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A Rant on Strong Emotion
12 years ago
Super ultra mega disclaimer! I know for a fact I'm gonna be dropping spoilers about the book The Night Circus. It's a wonderful book, I love the world, I highly suggest that you read it, and if you're going to read it based on my suggestion alone and hate spoilers you'll want to stop reading now. Actually before you go, take my advice and play http://nightcircus.storynexus.com before you read the book. The UI's terrible, but it has some things of value and if you try playing after reading the book it will have lost a lot of it's wondrous mystery. Okay, now go and read The Night Circus. Still here? Alright, second warning: this is gonna get angsty. Super angsty. Seriously. Before I get super into it, though, I'm gonna give...
Some Reasons Why
It's been proven in the past that nobody reads these things (my journals), so the question undoubtedly arises, why am I writing this? Well, I'm hoping that by putting these feelings into words, I can either let them go or fight them off later on. Y'know, catharsis. If that's the only reason, though, why am I writing it here? Why not post it to deviantArt, where even fewer people care, or better yet, just write it into a word doc and save it to a flash drive, never to be read? Well (again), I guess I like thinking that maybe, some day, someone will come by and read this and go, "Yeah, I know how you feel," and then they'll send me a note and we'll start talking and a relationship will form and everything will be sunshine and perfectly warm weather and unicorns will frolic through the fields, farting rainbows and pooping butterflies. Yeah, totally gonna happen. So, the broad-spectrum why is now answered, but I think I've probably pretty heavily implied that these feelings are not new; people who follow me on Twitter can probably scroll through my tweets and find a particular four-tweet bundle that demonstrate this quite well. So why now? Simple: I read a book. Specifically, The Night Circus. I'm gonna be dropping some references to this book, and I'll try to explain the references in less than two sentences in case whoever reads this in the near or far future hasn't read The Night Circus. I will say though, this isn't the first time a book's sent me into this state, this is just the most recent example; hopefully the rant will explain why on its own. Now, without further ado...
The Rant
To start off, I'm going to say right now that I'm not depressed. Or at least, I don't feel depressed, or that what I'm feeling should be classified as depression because depression lingers long after the sun rises and the day begins, and I can make these feelings go away just by doing the breakfast teleport. Really, it's more of a melancholy, but it's a melancholy I find I wear like a shroud far too often for my liking. It feels like someone suspended a pair of five pound weights inside my ribcage, one behind the center of each pectoral muscle. Nothing painful, nothing that I can't work around, but it's certainly there. For a time I thought perhaps they might be chakras that were being under- or over-expressed, but apparently there aren't any quite like this, so that idea's out the window and I haven't a clue why these weights in particular are felt. I can, however, describe the melancholy. I've figured out that much, at least, and for that I'm glad because I'm sure I'd be halfway to insane otherwise. Or maybe I'd just have an earlier bedtime, and would be living a better life for it, but I don't know and it's really beside the point. End result, this melancholy is the acute awareness of my apathy and the void of strong feelings towards any one particular thing.
The most obvious, and most incessant, example is that of romance. I'm of an age where many people have, at some point or another, had a crush; as many if not more have dated seriously. I am part of neither group. To reference Gone Home, I have never met someone and seen a gold star around their head, begging for me to get to know them. I have never felt like I was truly intimate with any one person over any other. Meanwhile, I read books about how people are content with living forever just with one person, and though I can conceptualize the idea, not once have I felt anything comparable. I can't say, "It's like X, but stronger;" I've never experienced that initial emotion, I have no day zero event. So, strong feelings of romance are out the window for me. What else?
What else is I'm asexual. No shame in it, there are plenty of times that I love how much it simplifies things because nowhere in my thought process is, "Sex is amazing, let's try getting more of that." I'm tempted to say more, but honestly, this is a public forum; I don't want to spill my guts to people just to be judged on words that were written after midnight when I was in a bad mood. Back on topic, asexuality is great most times. The problem comes when you're the only one like this... No details, but basically I had my asexuality brought to the forefront of my mind recently. It's one more sensation that I don't have, a talking point among friends where all I can do is shrug when it comes up. Another strong emotion, gone. Is there anything else?
