Here's how it works: when you intrude, usurp my autonomy, or generally assume shit, you exacerbate my anxiety and depression and increase the degree to which I'm suicidal.
As you might imagine, it's a little difficult to operate like that; this means I need to work on bringing those things down. Continuing with your shit just makes that process longer.
Father: Thanks, Jonathan. Like I said before, I read the stories and poems. They're not bad, but I do think you could do better. You should write more and write longer stories. I genuinely think you're a good writer.
Confusing length with good writing is a folly that I'm not sure I even know how to properly respond to. I would like to know upon what qualification he bases his arraignment. To think I've always wondered where I retained my ironic sense of humor.
Sorry, do I sound miffed? We'll put aside that each of the pieces I exposed revealed concepts which I've struggled with, particularly in trying to make sense of them (the pieces were "The Only Thing We Have", "The Darkling Plain", "The Phonecall", "Fabrication to a Love Ode", and "A Memory"). Really, in all honesty, that's not the point.
It's that he's, somehow, designated judgement without the least bit of reasoning. Perhaps I'd be more understanding if I were less certain about the pieces (so perhaps my peeve is, once again, the complete lack of assumption of possible, even remote, fault in such an assured statement).
Sure, the pieces, to a degree, could be perceived as mere exercises in writing (and thus not trying to achieve something exceedingly beyond the pale at the sacrifice of the obsession with a particular technique or concept); I've always seemed to have a taste for the technical. I've also preferred doing a job that leaves no room for fault, even if that means it's short and doesn't achieve fame-level work. "A Memory" is not significant for being the next "Paradise Lost". It's significance lies in what it's able to accomplish and communicate in a mere three sentences; it may not be Hamlet material but it is well done.
I mean, there were five fucking pieces in that document. That's five pieces to dissect and tear apart and pillage for meaning. And how do you summate five pieces of writing? "They're not bad[…]."
Forgive me; perhaps I'm undercutting his sentences. The full sentence is, "They're not bad, but I do think you could do better." This is followed by the advice that I should write more and longer stories. Seeing that the following sentence moves focus from the writings I provided to future writings, I can only assume that his take on the pieces was that, "Sure, they're writings in the proper sense; but, really, give me something which I don't have to give, at best, one sentence of attention to."
On that note, here's an old piece I've done some revision to. You can find the original here. I've cut out good chunks of it just to trim the fat. Notably, it changes the focus of the piece a bit; certainly makes it more of a meditation on depression, though it also fleshes out the technique I was trying for the piece (even if not for as long of an amount of text).
I'm still on the fence about it, given that it really doesn't reach for much; it's certainly not nearly as busy as "Fabrication to a Love Ode". But it is an interesting technique and not one immediately noticeable; plus I think it captures what living with depression is like quite well. Oh well, here's my short piece of writing that's not even worth the time for a likewise-length dissection.
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"Wha– sorry. Could you say it again? I jus-I wasn't listening. …. I see. Well…heh, well, who's to say? I mean – I suppose I just don't understand denial.
It just becomes…suffocating, sometimes. It’s like I'm continually under this expectation to match every single internal and external action with the right response. Because when you respond incorrectly, that sends the wrong message. Which I'd hate to do. Because it's not unreasonable! Remember a birthday, remember Mother's Day, look happy to see someone when you say hello, go see the play your friend has been working on for God knows how long, check in on them when they're sick keep in mind when they had an interview attend their speech talk during the conversation respond make eye contactnodarcheyebrowsblinkbreathe
"I spent the entire last weekend in my room. Heh – yeah…the entire thing. I just…didn't see the point in leaving. It took too much effort to get out the bed. And I was tired. So I tried to make sense of my computer screen for 36 hours. And it was…nice, because I didn't have to put any effort into anythin- no, I – I got lonely. I jus-
I just needed to breathe.
For me, there are two symbols going on here. I've often used the notion of trains/subways as a metaphor for depression (the dirt, single traveling; perhaps the prospect of leaving everything and everyone behind, again being singularity). Reading(/art), on the other hand, has always been a Noble Passion. It's education and enlightenment. Thus, the bettering of people and society. Healthy and wholesome, wholly what depression is not.
I would view an image like this as one of the Noble Passions in the midst of our painful world. It's the hope that makes studying and glorifying the arts so necessary and worthwhile. It's what makes living worthwhile.
