So long, 2020.

I've always liked fresh starts. I bog myself down quite a bit, and have trouble with long-term commitment. Fresh starts always seem exciting, and so black and white. There is a before and after. I imagine myself forty years from now, telling my grandchildren that everything changed on this day. Like my life is a novel, always so neat with a concise theme and direction. I know that this isn't the case...life is messy and unpredictable, and nothing about the movement from December 31st to January 1st can change that. But I still like it. So I'll set some resolutions, and some intentions, so that maybe over time I can step back from the chaos of my life and see some small overall trend, and know that I helped create it. I've decided to commit to one full year of therapy and medication. Most of the time I attend therapy for a few months at best, and then stop attending when things stall. I would really like to see where one full year of therapy takes me, without quitting when I've run out of things to say. One thing I hope to understand more fully are my contradictions. For instance, how much I love other human beings, but also want nothing to do with them on a personal level. I remember vividly one spurned love interest of mine telling me that I am intensely interested in a person until I feel I understand them, and then I drop them like a hot rock. The truth of that really hit home. I've always been able to drop people quickly, maybe because I never held them all that close to begin with. I mean...me typing this is kind of Exhibit A, don't you think? I say I don't have anyone else to tell, but in all reality I haven't looked for anyone to tell, either. I feel like people like me are rare, and that I'll never find someone I'm truly interested in knowing me from the ground up. That thought it so...self involved...that I know it can't be true. I know it can't. But it feels that way. Human emotions are so complicated. We really are the most neurotic apes. The front that I present to other people is stereotypical. I am constantly laughing and joking, because humor is typically surface-level. I don't ever casually bring up my existential dread. I think everyone would run in another direction if I did- at least if I brought it up as often as I'm thinking about it, they would. I can hear my inner therapist pointing out that I'm making an assumption about how other people would act, and not giving them a chance to prove me wrong. But honestly, the human brain is a statistical savant. We run analysis 24/7, and that's one of the reasons we've been so successful as a species. I'm assuming that is how they will react based on past experiences with people. It's not based on nothing. So maybe I am only PARTLY delusional. Another facet of not being myself around other people is because I have no idea what "myself" even means. I am so used to slipping my own thoughts through the filter of whoever I'm talking to that I can't even tell the difference anymore. I am a giant mirror, looking however you want me to look, saying whatever you will want me to say. The approval is a nice bonus, but I've realized recently that it has more to do with ensuring that people don't see ME. They see what they want to see, and then they move on. They don't pause and really LOOK, because I don't want them to see anything. It's a way of further removing myself from connection. Honestly, I'm so bad at connecting with other people that I'm one step away from starting www.bemyfriend.com and hoping for the best. Maybe taking out an ad in the paper. For the moment, I guess I'll settle on paying someone a lot of fucking money to converse with me in the form of a therapist. Maybe she can teach me how to stop being such an idiot. I do feel like the whole messy business of exposing myself to other people (LOL) is not worth my time. I don't feel like I click with a lot of people on a personal level, so the constant painful vulnerability of turning the mirror around and being let down seems exhausting and altogether fruitless. But maybe that's my problem to begin with, always assuming I know how things are going to go. One has to ration one's own emotional energy though...I'm just saying. Anyway, statistically speaking, medication and therapy are the most successful combination for depression, existential or otherwise. I'm excited to move forward with this and see where I end up at the end of 2021. For the sake of comparison, right now I feel like there is no purpose for getting out of bed. It feels like Groundhog's Day again and again and again. I think to myself, "well of course, idiot, these cycles of waking and working and cooking and cleaning and holding your children are what make up LIFE, this is LIFE". And then I think that if this is life, I don't think that I want it. Maybe I've become so stagnant that even the smallest forms of repetition, like doing laundry or the dishes, seem like the straw that broke the camel's back. I think human beings were meant to constantly feel somewhat off-balance, trying to figure some new problem out to stay alive. Living in this benality is making my eyes cross. I don't want to watch this movie for the 400th time because I already know it, line by line. I read somewhere that to combat this, I should take a new route to work. Is that not the saddest advice you've ever heard? It's like telling an animal at the zoo to play with his ball in a different corner of the cage to really shake things up. I'm not sure anything will help except to blow up the fucking cage. It makes me want to destroy my whole life, just so my brain has something to chew on. Isn't that sick? I've taken out ridiculous student loans and have begun pursuing a new career, which seems like a pretty significant shake-up to keep myself occupied for awhile, but it's not. The only thing that has changed is that now when I'm off of work, I do assignments on my computer sometimes. Another piece of advice I've heard is to jump out of an airplane once every few months. Apparently the adrenaline and the illusion of a life-or-death scenario can ease the pain of this for a little while. Neurotic fucking apes. I told you. And I am chiefest among them. Anyway, so I can feel like I am not the most negative human being alive, I'll list some positive things. My children are very cute, and I love to hold them and squish their little cheekies. It is absolutely dumbfounding to witness their brains developing, and to hear them speak words and arrange sentences. I created two cognitive life forms, and that is fucking crazy. I hope for their sakes they won't inherit this godforsaken navel-gazing. Here's to a more positive 2021.

