The Unforseen and Entirely Inevitable

The Unforeseen and the Entirely Inevitable

    Have you ever been excited about something, when over time what you thought was going to happen changed into something very different that was going to happen? Something that you weren't entirely thrilled about? But you already knew it needed to be done, so you are you going to do it anyway, deciding to make the best of it. You assume that once it is happening, once this change has occurred and you are in this new situation, that you will be happier about it than you were when you were looking ahead to something that had not yet happened.  At first, it is exactly as you had planned. The change is great, but so much is going on that you don't have time to miss the way things used to be. Life goes on. You think, "It is just like I said: I really am fine now that I am here."

     But you are not actually fine. For a short time you are fine. You had thought it would stay that way, but the feeling of contentment fades with time and you do miss the way it used to be. And yet you don't. You don't really want it to go back to exactly the way it was before, because you love some things about this new life. But at the same time as you feel this love, you feel pain about other things that you do not love about this new life. Things such as the loneliness. Those are the things that you do want to go back to how they used to be. But you know that nothing will ever be the same - nothing. It will never go back to what used to be normal. This is the new normal. And it kills you to think of it that way. You feel as though depression is waiting at the doorstep. Every once in a while, it actually makes its way into your life - into your heart and mind and you sit down and cry out your pain until the tears no longer come and you sit in silence, with the same amount off pain as before, because the tears do nothing to console your hurting heart. And so instead, you look to other things besides tears.

     You begin to compose. You compose a string of words that does not in any way truly express the way you feel, and yet it is the closest you can get to it. And still it does not do your pain justice. It does not do your loneliness justice. You wonder as you come up with these words and record them, if all of this is your own fault. It is your personality and your own choices that caused you to be in this position in the first place, is it not? Surely it must be. For no one else put you here. And so you blame yourself. Who else's fault could it be? None but your own. So you come to the end of your composition, feeling alone and having no one to blame and hating yourself and who you have become and who you have been in the past. You don't want things to go back to how they were and you don't want things to stay the same. You are a selfish, undeserving person. Of course you do not have what you want - you are never happy with what you do have. And so you end, understanding better your problem, feeling worse about yourself, with your depression intact but less overwhelming, with no solution whatsoever.

September 18