A Scanner Darkly

It is much easier to hate yourself than to love yourself, I've learned. Loving yourself requires work: physical and mental energy, boundary pushing, and constant self-reassurance. Meanwhile, hating oneself is effortless, a simple pessimistic thought is all it takes to slide back into familiar, dark oblivion. Do people enjoy being depressed? I don't think so, but I do know it is something like a safety trap, as unpleasant and painful as it may be to be there, at least it is well-known.

Realizing this I've decided to take proactive measures to alleviate my melancholic condition. A more active routine, with healthier meals, consistent study habits, sleep curfew, and perhaps a mood journal for my sine waves of irrationality. For this past spring break has been bad, really bad. Feelings of irritation, isolation, and night insomnia was a general theme this last week. Although I slept plenty during the day. Things have been getting worse for me, as the need to be alone piqued then fell sharply. How can someone who longs for alone time so fervently, suddenly feel extremely lonely, ugly, worthless, and ashamed? I love being alone, but sometimes it is a form of self-sabotage to escape from an ugly world and my own feelings of self-disgust. The stress of what comes after this rainy spring break has also prevented complete relaxation.

My boyfriend has proven to be a ray of reality in a dismal illusion of self-persecution. At times I want to escape my head; he makes it enjoyable to be there, in the present, with him or just the knowledge of him as part of the reality. He is so kind to me: considerate, caring, sexily intelligent and logical, and facetiously uplifting. He has done wonders for me, and probably does not even realize it.

"Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost perpetually, deceives himself about that precious little fragment as well. A portion of him turns against himself and acts as another person, defeating him from inside. A man inside a man, which is no man at all."
~A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick

SAD Fractals

Cold, foggy days are always difficult to someone of my disposition. I am pretty sure I have S.A.D (Seasonal Affective Disorder) even after years of living in SF, I still cannot shake the cold weather blues. Life literally looks more optimistic when the sun is out, and the wind freezes my bones and aspirations. When I was younger I had held such a romantic ideal of the city - now I can't wait to escape to a warmer life.

Beginning my day with a slight argument with a fellow Math Labmate about whether the square root of x squared was the absolute value of x (it absolutely is, by the way, without a fucking doubt), the rest of my day seemed burdened with a realization that the path I am on, with all the mistakes I have made along the way, looks quite daunting and unrealistic. With a GPA and stress tolerance so low, a workload and demand for acute intelligence so high, it seems to me that I am setting myself up for failure. Whereas I used to look forward to tutoring, now it mostly just seems aggravating and time-consuming. And I am already short on time.

In Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, mathematician Ian Malcolm mentioned the concept of fractals:

"There are good records of cotton prices going back more than a hundred years. When you study fluctuations in cotton prices, you find that the graph of price fluctuations in the course of a day looks basically like the graph for a week, which looks basically like the graph for a year, or for ten years. And that's how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there... And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day."

Lately, the last line has been swarming terrifyingly in my head: Your whole life has the same shape as a single day. And as far as I am concerned, this has been dead on. Nothing that I have ever set out to do has truly been accomplished, not in a single day, a month, or in my lifetime so far.

If I really think about it, I would be perfectly content doing some specialized vocation, massage therapy, or something, and going to community college and just having plenty of time to learn and pursue trivial yet fascinating hobbies. But I don't want my whole life to be one be one big procrastination after the other. Being content with oneself is not the same as being happy with oneself. In many ways, I have no choice but to continue the hopeless path I am on, and slowly change my individual days to somehow shape a life contoured by something other than disappointment and depression.

Slave Ship

I grow tired of my bearings
burdened by the very sails which guide this vessel
always in need of direction
but is just a prison in which I bury myself.
And the the aspirations that guard my cell
prevent escape or early leave
from the life which has no meaning,
but to embark upon destinations unreachable
and heated hopes that cannot be quelled.

Set Theory

I feel my life is nothing but an empty set 

that I continuously fill with trivial elements, ephemeral

though they are, still splendid in their disconnectedness.

And I, a mere instrument, to ravel together the segments 

in-between birth and death 

so that they may be perceived as 

though they were of great importance.

