Page from a Notebook

I think nobody becomes an adult without going through a phase of depression and cynicism. If you're lucky, you grow up to be an emotionally and psychologically stable individual, which means you're only mildly depressed for most of the time. Unfortunately, for quite a handful of us, we're nowhere near "stable," and we'll probably take longer to figure things out in life. It's just difficult to live with depression; most of the time we have to suck it in or we'll never be able to get up and function like everyone else. It's tiring to be so empty all the time. I wonder what in the world I'm suffering a nonsense life for. I'm grateful for everything, and yet so miserable: this is probably the closest I can ever get to happiness.

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My emotions are so delicate; my life is so dependent on guiding relationships that a wrong move can send my day into ruin, and as the years go by, send my life hurtling out the window.

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It astonishes me how something so abstract as emotions can make or break a life. I think this is precisely what fucks us up: when we cannot understand our emotions, what they are, what we must do with them, and why they disturb us so. Something so irrational and destructive has pulled apart relationships. Foundations that took years to build can crumble down in minutes. They lead us to neglect ourselves, others, and forget what we've been fighting for throughout our lives.

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To weather these emotions, I've taken to reading and writing. I found something in poetry that tempers these storms. It soothes my mind and eases my confusion even for a while.

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It is such a relief to find that a poet somewhere in time was able to articulate thoughts and emotions I could never make sense of in my deepest and darkest times. For that, I am grateful. And for a moment, I am less alone. It is good to be reminded.

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On Reincarnation

When my time is up, I will no longer dread the life I lived
For how wonderful it will be to know I played a minor role,
free of expectations and duties that kept me, and all my lives,
from being who I longed to be. This life was a reward
from my memories. At last, peace. I am home.

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"Description is revelation. It is not

the thing described nor false facsimile."

--Wallace Stevens, "Description Without a Place"

p. 181

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"To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love, to know that it is precisely there where you are not--this is the beginning of writing."
--Roland Barthes, "Lover's Discourse: Fragments"