A bit of 4 a.m. free writing (rambling about I, I, I) on being inherently emo:
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| circa 2006? at the hippie hotel, on & in ecstasy, with a roomful of familiar strangers |
Even after all those trips to the mountains then to the valleys, up to the sky then down to earth, even after plateauing into a mixed state of sober moderation & abstinence, & by doing so ridding of the extreme lows that so scared me, I still find that the emotion of sadness resonates with me most, & I believe it likely always will. This is not to be confused with something emo & pitiful but rather merely how it is. I feel as if the array of human emotions is comparable to drugs, & different people have their own personal preferences. Drug-wise, sure I did uppers, but I found downers, dissociatives, opiates, & psychedelics were more suited to my own persona. I could never feel comfortable while high on uppers, there was always this vague plaguing thought of paranoia, of disgust, this feeling of dirtiness, & a definite feeling of fakeness. It was never pleasant for me to feel too distant from who I was. I was never a loud, hyper, extroverted type, so to do drugs that promoted that wasn’t exactly fitting. I’d rather kick back, observe, listen. Adverse effects are what I experienced on uppers: instead of feeling like a superhero as others did, I felt small & insecure, awkward to a fault, & dreading the next hit. Everything besides uppers made me feel most at home: carefree, content, in love, in lust, & anticipating the next hit. Emotion-wise, sure I experience happiness & sure I can get pretty fucking angered at times but I find that sadness in particular is something characteristically me. Being happy is just not something I’ve become fully accustomed to feeling yet, though of course I don’t mind it, & being angry is something very fleetingly liberating then immediately tends to evoke feelings of guilt, remorse, & weakness. Books, films, & songs that make me want to cry torrentially or contemplate suicide are books, films, & songs I am drawn to & remember forever, they make me feel alive, that I’m not alone. When I used to get depressed really often, I could write for days & days & days, & every single piece would be of profound importance & an unparallelled skill. It’s not the same being happy & recording all the happy things I did in a day, it all seems so surface-based, & I'm used to digging deeper. I used to believe happiness was an effort to achieve & to be sad was our natural state. Now, looking back, I understand that it was much more difficult dealing with a seemingly helpless depression & being happy is so much easier. Or maybe I’m saying that sadness is easy to attain but hard to deal with, while happiness is hard to attain but easy to deal with.
You're right - sadness sucks, and ironically seems to take up the bulk of our waking lives. whenever i come out of sadness though, and i see how much that sadness has influenced and inspired me, i feel glad that i went through it. some of my best inspiration has come from depression. i suppose because of this, whenever i'm feeling low i'm more conscious of it as a 'good' thing and i take refuge in it; hide away and wallow in my sorrows. maybe it's a form of self-discovery in a way? sitting back and observing, internalizing and reflecting just comes naturally to us writers i think. have you seen 'midnight in paris'? it pretty much sums this up!
ReplyDeleteI can almost completely relate. It has been a while since I haven't went through 'melancholia'.
ReplyDelete@sunbeam: sure it sucked at first, but after experiencing it so goddamn often i began to get used to it, to accept it even, & at times make myself believe that that was just my reality: i was a depressed young girl & there was nothing i could do to change that. i remember whenever i'd inadvertently make others feel pity for my depressed pangs of emotion, i'd always assure them: don't worry, i get like this from time to time, i just have to wait it out. i'll be fine. not surprisingly, as i quit the drugged highs, i was also released from the depressed lows, & that was that. & it was sooo easy before to get so down on myself & the world that i could so easily, without hesitation at all, forget anyone else existed & just be with myself for weeks for days for months. of course i still get somewhat downer these days, but not nearly to the extent i used to, & it is undoubtedly necessary to a successful existence to experience both sides of emotional life, because we cannot know one without knowing the other as well. sobriety has allowed me to look at a lot of things from a different, much clearer perspective; i am now able to look at & analyze my past behavior objectively rather than in a biased, defensive, in denial, subjective manner haha. it's easy to see how feeling the blues can be a tool of self-discovery rather than one of self-destructiveness :) i guess it's all just a matter of thinking of things more positively, even the negative things - there is light in all things, even in darkness. i do hope our sagada rendezvous goes through, i'm foreseeing a life-changing experience <3 :)))
ReplyDelete@sunbeam: & nope haven't seen that film but will for sure have a watch when i get back to lalaland!
ReplyDelete@keren: i feel you! or felt you rather. i don't believe melancholia is necessarily a bad thing, use it to your advantage, change your perspective. i enjoy a bit of melancholia now & then. try to find a balance; we might never rid of sadness completely, but that's not the goal anyway ;p
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