Maybe. Kinda sorta maybe not really no. Stories pass around about people my age and younger doing amazing things, having these driving passions for science, or business, or whatever, pushing them to glory. What do I have? A lot of hobbies. Far too many hobbies. Reading, writing, drawing, video games, board games, tabletop RPGs, listening to music, playing music, costuming, martial arts, fashion, parkour, cooking, dancing, crafting, tarot cards, hosting events. Notice what's not on the list? Watching TV. Watching movies. Watching sports. Playing sports. Alcohol. Seriously, I go to college in the land of American football and beer, and I partake in neither, and it makes my weekends the most boring things on Earth, consisting of sleeping, websurfing, and maybe some procrastinating on things that actually matter somewhat like classwork or scholarships. Heck, I'm not even sure if I should bother with classwork or scholarships sometimes. End result, passion for causes, or science, or whatever, tossed out with the bathwater.
Let's see, what other strong feelings are there? Oh, triumph and tragedy. I once read some inspirational quote saying something like, "Everyone has a crowning moment in their life, and everyone has experienced a tragedy." They clearly hadn't met me. I may have achieved great things relative to my peers and my surroundings, but nothing has been a significant achievement on a personal level. I haven't worked to get where I am, just kinda let things happen. As for tragedy? Well, the frequently espoused "feels" over characters dying (like Herr Thiessen in The Night Circus [see I told you I'd drop spoilers]) is only momentary for me, so cross that off the list. And sure, I've had pets die, and my grandfather's passed, but I don't feel anything about these events. Death is, at least for the time being, a part of being alive. Say, where'd that list go? All I see is a bunch of crossed out words.
Watch as all this life just zooms by! All the riders in their cars shout over the wind, "Don't stick out your thumb, it's a terrifying ride for nothing!" But no, I grew up wanting to experience everything, though whether that was nature or nurture I couldn't begin to say. So I throw out my arm, I crank my thumb, I try to catch a ride, and still no car stops and I'm left with naught but a mouthful of dust and weary, blistered feet.
I'm honestly not sure why I'm writing this, ultimately. No outside influence can somehow give me a strong emotion. I can't just pick up causes like pebbles on the beach. Consoling responses do nothing but leave a bitter taste in my mouth as they say, "Just wait." I get it, I'm barely a man, I still have a long life ahead of me. But still, that fear hangs over me like a swollen rain cloud, whispering, "Your life is no mountain to be marked, climbed, and used to teach those you leave behind how to climb higher and higher mountains. Your life is a prairie, a plain that time will flood and leave nothing behind. You will be nothing." And nothing I have done, seen, or known will place me as more than an implication from a generalized statistic in a footnote on the life and times of my generation.
Perhaps one day I'll come back to this, and update it as I reassess this melancholy that clings in the late hours of the night. Perhaps.
Some Reasons Why
It's been proven in the past that nobody reads these things (my journals), so the question undoubtedly arises, why am I writing this? Well, I'm hoping that by putting these feelings into words, I can either let them go or fight them off later on. Y'know, catharsis. If that's the only reason, though, why am I writing it here? Why not post it to deviantArt, where even fewer people care, or better yet, just write it into a word doc and save it to a flash drive, never to be read? Well (again), I guess I like thinking that maybe, some day, someone will come by and read this and go, "Yeah, I know how you feel," and then they'll send me a note and we'll start talking and a relationship will form and everything will be sunshine and perfectly warm weather and unicorns will frolic through the fields, farting rainbows and pooping butterflies. Yeah, totally gonna happen. So, the broad-spectrum why is now answered, but I think I've probably pretty heavily implied that these feelings are not new; people who follow me on Twitter can probably scroll through my tweets and find a particular four-tweet bundle that demonstrate this quite well. So why now? Simple: I read a book. Specifically, The Night Circus. I'm gonna be dropping some references to this book, and I'll try to explain the references in less than two sentences in case whoever reads this in the near or far future hasn't read The Night Circus. I will say though, this isn't the first time a book's sent me into this state, this is just the most recent example; hopefully the rant will explain why on its own. Now, without further ado...
The Rant
To start off, I'm going to say right now that I'm not depressed. Or at least, I don't feel depressed, or that what I'm feeling should be classified as depression because depression lingers long after the sun rises and the day begins, and I can make these feelings go away just by doing the breakfast teleport. Really, it's more of a melancholy, but it's a melancholy I find I wear like a shroud far too often for my liking. It feels like someone suspended a pair of five pound weights inside my ribcage, one behind the center of each pectoral muscle. Nothing painful, nothing that I can't work around, but it's certainly there. For a time I thought perhaps they might be chakras that were being under- or over-expressed, but apparently there aren't any quite like this, so that idea's out the window and I haven't a clue why these weights in particular are felt. I can, however, describe the melancholy. I've figured out that much, at least, and for that I'm glad because I'm sure I'd be halfway to insane otherwise. Or maybe I'd just have an earlier bedtime, and would be living a better life for it, but I don't know and it's really beside the point. End result, this melancholy is the acute awareness of my apathy and the void of strong feelings towards any one particular thing.
