforce the anxiety and despair that I've felt in the long-term. Especially when I'm told that my situation isn't really "all that bad"; when I can see how much I could be doing right now, but for some reason just end up not-- insert how much of a "noob" I am for all those stupid little things I won't mention because they really are that petty (and yes I've internalized all those times I've been called that even though they were jokes and I know I shouldn't have).
I know I shouldn't care so much about what other people think, and yet, I do. I know that my life situation really isn't all that bad relatively speaking, and yet I can't help but feel a sense of despair and disillusionment with life- no, living, right now, and no, I'm not suicidal; I just don't feel like doing anything a lot of the time. And I honestly can't help but feel disappointed in myself when I can often see some solutions to my own problems but otherwise feel too helpless to actually do anything about it-- a helplessness that at one point culminated in convulsive sobbing after an otherwise 'reassuring' phone call, while screaming, "WHY WON'T IT STOP WHY WON'T IT STOP WHY WON'T IT STOP-"
Because the one thing I couldn't control, when I needed it the most, was my own emotions.
I have moments where I start to see how everything in my life is a construct of some sort (society, work, church, "normality," what-have-you), and I start to wonder, what's the point of all this. It frustrates me when I'm told that things will get better when I have a job, or perhaps someone else will be able to make me feel better, or that God will just make things work out in the long run; honestly, to me, this runs much deeper than that, and these kinds of suggestions strike me as lacking awareness in how to engage with individuals struggling with mental illness (although to be fair, not that I would know much better either).
I don't have faith in such simple solutions; ones that strike me more as trying to cover up the symptoms rather than deal with the cause: a deep brokenness for which I have no other words to describe, and even just calling it that sounds juvenile and trite to my own ears. (It's an affectation from all those church years.)
The annoying thing about trying to write all of this, is that I don't think there are any real words for whatever this is. Words can only mean so much if you haven't felt the source for them for yourself; all I can describe are the symptoms and try to rationalize something out of them, something that ends up coming across (at least to me) as reductive and a poor reflection of what it really feels like to experience an overwhelming sense of hopelessness when all other social and personal indicators seem to be telling you otherwise.
Maybe I'm trying to give this more weight than it actually has to begin with. Or maybe- you know what, never mind. I give up trying to wonder about these things. I honestly don't know. I'm just tired, man.
I'll try to have more faith in myself and other people and the world when I wake up tomorrow.
Sunday, October 30, 2016
self-diagnosis
It is midnight. I just screwed myself over sleep-wise by thinking that I could just fall asleep at 8 PM (because I had another headache that came out of nowhere and just wouldn't go away again) even though I knew this most likely would happen, and now I'm awake again.
I've been feeling off for the past week, even though I finally got past an anxiety-ridden hell-hole of the previous week that ended with a day of emotional catharsis and more crying than I would care to admit. And then I had to pick myself back up together just in time for a week of serially timed meet-ups with people as well as my career counselor, and I had to somehow remind myself how to socially function in front of others again and then apologize to the latter for my lack of progress because of ongoing stuff.
And I survived! somewhat.
I still feel emotionally fragile and volatile after all of that. And somewhat like a used sponge. It has taken me longer than I would like to "recover," although I feel like I face new struggles everyday that challenge my ability to function normally.
- I lost my car keys somewhere in a pile of bushes within the vicinity of my mailbox as I was checking my mail and they slipped off the keyring in my hand, and I heard them bounce off the pavement but didn't see where they landed.
Cue 20 minutes of frantic running up and down the sidewalk along both sides of bushes, panicked phone calls to Mom, and even more panicking as it was already getting dark and I was running late for a meet-up with Jade to head up to SF for a musical. After some help from a nice pedestrian walking her dog, I finally found them in front of a line of bushes, blended in with the shrubbery.
- Accidentally missed a phone interview call from UI people by a few seconds because my phone didn't ring (even though it made the "call missed" sound), and no one has responded or picked up on the line that I was told to call "within 48 hours" ever since. Killed my motivation to do anything for the rest of the day.
- Old social insecurities have started propping up again, only this time I feel like I can't afford to deal with this shit anymore on top of all of my other shit. Especially the anxiety of wondering what people are doing without me (because I'm not that oblivious and can sometimes tell when something's going on) and always feeling out of the loop, even though I know I can't handle that social atmosphere right now anyway given how out of it I've been lately, which is why I've been more distant in the first place.
And there's that inner voice in me that asks what's the point anymore, if you still feel this disconnected from people after all of these years. Why even bother keeping up anymore. Being in an environment where I can't be more open about my ongoing issues is exhausting (and for that matter, today was exhausting, and I wasn't sure if I could hold myself together for much longer).
- Food in general isn't as enjoyable to me as it used to be, to the point where eating now feels like a chore that I have to prepare for. Not that it hasn't been that way in the past, but nowadays even when I go out of my way to get something I like, it just... doesn't taste as good anymore.
- I haven't been able to consistently do anything I used to enjoy doing for more than 10-15 minutes at a time. Most of the time I don't feel like doing anything and end up settling for passing time uncomfortably, or end up briefly starting something I know I won't finish anytime soon. I started a game of Pokemon (Soul Silver) last night because I felt like it until I hit the first gym and started wondering what the hell I was doing with my life.
