CHASING MY OWN TAIL

I have been doing much deliberating about potentially going back to school. Right now as I write this, I'm procrastinating doing my taxes which is one of the many steps towards pursuing this goal. I constantly go back and forth between feeling very assured and confident about this decision, to feeling like an absolute fool. Someone asked me yesterday what I thought getting my degree would get for me that I don't have, and it was difficult to explain that I'm not seeking out further education purely for job prospects. Especially in today's world, it feels ridiculous. I do know completing a degree can open doors, and especially as a person in their late 20s, I would take my education a lot more seriously than I did as a teenager, and I would make connections that wouldn't happen outside of the academic world. Most importantly though, I want to feel a sense of pride in myself and I want to study the things that I find interesting. I want my career to feel meaningful.

I have long since made peace with the fact that all of my interests are in subjects that will never make me a ton of money. It's hard to look for advice online. Every Reddit post seems to exist just to tell you that there is no hope for you. If you're not willing to study computer science or engineering or something like that, you're fucked. You will never make enough to survive. Turn back now!!

The money thing is daunting, given that I live in one of the most expensive cities in North America, live alone, have a cat, a car, and work full time. I don't know how I am gonna make it work, but I know it's possible. I actually do make enough to survive, off a community college diploma in a creative field. So really, wouldn't it only be up from here? How much is self actualization worth?

The main thing that I think needs to be worked on is my ability to forgive myself for the choices I made as a younger person. I am so bogged down with regret and self-hatred for quitting my degree, for not just picking something, for deviating from the path I always thought I would follow, and for disappointing my parents but mostly myself. I know logically that I was a very confused, overwhelmed and deeply depressed person at that point in my life, and that perhaps things needed to happen in this order, but it's very, very difficult for me to withhold an intense judgment and disappointment in myself for that. But with this sense of self judgment, how can I expect to feel fulfilled for accomplishing this goal, if I have never given myself any credit for the things I've already accomplished?

I know (something often acknowledged by people around me) that I tend to be extremely hard on myself and not acknowledge my own achievements. I am a hard worker, I'm intelligent, I'm capable - I built everything I have for myself, I value my independence. Maybe these were the lessons I needed to learn before I completed this goal. If I'm able to do this, if I can prove to myself it was always possible, maybe that will be the ultimate confirmation that I always deserved it.

Is that enough reason or is this a really dumb idea?

INDIGESTIBLE

It was my birthday yesterday. On Saturday, my friends came over to my house, which I had spent hours frantically cleaning, to joyfully mess it up again. We played a card game and ate cake and then pizza, in that order. I laughed in that shrill witch-like way and the night felt like it passed in minutes.

Why is it that when I try to think to myself, "I feel loved"; "I feel grateful"; "I am satisfied"; "I am proud of myself"; it seems to bounce off something inside – a translucent membrane, or a shroud maybe? I hear myself saying the words, and I feel them in my mouth or rolling around in my head, but they will not absorb, like the molecules are too large. I desperately want to digest them. I have always felt like this. When the emotions are thicker, more significant, I will rehearse it. I play out my own reactions to grief, to betrayal, to anger. Twist my face and my body in the ways you are supposed to, almost as if to practice. I am acutely aware of the invisible camera trained on me always, and the inauthenticity of the moment makes me uncomfortable with myself. I say to myself, you don't really feel that way! you're acting! you're doing what you think you're supposed to do! So what if I am? Perhaps I feel undeserving of these moments, or this is a defense mechanism to make sure I am prepared for every possible situation. The only situation I seem to not have prepared for is one where I don't need to feel guilty.

Why can't I feel satisfied? I'm sitting in my apartment that I pay for, with my own money, with the job that I got myself with my skills and my talents, decorated by beautiful things that I collected with my unique taste, with my cat I take good care of, surrounded by friends that (certainly seem to) really like and admire me and enjoy my company. Why does it always have to feel like something is missing? Will it ever feel like enough? What if I am just a decent person who has done well for myself? What if I am doing my best and it's enough? What if I don't need to be punished? What if I didn't make huge mistakes and end up on the wrong path? What if this was the right path? Why do all of these thoughts have such giant molecules?