Anatomy of a Crush

A crush is not about the other person. A crush is about you. You, and your projected idealizations of what you ultimately find lacking in yourself is what you find so attractive in another person. A way to cover up your own shortcomings, you willfully fantasize of another person who you believe carries these attributes, and the fantasy manifests itself as love, or rather, obsession. Now sometimes, a crush can be a driving force to better oneself in hopes of impressing the one who fulfills this illusory role. More often, however, it is a self-perpetuating instrument of hatred of self. Because the inability of not only the smitten but of the desired to meet unrealistic expectations reinforces one's unchanging state of loneliness and low self-esteem.

A healthy relationship, on the other hand, still contains elements of fantasy in another but aims to have a deeper understanding of the significant other, warts and all, and still find beauty in him or her. At the same time, a certain vulnerability of allowing the other to see the inherent flaws in oneself, and still be desired is what characterizes a good relationship. A relationship is about self-acceptance and improvement. A crush is about self-hatred and denial of reality.

The new guy in my life may not know every pathology of mine yet, but what he has seen he takes in stride and inspires me to become a better version of myself. He cushions my sharp falls with humor and rationality. Similarly, I can tell his unspoken insecurities are soothed by my repeated presence in his life. It's strange for such a callused pessimist as myself to be with someone again, but I must say it is sweetly comforting in the darkness of my everyday troubles.

Quarter-life Crisis

Coming home to Cupertino used to be such a relief from the choking grip of city life. But ever since my mother caved to her depression, now San Francisco has become the welcome break from the suffocating stench of mental illness in my parents' home. As much as I want to spend time with my family, the effects of my mother's breakdown on me is hefty. Depression is an infectious fucker. All I want to do when I feel my mom's lackluster is pull the sheets over my head and sleep all day. Forget school, forget my friends, forget everything I used to know and love about life.

Perhaps the sudden arrival of my quarter-life crisis has also fueled an easy descent into mental instability, but I'm too stubborn to let it handicap my life the way it does my mother's, the way it used to mine. I find myself thinking about how much time I have wasted being down, when all I needed was to have completed a small task to have moved forward. Now I am 25, still 2 years and a semester shy from obtaining a Bachelors. The hell I am going to allow more time to be taken by my or others' pathology.

An important element to any life crisis is fantasy, and mine is no exception. I fantasize about the alter-personality of mine, the one that's sexily intelligent, cunning, attractive and strong. The one that has a Master's degree, a job in teaching mathematics, yet the freedom to steal away on the road on a whim's notice blasting classic rock riffs and wearing a black leather jacket. The one who is in control of her life. The imagination can either drive one to success or blind the same to disassociated failure, and I find it a tender balancing act.


"I hate my illness and I want to control it. This is what I believe to be true: You have to do everything you can and if you stay positive you have a shot at a silver lining."
~Silver Linings Playbook

Appearances

Nothing is as it appears to be

Yes, you know the meaning behind these words

intimately, but grudges held against your own heart

never stopped its persistent beat.

You've never been the forgiving kind,

and neither have I, but the past is no oppressor now

Time, the perpetual traitor, is on our side.

Fighting Depression

There is more to it than that I am broke, unsatisfied with my current job, up to my neck in debt, degree-less, and have fallen out of shape. Physically, hitting the gym a few days a week as I do on and off would be an easy prescription and boost endorphins, but it's not about my looks, which are average at best. Though I realize finances or the lack thereof make up the bulk of my unhappiness, it's not so much about the money than the loss in my sense of self.

Who the fuck am I? And what do I have to show for my life? Nothing. I know I'm not un-liked by others; I have a fair amount of friends in different circles and individuals I can hang out with. I get male attention, both sexually and from more emotional interests. Still, I often feel angry inside and so alone. I feel I have let people take advantage of my docile kindness and when I look back on them I feel a distinct rage. Both strangers and friends, even my best friend, whose 7 thousand dollar debt to me still remains unreturned, and his pace at finding a good job over a year after he has graduated from college so painfully fucking slow. Finances have put a strain on our relationship, and I feel distanced from him in my frustration.

I do enjoy what I'm doing, my goals toward a degree in Math, the tutoring gigs I've gotten. But the reality is I'm broke, the gigs barely pay, and I'm getting older and have less time to go after the other vocations I wanted, meanwhile my debt is stacking along with my doubts, and I have a sinking realization that I'll need to resort to other means of paying rent and tuition. Ever since summer school ended this depression has been crawling on me, slowly engulfing the optimism which usually balances out the blackness. This time, though, the blackness is winning.

So who am I? Just a vessel for others' use. That's all my life has shown me.

