Quarter-life crisis

The depression sets in like the fog of the city. It settles over me and sticks like a plastic sheet that suffocates and contains this fierce restlessness that keeps wanting to come out.

I need to get out, to move. More than anything, I need to move. Everyday I sit, I stare, I think, and role into the mundane mess that is my every day “work”. I am restless. I sit in front of my computer, like looking though a window at the world, watching everyone and everything move and evolve faster and faster. I see all the things that I could be doing and want to be doing but have chosen not to. Yes, it is a choice. A choice that feels like a masochistic pull into the world of the “musts” and “shoulds”. It is a force that holds me back and grounds me, pins me down, as my soul runs around the peg, runs in circles, looking, rushing, unconscionably panicked. For what?

I want to shoot responsibility in the head. I want to shake it and shout at it, yelling to leave me alone and that it doesn’t matter. I want to be reckless. To live every day recklessly like it is the last day of my life. But everyday becomes more and more similar. And I get tiered. I am tiered out by monotony. Everyone keeps saying they are tiered. 

The body is fragile. It is already starting to deteriorate and I want to beat it out of weakness before it is too late. I am only 26 and the dread and asphyxiating feeling that there is never enough time creeps up behind me and every time I look back, it creeps closer and closer. My body is yearning for freedom, for the freedom to move, roll, jump, dance, combine acrobatics with climbing and going downhill, fast. It wants to be strong to support the sickness and cruelties that the outside world and the mind inflicts on it. But mine is still weak. I am letting it waste way. It is good, it could be great, but I am not using it.

And then I turn to the mind for comfort. But I get none.

All I think about is: what have I accomplished? What have I done that is significant? Where am I going? Am I being useful? Am I doing what I love?

The questions these days are endless. They were never few. But now, as I pass the first quarter of my life, there are fewer and fewer answers. I can’t help but feel like something is dying. 

Transitions

Since I left high school and my home country, I have been living my life in phases, in moods, themes and emotions. I can remember very clearly what happened when…

Everything is coated in a taste, a feeling very different from anything I felt before. The first time coming to America, the first time going out West, the first time seeing a trestle, a prison, a corn field…
And I realized that the reason why I have such distinct memories is because they have been tainted by art – a movie, book, a song, some kind of magic that draws you in an blurs the lines between reality and some other fictional world that you somehow have been drawn and tempted into and stained with.

Starting a “new” life has really been the onset of my initiation into the world of adulthood. I have grown up. I have finally arrived. But I wasn’t graceful. In fact, I crashed into adulthood, loudly, clumsily, throwing a fit. Looking back, I realize now how lovely it was. How twisted and violently absorbing it was to swirl, to willingly let go and be pulled into fiction, into romance, into deep nights of thinking, endless car rides – the scenes rushing past the window like my thoughts rushing through my mind, pulling, having the feeling or being sucked out of my body into my soul and out of my soul into my body. And, my aura. The aura of adventure, of change, that aphrodisiac, the zenith and culmination of energy that makes feel so ALIVE. So FREE, so absolutely mad with sanity and insanity, intertwining people into the sheath of relationships and connections. So many connections were made during my fantastic years.

And then they were gone.

They stopped.

I stopped it.
I stopped them because they dragged me back. You see, they were selfish. They didn’t want me to leave them. They fed on my emotions, they fed on my vulnerability and my lack of confidence and in growing conjured up voices of control and fear.
         
I was afraid. I sometimes am still and afraid. Of life. Of things, of the fantastical world that captured my heart and my mind and fed me romantic daydreams and molded my realities, the stuff of great stories. But when I crashed into adulthood, the sharpness slashed me naked. Meaning that I would walk into a new phase, a new chapter shaper, more structure, motion-less, emotion-less. And yet, now, I am not lacking in emotion. I am happy. In the strongest way I have happiness in my life and although it is a boring happiness, it lets me breath.
But in being still, the whimsical fantasy has caught up with me, and Oh! How glad I am to see these old companions. They have changed too. In breaking through, they too have lost their fierceness and possessive desire of me and my attention.

Yet, thank you for coming back. I am melancholically glad to see you…

Either she has had too much, or not enough.

A night out

Dancing, dolling up, putting on that cute dress, applying makeup to enhance your features. For what?

You dance, you drink, you dance, you pull up that skimpy skirt and look around you, looking for that gaze that will catch your eye and make you feel like you will finally get some tonight.
Your heart rejoices slightly when you notice that skeez bag look at your boobs and your ass. You can’t complain. At least you are getting some kind of attention. Your eyes dilute like the ice in your drink and you keep shaking those “money makers” as if you were trying to brisk off some disgusting insect clinging to your nipples. “Maybe if I pull up my dress a little more, it will cause an uproar and I will get him to grind up against me”. And all the time you are watching the skinny one twirl and swirl in the center of the circle, all eyes and dicks on her. You dance, booze and shake harder, your skirt gets shorter and shorter and you try everything. But still the skinny one twirls and swirls in the middle of it all.
You ask: “What is the point?”. What are you looking for? What do you want? Sex? Attention? Affection? A quick fuck? Meaning?

Walking back you think about the number of time you have walked this road and the scenario repeats itself over and over again. And you ask yourself if you will ever be happy, or if happiness is trying to achieve happiness. You question whether you can handle life sometimes. It’s as if you were just born and have lived over 50 years at the same time, walking past faces, places, conjuring up those people you might never see again but who have touched you so deeply it hurts.

For what, you ask? For the sake of taking a step back, breathing fresh air and analyzing, thinking and seeing that you are walking on a tight rope and every step you take, you are confronted with a balance between walking or falling into delusion.