GOD-SHAPED HOLE

Today I felt very spiritually empty. I listened to a video essay on the Medieval mind. Apparently people in the Medieval era had a passion and emotional intensity that we would find confronting and overwhelming in our world of relative detachment. It was normal to be brought to tears - by your love for God; the majesty of the natural world; watching a person hang, committing themselves to an honourable death. To publicly profess your love and devotion to someone was acceptable, even admirable. The world had a clear and definable heirarchy which gave the monotony of daily life a sense of structure and security with the pursuit of piety the only goal, the reward of heaven as promised and tangible as the soil beneath your feet.

There has never been a less definable and less spiritual world than the one I live in. For all of its advancements and technology, it's impossible to deny the existence of a gaping, deadening spiritual void. Whether this is from the dissolution of community and ritual; the violence of colonialism and the death of culture in exchange for whiteness; social media and its consequences; or any other of the litany of social issues that have resulted from the industrial revolution is hardly worth mulling over anymore. The simple, difficult truth is that I, and most other people, live in a state of numb spiritual ennui and I, like most other people, spend an inordinate amount of time trying to shove any and everything vaguely God-shaped into this hole. I have no real interest, or capability really, to start believing in a God, much less a structured, male, Christian one. At the same time and despite all its glaring flaws, I can't help but envy this long-gone, devoted life.

My devotions are positively Medieval. Without careful tending, they gush forward like a flood out of a drainpipe. In my most vulnerable state, I can cry watching a man smile. I can cry seeing a cluster of spiders in the ivy, clambering over one another, brushed forward by the wind and glistening the sun off their backs. I can cry thinking of how beautiful it is to cry. I can cry thinking of how insane it is that we are not crying all of the time, over all of the beauty and the pain. I feel a sort of creature-self inside me, something writhing in confusion and rage at the dumbness we play at, the stupid bullshit we care about, the way we talk about each other with cruelty and apathy and scorn. The way we spend every day caressing plastic, holding it close to our hearts where it doesn't belong, these things not made by any natural God. The way nothing fucking seems to matter but producing, optimizing, monetizing, capitalizing, and all the other masturbatory synonyms. My devotion feels ferocious, blinding. It doesn't feel soft, but desperate and rageful. I can weep at the drop of a hat at all that we've lost, which was never mine to begin with. My body senses it – from its biology or from my ancestors or perhaps something else.

"I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart." - CAMERON AWKWARD-RICH

ANATTA

Buddhism teaches that because there is no permanent, separate self (anatta), the boundaries between individuals are illusory. Or Stoicism – "All things are interwoven with one another; a sacred bond unites them" - Marcus Aurelius. What I've found lately is this: the emotion which all my feelings boil down to in response to the world is betrayal. Sadness, grief, indignation, disbelief, love, empathy, and rage are distilled into a sense of betrayal. I feel betrayed because not only are the downtrodden and victimized me – not just philosophically, but literally, me – so are the victimizers; the gleefully bloodthirsty; the self-righteous; the thoughtless and selfish and cruel and greedy; and so this makes me ashamed.

I feel betrayed by the ways in which I hear us speak about ourselves, speaking about us like we are parasites, like we make this place dirty, and that we are deserving of cruelty. That they defy the fundamental truth that when a person seeks refuge from danger they are fulfilling the most essential instinct of every living creature on earth. I am not just disgusted and heartbroken at the 'other' for thinking this, but disgusted and heartbroken in myself. I ache with betrayal by the fascist because the fascist exists in me.

The way I know undeniably in my soul that those who appear to have everything are just as deeply spiritually broken, meaning-starved, and haunted by the void which is at the centre of life; who are clawing at the dirt as it buries them like it buries all of us, trying to engrave their names into the sky, little better than desperate animals; and again I'm disgusted and saddened by our ego.

But if these people are me, then everyone beautiful and kind, everyone soft-hearted and soft-handed, everyone ferocious because of love, everyone who sacrifices and shouts, is me — and it makes me want to refuse to despair, because this is equally our true nature, if we can only choose it, and I see us choosing it. I will continue to wake up and be teary-eyed and let my stupid heart bleed all over everything.