This is nothing more than a place to put some of my more troubling thoughts or emotions that have been keeping me up at night, and I’m not sure anyone will even read this or care about what it has to say. Either way it’s served its purpose.
I came across that video we made seven years ago in my basement. We were making an action movie starring Aladdin and his princess in a doll house. It had a brief commercial break featuring elmer’s glue and Snoke-a-cola(?). You kept zooming in on my teeth and face, and I shied away due to my even then severe self-consciousness. At some point you shouted “Everquest rocks!”. Watching it brought back the feeling that I was back in those days and although I was incredibly goofy awkward and more than a little chubby after a years worth of homeschooling I was happy. I always looked up to you, I still lurk you every once in awhile to see what you’re up to. I haven’t felt as close to anyone as I did back then. Even if it was awkward seeing you at first, an hour together and we were as close as ever. Sure I have friends now, but none who truly empathize with me, and I think that’s what I’m missing the most. That’s the source of all my nostalgia, why anything that even hints at happiness makes me yearn for those days again. As stupid and as painful to watch as that video was it let me revel in nostalgia and pretend we were friends again. I hope you’re happy.
I miss you. I miss my childhood which is now nothing but a nostalgic collage of synaesthetic memories. I miss you because I miss those memories. I can still visualize everything with every sense, and the whole thing combines into another sense altogether different and hard to put into words. The antecedent whom I miss does not apply to any one person, it applies to anyone I’ve ever had memories with in the past. More exactly it applies to the more distant past, to the point where memories begin to merge into that other sense that I still don’t know how to define. This seems to happen after I’ve moved on to a new era of my life. Just where these are divided is hard to say, and they overlap and lay on top of one another, but that extra sense seems to define these eras, each unique in my mind. Back to you though. Everything that I experienced in your presence seems to add to what later will make up these eras, and though you may be a different person altogether now than then, it is who you used to be that adds to it. You may be killing yourself slowly, or destroying your future, or turning over a new page of your life, yet there was a point where the future was unknown and you were great. Everyone starts out themselves, and it’s only with time that you are molded into the mass, and whether you like to think you aren’t a part of it, we all are. We never had a chance for anything else, we would die otherwise. Childhood isn’t when everything was simpler, if anything it was more complicated, because we didn’t have the confinement that we would later envelop us, we could wonder about the world and be ourselves. We now don’t have as much freedom, maybe we didn’t really from the start, we will follow the path that makes us most comfortable within the constraints that enable us all to live. This doesn’t mean we can’t think about what everything really is, we can still wonder about the world, our minds are the closest to free we can ever hope to be. Expand your mind. I’ve gotten off track again, though. I miss you. I wish we could be together again, but I know that it’s impossible. After an era apart the bonds between us are gone, and we’re nothing more now than friendly acquaintances. How are you? It’s good to hear from you. Goodbye.
There is but one absolute: everyone struggles for happiness. Most (if any) know nothing of how to attain this fleeting emotion. It comes and then goes without a second thought. You’ll look back on happy times, when in reality back then you did the exact same thing. No one’s happy today, only tomorrow or yesterday. Think of how long you’ve been happy in your life compared with any other emotion. Sadness is such a stronger emotion, and it overwhelms most of the world’s population. In some ways everyone enjoys it. It’s easy to get caught up in this mindset, it’s much easier to let despair possess you rather than just doing what you want. If the world were to end tomorrow, would you do anything different? Or would you do the same things you always did, too afraid to actually let yourself go? I don’t think many would do anything different, being too caught up in their usual routine. Anything that jars us off course is a welcome alternative, even if it is something devastating. Would you rather have your routine or something important to grieve about? Are you sure? Some people’s lives are drastically changed by such an event, and possibly for the better. My idea of hell would be doing the same thing every day, caught up in a comfortable routine. Life isn’t short, not when you do the mundane day after day after day. It only seems short because of the lack of alternate routes you take from year to year. We live longer than anyone has before us, many living into their 80s, so it’s not a lack of time it’s a lack of mobility. People give too much credence to the future, the afterlife, when who knows what will happen then? The afterlife might not (probably doesn’t) exist, yet people waste time making themselves unhappy to gain a place in line to it. Nothing will happen tomorrow unless you do it now, otherwise tomorrow will come and tomorrow will still be when you plan to accomplish your goal.
It’d been awhile since I’d last felt the embrace of caffeine, and there was a good reason for my abstination. Although it increased my creativity about four-fold, o the comedown I felt shaky, malnourished, and on the edge of an anxiety attack. The fact that something like this drug is in such wide use in our society today is frightening. It’s a mere foot away from cocaine, it’s fueling the world. People don’t know what is right for anyone but themselves, and even then sometimes they’re wrong. “Grown-ups” are not too much more grown up than kids, and as such they shouldn’t hold the tools to dismantle civilization. This, however, was not what was running through my mind as I biked home from the library, keeping the inevitable breakdown at bay.
I rode down 3rd street thinking of the nostalgic times, and I was almost instantly transported back in time. I scarcely recognized I was still biking down a dark street. The best friend I thought I’d always have, who I’d had since fourth grade, is no longer in contact with me, and a quote came to mind: “The bonds between ourselves and others exists only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them and notwithstanding the illusion . . . we exist alone.” The fact that he’s chosen a life far less befitting than he could have is awful, but I don’t think that even bothers me as much the fact that such close friends can become estranged from each other over the course of a couple of months. Another arguably closer friend who I’ve had just as long is near mental breakdown, and yet it’s comforting to talk to him, to know that I still have a close friend despite not having seen him for a few years. It was talking to him that brought to mind finally putting into writing the thoughts I’ve been having. I feel nothing but excitement for my own future, but the past thoroughly saddens me. Thus, I feel that this blog is to become my existentialist writings.