The most obvious, and most incessant, example is that of romance. I'm of an age where many people have, at some point or another, had a crush; as many if not more have dated seriously. I am part of neither group. To reference Gone Home, I have never met someone and seen a gold star around their head, begging for me to get to know them. I have never felt like I was truly intimate with any one person over any other. Meanwhile, I read books about how people are content with living forever just with one person, and though I can conceptualize the idea, not once have I felt anything comparable. I can't say, "It's like X, but stronger;" I've never experienced that initial emotion, I have no day zero event. So, strong feelings of romance are out the window for me. What else?
What else is I'm asexual. No shame in it, there are plenty of times that I love how much it simplifies things because nowhere in my thought process is, "Sex is amazing, let's try getting more of that." I'm tempted to say more, but honestly, this is a public forum; I don't want to spill my guts to people just to be judged on words that were written after midnight when I was in a bad mood. Back on topic, asexuality is great most times. The problem comes when you're the only one like this... No details, but basically I had my asexuality brought to the forefront of my mind recently. It's one more sensation that I don't have, a talking point among friends where all I can do is shrug when it comes up. Another strong emotion, gone. Is there anything else?
Maybe. Kinda sorta maybe not really no. Stories pass around about people my age and younger doing amazing things, having these driving passions for science, or business, or whatever, pushing them to glory. What do I have? A lot of hobbies. Far too many hobbies. Reading, writing, drawing, video games, board games, tabletop RPGs, listening to music, playing music, costuming, martial arts, fashion, parkour, cooking, dancing, crafting, tarot cards, hosting events. Notice what's not on the list? Watching TV. Watching movies. Watching sports. Playing sports. Alcohol. Seriously, I go to college in the land of American football and beer, and I partake in neither, and it makes my weekends the most boring things on Earth, consisting of sleeping, websurfing, and maybe some procrastinating on things that actually matter somewhat like classwork or scholarships. Heck, I'm not even sure if I should bother with classwork or scholarships sometimes. End result, passion for causes, or science, or whatever, tossed out with the bathwater.
Let's see, what other strong feelings are there? Oh, triumph and tragedy. I once read some inspirational quote saying something like, "Everyone has a crowning moment in their life, and everyone has experienced a tragedy." They clearly hadn't met me. I may have achieved great things relative to my peers and my surroundings, but nothing has been a significant achievement on a personal level. I haven't worked to get where I am, just kinda let things happen. As for tragedy? Well, the frequently espoused "feels" over characters dying (like Herr Thiessen in The Night Circus [see I told you I'd drop spoilers]) is only momentary for me, so cross that off the list. And sure, I've had pets die, and my grandfather's passed, but I don't feel anything about these events. Death is, at least for the time being, a part of being alive. Say, where'd that list go? All I see is a bunch of crossed out words.
Watch as all this life just zooms by! All the riders in their cars shout over the wind, "Don't stick out your thumb, it's a terrifying ride for nothing!" But no, I grew up wanting to experience everything, though whether that was nature or nurture I couldn't begin to say. So I throw out my arm, I crank my thumb, I try to catch a ride, and still no car stops and I'm left with naught but a mouthful of dust and weary, blistered feet.
I'm honestly not sure why I'm writing this, ultimately. No outside influence can somehow give me a strong emotion. I can't just pick up causes like pebbles on the beach. Consoling responses do nothing but leave a bitter taste in my mouth as they say, "Just wait." I get it, I'm barely a man, I still have a long life ahead of me. But still, that fear hangs over me like a swollen rain cloud, whispering, "Your life is no mountain to be marked, climbed, and used to teach those you leave behind how to climb higher and higher mountains. Your life is a prairie, a plain that time will flood and leave nothing behind. You will be nothing." And nothing I have done, seen, or known will place me as more than an implication from a generalized statistic in a footnote on the life and times of my generation.
Perhaps one day I'll come back to this, and update it as I reassess this melancholy that clings in the late hours of the night. Perhaps.
