Putting hindsight behind me, and other shocking realizations.

(Art credit: Jean Paul Sartre, by me.)

As you get to know me, you'll learn something about me - I go through phases of not breathing. And I don't mean apnea. I mean emotional suffocation. When I'm in one of these periods, I can't write, I can't create, I can barely speak, because the nuanace, the flow, just isn't there. I'd say I feel nothing, but that's not true. In those states I feel a constant... Sludge. It is SO DEPRESSING. And this type of not breathing is an unfortunate byproduct of the things that depress me in the first place. This type of not breathing is the exact opposite of breathlessness. 

Breathlessness, I'd be fine with.

All my life I wanted to feel. I valued feeling, emotion, passion, above all else and it really didn't matter if it was a good feeling or not. The more intense the better, I say. I've used this will to life to justify a LOT. 

But as the years went by, I began to get tortured by my past, and not necessarily in the way you'd assume. It wasn't things that had happened to me, or things others had said or done that were keeping me up at night. The things that bothered me most were things I had done or said or even thought - and over looked at the time. Things I'd done that were less than morally golden but had been dealt with at the time were rarely the problem. The habit I got into was remembering things from long ago, often years and years past, and suddenly getting that kick in the stomach that comes from your conscience. And the conscience's main song went something to the tune of "How the hell didn't you realize THAT wasn't okay sooner?! You must be a terrible person!". And so finally, the person who'd made it their life's work to feel, and most importantly to REMEMBER the feelings and events to look back on with accomplishment of their dreams, wanted nothing more than to feel nothing. To feel nothing, and to forget. 

Here's where drugs came in. But more about that later.

As someone who has always tried to experience and feel, I have spent lots of time lost in memory. When a memory springs up from nowhere, inspired by a song or a smell, a person or a place, my heart glows and I feel a sense of rightness, that this is what life is about, these moments. I think it's not unusual to say that a lot of times, the memory feels better than the event itself. And, for me, sometimes actions are carried out purely for the memory they create. (I actually about cried when I realised this. I wondered if anything is actually enjoyable at all, or if they just look good in the mind. I can still at times be unsure). So I felt like I was the very person for whom those rose tinted goggles were paraphrased. They never let me down. Until a couple of months ago.

The thing is, I've actually been happier than ever so it isn't any form of depression that brought on this realization. Maybe it was the contentedness itself that did it, even. Maybe just age. But the past has recently started seeming suddenly so much more like the past to me. It seems so far away and so sad, and somehow soon to be forgotten. I seem more mortal than I ever have done, closer to death, and so does everyone else. The past doesn't feel golden anymore, when as recently as six months ago it did. I have suddenly got older, and I will never be that young again.

It has been a decade since I wrote the similar (on paper) ;

I am nearly thirty years old.

I feel the same, but everything around me changed, a lot.