The nice thing about depression, at least you get your sleep.
Another holiday season almost gone, and while I can't complain specifically about any of the holidays that have passed but I can say they have seemed a bit... hollow. While I love every gift I've recieved this year, and it seems that those I purchased gifts for have seemed to enjoy theirs. I can't help but feel like something was missing. It's definitely not free time, because aside from the actual holidays my schedule has been pretty open. It can't be the meals themselves, since both my Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner's were both delicious and entertaining. I know it can't be a lack of sufficient sleep, since I seem to spend more and more time in my bed these days. (Alone, mind you) Perhaps this is just a part of getting older, I'm no longer home on break for large chunks of these months. Perhaps this has the effect of making them feel shorter? Or more rushed. Perhaps as you get older the holidays become less about oneself and more about the family. If this is so, does this mean I should be enjoying these holidays differently? Or that I should be focussing more on my family? Or as we get older are we supposed to start enjoying these things vicariously through those of us who are younger, who aren't perhaps quite as jaded by life.
"Happiness is not experienced, it is remembered"
That is a quote that seems more fitting every day. The older I get the more that seems to make sense. I can look back fondly on many different times in my life, but how often did I stop and think about how happy I was? Obviously there are times when the past only appears better in comparison to the present, but even when I'm not frustrated or upset or depressed I feel that the past was some how better, more fun, more varied. I feel like too much of my life has become repetition. I remember saying as I grew up that I could never handle the 9-5, mon-fri routine. That it would drive me crazy. well I've avoided that exact rut, but have I just managed to replace it with another? Am I perhaps so unhappy because I don't feel challenged? Because I feel like I can just go through every day on auto pilot?
I'm afraid I'll forget what it feels like to be alive. It's a dangerous fear because it has at times in my life caused me to do things that I have regretted. I make mistakes when I want to feel that rush. I try to force myself to feel it. I become reckless, dangerous to myself and those around me. In my naieve youth I could never understand depression, I could never see how a person could not see the good things in their lives. As I've matured, and hopefully entered adulthood I've come to realize that what happens to a person isn't so much the inability to see the good. It's the inability to feel the good. You know logically that it's there, but all of the bad in your life washes the good feeling away.
Sometimes I sit here at night and I ponder how some men I know, who have even less regard for others than myself get by. I wonder how they attract those women to themselves even with the dark hole at their center. How do they get these women so close that they can mangle them up so horribly? I've seen it so many times, but I just can't seem to reason out an answer that makes sense.
I can't wait for winter to be over. My car is so much more enjoyable in fair weather. Baseball will be back, football optimism will return, and any outward positives always help with keeping an inner positive. Plus it is significantly easier to start and maintain a workout routine in good weather. (it takes 21 days to form a habit)
How can I be friends with as many women as I am, and yet I've never been set up on one date?