- I constantly feel like I have the onset of a cold and pink eye without the mucus, in spite of repeated attempts at applying eye drops and daily Claritin to address what might otherwise be my allergies.
- It is 72 (down from 74) degrees in my place right now and I'm still sweating like I'm in a sauna. And I feel spoiled for saying that, but honestly, [the perception] of heat even to this extent makes me irritable.
- After all of the above this week... I haven't actually been able to get back to any of the work I was doing earlier yet.
- One week of milk tea or some other drink variant everyday; one day with two drinks and enough hot tea to give me a tea hangover at 10 PM; and another day that ended with three drinks because why the hell not. I'm probably going to try and tone it down this week for the sake of my own health.
- I had a dream last night where Jonathan (Ross) and I were smuggling fireworks as part of a car caravan into NYC and got pulled over by the NYPD equivalent of border patrol(?), only to get caught up in a gun battle between them and local gangs, and we tried to get out of there as fast as possible. And then I found myself hiding inside a crawl space because Jonathan told me to take cover and people were fleeing everywhere, where I was finally crushed by the overwhelmingly oppressive "presence" of approaching recycling trucks going on strike.
I worry about turning into a shell of a person who is miserable to be around because everything is always the way it's described here right now: negative. That everything I'm going through right now is becoming the new normal for me. That it's something that I just have to "deal with" now.
Fuck that. There's no reason to settle for depression when you know that things can still be better.
It's just hard to live that out sometimes. Especially when your own mind is at odds with yourself.
I've been feeling off for the past week, even though I finally got past an anxiety-ridden hell-hole of the previous week that ended with a day of emotional catharsis and more crying than I would care to admit. And then I had to pick myself back up together just in time for a week of serially timed meet-ups with people as well as my career counselor, and I had to somehow remind myself how to socially function in front of others again and then apologize to the latter for my lack of progress because of ongoing stuff.
And I survived! somewhat.
I still feel emotionally fragile and volatile after all of that. And somewhat like a used sponge. It has taken me longer than I would like to "recover," although I feel like I face new struggles everyday that challenge my ability to function normally.
- I lost my car keys somewhere in a pile of bushes within the vicinity of my mailbox as I was checking my mail and they slipped off the keyring in my hand, and I heard them bounce off the pavement but didn't see where they landed.
Cue 20 minutes of frantic running up and down the sidewalk along both sides of bushes, panicked phone calls to Mom, and even more panicking as it was already getting dark and I was running late for a meet-up with Jade to head up to SF for a musical. After some help from a nice pedestrian walking her dog, I finally found them in front of a line of bushes, blended in with the shrubbery.
- Accidentally missed a phone interview call from UI people by a few seconds because my phone didn't ring (even though it made the "call missed" sound), and no one has responded or picked up on the line that I was told to call "within 48 hours" ever since. Killed my motivation to do anything for the rest of the day.
- Old social insecurities have started propping up again, only this time I feel like I can't afford to deal with this shit anymore on top of all of my other shit. Especially the anxiety of wondering what people are doing without me (because I'm not that oblivious and can sometimes tell when something's going on) and always feeling out of the loop, even though I know I can't handle that social atmosphere right now anyway given how out of it I've been lately, which is why I've been more distant in the first place.
And there's that inner voice in me that asks what's the point anymore, if you still feel this disconnected from people after all of these years. Why even bother keeping up anymore. Being in an environment where I can't be more open about my ongoing issues is exhausting (and for that matter, today was exhausting, and I wasn't sure if I could hold myself together for much longer).
- Food in general isn't as enjoyable to me as it used to be, to the point where eating now feels like a chore that I have to prepare for. Not that it hasn't been that way in the past, but nowadays even when I go out of my way to get something I like, it just... doesn't taste as good anymore.
- I haven't been able to consistently do anything I used to enjoy doing for more than 10-15 minutes at a time. Most of the time I don't feel like doing anything and end up settling for passing time uncomfortably, or end up briefly starting something I know I won't finish anytime soon. I started a game of Pokemon (Soul Silver) last night because I felt like it until I hit the first gym and started wondering what the hell I was doing with my life.
- I constantly feel like I have the onset of a cold and pink eye without the mucus, in spite of repeated attempts at applying eye drops and daily Claritin to address what might otherwise be my allergies.
- It is 72 (down from 74) degrees in my place right now and I'm still sweating like I'm in a sauna. And I feel spoiled for saying that, but honestly, [the perception] of heat even to this extent makes me irritable.
- After all of the above this week... I haven't actually been able to get back to any of the work I was doing earlier yet.
- One week of milk tea or some other drink variant everyday; one day with two drinks and enough hot tea to give me a tea hangover at 10 PM; and another day that ended with three drinks because why the hell not. I'm probably going to try and tone it down this week for the sake of my own health.
- I had a dream last night where Jonathan (Ross) and I were smuggling fireworks as part of a car caravan into NYC and got pulled over by the NYPD equivalent of border patrol(?), only to get caught up in a gun battle between them and local gangs, and we tried to get out of there as fast as possible. And then I found myself hiding inside a crawl space because Jonathan told me to take cover and people were fleeing everywhere, where I was finally crushed by the overwhelmingly oppressive "presence" of approaching recycling trucks going on strike.
