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Diaryland
Simultaneous February 11, 2008 @ 11:15 p.m.
[Dear Nick,]
I'm gonna head to bed soon, but I just wanted to let you know how nice it was to get your email. I really love being back in touch with you. You always make my day. And lately, that's meant everything to me.
I haven't had a lot of friends to talk to lately, and far fewer that are local. All my other friends seem to be preoccupied with their own issues anyhow. I'm beginning to realize that a lot of the people I've befriended over the years have serious neuroses that they haven't really dealt with honestly or completely. I suppose on some level, I was attracted to them for that reason, sick as that sounds. I'm a really fucked up guy, Nick, though I like to think I've improved and healed a lot over the years. And I suppose that's why I feel like I'm drifting apart from many of my old friends. I've changed, and they haven't.
My old friend Ben is a good example. I used to kind of idolize him in a way. He was more of a teacher than a friend to me, and I always admired his insight and intuition. But now, I've reached an equal footing with him, and its changed everything. He tends to categoricaly ignore or swat down people when they criticize or challenge him, because in his eyes they have no authority or right to judge him. He categorically dismisses a lot of people, because he's always been in a unique place and therefore unassailable. Now I'm in that place too, and he can't believe it or acknowledge it. I even figured out something he didn't, and he can't accept it. Its not that I'm trying to be competitive with him, but I'm finding more and more now that the relationship has changed so much that I don't even know if it will last. Factor in a romantic history and things get even more convoluted. Its just that things are never easy with him - he fights with me on almost everything. I've never had that experience with you. We had maybe one fight that I can remember, but mostly I realize, looking back and even comparing, just how casual and easy-going we've always been with each other. I don't know if that's because of the way we met and communicated and history and such, but I think it has more to do with who you are, and who I am when I'm around you or talking with you. You really put people at ease. Ben's never given me that pleasure.
So many people I've known through school and work and friendship are now settling in to an adult seriousness about life that scares and intimidates me. Maybe they're finding their way and they're happy with it, but I'm doubtful. Perhaps its because they question it themselves when they talk to me. My friends are compromising, settling in - even, perhaps, giving up on things. They're turning into the kind of dead adults I always feared I'd become. Well, maybe that's too harsh, but that's what I fear, and with some, that's what it feels like. Maybe I'm just jealous because I'm 25 and I still haven't really found my way. I've had a lot of adventures, and come across many insights, but I still don't know how to go about this whole thing called Career. Maybe that's why I've been procrastinating on job hunting for the last month - or two.
You know, whenever I try to talk with other friends about the things that bother me, and the things I struggle with, I always feel like they don't really want to listen. Like its a favor they do in exchange for me to hear them out, and inside they're just wishing I would shut up already. I know I've felt that way sometimes about them, terrible as that sounds. Maybe its because, to me, I just can't take it. I feel like its neverending, and a lot of times I also feel like they don't really want to do the work or take the attitude necessary to really be happy and/or successful. I've never felt that way with you. I mean, I can't read your mind, but God Nick - you are one of, if not THE, most sincere person I know. And I always want to hear what you have to say.
I've figured out something about myself in the last year or so. I am slightly empathic. I can feel the pain of others almost viscerally. And I think I used to feel it stronger. I've put up so many shields and shut down so many feelings over the years that its hard to remember. But certain things - scents, songs, sights - trigger things. Life hasn't seemed as real to me since 9/11, but maybe that's because I don't let myself feel it as intensely as I did when I was a teenager, or a youth. It was overwhelming - so overwhelming. I used to cry at the drop of a hat, and meditate on pain constantly and continuously. At some point, I developed some kind of masochism in my mind that if I could just push myself to extremes and feel pain on my own terms, it wouldn't sneak up on me... wouldn't surprise me. I'm realizing that is quite futile, even if it can be educational on some level. We're all vulnerable - so completely that what control we have is really miniscule; almost totally negligible. But I also believe and know that The Universe - The Fullness - hears us and responds to us. I haven't had the guts to completely trust it yet, but I do know that its conscious and you can develop a relationship with it that changes things. We may not be able to control and dictate Mystery, but its not heartless. It does hear us, and it does respond to us. Its willing to teach us and love us and nurture us. But always on its own terms.
God, I wish you were here. I feel so alone, even amongst family. There's so few people I can talk to and be with and open up to without them thinking I'm bad or crazy or stupid or evil or twisted up in a hundred different ways. I'm sorry to unload on you like this, but when you say I can talk to you about anything, I really believe you. I honestly do. And I want to always be able to return that favor.
I love you very deeply. I hope you know that. It doesn't change the status of things I suppose, but I don't care. I'm so happy just to KNOW YOU Nick. As much as I wish things could be different right now - that history had taken some alternate path - I'm content with things. I really and truly am. Its like when I wake up in the morning and I walk around downstairs here at my parents house. My head aches and my back hurts and I wake up feeling so terrified of so many things. I'm jobless and dejected and a failure in a lot of ways. But I get up, and I walk around, and I notice sunshine, and I listen to birds. And there's a wind chime that blows outside the window, and nobody else is up yet. And the furniture here, and the food, and the company, and my family are all so beautiful and wonderful. And so I feel happy even while I'm feeling shitty at the same time. Happiness and sadness do not and cannot negate each other. I think that's a secret of life in itself. You can focus on one or the other, but I just try to let things be. I don't want to leave anything out of the picture. Because if I try to ignore the bad, then I'm not being honest or healthy. And if I try to negate the good, then I will bring myself back to the point of suicide. There's a whole realm of things that are completely unknown to me, and my happiness and sadness are parts within it. So I'm content to let things be just as they are, even if that paradoxically makes me both grateful and enraged at the same time.
Thank you so much for listening to me. I love you.
David
"Details in the Fabric" - May 31, 2009
Not So Quick Questions - April 6, 2009
The Morning Stars - Lords of the 15 - April 9, 2009
Sincerity and Faith in Magic - April 10, 2009
Not So Quick Questions (2) - April 14, 2009
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