Archive for December, 2008
Another Day
Sunday, December 14th, 2008.
Every day as of late has proven only to immerse me deeper into certain ongoing struggles. Most of which I have stated before, only they are more developed and complex now. I turn on the television. There’s war. There’s unrest. I read the ads on the campus bulletin boards. There’s war. There’s unrest. I am beginning to wonder how anyone can be happy.
In fact, I was at a party the other night, when I spotted one of my friends sitting in the corner, looking down. “What’s up?” I asked him. “I’m just depressed. A lot of things. I don’t know.” He replied. I don’t know… an interesting answer. I don’t know either. “They say alcohol is a depressant,” he continued, “but look at all these people. They don’t look depressed to me.” In fact, at that moment I felt like only two people in the world were depressed, but only one of us were willing to admit it. Most people say that it is a matter of acknowledging it and getting over it. Most people will offer solutions: religion, friends, drugs. I guarantee that all of those things will cure your depression for some amount of time. But you’re bound to be depressed. It’s inevitable. It’s like an airplane, which only flies as long as it has fuel, and must land eventually, or come crashing to the ground. For me, I should have seen it coming. It hit me at a time when I least expected it. As my new life bloomed around me, my former life withered, and I lost the best relationship I’d ever had. That was where it started. Over the past month I’ve been experiencing many different types of emotions and trying to make sense of everything that is constantly and violently changing.
I feel as though I have succeeded in one realm: I am well liked. This is something that I am afraid to embrace. My self esteem leaves me assuming that people are always only tolerating me, and no matter how hard I try to beat such defeatist feelings, I am overwhelmed. But lately I have been warming up to these new people, new friends, and this new life. And with the introduction of the new comes the ending of the old. As for Toni, what was once the apple of my eye, and a precious gem, is becoming bittersweet memories. The pains and the heartbreak that still linger on after what has happened are best buried, and I must look forward. Love letters, gifts, dreams, promises—all in the past. It is difficult to comprehend that, because, if three months ago you had told me that I would be saying “I can’t talk to her anymore,” I would laugh. Our relationship, our friendship, was such a strong, immutable thing. I wanted to be with her forever. I never could have imagined any of this. But I guess that is a testament of how young and naïve I still am. That’s high school, I suppose, and although I’m beginning to accept that this is all happening, I am upset that I am accepting it. It is an awful situation in every sense, and I have learned that trust and love is as sturdy as cardboard in many cases, and that a small amount of rain can melt your heart into nothing.
My heart is nothing now. The confidence that I began to build over the past couple of years has been severely shaken, and once again I am questioning my own worth. Other problems, perhaps even greater, surround me as well. But they are for another time. Things are nowhere near being sorted out, and I suspect that they won’t be for a long time. In the meantime, there is a passage from the book No Country for Old Men which I found particularly interesting. It has to do with the sheriff—now retired—recounting a dream he had recently had about his father, who had been dead for many years now. Sometimes it seems that the only comfort you’re going to get has been dead for many years. Sometimes it is in transitory dreams that will be remembered but not felt in the morning.
“it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin’ through the mountains of a night. Goin’ through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin’. Never said nothin’ goin’ by. He just rode on past… and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin’ fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. ‘Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there.
And then I woke up.”