I worry about turning into a shell of a person who is miserable to be around because everything is always the way it's described here right now: negative. That everything I'm going through right now is becoming the new normal for me. That it's something that I just have to "deal with" now.
Fuck that. There's no reason to settle for depression when you know that things can still be better.
It's just hard to live that out sometimes. Especially when your own mind is at odds with yourself.
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
post-processing
Thinking back over a conversation I had last week about not asking people for help, or not wanting to ask people for help. As my friend put it, "I think it's less about inconveniencing people, and more fundamentally about not trusting them."
The more I think about it... the more truly it rings in my ears. I just don't trust people enough to ask for help. I don't trust that they would actually be willing to set aside time for me if I were to ask. Or even if they did, it might just be that my expectations are set too high. That what I really want is someone who not only will reach out to me, but actually drag out whatever it is that's tormenting me on the inside while somehow cheering me up in the process (notice the number of "me's" in there). Which is a lot to ask even of a friend, especially when my self-perceived moments of desperation start to happen on a semi-regular basis. It's in part why I can't see myself dating someone right now.
It's also because I can see my own selfishness in this. I have these high demands that I don't expect others can fill, and moreover, I can't see myself necessarily doing the same for my own friends either. I mean, I'll be there enough to listen and be present in the moment, but if certain problems and complaints start to recur, I don't know if I could still be as patient with them all the time. And I hardly think of others except in terms of their relationship to me as it is anyway; I don't go out of my way to be present for other people when the opportunity arises unless I'm directly asked personally. I'm not as mindful as I could be.
A lot of times I'll have this notion of being "disappointed" in my interactions with people, although it wasn't until recently that I really tried to articulate what this meant to another person. The way I put it: simply hanging out with a friend isn't enough. Especially in a group (because the presence of 3+ people changes the dynamics of our interactions), but even in my one-on-one moments, just being together at the same time isn't enough either. What I need is "quality time," except what exactly that means or entails is often poorly defined and I won't even know what I want out of this interaction until the moment passes and I just "know" that I've experienced it. In college, this most often led inadvertently to talking until 7 in the morning, but that kind of lifestyle isn't sustainable for me anymore.
It is why I often can feel a sense of dissatisfaction even after an otherwise good one-on-one hangout with a friend. These days, I often only get a couple of hours at most to hang out with people. And a good part of that time is spent on less-serious/fun things because that's just normal, right? But at the end of the day, if we still haven't even broached something deeper or more fundamentally related to what I'm currently going through in the process, I may end up leaving feeling a little bittersweet or frustrated instead.
And it's unfortunate, because for me lately, a lot of those deeper or more meaningful conversation topics are tinged with negative emotions and experiences and just overall cynicism; sometimes I feel like my mind just can't help it. And I recognize that most people don't really want or need exposure to that, especially when it happens on a regular basis. Think of how you might respond to someone who you're used to seeing crying all the time. After a while, the novelty would wear off and you'd likely just grow more numb to their emotional expression, right?
But for the person lost in the thick of their emotions, every depressive moment or experience or trigger feels novel, even when their source isn't. It wasn't until I started reading over old entries on this blog that I realized that the roots of my problems were already apparent years ago; I still complain about a lot of the same shit today that I did then. But as time passes, I forget things. I read my old writings and it often feels like reading someone else's thoughts. And I don't remember so much what it felt like to write them back then anymore. (Sometimes I was being purposely vague, and now I look at those entries and have no idea what I was thinking about.)
But back to the relational frustrations, quality time is such a stickler for me. The less of it that I get in my interactions with people, the less inclined that I am to keep trying to pursue opportunities for it to show up. After a certain point, it just feels like I'm giving up on people because I have no faith in a future with them anymore. And it's so hard for me to start over again with new people that I'm more inclined these days towards just becoming a recluse minding his own business.
I'm practically living like one right now anyway.
---
I spent most of that day waiting for something to happen. For God to speak somehow even though I haven't been in a true posture of listening in years, or for someone to reach out to me even though I simultaneously turned off most other methods by which people could've reached me anyway, and either way I don't get spur-of-the-moment messages often like my more extroverted friends so I don't know what I was expecting.
I was fed up with the heat (90 in late September wtf). Fed up with the fact that my left knee starts to ache after walking a little less than a mile and has been bothering me all day today. Fed up with my inability to leave the house to study at a coffee shop like I've been intending to for the past four days. Fed up with my inability to focus or maintain some constant semblance of composure for the rest of the day until it was time for bed, and then I magically couldn't fall asleep again after three nights of having moderate success. By then I was so fed up I started sobbing again, except part of it felt almost forced which made me feel like I was just trying to put on a show to convince myself how messed up I really was.
I'm behind on all the little plans I made for myself yesterday and today, and I'm not really confident that they would've really gotten me very far anyway considering I'm still mentally stuck in mostly-theoretical-less-practical land (watching lectures and talks as opposed to actual tangible work and practice). And my state-of-mind these days has not made me confident about my ability to return to a normal working life again. And even if I were able to do that, I'm afraid I'll still be falling deeper into this abyss of growing more disconnected from people in general, of having less capacity to maintain the connections I still do have until I start giving up on those too.
To have been around for so long and still not be known. And unable to reconcile how much of it is because of my own limitations, or because of my own lack of initiative in places where I could've been present. Or if it was just because I never really fit in in the long-term in the first place, and all of my actions till now have just been to avoid acknowledging that fact.
