I hate being single on holidays like this.

I know no one likes it, but it's not the gifts or the "time together" that really gets to me (not that I'd mind either of course), but the reality of having someone that's there thinking about you, desperately trying to think of something, some gift or something they can do, to put a smile on your face. It sucks sitting around thinking about the important people in my life and how I can make their holiday a little better, all the while knowing their minds are elsewhere most of the time.

It's just life, realistically I will probably find someone to be with eventually, but the last few years haven't been the best. I need to stop feeling like I'm trying to salvage my life and barely hanging on moment to moment. It's more a mentality than anything else, and although the world isn't likely to change just because my outlook does, maybe my place in it will. At this point I don't feel I have much left to lose. As the people close to me continue to change their lives to suit their interests, I find my place becoming more and more subtle. I have no doubt that they still care, but there's no denying the distance; it's natural and faultless no matter how tragic.

I'm pretty psyched about the new journal I got for christmas, but I don't know what to write in it yet, whether I want it to be a diary-like journal of sorts, a random scrapbook of lyrics/quotes/thoughts, or an attempt at philosophical ramblings in hopes that something coherent is produced.

Not saying it will happen

But if it does

I want to be anywhere but here.


Being elsewhere wouldn't solve anything, and maybe it's a coward's approach, but it wouldn't be something I could just brush off. It's not something I could just try to fit into again. I'd pray for the best but I don't know how to deal with it. I don't think I could, not now.

I will be writing personal entries, they will be set to private. If it's something you want to know and you're someone that's honest enough with me and cares enough about me to call me your friend and mean it, say something and I'll give you access. If not, suffice for flaky details and keep living your life without me in it.

I really should post an entry tonight, just had a talk with chelsea and I feel like the entire time I wasn't being clear and wasn't being understood, which perhaps is fitting being as it was also brought to my attention that even the people closest to me have gotten a completely different impression of me than I view of myself. I can't decide if I'm just ignorant about it, or whether the view is skewed because they have a different mindset about things.

But I'm not bitter, and I am romantic. Even if I'm cynical and cautious, even if I'm discontent of the fact that the way I am doesn't fit in with any aspect of society, even if I feel unorthodox regarding relationships because so many expectations are set by society's standards and I'm ignorant of most of these, I refuse to believe I'm bitter about life, and as highly as I view love and connections between people, I think I'm as romantic as a person can be. I wish I was understood better. Even if I'm so fucked up in the head that society would have no place for my unorthodox ideals, I'd rather be understood. Especially by my friends.

I want to go on about this in detail, but I feel like I need to lie down, my head is swelling and I'm really confused about things right now. Maybe I'll come try to work this out tomorrow...

The test yesterday went really well, but where academic contentment sets in, emotional disarray comes waltzing in with the sort of proud smirk that says "what did you expect?"

This entry probably won't make sense, not even to me. I'm confused with the world around me, and i'm confused with my identity within it. My mind keeps changing by the moment, probably due to frustration, and I feel the best way to make sense of it is to vent completely, drain myself and let it all out, and hope some sense comes by the end. The problem itself keeps fluctuating from one issue to another, then back again. This is a public journal, but I don't think any of my close friends read it. And if they do, they know me well enough to expect it I suppose...

What DID I expect though. I find myself weighed down by the same heartstrings that have brought me to my knees time and time again. For all the glory of a beautiful friendship, it shows full of holes in times of grief. I find myself second guessing every foundation. Life is made important through our connections. We alone are nothing. Fighting for ourselves, we are weak. Existence is defined by the emotional attachment we have to others. This gives our life meaning.

Or so I believe. Or so I claim to believe, anyway. But then, how cruel is this world that such overwhelming emotions and sensations do not even phase those around us. Somehow I've always understood that love is not mutual in any sense, and that love is never balanced. Yet, when applied to my friendships, I find myself stumbling in the same cracks over and over again. What I want and expect doesn't even make sense, it's not possible, but the frustration and despair at falling never dullens.

