I hate feeling guilty.

In a way its why I hate being in debt (to anyone for any reason.)

I also hate new years resolutions, but since I had such a great time over the past few weeks, I made one this year.

Its not the typical resolution, I can’t stand people that think an incremental change of “1” is going to suddenly improve their fortunes in life, love, business, etc.

Just because the year is now 2010, doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly get a great promotion, or lose 20 pounds, or get engaged/married/pregnant/etc.

The year isn’t the problem, WE are the problem, and we can change whenever we want.

But yeah, so rant aside, I made a resolution, its a stretch (not really a lie, right?) to say it was entirely a “new years” resolution, because really its been on my mind since the day I was discharged from the navy last september.

I can’t even post the real resolution, because its too personal, too raw, too absolutely insane, and I’m way too scared of how people will react, friends I might lose, and family that may disown me.

Instead I’ll post a uselessly vague sentence that could encompass an infinite number of issues/problems/etc. and hope that its enough to set my mind at ease for now.

So what’s my hopelessly vague sentence/resolution?

To finally confront my deepest/darkest fear/issue/denial, and hopefully find some solace and help in making future decisions, and relieving these intense feelings of guilt and uncertainty that plague me every day of my life.

So much for writing a happy blog post.

So yeah, I’m still here, life is fairly normal, there are ups and downs (and of course an infinite number of overlapping waves to these cycles) and right now seems to be coming off a short up, and hopefully into a short down.

I really don’t like being on the down/bottom of these curves/waves, but I understand that the ups can’t last forever.

Everything balances out somehow, right?

Thinking of the past, and fantasizing about what lives my previous acquaintances might now have, it makes me feel lazy, and unimportant.

(both might be true)

Maybe its a last-ditch attempt to try and impress old friends and make old flames jealous (even though they ought not be?)

I’m not sure of anything anymore, except that, regardless of how socially awkward I was and still am, I miss my old friends.

Frankl said it best, life can have meaning in one of 3 ways, and one of those was by experiencing something OR encountering someone.

Maybe meaning can be found by simple encountering friends, even if they have no super-meaning for society as a whole?

Or is this another futile, fruitless attempt at self-affirmation? Another attempt to direct what little ambition I have left at defining myself in spite of what I have failed at, what I may have succeeded at, and what I have still yet to discover about myself?

To pre-empt any confusion (though I believe cousin Catherine understands precisely  what I wrote about) I’m talking about affirmation as written about by Conrad M. Baars, M.D. in his book, “Born Only Once: The Mirracle of Affirmation” which I absolutely devoured tonight, in one sitting over coffee.

The section on Self-Affirmation was enlightening, not merely as a means of learning that I alone cannot affirm myself, but as a means to build a deeper understanding of my closest friendships as well.

It also saddens me to realize that the state of being inadequately affirmed is so prevalent, especially among my generation.

I won’t apologize for my sadness, but instead, will try and ponder everything that I’ve read tonight, to see how I can truly, effectively come to “be” and then as a result “do” whatever is best to help be an affirming person, once I myself am properly affirmed, however long that may take.

Likewise, I’m not going to apologize for being angered by the occasional actions of my friends, but I do hope that I can learn to help my friendships be mutually-affirming instead of mutually-denying, and at the same time, I hope that those friends of mine who are themselves inadequately affirmed, just like I am, will examine their own attempts at self-affirmation, and realize that there is so much more out there for them, just as there will be for me, once we come to be fully affirmed.

I’ve spent a while tonight reading about “the miracle of affirmation” and how central it is to finding true human happiness and joy, and I’ve come to see that while I am likely not totally unaffirmed, I am certainly inadequately affirmed.

But more than that, I think my funtional decline in life is tied to a continually decreasing level of affirmation, which I’ve tried to compensate for through self-affirmation.

I also feel that my declining affirmation level is aggravated by my being surrounded by so many people who are also inadequately affirmed, or totally unaffirmed, but are yet materialistically successful in civil society.

