Oct 7, 2005

Night falls on the world... on my heart.... as the pain consumes me....

Just been trying to fathom a comfortable niche in the spectrum between brazenly insensitive stone-cold apathy and perpetually effusive emo-exaggerated theatre angst.

Of course, being sensitive and compassionate, I could never fall into the former extreme, and the latter extreme often makes me feel guilty about being sad. How could I ever claim to be sad when night has befallen their heart and the pain is consuming them? Isn't it true that when you're sad, someone is always sadder than you? What business do I have being sad, anyway, when I am merely wading about in a foot bath of dissatisfaction and they are drowning in oceans of sadness? Surely, what I'm going through is nothing compared to the excruciating hell they must be enduring, as they eat their double decker burritos and listen to slit-wrist gothic music.

I recognise it's becoming increasingly "hip" to act as if life is a complete tragedy and you are one of its biggest victims, but really, that just makes it harder for me to deal with being anything but perfectly content. When so many of life's "victims" out there are busy "bleeding through the eyes" and insisting that the world has nothing to offer them, I feel like such a lousy competitor. I very rarely cry, dark morbid poetry doesn't come naturally to me, and before I finish composing the first draft of my suicide note, I usually feel better. I just have too much to be positive about, and have nothing on the true emo kids.

You know, that alone just fills my heart with intense tribulation and my soul with irrepressible anguish. The misers of misery in my mind are insatiable gluttons.

I try not to deny the way I feel, mind, to myself or others that I deem worthy of knowing exactly how I feel. I feel it's worth emphasising, however, that I hate exaggerating while describing the way I feel, be it good or bad. If I'm sad, I won't say I'm miserable. If I'm satisfied, I won't say I'm ecstatic. I'm tired of seeing people clinging to either black or white because grey is such a dense and complicated shade. Corners and edges are psychologically attractive to us, but sometimes, if we want to remain true to ourselves and not become lost in a cycle of delusion, we have to make an effort to stand somewhere out in the middle: the small island hovering above a vast chaotic whirlpool whose nadir is but a portal back to the very edge that sucked you in to begin with.

So be honest with yourself now, and you won't have to burst out of your cozy little dream and confront the truth later on.

I'm tired of putting on acts for people, and in turn am tired of suspecting that many are simply leading me on. Honesty and truth have always been important to me, but I am embracing it more and more everyday. Ideally, I want to be completely true to myself and others without sacrificing my imagination. Can I accomplish that feat? Probably. I underestimate myself constantly. I want to feel as if I actually have a good reason to be here, as if my presence on Earth is somewhat justified.

I have been rather sad lately, and I can't put my finger on what has been feeding it. As I recall, I felt very similar to this around the same time of this month last year, when I was seriously considering dropping out of school. This realisation is some small consolation, since I managed to pull through then, somehow. I think there is something about mid-fall semester that is quite melancholy-inducing. Maybe it's just October.

Of course, I strongly desire to break out of this funk, as it's adversely affecting my productivity. 18 credits at once is not a comfortable pace. I mentioned my course load to a few other seniors in my major and many of them just gave me a "you crazy over-achieving bastard" look. It's far, far too easy to get hopelessly behind . . . and if I get behind I'll probably feel even worse about myself, then I'll be stuck in a hopeless rut and will no doubt be royally screwed.

At the same time, I still have my self-confidence telling me I can make it through. I have little doubt I can... but at what cost?

On the plus side, here's an interesting story- I made an intro post on a forum a couple week ago, and mentioned I was from Hawaii. A moderator messaged me a couple days later and let me know that a couple of his friends just moved out to Hilo to attend university. Small world, huh? Hopefully, I'll get the chance to meet up with the furres and see what they're like.

Interestingly, not only do I increasingly feel like meeting more interesting people, I also desire to converse more often with individuals I already know and love. I truly feel as if I am starting to break out of my shell when it comes to associating with humans... I find myself desiring to be around like-minded individuals a little more everyday. That's not to say my ideals are shifting completely ... far from it. I am maturing in some ways, which is better rather than worse in my view. I have nothing to regret as long as I don't lose sight of who I am and what makes me, me.

Throughout most of my childhood, I was deathly afraid of people. I have realised that I am an extremely late bloomer, but I don't see any fault with that.

I took a three hour nap, and feel extremely rested. I also had several anthropomorphic dreams. In the most memorable one, I was a passenger in a truck with three foxes and we almost got ourselves stuck in the sand while driving along the beach too close to the ocean. It reminds me of the time back in '89 when my father let his sister drive his then brand new Isuzu pick-up truck along Kekaha Beach in Kauai, and she, having seen too many films or images featuring people driving right by the ocean, nearly buried it for good before he took over the wheel and barely got it unstuck before the tide came in.

It's going on 2:30 in the morning, and I'm about to go grocery shopping to see if I can afford a loaf of bread or two. Or maybe just drive around aimlessly, wasting expensive gas. At this point, I don't care. I'll do whatever it takes to escape from the ordinary.

Just keep going, Neal.

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