I want to be a close friend, I want to mean so much, probably because I want to feel that I'm alive through my friendships. And such, as my friends pursue independence and personal strength, I find myself... in a sense, unnecessary. That sounds harsher than I mean it, clearly my friendship is still valued, at least sometimes. And yet, I find myself unable to mean anything at times when they need someone most. Because as a friend, we have a role. And because of our relations as a friend, we have limitations. Mental lines are drawn, and our value remains within this fixed region. As a friend, your thoughts and concerns make an impact, so long as its within this region. Outside, however, you're useless in a sense. Or maybe its just that there are times when people become so overwhelmed by emotions, be it loneliness, despair, anger, or what have you, that the impact as a friend just drops through the floor.

I look at friendship differently though. I look at life in general differently. Or at least, I think I do, but maybe i'm just missing sometihng. I think most people make a mistake by drawing lines everywhere. Everything just has to have a title, a representation, an outline. Nothing is taken simply for what it is. The most obvious cases for this are in our relation to those around us. People that care rely on titles such as boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife, friend, relationship, etc. to comfort them and help them forget about the fact that nothing in life, especially regarding a human being, is ever certain. It's nothing to get defensive about, and why are people so afraid to embrace it? I personally have always wanted something permanent, eternal, something that I can count on. Everyone does really. But the beauty of humanity is in our ability to adapt, to change, to learn, grow, and evolve. And as comforting as it is to view a relationship as a box, with limits, expectations, and plenty of lines so both parties know exactly what's allowed and expected... as nice as it is to feel like you can rely on this box to remain as it is for the entirety of the relationship, that's not only rediculous, but unwise. The box won't stay the same, no matter how much you want it to, the edges will bend and deform until it's not a box at all, and HOPEFULLY you'll come to like the new object even more, or at least be able to accept the deformities and resolve your personal qualms with it.

But, might I suggest a different look on that? There's really a few points to be made. First, if you're so busy drawing lines, laying down expectations, you're missing so much of the other person. You're cutting the fat, so to speak. You're saying that this much of the person is allowed to be expressed, whereas these characteristics must lie dormant. They're still there, but they're not allowed to come out and be seen. But that's just lieing to yourself, and if you really care abotu someone (or even if you don't, it really shouldn't change the answer) doesn't it make more sense to view them as they are, as a whole, than by giving them an outline to stand in? There's beauty to be found even in flaws, and truth is always more beautiful than deception. But there's a second point, just as valid as the first... speaking technically, your relation to those around you should be allowed to flourish in truth and openness, or else you're blinding and crippling the interaction. But it might be better to descrive it like this... instead of viewing a relationship as a box to fulfill your own sense of security, wouldn't it be beautiful to have a relationship that grows and evolves together? Why fear this element of change that's so natural to humans. It's a blessing, not a curse, and while it means that you will never be assured that your relation will not change, it also means you have the opportunity to grow alongside one another. Letting the relation grow and evolve, why do people deprive such a thing simply to drown their insecurity?

Clearly I'm a bit bitter. But I hate being classified. I've never fit in to anything in my entire life. That's not a whine, and in a way it's something I'm proud of (and something i despise at times), but I can't fit into an outline. I refuse to act a certain way or not say certain things because it doesn't comply with your view of things. I refuse to try to control my emotions and force them to abide by what's allowed in any sense, or to try to classify them into any certain form.

Somehow, in all of this, I've avoided talking about what's really frustrated me to tonight. I've diverted to what's concerned me for most of the week, and while it still concerns me, my mind is made up. There's nothing more to be said, though I truly wish more people adhered to this sort of belief and started opening their eyes to what's beyond the lines.

How do I word this though... tonight, I was faced with the limitations of a friendship. I think this should be extended to at least the last day or two, and include more than tonight's audience. I truly wonder whether I'll have a place at the side of my friends once the inconvenience of being my friend right now passes by. I don't know though. I hate this mediocrity. I fucking despise it in every way with every bit of me. What the hell is this, a casual friendship? Such a thing makes no sense at all. What sort of friendship could ever be casual at all. What sort of friendship, real friendship, is tamed by convenience. What sort of friendship reveals only what's safe. What sort of friendship is too timid to be honest. And on the other hand, what sort of friendship becomes complacent when the topic extends beyond the designated "boundary."