I think my siblings fall into this category too, and as such, any attempt by them to help affirm me, is futile.

So how do I reconcile all this and halt, and begin to reverse my recent declining level of affirmation?

I have some ideas of course, but am perhaps too scared to attempt to act on them yet? Or perhaps I’m too scared of being let down again, by myself, or others?

Or perhaps I just don’t yet know for sure that I’m ready to attempt it?

To everyone who’s suggested I seek counseling, since this has come from so many of my family and close friends, clearly most people see me as having a problem, and I understand and accept that. However, I’ve had counseling, fairly recently too, 10 weeks of it, both one-on-one and weekly group Cognitive Behavior Therapy while waiting to be discharged from the navy.

It was exactly the fact that I needed counseling which caused me to get separated from the navy early, and regardless of whether that was right or wrong for me, I do know that the counseling itself was of little benefit. Accordingly, I think for the time being, its not for me, especially since its no longer available to me at no cost, and I’d rather not spend my last dollar (or anyone else’s money) on a few hours of somebody telling me that which I already know, that I’m depressed, and that I should take medication, and go fall in with the rest of the world.

I’m not even saying that a psychologist’s diagnosis or prescription would be wrong, to the contrary, its highly likely that its right, as my psychologist in the navy recommended I see a psychiatrist and go on medication a couple of different times.

Its just not “ME.”

As usual, I’ll resort to somebody else’s intellect to try and adequately summarize my view on life:

“…I’ve never had the propensity to work, breed and die…”

I’m not sure I ever want to fit into day-to-day modern life, and the more I search for a place to escape to (even if only temporarily), the more I realize there is no physical place capable of adequately sustaining life that hasn’t been brought under some form of government/social control.

Everyone alive today was born a prisoner to social-contract civil-society, and I can’t yet reconcile myself with that, and I’m not sure I want to live in a perpetually decaying world that I’ll never be able to truly change.

It might be best to add that I don’t believe in the judeo-christian God, and I likely never will, so any argument you use from a religious stance, to try and tell me that any/every life is worth living, is a waste of time/breath, and I’d rather not get into a debate to try and argue the existence of said God, because I believe that everyone has a right to believe whatever they want about God, and that it alone shouldn’t preclude people from being friends.

I also don’t think anyone on this planet is “special” or any more important than anyone else, for any reason, and in fact, the very fact that we’re all “different” or “unique” or whatever adjective you want to use to describe it, makes us all inherently the same; we all WANT to FEEL special/unique, in the face of the otherwise crippling reality that none of us really are important to the universe, and we are all going to die while the whole of the universe won’t even register that any of us ever lived.

Again, I acknowledge that this is all likely an expression of the truth that its ME that is “defective” in some sense of the word. I’m just not sure if I’d rather be “normal” at the sacrifice of who I truly am, just to go be a part of day-to-day modern society that I don’t care for in the first place.

Honestly, thank you, everyone, for your messages, your friendship, and your offers of support/hospitality/etc, but right now, I just don’t think there’s anything that anyone else can do.

I have decisions I need to make before anything that anybody else offers in support will be able to have any useful effect.

Right now, counseling and medication won’t do anything to help me be the “ME” that I want to be, but instead will only make me the “ME” that the DSM and American Psychiatric Association think I should be.

And I’m not sure that I want to be that version of “ME” yet.

