It comes, it goes, like waves at the beach. However, lately, the unwelcomed visitor stayed past its welcome, much worse than "Aunt Irma".
You probably asked where I went the past few weeks, and this will be one of the (many) times I will be bluntly honest-- I was going through a major funk.
Call it what you want: a slump, a downward spiral, a trip down the rabbit hole etc.
When people spiral, some people Netflix their way into oblivion, or numb themselves by random purchases, or stuff their mouth with more grease than they could stomach, or black out wasted and then go home with an amnesia for a night.
As for me? I did all of the above, in addition to the diminishing productivity I have at work and home.
Looking back, hopefully I am just stating this out in exaggeration, that all the human and non-human authority figures in my life would have probably disowned me by now because of the things I did and things I said.
I am not proud of it, and in no way am I romanticizing any of my bad and irresponsible life decisions weeks ago, coupled by grading season at school (ugh). I am simply explaining my absence in Hive as well as in the other areas of my life.
The funny thing about this fun circus of events is, all of these occurred while I was pondering on a certain question-- an assignment given to me in attempts to "get my life together":
"What will give you peace?"
As usual, I've tried talking to different people about it, and they, while being well-meaning the whole time, provided different viewpoints and answers which I take in with a grain of salt. I admit that I found a lot of difficulty in processing their answers.
I feel that there are one of those times in which, when I do share what's on my mind or what I'm going through, it either gets trivialized, or it gets preached at, which isn't exactly motivating on my end, and instead encourages me to continue keeping these difficult and controversial thoughts to myself to avoid judgment.
Call me a basket case, a person who can't get a grip, an immature entitled person who can't accept the harshness of reality, or who can't seem to get out of her head? I've heard it all, and probably heard much worse. I realized that there is a very thin line between being a bitter, spoiled brat and an overly hopeful person who can't seem to cope with the idiosyncrasies of the fickle Goddess of Chance.
But like everyone else, no one in the world (including myself) has the right to demand a certain type of validation from the people who love them, who can only do so much as limited human beings and are only doing their best to help in the ways they know how.
The overwhelming news of Russia's Attack on Ukraine, the political negativity in social media with regards to the coming elections, all these along with my tendency to end up in isolating situations, I was sinking more and more into despair, overthinking and melancholia each day.
Frankly, it was getting more and more difficult to answer the question--
"What will give you peace?"
To be honest? Maybe I just want the world to stop turning for a while. With grading season at the moment, and everyone at work on the edge of a breakdown, the last few weeks feel like being in a roller coaster ride that I found fun at first, but now is turning my insides out as I desperately want to get off.
It's quite an interesting coincidence that the Russian invasion in Ukraine happened around the same time when the final season of Attack on Titan aired on Netflix. War, genocide, cycles of hate, struggles for power, historical narratives being passed on to perpetuate fear, anger and self-destruction --- themes I observed to be in parallel with the current conflict happening on the other side of the world.
People being evicted out of their homes, soldiers not a year older than any senior high student I am handling are being sent on to do the dirty work for their government.
War has never been gentlemanly, but I somehow had wished ethics and agreements based on the Geneva Convention still prevailed instead of being thrown out the window (and the sad thing is, we don't really know for sure up to what extent).
Propaganda is being aired here and there and it's almost quite easy right now to pin a certain person or a group of people as the bad guys. Parties right now on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine conflict are to some extent guilty for mass emotional swindling all posing to serve their "nation's best interest", perpetuating the already heavy tension in between at the expense of the lives eliminated by gunshots and bombs of those in both sides sandwiched by the conflict.
Aside from watching the final season of Attack on Titan and its lovely plot twists and amazing character backstories which immensely helped me reach realizations on the impact and complications of war and racial oppression in a form of anime, I also was able to read more doom and gloom literature and media: The Reader, Veronika Decides to Die, Flowers for Algernon,..
The bottom line of all the dark and gloomy things I've read is essentially this-- we are all at the mercy of chance, aaand the world is mad, cruel, and fallen, because everyone is. We are all fallen creatures and we can't do anything about it, because human beings are fallible. This path we're in is a one way trip to extinction and no matter what endearing characteristics we have, we're all going to die.
oooor maybe you're just addicted to sadness and negativity Roxanne?
Maybe I am...I have considered the possibility by the way, in fact just recently, I was called by one of my friends, a pessimist.
But I've been also listening to Alain de Botton's lectures, especially the one on Pessimism and Anger. To quote:
"Many of us today think that anger is sort of physiological problem, it’s to do with hot-blooded or something. Seneca thought that was non-sense. He believed that we get angry for a very simple reason - Optimism. Optimism makes us angry. And he compared a very interesting thing. He asked why people don’t get angry when it rains, particularly in Northern Europe. The reason why people don’t get angry when it rains is that we expect it to rain in England. It’s amazing if it doesn’t rain. So, it would not occur to anybody to be angry at the fact that it is raining. Now, the interesting thing is that we don’t adopt this wise approach in all areas of life. Think about our keys. We start shouting when lose the house keys. Or how we behave when we are stuck in traffic. Now essentially that is because we believe implicitly in a world where keys don’t go astray and the roads are always mysteriously traffic free. That’s a very very odd starting point for life. It’s our expectations that will define what will anger us." -- Alain De Botton
I used to feel bad about my pessimistic tendencies and all the complications that come with it, that sometimes I feel like I'm a burden, or a killjoy, when I talk to people quite opposite from being the life of the party-- it's one how the many reasons that introspection can be quite lonely.
But when the same friend told me that I could still use my pessimism to my advantage, it give me a sense of hope, light bulb turned on, that maybe I do not need to be as positive and motivated all the time as the rest of my peers after all, or have that one million drive to achieve a lot of things in a short span of time, or be pressured to live up to the many self-help books and moral guides I have read from cover to cover, and feminine energy quotes that I used to have faith in for a really long time. I can be pessimistic but still work towards what I want or make the most of what I have, without holding any resentment of the past and being too overly hopeful about the future. If this is how I will define peace, will I be able to give a definite answer to the question once and for all?
I guess that's what my therapist meant when he said "We all need to pick up our cross"
Roxanne Marie is the twenty-year-old something who calls herself the Protean Creator.
She is a chemical engineer by profession, pole-dancer and blogger by passion and frustration, and lastly, a life enthusiast. She is on a mission to rediscover her truth through the messy iterative process of learning, relearning and unlearning. Currently, she works as a science and research instructor in her hometown, Tagbilaran City, all the while documenting her misadventures, reflections and shenanigans as a working-class millennial here on Hive.
If you like her content, don't forget to upvote and leave a comment to show some love. It would be an honor to have this post reblogged as well. Also, don't forget to follow her to be updated with her latest posts.