Here lies the epitomy of my frustration. I care, I care so god damn much. I can't help, not this, not here, and this I've come to terms with in the past. No friendship is without a void zone. But what is the purpose of all my efforts to find wisdom when such wisdom is always ignored. If those I care about enslave themselves to their emotions and lie beyond the reach of reason, what good is my struggle. All my efforts to strengthen my wisdom and strengthen my relation to those around me is nullified by mediocrity of our relations.

My role is to share good times. My role is to listen when things go wrong. But don't speak, or speak only for my own good, as the choice will be made solely by the emotions guiding you. My words carry so much concern, they're more than words, they're my fight against your despair. Yet they're nothing more than vibrations, powerless to even approach the emotions controlling your actions. The same emotions that draw the lines that cage me, that define our proper friendship and its terms.

My role is to distract, dance a little dance with a jester's hat to escape reality. My role is to inform, my most useful feature, to tell you what you can't ask yourself, in a nice summarized format carefully picking the seeds out as I go.I can complement, but it's taken as dishonest flattery. I can respect, but it never really changes your outlook of yourself.

My role is to care, but never too much, and only according to certain guidelines. Move slightly out of the lines and it's a transgression. Fuck your lines, fuck your conditions. There's no difference between one version and the other, it's all a stupid mindtrick to emphasize or de-emphasize things by contrast. It's nothing more than an illusion we use to avoid being harshly honest to those around us and to ourselves.

The wisest words, the most irrefutable logic, the most sincere heart, all victims to mediocrity. The worst sin is placing yellow tape on a beating heart. When even the most beautiful things in the world are trimmed to fit, what is there left to admire?

Current Mood: disappointed

I've intended to come to this a few times in the past week or so, yet never found time. Tonight, I made time, because this is something I must get out and I must remember. Something's strange tonight...

For the first time in perhaps a year, maybe more, I'm ending the day with a very unique feeling. As the days keep dragging on and I try to find motivation to work on my schoolwork and ignore that very empty feeling, the loneliness that yearns to be with friends and away from this confinement that is my college life, I felt something tonight. I felt... special in a way. Something that was said made me feel different, not the artificial specialty that distinguishes a specific friendship from another of comparable value. The words can't explain it really, but I felt like I truly meant so much to someone, someone that means a great deal to me and has made an enormous impact on my own life.

It probably doesn't sound like much, and perhaps it shouldn't on the surface. Emotions sway like a pendulum, and being at a positive extreme carries a shadow of descent. But it's not the spark of contentment that I felt that makes this unique. It's not the words that weren't even spoken, it's something I saw beyond.

This was an epiphany of sorts, the sudden realization that I can't pursue any one aspect of my life at the expense of another. I've always been bad at multitasking; I mean this literally, unable to do anything while my attention is fixed on an objective. So when applied to my goals in life, my mentality followed this path as well. What I search for is one ultimate beauty that can hold my attention forever. One pure purpose that puts all other tasks to shame.

Thinking back, this is what appealed to me most about religion; to be truly religious is an absolute commitment to put faith above all else in life, to fixate your gaze on the will of the Divine and not let your eyes sway to temptation.

This is why I want to find "true love" and have a family. A purpose I can acknowledge as worth sacrificing all else for, something to put every ounce of effort into. Some place to call home without ever having to move.

This is why I've respected professors in college so much; they're so wrapped up in their work that it consumes their life (not all, but I'm speaking of specific professors, especially in the engineering field). They set their mind to one specific task and follow it meticulously, step by step, fulfilling obligations such as teaching class with the utmost disdain and haste.

And when it came to philosophy, I was mesmerized because I see this potential. I see in philosophy the potential to devote my life to the pursuit of wisdom. I see a road that's long and winding, one that I could spend my entire life walking down and never have to turn around.