I'm tired of trying to be in so many places at once. I can't keep up with people anymore without feeling like I have to pay some unsustainable toll that's becoming harder to pay these days. And now I feel like I'm shutting down little by little inside.
I am the one making my own nightmare a reality, and I feel helpless to stop it.
---
Do I really feel that helpless right now? To be honest, not as badly as the day before. But I'm still bothered enough to wonder if I really can handle this + the job search + crisis of faith + adulting all at the same time right now.
I'm reminded of a prayer my pastor had for me 3 years ago back when I was still in the middle of Healing Path-- over a sense of my having carried a very heavy burden for a long time. The original intention being that I might be able to, as the metaphor puts it, "drop my burdens at the foot of the Cross." And in a sense, I never really fully did so back then.
Regarding the metaphor itself, I don't think it really works like that in reality. To me, it's more like your burdens just become easier to bear, because you somehow know that you're truly not alone in them anymore.
Except I don't feel that sense of reassurance right now.
I've been listening lately to an audiobook of Michael McHargue (Science Mike!)'s Finding God in the Waves*. If you haven't heard of him, he's one of the hosts of The Liturgists podcast along with Michael Gungor (of the musical act Gungor). The book itself recounts his journey from evangelical Southern Baptist Christian to atheist to Christian again (but not quite the same as before).
Summarily speaking, it doesn't sound like it would be of much interest to anyone who's already firmly decided in their beliefs, and to that extent, I would say that it isn't really written for those people anyway. It's really more for people like me, Christians and atheists who otherwise feel out of place in their "home" communities because their beliefs or lack thereof makes them feel at odds with the people around them, to the point where they don't know who or what they are anymore. That, and it's for anyone who's open-minded enough to want to know what it's like to be in the shoes of someone going through a deconversion/crisis-of-faith experience first-hand, and to understand how to communicate with those people.
I'm only halfway through the book right now, but I have to say, Mike's description of that is spot-on. How often people misunderstand and think that it's because you're angry at God for some reason, when in reality, it's hard to feel emotions towards a being that you don't believe is there in the first place. How hardwired we are into our own perception of reality and where God fits/doesn't fit into it, to the point where we find it difficult to truly comprehend how people outside of our worldview can see things otherwise. He even delves into a lot of the science behind how our brains work in the process (along with a range of subjects from physics to neuroscience to cosmology to Carl Sagan to Dawkins to contradictions in the Bible and so on), expressing a surprising degree of scientific literacy and knowledge that I, unfortunately, don't see often in most other religious folks. I really appreciate it here.
Two things that stood out to me right away: first, his advice to Christians who have friends going through this experience as well. Don't proselytize or evangelize or try to talk them back into belief; you're more likely to drive them further away in the process. The best thing you can do is love and support them: whether it be through a hug, through letting them know that you are there for them, or other little things like that. People who are in the midst of a faith crisis are often at their most vulnerable, and tragically many church communities have responded by ostracizing them or publically condemning them to hell for their doubts/unbelief (which to me is more indicative of a problem in their belief system to begin with, but that's another story).
Second, his acknowledgment that it's okay to be completely skeptical of Christianity and its origins and yet somehow in the midst of that still want to follow Jesus at the same time. He makes an analogy in the process relating to past experiments involving medical patients who had their corpus callosum severed/removed (the part of the brain that allows left and right hemispheres to communicate). In one such experiment, a person actually identified as both atheist from one part of the brain and Christian from the other-- which begged the question, what is really responsible for our identity? How much of what we perceive as our "selves" or our "souls" is really just our brain and the ways it's neurologically connected or wired, as a result of all of our genetics and experiences combined? In the midst of that discussion, Mike explains his own state of being as if the Christian part of his brain were leading the atheist part forward, but at the same time, both are still fully at work in engaging with the moments and experiences he encounters. Trying to find value in the Christian experience doesn't mean that you can't also look at it with a critical eye.
I have to say, I am a little a jealous, though. A lot of Mike's story hinges around a particular moment alone on the beach in front of the waves, after just having had an altercation (with Rob Bell of all people), where he suddenly "experienced" God again, in a sense that can't fully be explained or conveyed. Moments like those are once in a lifetime. I still wonder if I'll ever experience something like that in my own context, or if that's what it would take for me to move forward from the place I'm at now.
Anyway, as far as the book is concerned, I have yet to come to a complete verdict given that I still have another half of it to go. But I'll just conclude here by saying that in light of coming across it, plus all of the above, this year thus far has been an interesting one.
I had a sense coming into 2016 that a lot of things were going to change. And well, the essential substance of my problems haven't really changed all that much or as fast as I'd have liked. I've just been forced to confront them much more openly (in all senses of the word) than I have in the past. And it's still difficult and depressing and sometimes I just want to collapse into a heap somewhere until I disappear or something, but at the same time, it doesn't feel entirely impossible to bear. Not anymore.
Maybe that's what being an adult is really all about.
---
*subtitle omitted because I'm not a fan of subtitles.