My Mind Can Feel

I have to admit, I still have some nostalgic sadness which lingers from the end of the Spring semester. Once again, I'll never have another one like it, and despite the hardships, I learned so much and made quite of bit of progress over the last 4 months, both academically and emotionally.

For one, I realized my career path in life is a mathematical one - not a physical one, per say. The study of English taught me to organize my thoughts. Astronomy opened my eyes and paved the way for Physics, and Physics made me fall in love with Mathematics. I'm not one who believes in fate, but I guess you could say I believe it was a natural progression of events and thought development which led me to the where I am now: a nearly 25-year-old aspiring mathematician, teacher, and more importantly, student. What draws me most to teaching, not just the 3 month summer vacations or even the feeling of empowering others through your knowledge, but always and forever being a student - always learning.

Doing and learning math does something to me. It clicks on some logical part of my brain and makes me think more clearly not just about the Calculus problem at hand, but other areas of my life. I've never been a particularly "rational" person. My emotions range too far along the spectrum to have any solid hold on reality, but studying and teaching math all the time forces me to see the world through analytical eyes - something I've lacked for a very long time. While there are holes in my education, starting from K-9 and up, I feel I'm slowly patching those gaps which were lost on me as a youth. I feel like a kid at the same time that I feel I'm getting much older. It's a strange sensation, but not unwelcome, and feeds back into my sentiments of the concept of life coming together naturally, with and without my conscious actions.

Perhaps that's why I've been able to finally and fully distance myself from my ex. Not to say there weren't relapses on both ends, but the final product was a good one. Forgiveness, closure, reason, love, and emotional acceptance found a balance and home together. I can move on.

This summer I have decided to dedicate myself to seeing a bunch of old timer concerts, modern summer festivals, continuing massage classes, spending time with friends and family, tutoring, getting back in shape, and furthering my education: a Linear Algebra and Elementary Statistics class. It most certainly will be a Summer of Rock 'N Roll to be remembered.

Oh my love, for the first time in my life

My mind is wide open

Oh my love, for the first time in my life

My mind can feel.

I feel sorrow, oh I feel dreams

Everything is clear in my heart

I feel life, oh I feel love

Everything is clear in our world.

~John Lennon, "Oh My Love"

Dimming

From great distances, or microns near
the fibers of my skin remembers - as though you were here.
And the tear, which remains splitting
from your careless folly, is unfair.
Our love holds like the stars - the space between us substantial,
and only grows more colossal, with time.
But by talons of your emotions,
the physical differences become minute - waned memories magnified.
Like a reluctant aperture into the past
the light never dims on you.
No, the light never dims on you,
even as our detachment becomes more vast, and solidified.

The Hard Way

Nobody else around me will ever know the dark, overwhelming, parasitical anger inside, and although I have taken measures to heal or lessen its effects, it is as much a part of me as the warm and caring person who feels for others unconditionally. Finding the balance may take a lifetime, but the rate at which my mind is growing through my studies, I hope my heart follows suit. I know we're all human, but it seems as though the people, especially the men in my life and starting with my own dad, had to first completely debase and mistreat me in order to realize I was worth anything to them. And after repeated careless stakes that pierced me, my rage advanced twofold on the people who caused me pain, and in the moment on anyone who disrespects me just a little. Does it always take hurting someone horrendously first to realize you love them? And I know if I had done the same to them, they wouldn't have allowed it, but I did allow it and it is completely fucked up. Still, I loved them and there is no magical parallel universe I can just slip into where they were magically not fucked up to me. I just need the pain to stop eating away at me.

I have even considered taking anger management classes, though my busy schedule and lack of funds hasn't permitted any such luxuries. Anyways, I'll be ok. The madness comes and goes, and so have the people who proved they weren't supposed to stay in my life. What I need now is to work on forgiving both myself and the people who damaged me. I don't want to let any experience debilitate me, as I've been stunted long enough.

I've had a few guys express interest in me, romantically and otherwise, but right now I feel like it is more of an inconvenience in my life to date. Someday, someone will love me right, for now I'm learning everything I ever slacked off on and never gave myself enough credit to apply myself to in grade and high school, and I will tell you, it is simply amazing. Not just the plasticity of the brain, but the incredible journey of how we understand and came to understand the universe, and how it just works, from the most seemingly simple motions to grand schemes. There is an elegance to everything around us, and I cannot soak it up fast enough.

It would be easier to be insane. But I'm not, and I have to keep learning and growing, the hard way.