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.