depressed

I haven’t felt capable of writing in here for a while because all these heavy things have been hanging over my head. Literally. Gray clouds & brown boxes. Bars & tubes stuck into my skull, driving me insane.

I assume the gray clouds are depressive thoughts of which I’m not consciously aware. The boxes probably contain psychic junk I have been suppressing. The metal bars extend to various people & represent the pressure I feel to please them. The hollow tubes contain thoughts & perspectives pumped directly into my head.

At least I think this is the case. I haven’t taken the time to carefully dig into these things because there is just too much heavy stuff there & it feels unbearably tedious to sift through it all.

So it has been sitting there, having a slightly discouraging effect upon me, making me doubt the value of anything I could express and also the value of those I would be expressing to.

It hasn’t been the best time ever when it comes to relationships.

For starters James has been going through the darkest period a man lives through in a 264 period (Pluto on moon) also known as the Wife Beating transit. And I’ve been stuck in a house with him night & day.

Secondly, the political situation- shutdowns etc- has me on edge. I feel nervous that you are expected to accept the government’s increasing control without question. I can’t bring myself to wear a mask- because I believe something sketchy is underway- and this makes me seem like an asshole to others. And people already think I am an asshole for supporting Trump which bums me out as well.

But the fact is basic freedoms- such as free speech & the ability to live life on my own terms- are very important to me. I don’t want to live in North Korea. And this makes me a nazi klansman in the eyes of most people I know, making me feel even more isolated.

And on a personal level these past months have released a series of events which made me realize most people I believed to be friends were actually enemies from the beginning. All this has me doubting how many good people actually exist in the world. Is everyone your enemy once you get to know them? Or am I just doing something majorly wrong?

Regardless though, I know I must push through these gray clouds & attempt to express myself, if only to provide balls for my enemies’ cannons.

Because I do believe in life. I know there is a higher purpose and our actions matter. We have to place our faith in doing the right thing, letting the chips fall where they may when it comes to peoples’ reactions.

And I also believe in people because they are made in Life’s image. Still this faith is a muscle I have to consciously exercise. I think the most important part of writing is summoning in your mind an image of an ideal audience that you are writing to. People who are caring, interested, thoughtful…. whatever qualities excite you. These imaginary people become your muse.

Sometimes you imagine specific people have these qualities and you make them your muse. Sometimes you find out they never had those qualities to begin with and it feels as though a piece of your muse has been lost. I guess that is what has been happening to me.

But then you summon your faith again and once again imagine a beautiful golden blob of humanity dangling above your head, filled with endless possibility. People so inviting you want to tell them everything.

Ever since the initial exhilaration of living someplace new wore off, I have found myself rather depressed in West Virginia. It is just so green here. I cannot even see a slice of sky from my window, only walls of green from trees rising up the side of a mountain. Being green probably sounds wonderful, but to me, green is the heaviest color- dense, dark and difficult to digest, like a solid stick of butter with no bread. Heavy things, things that are difficult and thick with no bubbles, have always been my weak point in life.

Julien in the Walmart parking lot. — Me, exploring Walmart’s parking lot.

In New Hampshire, the conversations I would overhear, tended to revolve around movies, restaurants, politics… airy, impersonal things. Here, it is mostly thick and sticky gossip, or else ironing out the details of Jesus’s Millenial Reign. Football, faith, and family are all that really matter here, and it isn’t clear to me how I can be a relevant part of that picture. Plus, I miss the ocean.

So, about every 36 hours I get so depressed that I can neither move nor stop crying, which will provoke James to drive me out to one of my favorite parking lots (yesterday it was Walmart). I tell him what I am feeling, and invariably he shows me a new way of looking at the situation, which causes the depression to evaporate almost instantaneously, giving me the energy to get out of the car and explore all of the parking lot’s interesting nooks and crannies. It is strange, how quickly even the heaviest feelings can change in response to seeing things in a different light.

Which has really underscored for me how much our feelings reflect our thoughts. And our thoughts- these seem to reflect something even more rarified, which I would call our spiritual perspective, our core beliefs about life. What is life? What is its purpose? Is it guiding me? Is it forever? Does it want the same things for me that I want for myself? And so on and so forth. Mostly we go through life answering these questions only subconsciously, but still our conclusions form the basis for all our other thinking.

But how can we know the true nature of life? It isn’t really something which can be determined by our intellect. But I think we have faculties which go beyond our intellectual, emotional, and physical ones, even if these faculties are not always acknowledged by our society. On some level, we KNOW what life is, and we KNOW who we really are. But too much confusing feedback from the world can cause us to doubt this part of ourselves who knows.

There is, I think, a golden sun in the center of the universe, whose light feeds our minds with truths about life and our place in it. If we shut our eyes to this sun, the world grows dark and confused. We strain our minds, trying to find reasons to feel good about ourselves, we strain our emotions, trying to stimulate them towards happiness, and we strain our resources, burning through them to fill the emptiness.

If I had to name this sun, I would call it The Future. In a way, I think our most important spiritual belief may be the idea that we are immortal beings living in eternity. Without this, the future can never truly be bright, and without a bright future, happiness is impossible. Without eternity, there is no true love, no true meaning, and no true growth. Without eternity, there is no reason to believe that the universe loves us or that we have much value at all. But with an infinite future, all set-backs are temporary and all gains have infinite value. Relationships take on a new dimension, and we can set the most lofty and profound goals for ourselves. If I could change one thing about our culture, I would change our belief in impermanence to a belief in forever, because I think this would cause us to honor the golden things that really matter. And on a personal level, I wish I could regain the feeling of timelessness I knew as a child. Because when time ends, peace begins.