I enjoy the background on this thing.

Not a huge fan of the formatting anymore, the rest of the style lacks some utility that would be helpful.

I got a lot of garbage out of my head, here.

It's a fascinating dive into a person I haven't been for a very long time.

Maybe I never was that person. It's always been hard to tell.

What's there to update?

I have sleep apnea. Odds are good it has been the source of my most severe depression symptoms.

I've had two surgeries to try and alleviate it. Both helped the physical issues, but it seems my brain is determined to just...not breathe, sometimes, at night.

There's a machine for that, so I sleep with a vader mask now. Cool, huh?

Only it's difficult to keep at it, so I lapse a lot.

The way things are looking, the remainder of my depression symptoms probably stemmed from untreated ADHD - or, more concisely put, inattentive-type ADD.

Who'd've fucking thought.

I still am not sure I believe it, but the meds help in ways anti-depressants never did.

I still linger far too often on memories that are painful to hold.
I still haven't graduated college, though I'm actually making real progress for the first time in longer than I want to consider.
I have a pretty stable group of friends, and I'm doing my best to open up to them. That's one hell of a trip. Old me wouldn't dare.
I've accepted my role in a certain kink, and that has led to some really fantastic things. But that's not suitable for this blog, so we're leaving it at that.

Mom hasn't been able to walk since her knee replacement. It was supposed to alleviate the pain.
That was five years ago, maybe six? I have been trying to find time or money to remodel the house to compensate for her walker/wheelchair...maybe it's time to swallow my pride and start a gofundme. It kills me to watch.

I have serious relationships, somehow, and I'm not wasting away terrified they'll spontaneously abandon me. Again, old me wouldn't dare.

Which is not to say I don't have my issues. I'm here again, aren't I? Musing into the void?

Part of me hopes somebody will read it, part of me dreads that. There are so many of my friends who were left by the wayside because I didn't know how to hold on to them when I needed.

I rediscovered my livejournal, thanks to the efforts of some very strangely motivated hackers. Password breach on myspace and livejournal? What year is it, right?

That was bittersweet, let me tell you. I used to wax poetic about some asinine shit.
But there are so many reminders of those I've lost. Kat, Megan, Whitney, Sara...their pages are still there, like unwitting gravestones strewn across the digital world. The bits left are random, and it lends the whole thing a kind of macabre humor. Not the funny sort, mind you, but there's something to be said about the way the words of the dead linger online in unexpected ways.

I've moved to doing all of my "blogging" via twitter, nowadays. Scattering my thoughts into the uncaring winds of the internet in a more piecemeal fashion. It seems safer than meandering through the dusty, forgotten, crumbling pathways of my own memories like this.

CrTrainwreck, if anybody gives a shit. Hell, -I- forgot this thing was still around.

I've been cleaning and organizing my stuff in a meaningful way, for once in my life. That's another trip down memory lane, in different ways. I had two lives for a really long time, it turns out.
I still do, in a way. It doesn't feel as disjointed, though. I don't feel like delving into honest words is disingenuous anymore. I don't question my own motivations. I have my secrets, like anyone, and that's okay.

I have, for lack of better phrasing, come to terms with who I am.

I have not, however, figured out what the fuck I want to do about it.

Hello again.

-C

Welp, this thing still exists.

...nothing to say, just surprised. What's up, folks?

Religious Content Alert

Something

This post is designed to go with the Walk Off the Earth (Gianni and Sarah) cover of Say Something. If you want to read and listen (which I'd recommend) the link is here: http://youtu.be/fqVNm0c8nnQ

The expression isn't perfect. It can't be.
But I'm trying anyway, damn it.

Reflection

Where do you find motivation after confronted with the stark reality that everything you are, everything you are capable of, is not enough?

That question first weighed on my mind some years ago. I was just getting in to high school. I wasn't ready for it. Hell, I'm still not ready for it. I don't have an answer. I don't even know where to start.

If I had known, then, that this question would haunt me and break me down into this abject and barely functional...thing, I'd have burned it out of my brain just like so many other things.

I think I can safely identify it as part of the root of the problem, at least. That's nice.

But in all seriousness, that is the worst part about being intuitive or intelligent or whatever the fuck you call me. I could have played music for a living, or became a doctor, or gone into biochemical research, or started a business. The research is the strong option right now.

Thing is, staring variability like that in the face, most people default to what they enjoy most. Following your dreams, or what have you.
My curse is that they are all weighted the same. No option appeals more or less than the other.

Once I accepted that, ages past, I realized that was a component of understanding that nothing I did would ever feel like it was good enough. I could be an amazing doctor, and lament the musical career I never had. Or vice versa, etc ad nauseum.

