OKB4RMA- Listen, I mean this sincerely, best of luck to you in finding contentment and peace. Life ain't easy, no matter where you're from or what kind of family atmosphere you grew up in. That's a generalization, and I'm sure there are some who've ascended the ladder of life's journey with nothing but blissful occurrences and relationships with which they form their personality and outlook on life. I for one have never met anyone like that. Granted, I've never been to the Seventh Heaven filming set, but just the same...I remain highly doubtful that those people exist, yet I acknowledge the possibility.
Either way, clearly we are not two individuals who have that kind of constructive, joyous type of transition. It sounds to me, however, that you have been stricken in a different way than I, and that you are struggling currently with finding a way to assimilate destructive memories from your past into a place in your consciousness that will allow the past to simply exist as a neutral and no longer impelling force, as opposed to an omnipresent razor, constantly slicing into your ordinary day with a sharp reminder of things you wish would just disappear. I used to feel that way before CEDU, which sounds strange. But in my case, CEDU somehow violently shook those kinds of mental inclinations out of me, and replaced them with a kind of cold contempt for that kind of perception. Strangely enough, I was thrilled with that unexpected development, as I no longer seemed wracked with a debilitating depression but rather felt cool and detached, aloof I guess. This is not an indictment of what you expressed in any way, rather, the sort of disapproval I referred to was how I felt towards my own past view of reality. You could conceivably call it a self-perpetuated psychological manipulation...because when I admitted weakness and doubt in the past, (family issues, alcoholism coupled with persistent emphasis on toughness and masculinity as a bleed and not cry representation) I was chastised and subjected to bizarre 2:00 AM wakeups in which my sensitivity and emotional expression was painstakingly, and drunkenly, dissected as pathetic and embarrassingly weak, and so in response to this suffocating malaise and self-incrimination I developed a mindset of indifference and cynicism that allowed me to distance myself from the pratfalls of displaying emotion. Eventually, and really this developed from a partial evolution to a rooted and dominant mindset in the year and half I was at CEDU, I no longer felt compelled to despair over life and my place in that existence. This has separated me from depression, but I also feel emotionless and bitter, yet somehow bitter without discomfort.
All that is hard to explain, naturally. And my armchair psychiatry is probably worthless as it is off the cuff and anyways, I'm in no position to give people advice on establishing a cohesive, pleasant world view. I don't think I really gave you any advice here, anyways. But I guess you somehow encouraged me to open up a little...it was strange but not unpleasant. For you, I hope you find some resolution in your current pursuit of coming to terms with the past. I wish you all the best.
I just came across a quote that seems well suited for whatever the hell I was trying to say-
No man can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true. -Hawthorne
[ This Message was edited by: Sardonic Shrug on 2006-02-28 12:37 ]
