fantastic head

"Everywhere you look, everywhere you turn
Illness is watching, waiting its turn..."
-Sufjan Stevens, I Want to be Well 

My brain has been twisting like a corkscrew.

In the past several weeks, I've heard from a lot of people that I should lighten up.  I absolutely agree with their observations.  I just don't know how.  At the risk of sounding embarrassingly cheesy, it's hard to lighten up when your world is full of darkness.  Of course, that could all be a matter of perspective.  Maybe I'm making things dark for myself.  Maybe my depression is all my fault.  Maybe I am playing the victim.  But if that's the case, why am I doing it and how can I stop?

Back in college, my horse-faced counselor laid out some labels for me to ponder.  He said I put people into three categories: Victim (which is me), Executioner (which at the time was my roommate but applies to anyone I dislike) and Savior (which at the time was Chasity, one of the only people I grew close to in college, but applies to anyone I like).  He said that I played the Victim and sought out Executioners and Saviors.  I took it to mean he felt I was responsible for all of my misery, that I had somehow constructed my chronic sadness by casting characters who fit certain roles to play out my misery like it was a stage play.  Sitting in the chair, staring at this man with the mile-long face, his gray ponytail dangling behind his neck, his irregular and yellow teeth glossy under the florescent lights, I thought to myself, "It's all my fault?  It's all my fault?"

I got up, left and never went back.

I was going through the hardest time of my life and this man who was supposed to help me was just making everything worse, telling me I had brought it all on myself, that I was the one to blame.  Looking back, he very well could have been correct.  I think a lot of times I probably do make people out to be the enemy.  Sometimes I do act like I'm a victim, like the entire world is against me.  Although he might have been right, his delivery was devastating.  I was more fragile than I normally am, trying to deal with a host of changes and it seems he should have been more sensitive to my plight.  I wish he would have broke everything down for me a bit more gently.  Of course, even now I guess it sounds like I'm making my counselor sound like the enemy.  I'm not saying he was, just that dropping such a bomb in such a cold way probably wasn't the best method of trying to get through to me.

Or maybe I'm just truly crazy and anyone that doesn't coddle me winds up being an Executioner in my stage play.

Fade out.

New scene.

There are a lot of times when I feel like there is something legitimately wrong with me.  Either I have some kind of mental illness or depression or something but I am just not normal nor do I feel like I fit in with other people.  Or that maybe I was clinically depressed or repressing some kind of tragic childhood trauma that made me the way I am right now.  I was looking for something, any kind of excuse to explain why I am so dysfunctional.  There had to be a reason, a moment or phrase or person or action that shaped me into the broken person I've become.

I suppose I was really just trying to take the easy way out, seeking some disease or mental disorder to absolve me of all responsibility, a defect in my genetic makeup that would easily explain all my craziness.  But, I don't know if there is any.  I haven't been formally diagnosed with depression, although I think that might be more probable than any other explanation.  I have to wonder, though, if I don't have a mental disorder and it's not necessarily depression that makes me so empty inside, what is the cause?  Am I doing this to myself?  And if so, why?

It seems there's always something in the way of me getting close with people.  A lot of the times I over analyze my relationships with others.  I'm offended easily.  I get mad often.  I'm continually disappointed.  But, I realize that most of my mood swings are irrational and uncalled for.  I just don't understand why I react the way I do.  If I do make people the enemy, why?  What made me wire my brain to turn against others, to always be paranoid and expect the worst in people?

I wonder if it's because I am not genuine.  I think my lack of socialization when I was younger really damaged me.  Because I did not learn how to interact with people when I was younger, I kind of made it up when I was forced to be around people, such as when I started school or began working with the public.  I guess I gathered all the information I knew about manners and how one should behave around others, such as kindness and respect, etc. and applied that to the way I acted toward others.  Yet, none of it ever came naturally.  I knew how I was supposed to act but it never felt real to me.  What felt real to me was to walk away, to be alone, to not care about what anyone had to say.  I suppose, in a way, my lack of socialization made me selfish.  I never learned to care about people the right way, the genuine way, therefore just about every relationship I formed from then on was manufactured in my head and not my heart.  And when something isn't pure, isn't genuine, it gets messy fast.

I just honestly don't understand how to know people in any other way than to be their acquaintance.  I can like people but I don't know how it feels to go beyond that.  I don't understand carrying that level of liking someone over into a friendship and I certainly don't know how to push it even further into romance.  I don't know what it feels like to like someone, to enjoy their company for more than a little while.  I don't get how people can stay friends for a lifetime or get married or be in love.  This is not me being negative or rejecting love.  This is me saying I genuinely just don't get it.  I don't know what it means to love anyone.  I don't know what it means for anyone to love me.  I don't think anyone does because I can't comprehend loving or being loved.

The only way I can really judge my affection for others is based on thinking about their demise.  I think to myself, "If they die, would I be sad?" And the only people I'd really be sad over is my mom and dad.  Anyone else, I'm just not sure.  It's not that I wouldn't care but I just don't see myself being all broken up about it.  That's because I'm just not attached to anyone.

My heart feels tangled because there is a part of me that comprehends goodness.  There are still strands of goodness from when I was a child, when I think I had the capacity to be good and genuine and enjoy people.  But, they just don't do anything but act as a reminder of what I used to be and the pariah I've become.  I feel split in half because all I've ever wanted to do was educate people, to change them, to show them that ignorance and violence is senseless and useless.  I've always wanted to open people's minds, to get them to think, to spread tolerance.  Its why I write and it's why I want to be an animator and storyteller.  There's lessons that can be learned while being entertained.  The sad part is I am becoming the negative things that I once tried to teach against.  I am becoming the terrible kind of person I used to want to touch.

This leaves me with no stability, to support, no foundation on which I can stand and gather myself.  I am floating in a trillion pieces, completely unorganized and only bound together by bitterness.  It makes me question myself, my motives, who I am as a person and my purpose in this existence.  That storyteller and lesson teacher is still there inside, somewhere, buried beneath all the anger and hurt I've accumulated over the years.  I feel like I have the potential to create amazing things and that is not me being cocky or bragging.  I obviously think I'm useless and untalented.  But, I feel like I have these ideas that if executed correctly could possibly create that positive change that I wanted to do so long ago.

It's a conundrum.  In my brain there is rage and murderous thoughts that slip through my synapses.  There's disappointment and fear and a recoiling reaction that comes along when thinking about people.  Yet, among all the horrible thoughts that assimilate in my skull, there's still the hope for a fantastic head.  It's only if I could reject all that rage, maybe I could make room for more ruminations that could lead to profound projects.  It's just hard because all the negativity makes me exhausted.  I only have enough energy to think and not do. 

How can I reconcile hating people but wanting to help them?  How can I reconcile hating myself but wanting to help myself?  How can I shift my mind from thinking everyone is out to get me to realizing that they might be angry, too?  Maybe they've just been hurt like I have.  Maybe life took a steaming dump on them as well except they project their anger outward, while I project it inward.  Sure, some people are born a-holes but a-holes can be created.  Look at me.  I wasn't always like this.  So, maybe they can be uncreated as well.  And in a world full of Executioners, it seems I might be the biggest Executioner of all.

It seems now there's a race to see which part of myself will win.  I'm a split personality, a walking contradiction, evil and innocent, Savior, Victim and Executioner rolled into one ball of fat and frustration.  The question is, will I be able to save this fantastic head or will I simply chop it off and be done with me?