I was talking to Katie some days ago. We were discussing our lives. Hers, if you hadn't heard, is quite better these days. She says she's happy. I believe her. God knows, she deserves to be. Heh, but don't we all...
So, being the typical teens we are, our conversation turned to our perspective depressions (or lack thereof, as is the case). I'm sure you can guess my case. Not bad. No, heh, certainly have had worse. I'm at a point where the dismal is utterly appealing (it's better than how these words sound; I can assure you of that). And, of course, she asked the question we all ask - do you ever feel like you want to go back? Do you want the frank answer? Yes, of course. Ignoring the cycle (which you cannot break - I have it for life, let's just be honest. I should be treated, but I never expected kindness from any outcome), there's so much that is utterly appealing about the hurt, the broken, the sick. Heh, I think anyone else would recoil at such desriptions. Oh well. Of course, this is me. This is the last thing I'd ever wish for Katie. Perhaps, were I not caught in the chemical fixture, endulging in the dark wouldn't be so costly. I wouldn't know, though.
She doesn't have to deal with it anymore. I wouldn't tell her to go back. But, of course, as she agreed, there is this appeal in the dark. To which we were wondering, how does one get around this snag? I put forth that maybe if you had a buoy, of sorts, something to keep you afloat when things got bad, so your head stayed above the water. Something that was constant and gave you joy in your life. Then again, who's to say you won't want more once you get that? I've often wondered if all I ever did was want, want, want. I wouldn't be suprised.
In any case, this lead to me observing how I don't think in terms of an emotional level. Things were goals - get it done, achieve this, etc. I never thought about the emotional cost. Like, get the hw done. Okay, 5, 10, 1 in the morning. So long as it gets done. But the later it gets, the more the emotions fly off the scale (as we all too dearly know).
To which I noticed a larger flaw in my thinking. Generally, when writing, the work focuses on two characters and watched there development. You can tell I think very much so of interactions between people. In any case, these two develop one or the other or both. Yet the situations I want to set them in - I've been tossing around this idea of a city setting (I love the city). The graffiti, the grime of the tiles of a subway, the dirt the sun passes through in a window - I like the broken, wounded aspect of it. But if the characters are to be healing, you'd have to do without the dark, the towering of the buildings, the abandonness of it, the way it can be full, just bursting and you still feel utterly alone, the cold as you suck air into your lungs on a night you stayed out for way too long for, a cold that just bites, so that your eyes water. Ooh, you'd have me toss this away?
I'm placing these characters, these connections they make between each other in places that are in themselves hurting. How can you have them heal?
I dunno. I barely have answers for my own life. I suppose I should enjoy this relative calm. Almost break. I shouldn't let the hw get to me. Ignore the grades, right? I haven't felt calm for a while, though. Oh, I'd love to just write, state and state - and do nothing. Indulge in the misery of emotions even though it does me no good. Because it's just a ride, it's just getting through life, with no solutions, no end, no point. And I swear I will go crazy if that's what I must settle for. So, as much of a thrill this damn cycle of depression is (heh, of life and death preportions...), I'd rather not settle for it.
I guess I just have to figure out when it's appropriate.
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
-Matthew Arnold
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