The more I think about it... the more truly it rings in my ears. I just don't trust people enough to ask for help. I don't trust that they would actually be willing to set aside time for me if I were to ask. Or even if they did, it might just be that my expectations are set too high. That what I really want is someone who not only will reach out to me, but actually drag out whatever it is that's tormenting me on the inside while somehow cheering me up in the process (notice the number of "me's" in there). Which is a lot to ask even of a friend, especially when my self-perceived moments of desperation start to happen on a semi-regular basis. It's in part why I can't see myself dating someone right now.
It's also because I can see my own selfishness in this. I have these high demands that I don't expect others can fill, and moreover, I can't see myself necessarily doing the same for my own friends either. I mean, I'll be there enough to listen and be present in the moment, but if certain problems and complaints start to recur, I don't know if I could still be as patient with them all the time. And I hardly think of others except in terms of their relationship to me as it is anyway; I don't go out of my way to be present for other people when the opportunity arises unless I'm directly asked personally. I'm not as mindful as I could be.
A lot of times I'll have this notion of being "disappointed" in my interactions with people, although it wasn't until recently that I really tried to articulate what this meant to another person. The way I put it: simply hanging out with a friend isn't enough. Especially in a group (because the presence of 3+ people changes the dynamics of our interactions), but even in my one-on-one moments, just being together at the same time isn't enough either. What I need is "quality time," except what exactly that means or entails is often poorly defined and I won't even know what I want out of this interaction until the moment passes and I just "know" that I've experienced it. In college, this most often led inadvertently to talking until 7 in the morning, but that kind of lifestyle isn't sustainable for me anymore.
It is why I often can feel a sense of dissatisfaction even after an otherwise good one-on-one hangout with a friend. These days, I often only get a couple of hours at most to hang out with people. And a good part of that time is spent on less-serious/fun things because that's just normal, right? But at the end of the day, if we still haven't even broached something deeper or more fundamentally related to what I'm currently going through in the process, I may end up leaving feeling a little bittersweet or frustrated instead.
And it's unfortunate, because for me lately, a lot of those deeper or more meaningful conversation topics are tinged with negative emotions and experiences and just overall cynicism; sometimes I feel like my mind just can't help it. And I recognize that most people don't really want or need exposure to that, especially when it happens on a regular basis. Think of how you might respond to someone who you're used to seeing crying all the time. After a while, the novelty would wear off and you'd likely just grow more numb to their emotional expression, right?
But for the person lost in the thick of their emotions, every depressive moment or experience or trigger feels novel, even when their source isn't. It wasn't until I started reading over old entries on this blog that I realized that the roots of my problems were already apparent years ago; I still complain about a lot of the same shit today that I did then. But as time passes, I forget things. I read my old writings and it often feels like reading someone else's thoughts. And I don't remember so much what it felt like to write them back then anymore. (Sometimes I was being purposely vague, and now I look at those entries and have no idea what I was thinking about.)
But back to the relational frustrations, quality time is such a stickler for me. The less of it that I get in my interactions with people, the less inclined that I am to keep trying to pursue opportunities for it to show up. After a certain point, it just feels like I'm giving up on people because I have no faith in a future with them anymore. And it's so hard for me to start over again with new people that I'm more inclined these days towards just becoming a recluse minding his own business.
I'm practically living like one right now anyway.
---
I spent most of that day waiting for something to happen. For God to speak somehow even though I haven't been in a true posture of listening in years, or for someone to reach out to me even though I simultaneously turned off most other methods by which people could've reached me anyway, and either way I don't get spur-of-the-moment messages often like my more extroverted friends so I don't know what I was expecting.
I was fed up with the heat (90 in late September wtf). Fed up with the fact that my left knee starts to ache after walking a little less than a mile and has been bothering me all day today. Fed up with my inability to leave the house to study at a coffee shop like I've been intending to for the past four days. Fed up with my inability to focus or maintain some constant semblance of composure for the rest of the day until it was time for bed, and then I magically couldn't fall asleep again after three nights of having moderate success. By then I was so fed up I started sobbing again, except part of it felt almost forced which made me feel like I was just trying to put on a show to convince myself how messed up I really was.
I'm behind on all the little plans I made for myself yesterday and today, and I'm not really confident that they would've really gotten me very far anyway considering I'm still mentally stuck in mostly-theoretical-less-practical land (watching lectures and talks as opposed to actual tangible work and practice). And my state-of-mind these days has not made me confident about my ability to return to a normal working life again. And even if I were able to do that, I'm afraid I'll still be falling deeper into this abyss of growing more disconnected from people in general, of having less capacity to maintain the connections I still do have until I start giving up on those too.
To have been around for so long and still not be known. And unable to reconcile how much of it is because of my own limitations, or because of my own lack of initiative in places where I could've been present. Or if it was just because I never really fit in in the long-term in the first place, and all of my actions till now have just been to avoid acknowledging that fact.
I'm tired of trying to be in so many places at once. I can't keep up with people anymore without feeling like I have to pay some unsustainable toll that's becoming harder to pay these days. And now I feel like I'm shutting down little by little inside.
I am the one making my own nightmare a reality, and I feel helpless to stop it.
---
Do I really feel that helpless right now? To be honest, not as badly as the day before. But I'm still bothered enough to wonder if I really can handle this + the job search + crisis of faith + adulting all at the same time right now.
I'm reminded of a prayer my pastor had for me 3 years ago back when I was still in the middle of Healing Path-- over a sense of my having carried a very heavy burden for a long time. The original intention being that I might be able to, as the metaphor puts it, "drop my burdens at the foot of the Cross." And in a sense, I never really fully did so back then.
