So, after my recent post about healing, I was honestly a little bit scared to write this post, or really, to write anything. In it, I wrote about how I felt like I had experienced some healing about the post-graduation feelings and my persistent loneliness, so I sort of felt like if I wrote anything about anything negative, it would contradict that healing. In doing so, I worry that it would make my words seem less meaningful, that “healing” was just a lie I made to pretend that I can actually allow myself to be happy and to add some variety to the general bleakness surrounding this blog. Worse, I worried that it would mean I am stuck, that even when I thought I was healing, I end up in the same place again and again, and no amount of “healing” or blog posts will allow me to get anywhere. And if that happens now, who’s to say it won’t happen again and again, for the rest of my life?
I myself might also be part of why I'm stuck; I don't want to be better, even if maybe I could be better. I mean, I do, in the sense that I feel broken and unlovable and blah blah blah and do not want to go back to those nights sitting on the edge of my bed, desperately trying to cry. But I don't want to be better either, in the sense that if I get better, it feels like I have to never struggle again. Because what if after everything, then things get bad again, and my friends who have watched me (steadfastly or otherwise) ask themselves silently: what happened? It would hang over me like death, like a magnifying glass of shame pointing out the fact that I could have succeeded and found healing to become normal, but I fell short. But if I never really get better, I can't get worse, and I can't feel the unspoken judgement of my failure. And if I could just be better and happy, why wasn’t I before? It would make the whole struggle a complete waste of time.
”Recovery is a spiral, not a circle. You may return to the same patterns, but you will break free." - Eris Morn, Destiny 2
But I’ve realized that healing from anything, as with all of life, is not a continuous path. It is an oscillating mess of valleys and mountains, going up and down and up again in unexpected ways. Each triumphant peak is balanced by near-crushing depths, and vice-versa, all in hopes of eventually rising higher and higher toward healing, fulfillment, and happiness. So though I may be healing for one day or week or year, I cannot expect myself to always be healing. I must accept stagnation, degradation, and the knowledge that two steps forward and one step forward is still moving forward. Sometimes I may even step two or three steps backward and trip backwards even further, and I have to be okay with that, even if it's painful. And it is painful to backslide, to recidivate the crime of imperfection, but c’est la vie, I suppose. So that’s why I can write this post now.
”Maybe life is like a rollercoaster, and you only go down so you can have fun coming back up.” - Reese, Malcolm in the Middle
With that being said, here’s what I want to say. Despite the “healing,” despite everything, I feel as though I now find myself on a cliff, on the verge of something awful. A downward spiral, maybe. It’s a desire I can’t shake, one that keeps coming back to me. It’s to be alone. Weird, I know, from the guy who’s always complaining about being lonely. But what I want is really to be disentangled from everything.
A while back, I was driving out in the country (by which I mean 30 minutes away from home). The sun seemed to shimmer a little brighter without the haze of buildings and floods of cars, like it was allowed to mellow its light over the verdant hills of early summer. Flowering buds were in the air, as pervasive as the buzzing of flies in the season’s heat. I reveled in that peace, that spiritual sense of nature and tranquility. When I came to a railroad crossing, I encountered two young boys on bikes, sauntering on along the side of the tracks while talking casually. Then, one split off from the other, their paths diverging as one continued along the ancient iron path and the other through the rough terrain of dust and wildlife. They waved a goodbye to each other, but it was casual, floating through the air like the lazy float of a leaf. They would see each other again, find each other again, for their lives were entwined in the very nature around them. One need only look in the breeze to find one of them, or whisper their names into the grass. Do you understand? Do you understand that their lives, their easy familiarity with death and life alike, binds them to things beyond themselves? That their spirits are untethered by the steel trappings of suburbs and society, and need only to worry about the simpler things in life? As birds, free and flighty, they entered my life for a moment before departing, but not without leaving behind a feeling of desire. Desire for simplicity, for freedom, for the cleansing light of the rural sun.
I mean, maybe I'm romanticizing them too much. They're just people. Kids. This is just normal life for them and millions of others in the world. Still, they seemed to have a more quiet life than I do, and reminded me of one of my greatest impulses: to be alone. Not lonely. Not sitting in a crowd where no one chooses me, or holed up in my bedroom. True blue loneliness, where I am living the quiet life, away from my past (as much of a past as an 18-year-old from the suburbs can have), where I am beholden to none. Somewhere no one knows my name, and expects nothing of me, like a Thoreau-esque hermit. Everything in life just seems too complex. All my close relationships are tangled knots of feelings and history, making them as difficult as they are fulfilling. Meanwhile, my future remains as Gordian as ever. Utah State, law school, journalism, cooking? Too many options, none of them appetizing. And outside my little bubble, the world itself is overwhelming, overrun by politics and poverty and suffering that cannot even be properly imagined by my limited experiences. So loneliness, the quiet of an existence in total isolation, offers a path out. One that allows me to live without these worries and maybe even be happy.
If I cut off my relationships to isolate myself this way, maybe people would notice. Maybe some people would even be hurt. But if I were alone, would I really be the one to bear their pain, other than fleeting guilt? And without those people around, who could hurt me? But when I pull away, I have always eventually acquiesced and gone crawling back to people, desperate for connection once more. Now, however, I feel a lot more peace. I feel more content to sort of just sink away. Down, down, down. Adrift from everyone else. Maybe there I will “find myself.” Or maybe I’ll realize I’m a coward running away from everything good in my life.
Of course, I won’t really do anything, so don’t be too worried or anything. Rawr xd xd?