So where does all this tie in? I realized that this entire line of thought is ignorant. Especially for anyone engaged in philosophy, and even more strongly for my own personal beliefs. Looking specifically at the feelings imbued tonight by a simple conversation, I noticed that I cannot, nor should I, neglect any part of my life in an attempt to focus on an infinitely exhausting vision. One way of saying it is that moderation MUST be maintained, but I think the reasons go beyond even moderation. I would say it reaches to fully appreciating your connections to life; to ignore the significance and inherent beauty of any aspect of your life in an attempt to promote another pursuit is to essentially deny part of yourself. And to deny part of yourself, to willingly turn your back on yourself, is self deception of the worst variation. What is left to pursue this ultimate vision on which you base your life is not you at all, but a mere fragment of yourself; it is not simply a distorted self, but some entirely different monstrosity altogether.

This essentially reduces to my argument regarding the significance of oneself. When we describe anything, or even think of anything in this world, it is by relation. Every object, every person, every thought is identified by comparison. Aesthetic qualities are identified by comparing shape, size, beauty, etc. Moral qualities are identified by relating to our concept of virtues and morals. We identify our friends through character traits, but these relate to memories and how they've acted in the past. In a sense, this is quite similar to Plato's argument regarding forms. But the point I'm getting to is, I think, quite a different look. When we regard our own existence, it must then be defined by our relations. We certainly relate our vision of our self to our ideals of virtues, claiming to be courageous or cowardly, moderate or excessive, beautiful or ugly, etc. But what about the views of those around us? Many people would claim that the impact we have on the world, which could be called our -connection- to the world through accomplishments, gives us definition as well. Yet it is not so common today to extend this to the perception of our self in others around us. People around us see very specific, usually limited, views of us through our actions and the situations we encounter in life. I used to feel the image to others was meaningless because they often saw so little of me, or misinterpreted my intentions so much that it wasn't me at all. After all, every mind has its own "filter" of sorts through which all empirical knowledge must pass through. But in hindsight, I feel that this connection IS our identity. We create a personal image for ourselves, but this is not an identity. This image relates to nothing but our self. The significance of life, and the identity of each of us, lies within our connections, not within self-perception. As if there's a big spider web in life, our identity is not the spider but the webbing itself that links us to existence. This is quite wordy, and I could go on for days about this, but that's the general idea.

So still, perhaps it isn't apparent why tonight was significant. I've contemplated pursuing philosophy very seriously and spent the past few months trying to discern what role I want philosophy to play in my life. Part of me has wanted to dive in with my eyes closed and never come up for air. Part of me has always felt that unless I untie myself from my life as I know it now, I won't be able to make such a significant change. As if my life, with its problems, its loneliness, its despair, were shackles at my ankles. As if it was actually holding me down. Ignorance. This is me. This longing for friends, this desire for love and embrace, this confusion, it all makes me the way I am. It completely encompasses my emotions and feelings for those around me, and defines the way I live my life. And I must carry every bit of it with me wherever I go, whichever road I follow, never denying nor forgetting, always embracing and accepting every flaw. And most especially, my friendships, few as they are, for they define me as I truly am. I cannot distance myself from my flaws, from my loneliness, from my friends, and attempt to hide in the deep waters, to forget pains, to mold a new existence for myself from scratch. I must pursue philosophy to understand myself and to better understand how I can happily live life, but I must do it alongside my current life. I must embrace my connections and friendships completely. I must stride forward with it all, bearing all the weight, arm in arm with my cares, my fears, my ignorance. And I will bear the eyes of my friends every step of the way, living my life not to better -myself-, but to better my connection to them.

Current Mood: contemplative

I feel as though I've just woken up to realize I've been asleep for years. As cliche as it sounds, that's the way things feel after this week. But it's more than just the world around me that I find changed, it's who I am. As I try to get my life straightened out, and piece together the broken bits on the floor, I find myself not understanding who I am at all...