It hurt. It hurt a lot. I shrugged it off and played the game day by day, but it all lead me to here, and all I have left is the sum of my failures.

Some of these things, I realize, it isn't rational to blame myself for...I should not be carrying all of the guilt that I do. Knowing it isn't rational, though, that doesn't tend to help much.

Insanity is portrayed as more glamorous, and that statement alone makes me hate the world.

Genius and insanity have that close-knit relationship and everyone loves to talk about it and not quite outright claim they believe themselves in the first category, but while everyone is willing to look at the heights of achievement one can reach...no.
No one ever, ever talks about the anguish and suffering. We're all about overcoming adversity. Truth is, those beautiful achievements do very little to soothe the misery. How would I know?
Intuition.

I do mean misery. I don't notice it as a significant factor anymore because it's been my resting pulse for nearly a decade, but I am relentlessly unhappy.

Most of that is predictable, if you have all the variables.
You don't, and I am not going to give them to you.

I used to have this notion that I could overcome all of this for love.
That was quaint and pretty and so very terribly wrong, and I'd give a lot to take back the attempt because it still fucking hurts to have failed so utterly - myself, sure, but mostly the truth of hurting another in the process of my downward spiral.

There's blame number one. Or is it? See, it's hard to tell. Do I blame myself for her feeling the need to leave?

Yes.
Same way I blame myself in no small part for the deaths of all my friends who had diseases that maybe maybe in some tiny fantasized version of reality I could cure.

I told you it wasn't rational.

I've been doing the isolation thing again lately. I didn't realize it until I considered how long it's been since I had an honest conversation with another soul. Go figure.

So it all boils down to that question. Motivation. I want to do something, but what? How do I choose and deal with leaving everything else unfulfilled? I can't have everything. I can't even have most of it. Probably not even some.

But nothing, nothing is getting old. I am tired of being goddamn tired all the time, and my mind is stagnating. I can't help but worry about the onset of rot.

I don't know precisely what to do about it, aside from seeing that for the moment, my only real option is to open myself up to all the guilt and shame and ache. There's a reasonable chance it'll spark something inside of me.

Or I'll drown in it.

But change is good, right?

Funny notion, that.
Some caterpillars endure metamorphosis and become butterflies.
Others get eaten.

- C

"You think you are safe? It is an illusion."

Just watched a video that presented the two-party political system in the United States in the same light as an NFL game. Two teams bent on dominating, not even just winning, but creating a dynasty...with the real motivation and power being the money involved in the product being sold - the conflict. Most spectators are at best only tangentially aware of the background machinations involved in sports.

The video presented the situation as analogous to the Democratic and Republican parties. The spectators (voters) remain unaware of the background motives, while the "teams" play out a bitter war for dominance, and the owners of the teams do nothing but profit on the often complacent viewership while essentially having coffee together in the "real" world.

In the NFL, the illusion is created at some expense. But it's entertainment.
In politics, there's collateral. Real human beings suffering and dying while our attention is diverted to...what, exactly? Garbage attacks about the citizenship of a presidential candidate?

I find the analogy presented both immensely depressing and mind-numbingly accurate. If nothing else, it sums up the word that came to mind about the State of the Union address. Misdirection.

Brings me back to an earlier thought about the nature of services. If you aren't paying for them, you are probably the product being sold. Apply that line to politicians and tell me it doesn't smack of accuracy, if buried beneath a little bit of cognitive dissonance.

- C

Once in awhile I get these flashes of clarity.

It's like between them I'm living, breathing, thinking, existing in a haze. Nothing is distinct, everything is muted, but that's my reality so I don't notice it.

Then the moment comes and the fog clears and I see everything in my own mind the way it is supposed to be. I see the momentum I could have, the drive, the honesty and kindness and sense of purpose.

I hate those moments. I wish like hell it looked like a mountain I'd have to climb or some challenge or even something painful that I'd have to suffer through. Those I could handle. I don't have a high enough sense of self-worth to be that concerned about suffering.

Instead, it looks foreign. I recognize there is a distance between where I spend most of my time and these moments of lucidity. I can even see a path from here to there, but it's through a medium I don't recognize. It's like seeing a glimmer of hope at the end of the proverbial tunnel, only to find the air has become water and the ground quicksand. I don't understand how to travel in this medium, and so I can't move. I can only watch.

It's probably just another way my mind has found to torture itself for all the things I haven't done. I don't mind the suffering - not because I'm noble or strong, but selfish. Pain without purpose is indistinct like everything else, but pain from a clear source that perhaps I deserve, that can sometimes be sharp enough to pierce the veil of...all of this.

You don't know what that's like, and if you do I'm sorry.