Yet this image caused me marked confusion.
I have been trying to make sense, for a while now, of the fact that there are elements of my depression I very much enjoy and appreciate (even now, my brain is immediately wondering if that's not some thought influenced and created by the depression or simply some insane idea loftily thought up while the depression isn't that bad at this moment).
This picture (rather surprisingly) elicits such strong emotions from me not because the two symbols contrast each other but because they exist together here.
Yet, behind this, there was always this question of "Why?" As per always, I need to have some reason, to explain it.
As I said before, depression is sickness. It is suffering. It is unhealthy. So why be drawn to it? I can provide an explanation of the beauty in sadness, the way that I think our best natures can come out during suffering, etc.
All of which would be valid. But I think the part that unnerves my need for an explanation of everything is evident in my uneasiness about depression appearing with art as if they belong together. It's that, bluntly, I like it, sans explanations – and, as I've said multiple times, I really shouldn't necessarily.
I imagine it's the same uneasiness I get when liking something simply because it elicits nostalgia. Nostalgia over something that was defensively great (i.e. aspects of my childhood)? Acceptable. Longing purely out of nostalgia? Problematic.
And the reason that it seems so inappropriate for it to feel like these two symbols above go together is because, while I can defend art along such lines as I've done above, I just want to simply like these things.
Maybe it's because it's general; after all, you generally don't just like a book for no reason: I have very specific reasonings as to why The Great Gatsby is the shit. It's that, on some purely emotional level (ugh…), I just want to idolize Art.
While this brings up questions and ideas of its own, it also zeros in on an issue I've been trying to deal with for a while now: I'm tired of running from my depression. I don't mean in that I accept and fully embrace the disorder that will be a lifelong ordeal; I already do that openly, perhaps overzealously. I mean that I accept that it's not only something I partially enjoy for very particular reasons but that it's something which colors the entirety of my world and that I can't understand or experience the world outside of that lens.
Art is beautiful in the environment of that empty train station right before daybreak, when there's near to no one there.
You can see strains of this argument in past entries (third portion): the narrator has to stress that healing is the important thing, at the end. Yet perhaps that too simplifies it. There are aspects of depression I like, even if they may not be healthy for me. And saying that I had to learn to cope with depression always seemed like a diluted argument compared to saying you must heal from it but the former may be reality and it's what I want. I don't want to render myself nonfunctional or in massive pain but I don't want to have to offer explanations for, say, the morbid.
When something means a lot to someone, I think you should share it (I've mentioned this somewhere on this xanga before). And that has inevitably meant that I want someone who can appreciate depression with me.
More than that, I want someone who'll equally understand the religious experience I have with art.
Or someone who thinks going through as many museums as we can get our hands on in the spans of a day is a worthwhile effort.
Or would be piqued by the prospect of going out to a park at 2 in the morning.
Or to stay up all night just analyzing the shit out of everything and anything.
Or really loves hip hop.
Or horror movies.
Or feminism.
Or quotes.
Or, if ze doesn't, ze's at least willing to try to see why I do and tries to be a part of it just as I want to see everything that ze appreciates, and why, because ze's a person with a story and a history and dreams and aspirations and feelings and those are important and interesting.
Okay, so maybe I can't quite divorce myself from needing an explanation for things. But I think the reason why this no-explanation buisness arose is that there is clearly an emotional, non-explanational, aspect (even if elicited by a logical reasoning) of all this.
And I want someone to have, or try to have, that same emotional reaction to these things that I do. Because they're important to me.
And they are how I see this world.
There was a moment, in the familiarity of Caroline, Laila, and Monica tonight, where I had this worry that, once I achieved some form of stability that I was happy with, I would find that I actually didn't like even that and still wanted more. I shortly realized that this was because I was imagining the only realistic stability I might achieve is one so likely to fall apart and dissipate (I may never be able to articulate what it means every time someone reaches out to me in persistence, wanting to actually spend time in my presence). It is not being unhappy with stability that is my fear: it is never being able to achieve stability.
Responding with silence has become a norm within the past year; it's not one I like very much. Part of it is simply the inevitable result of living with disability. Much like, by my Senior year of college, showering on the weekdays all but ceased. As I said – to basically similar effect – somewhere else on this Xanga, it's not pretty but I'm functional. I have that much.
