H.Q.

Sorting Things Out
2020-04-20 04:48:45 (UTC)

An Interesting Day

I'm depressed so often that I forget what life feels like. Even when I wake up and have a "good day" there's this overhanging cloud of sadness. Still, the cloud can be small or big and today it was small. It didn't rain down on me, maybe just dulled the sun a bit which is nothing I can't deal with.

Whenever my sadness and mental illnesses dissipate some, I find that there are so many things about life that I adore. I forget they exist. It's weird how being depressed can do that to you. It takes the joy and life out of everything you've ever loved. But every once in a while ... I catch a glimpse of what life is from inside my bubble of madness and it excites me so much I feel like my heart will leap out of my chest.

I want to write this down for the next time that I can't stop crying and the world is crashing down on me for no reason other than my brain decided I should be miserable. It's important you remember pain simply cannot last forever. That's not to say it can't last a long time, but certainly not for an eternity. There's just not enough pain and energy for that.

There will always be a moment, even if its only for a second, that you catch sight of the stars and you can breathe again. I love the stars. It blows my mind to think of what they are, the raw power that they possess. From here they're just glittering dots in the sky. There are so many that I can't even count them in the night sky. But I imagine if I could fly, what it would be like to get closer. Can you imagine?

The wind would flow right past you and ruffle your hair and get in your clothes. You could close your eyes and breathe in deep. When you opened them again there would be clouds around you. Weightless and impossible to grasp, wet on your skin. Then higher and higher and on and on. Then maybe you'd find yourself exiting the Earth's atmosphere. All those stars that were scattered charmingly across the sky keep getting farther and farther from one another. The closer you get the more they spread. Then you focus on only one. You fly closer and closer and its brightness is impossible against the inky black of the universe. Finally you stop, blinded by the sheer light and heat it gives off, and you're forced to remember this a chemical reaction. That every single one of those dots is a burning ball of gas in the sky, part of a universe so vast you become nothing but a speck.

Of course, that's incredibly scientifically inaccurate. Flying is impossible and you'd die an atrocious death far before you ever left the atmosphere, but still, I don't want to spoil my day dreams too much.

The sun and the clouds and the trees are impossible to ignore. They make me marvel. When you look closely, what can you see? It's all so intricate. Has a life of its own. How could it be that so many things of profound beauty exist around me and I never see them because I'm sad? I know depression is more than sadness but I just wish I could clear the fog from my head sometimes and allow myself to see the things I love. They always help mend my heart so beautifully.

There's plants and poetry. A million stories and movies. Music that makes every nerve in my body sing. There's no room for bad feelings! I want to yell! I want to run to everyone I know and tell them that they are beautiful. That I love them! That the things they do matter and that I'm glad to see their faces. Even him. I want to tell him there's no one I've ever adored more, that his happiness is without a doubt one of the things that makes this world shine to me.

I watched "Chef's Table" on Netflix today and I'm awed by the chefs. They love food so much that one can't help but be thrilled by it too. There was a woman, her name was Asma Khan. She told the story of her birth, and how in India she was unwelcome because she was a girl. That she was the second daughter which was like a curse on her family, she was to be a burden. Her mother cried when she was born! It blew my mind that she seemed to have no resentment for the way that her mother was sad she'd been born. She's 49 now and owns a successful restaurant with an all female kitchen staff in London I believe. One of the things she said was that she wanted to make her mother so proud, to make a mark so deep, that it wouldn't matter she was a second daughter. That struck me like a punch in the gut. I know the feeling that you need to justify your existence. The simple fact that I am is not enough.

I thought she was amazing. I couldn't stop watching her and listening to the things she said. Women are something I'll never cease to be amazed by. Chef's too. I'm so bad at cooking but I wish I could. Just like I'm bad at dancing but I wish I could. They're all forms of self expression. I think there's little more that I desire than to express myself but I've never known how. Is it possible to express yourself when you lack talent in all forms of expression? No one will ever truly know what I feel. And few will ever be able to share with me how they feel.

I have a bone deep urge to understand humanity. I want to know so badly everything about everyone. It interests me so much sometimes I feel I'll die if I never figure it out. I crave authenticity, I want to know when things hurt and why and when things feel good and why. Asma took us through her life, every up and down, like the fluid motion of her knife rising and falling as she chopped vegetables. Always she was moving forward even when things were rough. I admire the resilience of the human spirit which I lack so dearly.

I spoke to my mother too. We yelled at each other and I cried. Finally she told me what she wanted and I told her what I felt. I think if people spoke clearer we would all be better off. When people say what they want to say there's little room for lack of communication and misunderstanding. That doesn't mean people shouldn't shut up every once in a while. I think what I mean is people should use their words with intention. Use them as the tool they are to truly communicate the point that they wanted to make. Understanding is such a wonderful feeling, both for the person that is gaining the knowledge and for the person that is finally being understood.

Maybe that's hypocritical of me to write since this diary is just a way to work through the things I will never utter to another human soul. I hope that's not the case, though. I hope that here I can write freely, without a worry of what someone might think when they hear it. Then when I have it figured out, when I can put into words the feelings that eat me from the inside out, I'll say them out loud to those who need to hear them.

I love days where I learn new things. Today was that kind of day because I learned the story of another person and now I understand a little more what it means to be human. It was an interesting day.




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