A Glass, Half Empty

Image courtesy of Stockvault.

Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t actually succeed in killing myself four years ago. It’s a weird thought, but based on perspective it can be appropriate. At the time, I was in the middle of disintegrating most of who I thought I was. I’d gone through the trouble of law school and the Florida bar exam only to not find work. I didn’t believe in myself; I did believe in other things.

I also didn’t fully want to leave Florida. My plan after failed suicide attempts was to just walk out the door of the apartment I couldn’t afford and wander into a nearby swampland. There, I’d find a secluded spot until the elements took me. The thing I remember about all of this was that I was happy with it, but I knew nobody else would understand why.

This really is the insanity of depression in a nutshell. I have thoughts that make no sense, yet they persist despite my best efforts to curb them. If I could control them, I would smother them in their sleep. Other people outwardly have an easy time of doing this, and it irks me. To them, they dismiss it as casual pessimism that chooses to keep a glass half empty. I’m not a pessimist, because I know the glass is half empty.

I have given up on happiness. It never stuck around, and so I treat it like a deadbeat friend that never did anything good for me. Happiness is that jackass that wants you to do what everyone else wants and then cusses you out when you have to take time to be yourself. Happiness is that thing everybody swears they know but can’t make an appointment for you to visit yourself.

When I get to thinking about stuff like this, I come out the other side in almost a fugue state. Then the realization descends, and I remember that all of this doesn’t really tell me who I am now. Nietzsche wrote about this feeling when someone has their entire value system obliterated. I’m not sure he got all of it right, but he definitely described the initial feeling quite well. The problem, of course, is that I’m four years out from it. “Initial” implies that something else will follow, but so far I’ve only had the last dying gasps of who I was come out.

This blog is probably the only repository of who I am. Looking back on things, it seems silly all of the stuff I felt compelled to write about. None of it really describes who I am now. I haven’t built anything, because there is this part of me that has always felt like building something is a complete waste of time. I won’t need it where I’m going, so why take it with me?

Part of me realizes now that I do want to fill the proverbial glass, and even if it’s half empty, it’s also half filled with something. I’ve been looking at what I’ve lost. I don’t know if I’ve lost too much of myself. What if the best parts of me were left in Florida, and I’m just something else that resembles a human?

I understand now that this is a problem of perspective. My perspective gets irrational without my full knowledge. Perhaps I get like this because I’m trying to center myself again. Destruction used to help calm me. I don’t have that option when there’s nothing left to destroy.