So who are you? And who am I to you? And what exactly would happen if my relation to you changed someday? For certain, I've been confused about myself my entire life. I don't expect it will ever truly settle, and yet I've always had a way of identifying myself. I shy away from labels because of the expectations that go hand-in-hand, yet I've always identified myself by my relation to those around me. And in the recent months, it's become increasingly unclear just who I am in these regards.

Last week I made a valiant effort to get a lot of things on track. I attended all of my classes, spent an incredible amount of time trying to catch up on schoolwork, actually ate healthy for a change, worked out and got a bit of exercise, spent a little time reading philosophy for fun, and only played games for a few hours through the course of the entire week. As the stress overwhelmed me, I kept thinking of a close friend of mine that has been going through so much lately with so little to look forward to. Not to sound sappy, but it was a great source of motivation. As a side note, the ending at the end of the week was rather ironic in these regards... I was so focused on things I needed to get done to better myself, and I realized that it's a million times more difficult when you don't have either recognition or sympathy for your hardships. I could work and live in this way the rest of the year, stressed, busy, and rather unhappy, and in the end I would have nothing to show other than personal satisfaction. Yet, is that how I satisfy myself? I find myself craving the praise of those I care about more and more. It's easy to give the cliche criticism "you should be who YOU want to be, not who others want you to be." Yet there's an important crossover between this, as I want to be someone my friends are proud to know, someone they can not only trust but rely on, and someone they respect. And in recent months, I've found myself much further from the people I care most about.

As their lives took sharp turns and their sources of happiness either fell through or became unavailable, they took the logical approach of trying to supplement these various aspects to fill the gap and return to a more normal mindset. Yet there's only one way this accommodation works for everyone, and it may very well be referred to as the logical approach; for all parties to alter the necessary aspects of their own lives. Logically it makes plenty sense; yet I must be a fool, for I don't know how. Or maybe, as a stubborn child still at heart, I don't -want- to change. Most that know me would say I wasn't happy before, but these friendships are more than just "important." This was the essence of my life, a side-character of sorts admiring and envying the relationships, the embraces, the emotions of those closest to me. But a friend, a true friend, a proud friend that was, if not necessarily needed, at least a very integral part in the lives of the ones I cared for deeply. These friendship were my identity. They were ME, the only way I knew and understood myself, the only part of me I could rely on. And yet, here we are, and what have things become? The last few months feel like a giant carousel ride in a sense. A very long and emotional ride, and in the end everyone is somehow different, but we've found ourselves back at the start. Only it feels as if I fell off somewhere along the way, and now I'm just watching from afar. No longer even a real participant, just a mere observer.

This was where I felt I belonged. At their sides, always. This isn't a betrayal or anything of that sort, yet somehow I don't belong there anymore. Lives have changed, circumstances have altered, accommdations have been made, and it's all covered me up in a fog that prohibits me from even seeing where I remain. If you're an optimist, you'd point out that having no place in which you belong leaves you infinite options; you never know where you might end up because you're no longer returning to the same place at the end of each day. But I'm no optimist, and I've never been one to do well at adventuring at all. As proven by my overwhelming desire to have a wife and family, I yearn most of all for a place where I'm wanted and needed, the area in life that I know I make such a difference. I want an embrace that not only comforts but molds itself to accommodate for problems without ever letting go or loosening.

So what, then, do I do about this situation? I'm left with a distorted outline of how I see myself, unable to fit into the picture the way I always have. It would be nice if by some miracle a solution fell into my lap, a means of understanding myself and complimenting my own life for the vacancies that have resulted from the turmoil of those around me. But that's a difficult hope to bank on for sure. I'm still trying so very hard to make some changes in my life and daily habits, but with no solid foundation to support, the struggle grows more difficult every day, and I don't know whether I have the strength to make it through at this rate. And who do I go to for advice when those closest have become distant? I'm confused, but find myself far more lost than I ever recall being. I have many important decisions to make regarding my life in the next year, and I can't even understand or visualize myself right now. I don't know where I'll go from here, or how things will play out in the coming months, but may God watch over us all during these times...

Current Mood: confused