I don't really feel like journaling for the public eye tonight, but I'm too lazy to actually sit and write out my thoughts with pen and paper, and there's some things I kinda wanted to vomit up, so there ya have it. This'll be boring, I bet.
I feel like I'm becoming a hermit. I don't know how I feel about living alone. When I'm free to hang out every night and drive to Birmingham/Nashville/Cleveland every weekend, it's no big deal, but I don't really have time for that now. All my on time is spent working with people I don't know or being in class, and all my off time is spent reading or watching tv. alone all day. Everybody knows, I go crazy when I'm alone, and everything seems harder and sadder and scarier. I hate being a student. I never thought I'd say that, but it's just not for me. I do work better with a little structure and a few deadlines, but I don't do well with more-than-I-can-handle, and grad school is just that. What is the point of assigning more than could ever conceivably be digested? I concluded tonight that I should just accept that my job/occupation is best left separate from what I love/my sense of meaning in life. I think that's how most old people I know live, and it's always seemed really depressing to me, but it's not as depressing as hating what I love. Most people probably think it means I would be "wasting my potential," but I wouldn't be. I'd just be using it off the clock. I'd still write and read and learn and teach and sing. way more than I do now.
This summer was so great. I read when I wanted to, traveled when I wanted to, sat around when I wanted to, hung out when I wanted to, and for money? I moved books. Meaningless? You betcha. But it put money in my pockets and left me time for things that actually matter to me. School is not like that. School demands it all, and then it costs me thousands of dollars, and then it gets me nothing. No thanks.
But what do I really want? I want to build a life with a few people I care about. But time keeps ticking by and stealing everybody I know to marriage, and I got no prospects for initiation into that world. Do grown-ups still share life with friends, like kids do? I've never seen it done, but supposedly, it's possible. If it's not, then I better get used to this hermit thing. Maybe get me a cat. That sounds awful.
I'm sad. The zen masters say "Let yourself feel the sadness," but I can't figure out what that's supposed to do. It just keeps making me feel sadder.
I saw The Other Boleyn Girl this weekend. Have you seen that movie? It is beautiful, and absolutely devastating. I have been reluctant to put this into words, because I know it will sound lame or artificially deep or something, but watching that movie, I had this shocking realization of my own mortality. I think about death a lot, but it's almost always in the form of losing, not dying. Friday night, I realized I'm going to die, in that way that can't be reasoned, that just has to come upon you. It doesn't seem fair. We, the living, make decisions based on what's best, what's gonna bring us and everybody the most happiness and fulfillment and good things, and here we are stuck with this one dumb investment: living. Living will cost us our lives. It's an awful idea, but we didn't really get to choose, and we will never get out of it. You're going to have to experience mortal pain, death pain. Maybe your left arm will start to hurt, and you'll know: it's coming. and then your heart goes. Maybe you'll go crazy first, you will literally lose control of your mind, and for a flashing moment or two, you might actually recognize it. Maybe a grizzly bear will come upon you in the woods, and you will have to fight for your life. a gunshot. a head on collision. flying over a ravine. It's going to happen. We live lives of cushy comforts, but one day, we will die. Things will not be cushy forever, and you forget about it. You get disconnected from it. But that doesn't keep it from coming, and so what? Does it do any good to really face it, to know it now? How could I face it? How could I believe it? Me? I will never end. No. What would happen next?
My mom knows. I know somebody that knows. except maybe she doesn't know anything now. And that doesn't help anything.
Also, I am menstruating today. So it's possible that is affecting my mood a smidgen.
I've been watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia lately. Good one. I just thought I'd end on a light note.
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