The Orange Shirt

I hadn’t thought of you in a long time, which considering my long struggles to cut you back and tame your wild, stubborn overgrowth, I have to admit it was a welcomed relief. You had finally settled down beneath a hard, thick firm crust of earth, which I had planned on leaving until a new grain was stubborn enough to weed its way through to the surface. Yet today, I saw something which hit me like the sharp, penetrating heaviness of a plow on the surface of the earth before it cuts deep and churns the consolidated soil.

I was walking unperturbed, peacefully admiring and absorbing my state of being, feeling harmoniously intertwined with the nature around. As melodious, dramatic music played in my ear, I watched people of all shapes, sizes and stories maneuver their way along the outskirts of the park. I had been walking for an hour deeply engrossed in the smells and visual textures of the nearby arboretum and the radiant sunset. But when I turned my head back towards the path, it happened. A young man encompassing his lover emerged from the crowd, wearing an orange shirt. The same orange shirt that you once wore. The one you sported the day we climbed like goats and discovered the heights of sacred temples. The one that gave birth to our first intimacy, as I sat next to you, outlining the printed designs with my figure tips on the small of your back. The one that you wore under, in between and over and over again. The one that still to this day distinguishes you amongst all others and the one that matches your colorful personality.

It was like a reflex. Seeing this man, simply dressed in a pair of jeans and wearing that orange shirt, left me with no other choice than to believe it was you. Frozen in time and place, he turned and to my relief and disappointment, it was a stranger’s face I saw…

Revolutionary Road

The only night time sounds come from the road named after some famous lawyer. Drivers pretending to be invincible, cruse in and out of earshot. Meanwhile the General convenience store sits opposite the fast food joint, both staring at each other in loathing competition. The parking lot which separates the two looks like a stage, illuminated from the bright street lamps overhead. I sit here on my tinny balcony watching, waiting for performers to dart from the sides with hats and cookie cutter smiles, singing a generic tune that will stir up that deep-seated desire to want. And there they come! Like lost souls. Slowly. They emerge from the sides. Some meander in an out of consciousness, while others in and out of the garbage disposals. Some walk up and down the front street, aimless, empty. Slowly. Times has no say and neither does anyone else about what you do or how you should live your life. Bang! Exclaims the furious sedan in disapproval. And the crescent-shaped moon smiles down on our performance, wondering what strange dissatisfied creatures we are.

I just saw the movie “Revolutionary Road”. Brilliant!
This is what I love about art and artists. They take us out of the water and shows us what we are swimming in. Some could argue that it is just a movie, or it is just a story but then what is the point of writing these stories or making these movies if not to awaken us and stir us out of oblivion.
Is society a trap or is it just “normal”. The moral of the story…you only have one chance to live the way you want. Or do we? Choice. Decisions. April in the movie says “We are special, we are out of the ordinary and we want to get out”. The actors demonstrate such dissatisfaction with the way we live, which is basically like everyone else. But then what is the right way of living? What more do we want? We want to be like everyone else and yet we want to be different. The director of the movie says that Frank is too scared to change and live the way he really wants, which is representative of most of us. Is that true? He also says that despite the story being set in the 50’s it illustrates a universal unrest. It shows the way most people live their lives. Is that true? Are we really so afraid? If so what are we afraid of? What are we afraid of?!
A woman the other day asked in response to my comment that families should be more involved in their children’s lives, “Should someone dictated the way families should live? Everyone should feel free to live the way they want. Yes. But, what about all that is unsaid. What about, as psychology puts it: schemas and social scripts? Regardless of who decides how we should live, the fact of the matter is that there are unsaid rules which exist and are enacted every day all the time. As April says in the movie “What are all these rules? who makes these rules that we have to live by?”
What a paradoxical, controversial and complex society we live in.
What do we want? We seem to have everything. We seem to seek what we want but when we have it, we are not satisfied. Can we ever be satisfied? Is it better to live wanting or is better to fall into the cycle of want, have, want, have.
Going places…Romanticizing, fantasizing, creating better lives. Hesitation. Who are we? What are we? Have we made this world too complex to live in?

Everything I thought, is not and everything that is, is neither…

For the past three years of my life, I have been searching. I moved and traveled far and wide, across and around the world, in and out of countries and peoples lives, searching for something. I try this and I try that, hoping that through the chaos and the conglomeration of experiences, I will find what I am looking for. Yet, the more I search, the more lost I become. I am like a soft, smooth, sand rock, that has been dislodged from the beach and thrown back into the ocean only to be banged up and altered by the waves. “Mais vous qui n’avez pas les os en verre, vous pouvez vous cogner à la vie.” (Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain) Oui c’est bien vraie, mais a force de se cogner, on ne se reconnait plus. And that’s what happened. I have banged myself against life so much that I have been disfigured. I don’t recognize who I am anymore nor what to do, nor where to go next.

There was a time when I was excited and hopeful. I thought that if I didn’t find what I was looking for, I would keep searching. The more distant and abstract the place, the better. I got excited and enraptured when I found and fell in love with something or someone. But like everything, nothing lasts. I pushed so far and so wide and so fast that I eventually lost myself in the process. When I realized what was happening, I went back to the place I came from only to find familiar ghosts. I then buried myself in the moment, forcing myself to just be. But how can you be when your mind, heart and body are scattered all over the place?

So what now? I can’t be, I can’t go back. “Chose the road less traveled”. Again good advice. The only problem is that I just don’t see ANY roads. I am walking ahead making my own. But I am scared, lonely, hesitant, frustrated and…feeling very empty. Everything I though, is not and everything that is, is neither…