Alien

I realized a few days ago how much I feel different from the people around me. I feel like I belong in the same genus, but a different species. I feel like I think in a different language then everyone around me, and have never met anyone who speaks the language that I do. I look for them everywhere. I never find anyone. Eventually I just stopped looking people in the eye, because I knew I wouldn't ever see what I was looking for. Always looking, looking. There are always things to be done, and the forward motion of the world leaves me car sick. The endless treadmill of dishes and laundry and bathing and working and sleeping and dishes and laundry and bathing and working and sleeping...I just wish the world would stop. I wish it would stop so that I could catch my breath. My biggest fear is that all the time in the world won't be enough for me to feel like I've caught up. It never stops. And there's no one I can tell. I've stopped trying to know other people anymore. But I wish there was someone I could talk to, someone who would know. But I have kids, so I complete my tasks like a jerky, animated corpse. I see myself putting the dishes in the dishwasher, I see myself taking myself out for a walk, I see myself folding the laundry, like it's happening to someone else. And I wish it was. I wish I could be a different person. Someone else whose brain didn't do this. Someone else who could skim through the surface of life and be content, not drowning themselves under the surface. I think about how afraid I am that this could happen to my daughter, and how it would be my fault. I think about how I wish my kids had a mother like I see on Instagram. I wish I could do crafts. I wish I had a more desirable body, less gray in my hair, less lines on my face. I wish I could be a different person. I don't want to die, I just want to sleep. But I can't even picture an amount of time that I could sleep that would seem to give me enough distance from this. That I could wake up and feel far enough away to keep moving forward. Always looking, looking. Same genus, different species. And there's no one I can tell, that I just want to sleep.

Oracle

I have learned recently that I may not know everything. I know this is as big of a shock to you as it was to me. I can't believe it, either. But here we are.

I am an incredibly perceptive person who is very used to seeing things that other people might not know that they are showing to me. I am a very good people-reader. I believe I have an incredible grasp on the inner workings of most humans, and as a result, believe that I know everything you're going to do before you do it and respond accordingly. I spend an INCREDIBLE amount of time assuming I know what someone is going to do and using that to plan my response. I try to control everything this way, to keep myself safe. So I know what's coming. To never be surprised.

The last time I remember being surprised was when I woke up at my then-boyfriends house to another friend gently shaking me and telling me that my parents were desperately trying to get a hold of me. I felt a lightning bolt of fear strike through my gut. I knew it wasn't good. This was the first time my parents had tried to contact me since our big fight. My mom told me she wasn't sure if she wanted me to be a part of our family anymore, because they couldn't trust anything I said. Because I was a liar. Even then, I was trying to manipulate the narrative. Trying to control.