Regarding the metaphor itself, I don't think it really works like that in reality. To me, it's more like your burdens just become easier to bear, because you somehow know that you're truly not alone in them anymore.
Except I don't feel that sense of reassurance right now.
I've been listening lately to an audiobook of Michael McHargue (Science Mike!)'s Finding God in the Waves*. If you haven't heard of him, he's one of the hosts of The Liturgists podcast along with Michael Gungor (of the musical act Gungor). The book itself recounts his journey from evangelical Southern Baptist Christian to atheist to Christian again (but not quite the same as before).
Summarily speaking, it doesn't sound like it would be of much interest to anyone who's already firmly decided in their beliefs, and to that extent, I would say that it isn't really written for those people anyway. It's really more for people like me, Christians and atheists who otherwise feel out of place in their "home" communities because their beliefs or lack thereof makes them feel at odds with the people around them, to the point where they don't know who or what they are anymore. That, and it's for anyone who's open-minded enough to want to know what it's like to be in the shoes of someone going through a deconversion/crisis-of-faith experience first-hand, and to understand how to communicate with those people.
I'm only halfway through the book right now, but I have to say, Mike's description of that is spot-on. How often people misunderstand and think that it's because you're angry at God for some reason, when in reality, it's hard to feel emotions towards a being that you don't believe is there in the first place. How hardwired we are into our own perception of reality and where God fits/doesn't fit into it, to the point where we find it difficult to truly comprehend how people outside of our worldview can see things otherwise. He even delves into a lot of the science behind how our brains work in the process (along with a range of subjects from physics to neuroscience to cosmology to Carl Sagan to Dawkins to contradictions in the Bible and so on), expressing a surprising degree of scientific literacy and knowledge that I, unfortunately, don't see often in most other religious folks. I really appreciate it here.
Two things that stood out to me right away: first, his advice to Christians who have friends going through this experience as well. Don't proselytize or evangelize or try to talk them back into belief; you're more likely to drive them further away in the process. The best thing you can do is love and support them: whether it be through a hug, through letting them know that you are there for them, or other little things like that. People who are in the midst of a faith crisis are often at their most vulnerable, and tragically many church communities have responded by ostracizing them or publically condemning them to hell for their doubts/unbelief (which to me is more indicative of a problem in their belief system to begin with, but that's another story).
Second, his acknowledgment that it's okay to be completely skeptical of Christianity and its origins and yet somehow in the midst of that still want to follow Jesus at the same time. He makes an analogy in the process relating to past experiments involving medical patients who had their corpus callosum severed/removed (the part of the brain that allows left and right hemispheres to communicate). In one such experiment, a person actually identified as both atheist from one part of the brain and Christian from the other-- which begged the question, what is really responsible for our identity? How much of what we perceive as our "selves" or our "souls" is really just our brain and the ways it's neurologically connected or wired, as a result of all of our genetics and experiences combined? In the midst of that discussion, Mike explains his own state of being as if the Christian part of his brain were leading the atheist part forward, but at the same time, both are still fully at work in engaging with the moments and experiences he encounters. Trying to find value in the Christian experience doesn't mean that you can't also look at it with a critical eye.
I have to say, I am a little a jealous, though. A lot of Mike's story hinges around a particular moment alone on the beach in front of the waves, after just having had an altercation (with Rob Bell of all people), where he suddenly "experienced" God again, in a sense that can't fully be explained or conveyed. Moments like those are once in a lifetime. I still wonder if I'll ever experience something like that in my own context, or if that's what it would take for me to move forward from the place I'm at now.
Anyway, as far as the book is concerned, I have yet to come to a complete verdict given that I still have another half of it to go. But I'll just conclude here by saying that in light of coming across it, plus all of the above, this year thus far has been an interesting one.
I had a sense coming into 2016 that a lot of things were going to change. And well, the essential substance of my problems haven't really changed all that much or as fast as I'd have liked. I've just been forced to confront them much more openly (in all senses of the word) than I have in the past. And it's still difficult and depressing and sometimes I just want to collapse into a heap somewhere until I disappear or something, but at the same time, it doesn't feel entirely impossible to bear. Not anymore.
Maybe that's what being an adult is really all about.
---
*subtitle omitted because I'm not a fan of subtitles.
Sunday, September 25, 2016
More Than Sundays
Warning: pessimistic views that may not entirely be in line with reality to follow.
So I have a confession to make. I hate church.
No, I don't mean THE Church or churches in general or whatever (and I actually still love my small group). I mean that I hate Sunday service, aka the place where most people get their first exposure to church anyway. Enough so to the point where I not only find it difficult to actually show up, but I also have days like today, where I actually made it to service (albeit 20 minutes late) but then wound up leaving at the end of it in tears.
It's not so much something that I have against the whole concept of Sunday service, though; I just personally don't feel cut out for it. Speaking as someone who has long struggled with trying to fit into most social situations and groups, church on Sundays often feels like just another one of those places. If you don't already have friends who you're regularly in contact with there anyway, it can become rather impersonal and a source of awkwardness, being forced to either say hi to or ignore people who you recognize but aren't particularly close with, and the brief conversations you do have to catch up with such people often peter out just as fast as they start (because one of you doesn't have anything else to say and then starts looking to bounce to the next person or location).
