Every so often, on certain days (of which today is one such), everything comes to me as if the sun shining shows me everything I am... or, more specifically, everything I am not. On these days all of my faults and failures form rank, they line up squarely in front of my mind's eye , and stalwartly refuse to move. Or perhaps it is more the inversion of a bright light. Normally in sunlight, the extra brightness shows you the details of what you're looking at... but that's only if you are between the sun and what you are looking at; if what you are looking at is instead between yourself and the sun, then all you can see is a bland and black silhouette. Now imagine you're looking at yourself, at your life, from a 3rd person perspective, as if your eyes could leave your body and search you from another angle. Today, my eyes peer into the sun; they see only the great blackness I spread before the brilliant backdrop. Infantisimal my silhouette may be before the sun, but the darkest possible because of the light. I see only the black hole of my failures thieving light.
I have days of angst. I think to myself perhaps it's the Romantic kind, like Existential Angst... but I know it's not; my days of angst stem from the realization of everything I've failed. I am a failure. I've set before myself many goals, and I find them hard to achieve without changing them in some way to make them easier. It's like I'm cheating myself in order to win. How fucked up is that? Normally on bad days like this I just ignore myself and wait for the next day, but some days refuse to be ignored. These days I can't escape, I believe, are fueled by the realization that I'm not living up to my potential. I am letting myself down by becoming complacent. I am still not what I want to be. Maybe it's this place, being in my hometown, still not graduated from college; it shows me that I've only spun my wheels and gotten no further than where I started. I can't really blame others for my failures, much as I may wish to. I guess that should really go both ways though, since I tend to credit others for my success. Maybe I should take a little more pride in the things I have accomplished, maybe they're not all just things that fell into my lap.
I think that's one of the major problems with learning quickly... I never have to work very hard to learn things, so everything is easy, and when it's not, I'm easily discouraged. I'm well aware this is not a legitimate problem. "Oh, he's too smart, how sad for him." I get it, truly, but my problem remains; I don't work hard enough. I'm suspicious of anything that comes easy, and I've a fear of enjoying anything too much. If I enjoy it, I know it will be either taken away or interrupted in some way. It's the same way you refuse to pull out a book you enjoy on the bus, because you know you'll either miss your stop, or, more likely, you'll be so distracted by everyone else and by trying to not miss your stop that you won't be able to enjoy the book at all.
I'm thinking of the movie Stardust. In it there's a line where the Star says, "There are shopboys, and there are boys who work in shops." I very strongly hope I am not a shopboy, but I wonder if I am because of the lack of credentials to my name. I am not what I am supposed to be, not yet.
One last complaint... a few days ago I wrote about a friend... now I'm shocked at my audacity to believe I could consider telling another what to do. I am not there, I am not the person, and I don't know for sure what the intended meaning of the words was.
Maybe the feelings of this day will pass; I hope they do. I do know that our emotions don't believe in each other, what we feel today is what we think we will always feel, but emotions are like the weather, about as powerful, out of our control, and permanent. So I convince myself there is peace to be had, the emotions will pass like the clouds eventually do. Until then, all these Question-Fish are piranha, staring at me with their unblinking fisheyes, biting me deeply....
No comments:
Post a Comment