Friday, December 2, 2011

Faux-ironic title designed to maintain my masculinity

Loop de doop, looking at the blank page. I don’t know what to put here because I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s not totally true; I know what the symptoms are. I’ve been picking internet fights for a week straight. It’s a really obvious sign that I’m frustrated about something. The way I operate is that if I’m frustrated about something but can’t really do anything about it, I end up channeling it into something I’m passionate about and start petty arguments about things I normally would let slide. I assume everyone does this to some degree. The problem is that I don’t know what I’m really frustrated about. My life is going more or less okay. Things are fine on nearly every front. Every idea that I have that I might be frustrated about doesn’t pan out when I try to imagine whether I’d feel any better if those problems were solved. My best idea so far is that I feel like my life is going nowhere or not going somewhere fast enough or that I’m totally unsure of where to go. I think I’ve thought up (And then done little to no work on) half a dozen projects to work on, to theoretically jumpstart the drive and get me back on my feet. It’s so strange, because I’m pretty sure I had peace of mind at some point this year, but it’s gone again and I don’t know where I’ve put it.

Not to help matters, I’ve been getting a bunch more acne than usual, especially on my shoulders and forehead, which frustrates me both on a totally vain “insecure about my looks” level and also on a “for fucks sake everyone told me when I was a teenager that I was going to grow out of acne and not get it when I got older” level. Lying assholes. They should have just told me “well, you better kill yourself now because you’re gonna be ugly for the rest of your life.”

Of course when I look back at it, I’ve been feeling kind of like this since the last queerlesque. I’m restless and dissatisfied and totally inconsistent. I’m not even depressed. I know when I’m depressed, and this isn’t it. I’m angry, is what it is. I keep wanting to unfriend everyone I know and say vicious and mean-spirited things to the people I otherwise like and I want to yell and scream, which is basically another way of me saying I want someone to pay attention to me and give me hugs and reassure me and things like that. But I don’t even think that will help ultimately, otherwise I would be asking for hugs and reassurance. The problem will still be there even after the person leaves.

I hate feeling ashamed for feeling the way I do. Because that’s what I feel. I feel like even posting this is a cloying attempt to garner sympathy, which is ultimately pathetic for me to do. I hate feeling like I need to act this way or that way to satisfy whatever audience I have. I hate feeling weak for writing about my feelings. I hate that I still feel weak for writing my feelings after doing it for years. I hate that I imagine the reaction from people whose opinion I value and cherish will inevitably be tainted with “that’s nice, but boy isn’t Jake melodramatic and whiny?” I hate writing faux-ironic titles where I sort of hint at the idea that I know how silly my emotions are. I hate that anyone else ever feels like this and I hate the people who perpetuate it with non-advice like “man up, son.” For fucks sake, I’m a person on this goddamn planet and I will not be made to feel bad for being as emotionally fragile as I want.

Clearly the solution is drugs or something, but that terrifies me on another level where I admit the ultimate physicality of my being and the completely true concept that I have no independent will except what is chemically expressed by various regions of my brain. I went to a bar just to drink and feel sorry for myself the other week. I didn’t tell anyone. I don’t tell anyone anything important these days. No one tells me important things. I made a hand-turkey for the college of liberal arts office at UNO and dedicated it to someone and then I didn’t tell them about it. It’s still on the wall.

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