I assumed the day had finally come when they were going to take everything from me. I was a spoiled child- my parents paid for everything. My day of reckoning was upon me. Just as I suspected, just as I predicted, they were here for my Ford Explorer. My cell phone. They wouldn't support me any more. I knew this day was coming. With a deep pang of guilt and shame roiling in my gut, I got up and rushed over to meet them at my apartment. They were frustratingly vague over the phone before I got there. My mom called me "sweetie", which she never does. They were being so gentle with me. They just wanted to soften the blow, I thought. This turned out to be true, but the blow came from a direction I wasn't anticipating. I couldn't put my hands up to block. I didn't see it coming, and it knocked me sideways and off of my feet.

My aunt was dead. She had killed herself- shot herself while she was drunk with the person she loved on the other side of the door, trying desperately to get in. My aunt, who was the "me" in her nuclear family. The black sheep, the outsider, the flake, so compassionate that she was always hurting, so funny that you couldn't tell that she was always hurting, my aunt. I had been corresponding with her throughout the latest ordeal with my family. She had a friend who worked at a bank who would help me set up my finances. She would help me apply for a loan to finish paying for college. She had stopped responding a few days prior. I assumed that she had flaked out on me again. I was used to it- she rarely showed up to my birthdays. I knew she wanted to, but I didn't understand then why she wouldn't show up for me. Didn't she know that she was the "me" in her nuclear family? Didn't she know that she was me? Families are complicated. Getting kicked out of her family for being a lesbian was a wound that never healed for her. I didn't know that then. Abandonment was a wound that always festered in her, until one day it became a bullet.

That was the last time I felt surprised.

My parents took me home to be with the rest of the family. I remember my grandpa passing out his typed multi-paged thesis on why my aunt was a lesbian at her wake. Something about my grandma taking Tylenol during the pregnancy. Everything he viewed as wrong in his life, he found a way to blame on her. He's dead now. I often wonder why that was, what deep pain he couldn't bear to sit with that he had to keep pushing it off on to her. I guess I'll probably never know. What a theme.

Anyway.

I assumed I was over all of this. It was a decade ago (I say it that way to make it sound even longer ago than 10 years). My therapist assures me that I am not. Another thing I didn't know. I guess I'm pretty shite at knowing everything. Yet another thing I didn't know.

All of this control, these predictions- reading body language and vocal fluctuations to come up with some semblance of an idea of what to expect next...it's made me insane. It's paralyzing. I don't respond to text messages sometimes, because I can't figure out how to respond in a way that will steer the conversation in the way I want it to go. I can't figure out when we should stop the conversation. I can't figure out how to not be offended when they decide to stop the conversation, no matter how passing and insignificant the acquaintance. I want to put the burden down. I want to say what I think. I want to even KNOW what I think. I have spent every minute of every day trying to manipulate to keep myself safe, to keep one step ahead of the game, to steer the ship in the direction I think is safest. I almost typed, "to steer the ship in the direction I want it to go in", but that would be a lie. When I'm asked what I enjoy doing with my free time, I don't even know the answer. To pretend like I know the direction I want the ship to go in is laughable. I don't know what I really think about anything. I just know what I should think about everything that will keep me safe. I want to remember what I know, again. I want to be true, again. And I think that starts with the ability to trust myself in a free fall. To trust that I can handle anything that comes my way, without the need for preparation. I am like the 30 year old suburban mom version of a doomsday prepper. Always trying to be two moves ahead. But I don't want to be ahead any more. It's exhausting, and to my never ending surprise, I am not always correct. It's a waste of energy.

This anxiety that's in me, I wish I knew where it comes from. Some part of me thinks it's just biological. I developed a theory a long time ago, watching neurotic elephants sway in a zoo. They were swaying to help alleviate their distress. They were distressed because their lives had become so unnatural. The brains they developed to solve complex problems to help assure their survival were suddenly no longer needed. Colloquially (my favorite word), they started "spinning out". All of these firing synapses with nowhere to go. Humans seem similar, to me. Our lives are much easier to navigate now. Most of us will never have to truly be concerned about where our next meal will come from. We can meander comfortably through life. But our brains won't turn off, won't let us relax, won't let us believe that we are safe. We spin out. I spin out. We develop neuroses...swaying like elephants in a zoo. Drinking. Smoking. Self-harm. Eating. Spinning out can look like a million different things. I wish I knew how to stop spinning.

Anyway, this post is long enough. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.