DSM diagnosis: Unloveable-ness with a tendency towards self-loathing. Prognosis: Lame.

I want to be a story worth writing about. To live each day and say "wow, that was awesome, someone should write that down." But then the next morning comes, and I don't want to leave my apartment, let alone do any of the random things that might make a day memorable-like singing at the top of my longs in a public place, or,  asking someone on a date. Hell,  I felt embarrassed making eye contact with a relatively cute guy in the grocery store. My most memorable moment today? Eating cookies. Cookies I would not usually eat. Unfortunately for my stone-cold heart, they beat out my dinner conversation with friends (thinking about the food), and my futile familial call (my attempt at connection and loving relatedness left me confronted with a cold and shivering heart when I got of the phone).

"A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Life" by David Miller is excellent. However in currently not living a better life, I feel a little bit lame as I reread it. Shaming myself with lameness is not usually an effective antidote to my already large dose of lame, but when I get perspective on it, it is at least slightly comedic.

My dad's words of wisdom tonight were"get up, dress up, and show up, that's like, 80% of it." It's like I'm dressing up for meaninglessness every day. Changing out of my pajamas and some piece of clothing I feel relatively comfortable in to go out in the world and... stare at people and wonder why they walk around in their lives. The most meaning I've been able to find is in my trips to the grocery store, because I MUST eat green apples with cashews (or if I run out of whatever concoction I have imagined, it will quickly be replaced with anything within arm's reach), otherwise I simply WON'T be ok. Ok, so there is meaning in consumption, and not having cold toes. If I was completely numb I wouldn't be so concerned about having cold extremities-at least I still have some survival instinct intact.

But it's all so pathetically boring, which is what makes it even more depressing. I have no children, I am not in severe debt, I'm not overweight, I don't have cancer. And there is a world with many more significant crises beyond my cross-eyed dilemna.  I'm stuck, and I suffer from an acute case of self-loathing and unloveable-ness (yes unloveable-ness is a psychiatric disorder, look it up in the DSM biatches).

I'm not committed to this lame story. Part of it shifts when I stop correlating the quality of my day with whether or not I'm happy and satisfied by what I ate (because that rarely, if ever happens). But that does happen when I'm involved in things that provide way more meaning than whatever it is I may be consuming. So that's the mission: do something, ANYTHING, that makes me excited and trumps my concerns about cold toes, iron hearts, and lunch time.

I want to be the bestest.

Jealousy. I hate t o admit that part of me is happy when other people f*** up. I want to be the best. I want to be miss america. There really is no such thing as the BEST in the world. Every year there is a new Miss Universe, but we have no idea if there is some woman in rural Peru who actually meets every cultural aesthetic imaginable, or an eskimo who could put every Frank Sinatra, Whitney Huston and Maria Callas to shame. 

But there really is no such thing, because everyone has different ears and eyes and feelings and thoughts. So this whole "best" s a lot of bull.  But still I want to be the best. 

Design to be alive

When is it we stopped designing things to make people feel alive?

I live in a room where I cannot see the sky.

I work in an office with no windows.

I walk outside and the buildings are so close, there’s little difference between a sunny and a cloudy day. 

The water I drink from the faucet meets the minimum drinking requirements.

The chair I sit on is a chair. There’s little consideration for the alignment of my body

.

I live in an artificially lit environment 23 out of the 24 hours of any one day (even the street lights invade my room at night).

Gaudi's Sagrada Famila, Barcelona

When did we stop considering any kind of quality of life, and think merely in terms of quantity? Why don’t we create worlds of inspiration, greenery, treasure troves of humanity and life? We live longer and longer, but without inspiration, simply with functionality. I don’t just want to just function, I want to be alive.

Consumption

Borrowed from Robozombie's post on 2/11/11

If I consume this product, will I relive my childhood? It is like resuscitating  a moment in time, this intangible feeling I didn't know I missed or lost. It was nothing then, but I crave it now.
This sensation reminds me I have a body.
This taste is my one experience of pleasure.
In a world of gray existence, I am consumed in color.
I suddenly have something to care about.
Now there is purpose, because I must have it. Thank god, something matters.
It makes me feel full, which is the closest I can come to love.

Dying, to feel alive.

Why does it seem that mot humans kill themselves to feel alive?
We smoke, we drink, we abuse ourselves. We do many other, much more subtle things, that lead to our physical, mental and emotional discomfort. Why?

I find myself constantly conflicted not so much about death, but about existence. This constant existential mantra "why am I here? Why am I here? WHY am I here?" Witnessing the pain and misfortune of others serves as a brief wake-up call, but it's fleeting. After reading about a murder or a car accident, it takes only moments to become completely absorbed in my own love-hate world of what seems to be a mediocre existence. I spend money, is my existence justified in that I support an imaginary economy? If I type many words into a computer and (some day) make fancy reports that I project on to a wall with many statistics, have I done something? Where does one find the sensation of being alive? If I feel alienated from my own family, but smile at strangers, does it even out somehow?

I'm so disappointed. Disappointed that it's not easy, disappointed in myself that I don't know how to make it easy, disappointed that I don't know how to care enough to do anything, about anything. Except for continue the conversation, and ponder my inexplicable disappointment with being.

Why violins confuse my heart.

The lights are dim as the violins tune. Their gentle lowing reminds me of cows idling in green Pennsylvania fields, soft and gentle as the breeze.

How can my heart feel so divided between past nostalgia and living into the present moment? Between two or more geographical places- what is it I'm trying to regain, what is it I have lost? Why must I suffer these images, this barrage of time?

I sometimes wonder if I'm not reliving a moment of someone else's life, or a fragment of a movie, a bit of a story I read or saw that has become a part of my own narrative somehow. Maybe it's my neighbor's feeling that accidentally found it's way to me, the owner being too full of questions about real estate, inflation, and baby formula. Just that brief and impassioned violin vignette brought me to a cold, snowy, New England evening, where the crispness of the air cuts you with a fleeting but bitter melancholy. Wrapped in the darkness, you feel the smallness of your existence.  There's joy that your life is not nearly as serious as the stars, and yet at a total loss as to how to make anything matter now that you realize this.

Is that why city dwellers are so narcissistic? They don't have enough wide open views to see the vastness of the world? The sky is too punctuated and divided, leaving children and long-time residents with a sense of it being manageable and divisible? I fear there are many examples to the contrary, and still I can't help but wonder.