It's that reason that is the operative at play in cases like Margaret and Allan. In instances like with my dad and mom, it's far (far) more my complicated history with authority.
I have little doubt that the root of it goes back to the fact that I grew up in a controlling household. If my incessant attention to irrelevant details, that are greater in value at their whole, is any clue, it was the constant denial of making little choices as to what to wear or what I could keep in my room (or even how I wanted to order and organize my room) that, if not the basis of this issue, have some part in it. Sure, part of the issue at stake in those previously listed denials is also the refutation of my choice in an identity (something that always seemed, to me, to have been developed at a young age) but it's also that basic fact that "refutation" and "denial" are used in these sentences.
I was refused choice; in a sense (metaphorically), I could not freely move. Double this with my depression (the casual choice of the abled to climb the stairs is far more greatly complicated for those resigned to a wheelchair) and you may see a pattern.
I remember being strikingly affected when, while visiting a museum, one of the guards interrupted my thoughts as I was observing a painting: "Excuse me, sir? I don't mean to interrupt you, but we ask that patrons don't get to close to the artwork or point near them to avoid getting oil on the works." I feel – if my memory is of any reliability – like my issue with people interrupting me because they felt that I hadn't noticed something (walking out in front of something, being in someone's way, etc.) is a trait which formed far more frequently, if not in entirety, after this event though my reaction at the time seems to suggest to me otherwise. Regardless, my (internal) reaction wasn't annoyance and it wasn't indifference.
It was a sort of elation. I immediately told the guard that of course I would do this and thanked him for alerting me. I wanted to help this man.
The crucial point was that he had asked me. Rather than trying to exert control over me, he had offered the control to me.
Now, of course, there has to be limits. You cannot just do as you please in life with others respecting your control and authority. You have to mutually respect everyone else's control and authority. While I may deal with the "Why" of this rule later in this post (or certainly in another post, at the very least, since the functionality of this rule needs to be addressed to make it a valid rule), what I proposed in the previous sentence works when you follow the rule of allowing every person to do entirely as ze wishes up until the point that ze harms someone else. Hence, I would have accepted the guard to have said, "Please do be careful not to touch the artwork. Thank you." I may not have had such a positive reaction but there would have been absolutely no complaint from me. I'm visiting the museum; the artwork is the museum's; they have every right to tell me how to behave around it.
But the reason that I tell this story is that it was this moment that started to make me realize the explanation that can justify – I'll even hazard an absolute guess here – everything about me (I forget if I've mentioned it here but the fact that I came out of an abusing household and most of the people I've known have witnessed abuse can also be used to explain and justify every action, ideology, and way of thinking that make up my identity).
It is that I want control. Even if it's solely for the aim of implementing what I want (which, in almost all cases, is the betterment of others; I mention this because this is often not what we think of when it comes to desiring control. I like power; power is control. That it garners respect is certainly a perk but, at the end of the day, it always comes back to what I want to build and make. And 90% of that deals with the bettering of others).
I've been thinking about mentioning here for a while now that I think the reason that stupidity so vastly and flatly terrifies me is that, when someone is stupid (or is stupid about something), there really is no way to reach zem. Because you can't rationally proceed about the world when basic logical connections break down. While I very rarely am a fan of forced control, I am all for control by helping someone understand a line of reasoning. We often don't think of this as control (e.g. we don't think of it as control for us to accept that gravity is real and choosing not to deny gravity. Yet it is; I can't control someone in a way that can avoid zem making choices that will harm others if zir basic logical processes cannot comprehend gravity).
Which brings me back to my central point. Sometimes it's not fair. Allan or Margaret don't deserve to be put off. That's the disability working, reducing our expectations below the logical standard.
But with my parents, I have only ever asked them for one thing, really. Sure, I borrowed the car to go see friends (come college; I'm pretty sure my standard of getting out of the house in high school was far below average for others my age at the time). But that's really about it. I bend very easily; I'm pretty sure I've said it here before but I often don't actually fight back until backed into a corner (notice that the notion of control has been here all this time, even before this post?). So I've made concessions. My mother's controlling. So I let her make me apply to 13 colleges. Not necessarily what I would do; not really a bad thing, either, so I was more willing to do with that proposed idea. However, when it came to applying to Havard, I firmly said, "No." I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to go.