And if you don't have anyone else to turn to, or are someone like me who often just isn't in the right state of mind to be talking to people casually on a Sunday morning (often because of pre-existing mental issues or because the sermon this morning forced me to confront something personal) and finds it difficult to feign interest in conversation or maintain an air of social propriety or even just try to reach out to people who I don't talk to often, it can become very isolating. I have never felt more lonely than in the presence of other people.
I think part of my problem is that I heavily dislike small talk, and I often prefer to be more vulnerable or open about my issues or ongoing state of mind with people, even if I don't know them as well. But this doesn't really work with acquaintances or most people I run into on Sunday (...in an environment that somehow tries to be both conducive for reflection and still upbeat, because "Praise Jesus!"). In being hyper-self-conscious of that, I often end up just standing around aimlessly at the end of service, not knowing what to do with myself. I usually feel like someone who still needs people to reach out to him even though he's been around for years.
And then I have a day like today, where I push it a little bit and force myself into a position where I'll have to interact with people sooner or later. But a lack of acknowledgment or even a simple "hey, it's been a while!" (because really, I've been around, and we just haven't talked because there isn't a pressing reason to still be in each other's lives and it's probably mutual), and sometimes receiving an awkward look instead is enough to crush me on the inside and remind me of how much I don't feel like I fit in with this larger community and why I stopped bothering to come out as much in the first place.
It's hard to fit in when you don't fit into the typical mold of what an average attendee at this church service looks like (straight, married or in a relationship, God-fearing, good with kids, wakes up in time for 9 AM service, drinks coffee, etc). Even more so when you're still in a place of questioning whether or not you really believe in this anymore, and find it difficult to take the words spoken or sung in front of you seriously sometimes but still have to put on some air of reverence for it anyway.
But these kinds of problems aren't just limited to church for me. I have them with any and all kinds of social situations that force me to interact with people who I don't see all the time. And even with those I do hang out with semi-regularly, I think about often I shut down in front of them after a while because I just don't have the mental energy to be present anymore, or in other cases, how long it took me to even get to a place of feeling comfortable enough to be around them in the first place, and how these days I still don't feel entirely comfortable or perhaps even less so than I used to.
How if it weren't for other factors of situational placement or convenience, we wouldn't even be talking in the first place, because I am not the type of person easily inclined towards forming or maintaining relationships with people. Every interaction I have feels like a toll, and it takes just one misstep these days to turn my otherwise functional mental state into a mess and make me go fuck-people-fuck-social-norms-fuck-propriety-fuck-everything-fuck-living-(but-I'm-not-suicidal-yet).
And I hate it. I hate how volatile I am.
I hate how long it takes me to recover from one night's worth of bad sleep, one day's worth of committed social activity, one week's worth of back-to-back blocked-out-calendar engagements and errands, one year's worth of events that I can't remember happening anymore, one decade's worth of stagnation in my state of being emotionally and spiritually.
How it took me almost two decades to come out to myself and acknowledge that I can't keep going on like this anymore.
How this life I'm living isn't really sustainable.
How I have no healthy models from others of what it really looks like to truly "live," because no one else around me "looks like me" in the same sense, even though I've been conditioned for most of my life to look up to others: parents, peers, friends, authority, absolute truth, God, myself, anything else what-have-you, only to have my confidence in all of these to be shattered once I finally realized that I didn't trust in any of them anymore, because at the end of the day I was still stuck in the same place anyway because I couldn't live up to the ideals or models or molds placed in front of me of what a Christian or what an adult or what a straight-bi-homo-whatever or what a sane human being or even what a friend really looks like (and I never really fully identified with any of my home cultures so eff that). I don't really know who or what I am anymore.
All I have now are just waylaid plans for how to spend time in the meantime since I have other shit I need to worry about. And I've been so dissatisfied with the conversations I've been having lately (even the "good" conversations) that I don't feel like talking to anyone anymore, no small talk no random lol comments no whatever. I know something isn't right with me, but part of me doesn't want to do anything about it, other than perhaps acknowledging that something exists and leaving it there for now.
Dear friends and people who like to fix problems: I'm sorry for being so frustrating. I'm frustrated with myself right now, and I don't even know why, or perhaps I just don't want to admit it and I'm really in denial about whatever my true problems are, or perhaps all of this is just me blatantly overreacting to something really mild because I'm ultimately insecure with myself and my own state of being to the point where just about anything will trigger me these days, or perhaps I really was mostly okay until I started writing this because "I just had to" and then just unwittingly opened up a giant can of worms/subconscious-thought-vomit from my mind.
Pardon me while I try to cool myself off for the rest of the day instead of being productive like I was planning to do. I'm probably going to come back to this later and wonder wtf I was thinking, as usual.
Here's a song from The National that I like a lot.
(on another note... two hours to write. I think that's a record for me.)
So I have a confession to make. I hate church.
No, I don't mean THE Church or churches in general or whatever (and I actually still love my small group). I mean that I hate Sunday service, aka the place where most people get their first exposure to church anyway. Enough so to the point where I not only find it difficult to actually show up, but I also have days like today, where I actually made it to service (albeit 20 minutes late) but then wound up leaving at the end of it in tears.
