shattered

I have not posted a blog in over a month--that's probably the longest I've gone since I started this. I'm not sure if it's because I haven't had much to say lately, or if I've just been feeling too busy to actually sit down and reflect for a few minutes. Perhaps it's just because I've been fairly content lately, and when I'm content, I tend to flow along with the stream of life without occasionally stepping onto the shore to see where the current is taking me.

But lately, these past couple of days, contentment has fled, and I've been left feeling a little shattered. (How does one feel a 'little' shattered? I don't know, but 'shattered' seemed so harsh.) Everything had seemed to be going so well, but these last few days, I feel like things have been falling apart.

And so yesterday and today I've been depressed. That old familiar feeling that I've blogged about before, where I can't get excited about anything, where my life seems hopeless, where I feel like I've made some wrong decisions but now it's too late to change them, where all I really want to do is sleep because it shuts out the world, where I feel like I'm constantly on the edge of tears...that feeling. Perhaps you'd think I should call someone, but I just feel so negative, filled with resentment and bitterness, that I can't imagine a conversation with anyone would go very well. Even after talking to my mom, I feel like a jerk, because all I can do is listen half-heartedly and then talk about how miserable I am.

I've been through this enough times now where I have some perspective on it, I think. I realize it's just a two or three day thing that I go through every so often (not so often now, it seems, thanks to the pills), and there's really nothing I can do about it, besides ride it out. Just wait for it to pass, the way you'd wait for a cold to pass.

An effect of the depression is an incredibly strong feeling of being alone.

I do not think I made the right decision by coming to C-U. Aside from a few wonderful people I've met, I feel like my time here has been a wash. I mean, three years now, and I still don't really have a group of friends here. I still don't feel any sense of community. I just can't believe that. Is something wrong with me? Have I become such a resentful person that I can't make friends anymore? In Pittsburgh, in Tampa, I felt loved. There were groups of people who loved me, whom I loved. Here, there are a few individuals, but nothing like a group. This is probably because I haven't become involved with a group of people 'like me.' I've hardly connected with anyone in my academic department here--I don't think I get on well with many people who are absorbed in academia, at least in the humanities--and the social groups I've flirted with just haven't felt right to me. I know there are people out there that I can connect with--I've felt it when I've gone to visit friends in various places--but for some reason I can't find these people here (except, as I've said, for a few individuals). Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough--maybe I need to join a group, or start a group--but it's always been relatively easy to find these people. Not so much anymore.

I know that this is a large problem, a cause of my occasional discontent. I'm not enamored with the program here (it clearly wasn't right for me), and since I don't have a group of friends, I often can't figure out why I'm actually here. I've heard it said that you come to C-U for the university, for the academics; but if I don't get much satisfaction out of the academics, then...there's not much of a reason to be here, you see? And it might be getting worse--a friend is leaving, a friendship seems to be fading--the future here is not bright, to be honest. These past couple of days, I have been wishing I could just pick up and go, but where to?

I wrote a Mother's Day card to my mom recently, and as I was writing it, I had this insight that I hadn't owned up to before: I wrote that she has been the one constant in my life, the one constant source of love, and that she has been a major source of support, especially over the past six years, since my father died. I knew this, but the insight was that, as I wrote in the card, I've really been drifting ever since Dad died. I was driven at CMU, and felt I had a clear path ahead of me, but after Dad passed away, I lost some of that focus. What might have happened is that Dad's death caused me to give up on Ultimate Meaning. I couldn't really believe in religion, and without religion, you've got no ultimate meaning. But once you give up on ultimate meaning, you have to accept (I think) that we all have to make meaning for ourselves, since most of us (if not all of us) need to feel that our lives are about something in order to feel content. However, since I realize this--that any meaning is essentially manufactured, a sort of psychological trick--then all meaning becomes tentative to me, and this makes it meaningless. I don't know if I can live in a world without ultimate meaning.

So, since Dad's death, there's been this underlying sense of pointlessness to things. I can rise above it from time to time, when I can feel some meaning--when I'm with dear friends, when I see a beautiful movie, when I'm at a great concert, when I'm absorbed in a book, when I can get excited about my work--but it seems to take such a force of will to feel this meaning, and sometimes I just can't keep it up. I get tired. And the meaning explodes, and I'm flung back to earth, to the realization of meaninglessness.

I suppose I have centered my 'work' on meaning in education because I don't want other people to go through what I have been through. I want students to learn how to handle questions of meaning in such a way that they can find contentment. But maybe this means that my work is just a form of therapy for me. And if this is the case, then I'm not going to make it in academia.

I guess the bottom line is that, tonight, I feel like my life is a mess, and I don't know what to do about it. The fact that I go through this every so often is a sign, I think, that I can't just let myself get caught up in the stream of life again, since that stream is not actually taking me where I should be. I need to live differently if I have any chance of being content. I can't keep on making these sorts of bold pronouncements, however, without actually doing anything about it. This is my fatal flaw, I think--translating lofty thoughts, words, values into action.

There's more to say, but I should get to sleep.