Measure of Mindfulness

The measure of our mindfulness, the touchstone for sanity in this society, is our level of productivity and our attention to responsibility. If you're still at the point when you're even just barely going through the motions (i.e. showing up at school, making small talk) you are still okay or okay enough. But you're not, and a desire not to acknowledge depression in ourselves or those close to us- better known these days as denial- is such a strong urge that plenty of people prefer to think that until you're actually flying out of a window, you don't have a problem.

I can't quite shake this feeling that we live in a world gone wrong, that there are all these feelings that you're not supposed to have because there's no reason to have them anymore. But they're still there, stuck somewhere, a flaw that evolution hasn't managed to eliminate yet, like tonsils or an appendix. I wonder if anything will work or if there is no drink, no drug, no pill, no potion, no serum, no shot, nothing under the whole black sun that can possibly penetrate a pain so deep. There must be something, some very strong hand with a very tight grip that can turn off the way I feel.

Jesus Christ

Every guy I fall for becomes Jesus Christ within the first 24 hours of our relationship.

I know that this happens, I see it happening, I even feel myself, sometimes, standing at some temporal crossroad, some distinct moment at which I can walk away and keep this all from happening, but I never do.

I always imagine the end, the despair I will suffer when it comes, and it makes any happiness I have in the present seem not merely ephemeral, but doomed. Because the happier I allow myself to be, the more miserable I will be later.

Sometimes I wish I could walk around with a HANDLE WITH CARE sign on my forehead. Sometimes I wish there was a way to let people know that just because we live in a world without rules, and in a life that is lawless, doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt so bad the morning after. Sometimes I think that I was forced to withdraw into depression because it was the only rightful protest I could throw in the face of a world that said it was alright for people to come and go as they please, that there were simply no real obligations left. Certainly deceit and treachery in both romantic and political relationships are nothing new, but at one time, it was bad, callous, and cold to hurt somebody. Now it's just the way things go, part of the growth process.

I grab at everything, I end up with nothing, and then I feel bereft. I mourn over the loss of something I never even had. I am a sick, sick girl.

Soviet Union

I am the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave, but the artificial warmth of my smile- that phony, clownish curve, the kind you see on miserably sad people and villains in cartoons- will remain behind as an ironic remnant. I am the girl you see in the photograph from some party or some picnic in the park, the one who looks vibrant and shimmery, but who is in fact remarkably insignificant and soon going to be gone. When you look at that picture again, I want to assure you, I will no longer be there. I will be erased from history, like a traitor in the Soviet Union. Because everyday that goes by, I feel myself becoming more and more invisible, getting covered over more thickly with darkness, coats and coats of darkness that are going to suffocate me in the sweltering heat of the summer sun that I can't even see anymore, even though I can feel it burn.

Snow Globe

I am a stranger wherever I go because I am strange to myself. My mind just goes off doing its own thing, never consulting me at all about whether it's alright to feel this way or that. I feel like one of those souvenir plastic domes that are full of glitter which you get at Disneyland or at truck stops, the kind that makes snow when you turn it over. That's what it's like in my head all the time, constant weather patterns of all sorts- blizzards, cyclones. I am the fucking Wizard of Oz. I am constantly standing several feet away from myself, watching as I say or do or feel something that I don't like or don't want at all, and I still can't stop it.

Now

I just feel like crying because I hate the butterflies.

2 blogs in under 24 hours

Despite my innate need to analyze and hypothesize, what I really need is something I can't articulate. Its nonverbal: I need love. The sort of thing where my mind will shut off and my heart will take over, if you will. Something that I can feel, not describe.

What I do feel is the scariness of my potential. I feel the warmth of my friends, but I don't deserve it. I feel the sincerity of my anonymous formspring posts, telling me that I'm genuinely a good person, but I fear that those people are misled. I feel wasted. I know that I got a 4.0 last semester, and that I have a high vocabulary, and I can write well, but I don't feel smart. Here I am, not at school but alternatively reading while drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. It's not that I'm not sick, I'm just tired and don't feel like it. Like so many other days.

It scares me. I look around my room- and see tons of books, and trash, and dirty dishes, and so many clothes on my floor that you can't even see my carpet- and all I want is out of this mess. I don't know how I got to this point. I wonder where I went.

Bumper Sticker

I saw a bumper sticker on a car today that read "If you're not angry, you're not paying attention". We'd probably all be better off if we weren't paying attention. Centuries of bumper stickers have enriched our lives, and now we cannot go day to day without noticing the tailgaiting jerk behind us, the woman screeching into her cell phone, or the waiter who thinks he's Gods gift. After all, in the words of Thomas Gray, "Ignorance is bliss".

But for better or for worse, we no longer have the gift of oblivion. So many inconsequential details have made their way into our lives, and it's incredibly difficult to ignore. We pay attention, and the result is misanthropy ranging from the vague to the acute. We seem to take delight in comparing our irritations with others- take the blogging movement, for example.

This annoyance, however, isn't particularly good for us. Researchers have said that physiologically speaking, anger has many different effects on our body. But moreover, it appears to be something we crave- as much as sex, as much as food, as much as drugs. Aggression engages the brain's reward pathways and involves dopamine.

I don't understand why we act the way we do. But maybe it'd be easier to accept it that way.