It's not so much something that I have against the whole concept of Sunday service, though; I just personally don't feel cut out for it. Speaking as someone who has long struggled with trying to fit into most social situations and groups, church on Sundays often feels like just another one of those places. If you don't already have friends who you're regularly in contact with there anyway, it can become rather impersonal and a source of awkwardness, being forced to either say hi to or ignore people who you recognize but aren't particularly close with, and the brief conversations you do have to catch up with such people often peter out just as fast as they start (because one of you doesn't have anything else to say and then starts looking to bounce to the next person or location).
And if you don't have anyone else to turn to, or are someone like me who often just isn't in the right state of mind to be talking to people casually on a Sunday morning (often because of pre-existing mental issues or because the sermon this morning forced me to confront something personal) and finds it difficult to feign interest in conversation or maintain an air of social propriety or even just try to reach out to people who I don't talk to often, it can become very isolating. I have never felt more lonely than in the presence of other people.
I think part of my problem is that I heavily dislike small talk, and I often prefer to be more vulnerable or open about my issues or ongoing state of mind with people, even if I don't know them as well. But this doesn't really work with acquaintances or most people I run into on Sunday (...in an environment that somehow tries to be both conducive for reflection and still upbeat, because "Praise Jesus!"). In being hyper-self-conscious of that, I often end up just standing around aimlessly at the end of service, not knowing what to do with myself. I usually feel like someone who still needs people to reach out to him even though he's been around for years.
And then I have a day like today, where I push it a little bit and force myself into a position where I'll have to interact with people sooner or later. But a lack of acknowledgment or even a simple "hey, it's been a while!" (because really, I've been around, and we just haven't talked because there isn't a pressing reason to still be in each other's lives and it's probably mutual), and sometimes receiving an awkward look instead is enough to crush me on the inside and remind me of how much I don't feel like I fit in with this larger community and why I stopped bothering to come out as much in the first place.
It's hard to fit in when you don't fit into the typical mold of what an average attendee at this church service looks like (straight, married or in a relationship, God-fearing, good with kids, wakes up in time for 9 AM service, drinks coffee, etc). Even more so when you're still in a place of questioning whether or not you really believe in this anymore, and find it difficult to take the words spoken or sung in front of you seriously sometimes but still have to put on some air of reverence for it anyway.
But these kinds of problems aren't just limited to church for me. I have them with any and all kinds of social situations that force me to interact with people who I don't see all the time. And even with those I do hang out with semi-regularly, I think about often I shut down in front of them after a while because I just don't have the mental energy to be present anymore, or in other cases, how long it took me to even get to a place of feeling comfortable enough to be around them in the first place, and how these days I still don't feel entirely comfortable or perhaps even less so than I used to.
How if it weren't for other factors of situational placement or convenience, we wouldn't even be talking in the first place, because I am not the type of person easily inclined towards forming or maintaining relationships with people. Every interaction I have feels like a toll, and it takes just one misstep these days to turn my otherwise functional mental state into a mess and make me go fuck-people-fuck-social-norms-fuck-propriety-fuck-everything-fuck-living-(but-I'm-not-suicidal-yet).
And I hate it. I hate how volatile I am.
I hate how long it takes me to recover from one night's worth of bad sleep, one day's worth of committed social activity, one week's worth of back-to-back blocked-out-calendar engagements and errands, one year's worth of events that I can't remember happening anymore, one decade's worth of stagnation in my state of being emotionally and spiritually.
How it took me almost two decades to come out to myself and acknowledge that I can't keep going on like this anymore.
How this life I'm living isn't really sustainable.
How I have no healthy models from others of what it really looks like to truly "live," because no one else around me "looks like me" in the same sense, even though I've been conditioned for most of my life to look up to others: parents, peers, friends, authority, absolute truth, God, myself, anything else what-have-you, only to have my confidence in all of these to be shattered once I finally realized that I didn't trust in any of them anymore, because at the end of the day I was still stuck in the same place anyway because I couldn't live up to the ideals or models or molds placed in front of me of what a Christian or what an adult or what a straight-bi-homo-whatever or what a sane human being or even what a friend really looks like (and I never really fully identified with any of my home cultures so eff that). I don't really know who or what I am anymore.
All I have now are just waylaid plans for how to spend time in the meantime since I have other shit I need to worry about. And I've been so dissatisfied with the conversations I've been having lately (even the "good" conversations) that I don't feel like talking to anyone anymore, no small talk no random lol comments no whatever. I know something isn't right with me, but part of me doesn't want to do anything about it, other than perhaps acknowledging that something exists and leaving it there for now.
Dear friends and people who like to fix problems: I'm sorry for being so frustrating. I'm frustrated with myself right now, and I don't even know why, or perhaps I just don't want to admit it and I'm really in denial about whatever my true problems are, or perhaps all of this is just me blatantly overreacting to something really mild because I'm ultimately insecure with myself and my own state of being to the point where just about anything will trigger me these days, or perhaps I really was mostly okay until I started writing this because "I just had to" and then just unwittingly opened up a giant can of worms/subconscious-thought-vomit from my mind.
Pardon me while I try to cool myself off for the rest of the day instead of being productive like I was planning to do. I'm probably going to come back to this later and wonder wtf I was thinking, as usual.
Here's a song from The National that I like a lot.
(on another note... two hours to write. I think that's a record for me.)
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