Ever since I ran away, my mother got nicer about certain things. It's interesting to see where her and I actually do have similarity (and the differences in that similarity). It's the play I would have made. I give up some, you give up some. It's the idea behind me bending, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph; I often play the long game: I'd much rather accumulate points to use later than fight out each battle full-on each time (depression partially necessitates this). As I've told my father, I choose my battles. My mother's been particularly lenient about some of her inanities lately; I overheard her a few hours ago telling my dad he should stop being so negative in the way he talks to me (of course, seeing as this is actual foul play rather than something that could truly be seen as a favor (you don't stop stealing from someone as a favor, for anything), this is problematic).
Yet when I said that I didn't think that it was a good idea for me to go to graduate school (something I should probably do a full post on some later time), I was resoundly told that wasn't an acceptable answer (it was said more leniently than that but, like I said, another post).
So when I desire silence from my parents, this is partially to see if I get the choice of being left alone. When I continue silence despite their protests, this is to see if they earn my trust to break that silence (word of advice: incessantly talking and refusing to accept that choice of silence are not ways to reassure that I have control).
Because, I would strongly argue, the only thing I have ever truly asked of them is to be left alone – and, by a lesser extension, the ability to make my own choices and time to formulate my own thoughts (clearly I don't make rushed decisions; I need to think). Interestingly, this is the one thing they have refused to give me.
"Oh, fuck!" Perhaps not the most elegant I could have been but an adequate translation of a headache cleaving my skull into two and a chest of mucus causing unmitigated reverberations throughout my rib cage. It was a deep cough, the kind you feel embedded in your very frame. Each expulsion let forth a rolling grumble, like an engine turning over as it strains to start; it's the sputtering before coherency.
With a rapidly waving gesture, I managed out, "Grab me a soda: cream soda, if we have it; root beer otherwise," as I tumbled into one of the chairs.
In spite of heading to the fridge anyway, she shot me a questioning look. "You've had 5 today already!" she exclaimed, her voice muffled from being stuck inside the fridge. "I have a feeling that cough and headache you have are not signs of good health."
I started laughing, wheezing from my currently articulated predicament, so much so that I jumped in my seat as the can of cream soda was thrown into my lap from across the room.
I smiled a grimace as I cracked open the can's top and held it up, commenting, "There is never an excuse to stop enjoy the best that life has to offer, even if you have a point. If I don't have diabetes type II sometime within the next 5 years, I will truly be surprised." I shuffled around in the recliner, feeling it envelop my sore body. "Besides, it's nothing that a good night of sleep cannot fix."
"Don't you ever worry you'll sleep your life away?" she asked, shaking her head as she walked over.
I kindly grimaced at her again, wheezing softly, "Ahh, no; I'm the lucky one." Her brow furrowed. "Get me tired and I have no issue going to sleep within 5 minutes; I also need 12 hours at least to remain operable. Some people toss most of the night and, once they do escape into sleep, they have nightmares to contend with. Is not the current world nightmare enough that we should be forced to bear more of it?"
I settled back once again, sighing deeply with a steady, though dim, rattle. "Oh God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space—were it not that I have bad dreams."
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I occasionally like to pretend I can write.
You know, I do hate repetition, but (for clarity's sake):
My mother was dominant and abusive throughout most of my childhood. My father often made it seem like his love was dependent on certain superficial concepts. Now, of course, these are simplistic statements, not-100% true. But I'm summarizing.
Combined with my generally independent nature (or perhaps created it?), I don't like being controlled. While (like most things) there is good that can possibly come from others making decisions for you, the highest level of accuracy is from a person independently in control. Help is best received when asked for rather than forced upon.
Do not tell me what to do.
Ever.
I can fully make my own decisions. You are welcome to suggest or ask but any command will immediately be received in ill mood.
Tied to this, if I say something, I mean it. Yes, there's the whole issue of lying and the like but, as someone often mistaken and judged, take my word. As I know I've said here a million times, I try to be as honest and of full-character with everyone. Anyone who reads this could deduce it, but – for the record – the entirety of my being and all my ideals, motives, etc. stem from my abuse as a child. That is why I consider the highest good you can achieve is serving others. It is why I always act with integrity. Etc. Even you think it seems otherwise, I am not lying. If I say I am going to bed and that takes 2 hours, there's a reason for it (depression), even if it doesn't make sense to you.
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