“Son, look at all the people in this restaurant
What do you think they weigh?
Out the window to the parking lot
At their SUV’s, taking all of the space

They give no fuck
They talk as loud as they want
They give no fuck
Just as long as there’s enough, for them

Gonna get on the microphone down at Wal-Mart
Talk about some shit that’s been on my mind
Talk about the state of this great nation of ours
People look to your left, yeah, look to your right

They give no fuck
They buy as much as they want
They give no fuck
Just as long as there’s enough, for them

Son, look at the people lining up for plastic
Wouldn’t you like to see them in the National Geographic
Squatting bare ass in the dirt eating rice from a bowl
With a towel on their head and maybe a bone in their nose

See that asshole with a peace sign on his license plate?
Giving me the finger and running me out of his lane
God made us number one ’cause he loves us the best
Well he should go bless someone else for a while and give us a rest

(They give no)
Yeah, and everyone can see
(They give no)
We’ve eaten all that we can eat”

– Ben Folds, “All That You Can Eat”

“Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”

and some 40 pages later…

“… As Richard Hofstadter reminds us, America was founded by intellectuals, a rare occurrence in the history of modern nations. “The Founding Fathers,” he writes, “were sages, scientists, men of broad cultivation, many of them apt in classical learning, who used their wide reading in history, politics, and law to solve the exigent problems of their time. A Society shaped by such men does not easily move in contrary directions. We might even say that America was founded by intellectuals, from which it has taken us two centuries and a communications revolution to recover.”

– Neil Postman, “Amusing Ourselves to Death” 1985

So for no reason, and with no accompanying explanation, I received an “amendment” to my unemployment insurance claim, informing me that my award (that I’ve yet to receive any part of) was now ZERO.

I even failed at unemployment.

Cheers capitalism/u.s./civil society, I think I’m over you.

Where I used to sit

All alone in the dark

And dream about things

That I cannot say

You always said destiny

Would blow me away

And nothings gonna blow me away

At Cavanaugh Park

Where you used to take me

To play in the sand

And said to me son

One day you’ll be a man

And men can do terrible things

Yes they can

There was never any place

For someone like me

To be totally happy

I’m running out of clock

And that ain’t a shock

Some things never do change

Never do change

At Cavanaugh Park

We used to get high

Watchin teams as they fought

They loved my friend Adam

But he always got caught

Man that kid made fucking up look cool

Aren’t we all so cool now, No

There was never any place

For someone like me

To be totally happy

I’m running out of clock

And that ain’t a shock

Some things never do change

Never do change

Never do change

Never do change

Never do change

At Cavanaugh Park

Where I used to think

That this life would be good

And I would do things

That I thought that I should

And no ones going to tear me down

There was never any place

For someone like me

To be totally happy

I’m running out of clock

And that ain’t a shock

Some things never do change

There was never any place

For someone like me

To be totally happy

I’m running out of clock

And that ain’t a shock

Some things never do change

Never do change

Never do change

Never do change

Never do change”

– “Cavanaugh Park” by Something Corporate

There is a rapture on the lonely shore;

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature more…”

– Lord Byron

It bothers me more than almost anything [and almost certainly more than it bothers anyone else] when I’m compared to my siblings/relatives, and as such, I tend to compare myself to them increasingly more often, which in turn, creates a very destructive circle, in which I’m always the failure. As such, I end up thinking that people compare me to my siblings (and even my extended relatives) more than they probably do, which re-inforces my feeling of being a failure.

And when forced to be measured by the scales [or in the contexts] that measure them, I am a failure, because those scales and contexts are not the right tools by which to understand me and my life.

My brother and sister succeeded because self-reliance in the context of social-contract was one of the single most important goals for themselves; they both vowed to never end up like our parents, and worked their asses off to do so.

I just don’t know if I’m strong enough to be able to remain close to my family, without feeling like a failure, or without sacrificing myself to medication, which I  know is not the right solution.

So I’m left with the understanding that for now at least, I need to find my own context by which to be understood, that doesn’t involve comparison to my family.

“I’m going away for a while
But I’ll be back, don’t try and follow me
’Cause I’ll return as soon as possible
See I’m trying to find my place
But it might not be here where I feel safe
We all learn to make mistakes

Misguided ghosts
Traveling endlessly
The ones we trusted the most
Pushed us far away
And there’s no one road
We should not be the same
But I’m just a ghost
And still they echo me

They echo me in circles”

– Paramore, “Misguided Ghosts”