| Long time coming introspective post |
[May. 26th, 2012|02:58 am] |
A couple nights ago I was out with some friends having pizza and beer and the comment came up from my roommate that 'We were all fucked up, but look at how we've done today!' I half-jokingly said 'I wasn't!', the joke part being the contradiction of a truism and the serious part being that in a way I consciously avoided a lot of the typical traumas and confusions of growing up (for better or for worse, as we shall see). So my roommate retorted
'I don't know, you were really struggling when I knew you back when.'
It was the term 'struggling' that caught me because there's something about that word that is meaningful and serious in a way most words these days don't really contain. I wouldn't say it's a powerful word but when someone says someone else is or was 'struggling,' you pay attention. Hence, I tucked that idea right into my brain for some noodling and the night went on.
Certainly I have had emotional and personal trials and certainly during the time I've known my roommate, there've been hard times. That idea of 'struggling' in general as a part-of-my-life thing, the coming-of-age narrative inherent in it, compelled me so I thought it through. Instead I realized that if 'struggling' is what people had seen, then there was some externalized message of conflict I gave out that I didn't necessarily grok myself.
The important thing I'm getting at here is that I feel I may not have been aware, and may not still be aware, of how much I am actually struggling. Perhaps I feel fine but outwardly I'm suffering, some reverse introversion narrative.
I am capable, if pressed and I so choose, of pulling up no end of personal experiences I've had to make my life seem miserable or hard. I think everyone has a tendency towards this idea of having an especially hard life, but objectively I've buried more people and took care of the logistics of the funeral than most people my age, for instance. However, I've never really had a hard time dealing with life and read-throughs of various older journals (including this one) show more a predisposition to exaggerate reactions and pain than really necessarily was there, one because I was a teenager so the world was always ending and two because I was a goth so I wanted it to end to prove some stupid unimportant point. So there's that.
I also thought about the experiences I had, especially in elementary and middle school, where other children would approach me and ask 'What's wrong?' I'd be confused, and say, 'Nothing.'
'Do you want to talk about it?'
'Uhhhh... no, um, nothing's wrong.'
'Okay but you look sad.'
'Um, okay.'
(^Imagine two six year old, shy voices saying that for instance)
My mother said I had a 'serious' look.
So anyway I wondered if I have some external feature where I gave off a stronger sense of pain than I actually felt, or even if I actually felt that pain and just radiated it instead of feeling it inside. Interesting thought the latter, as well as pointing toward perhaps my difficulties at approaching women?
So I asked my roommate about it tonight as we were on a ride home. Again we were with friends, the same ones, and again the subject of our early 20s struggles came up, but this time didn't go so far and happened right before I left, so I took the opportunity to say, 'Well, now that we're on our way home... what do you mean by 'You were really struggling.'?'
And I cannot replicate the whole conversation but it was interesting to hear. One of the things we covered is simply how much I've grown over the past couple of years, no surprises there. Better confidence and so on. But she talked about my dark hair and clothes, very pointed and biting comments to others about substance and sex experimentation and how for a lot of people around me at that time, it was very strong and hard to understand my side of the issue, and how intimidating I could be in conversation.
Then of course we talked about the future and the expectations we have for how things will change and how we will grow more and now I have some noodling to do about how I still use intelligence as a weapon (regardless of whether I'm being intelligent or not) and how I compartmentalize information and that IS how I deal with shit in life, and how that can translate to relationships, and I brought up a point I had written here a while ago about the amalgamate relationship I've had in consideration of the various things I've learned from various women, and so I have some more noodling to do about that too.
This whole exteriorization thing could be actually helpful if I have more control over what signals I send off. Until then it suffices simply to be aware of it. My mother has told me about it a lot but I did not grok it until tonight because of how my mother chooses to phrase it. She would talk about 'living under that energy' or 'living under that cloud'. I certainly don't want people close to me feeling like I'm darkening the world or anything like that. So there's that.
It is probably a good point in my life for me to reconsider these sorts of things anyway, since I'm at the tail end of my mid-20s, just now sussing out the true qualifications of my career, can go pretty much anywhere in the world, and am not in a relationship. Makes me sad to feel so... Narrative banded about a Dramatic Question. To feel again like I haven't felt in a while like my own personal work with figuring out myself is somehow cosmically significant or that I'm a protagonist of any story.
This could also why I've been, at least as I perceive it, rather touchy about things lately.
--PolarisDiB |
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