For a number of reasons, partially therapy yesterday, partially just thoughts that have been going through my head, and partially because of my faulty memories, this morning I dug out my old journals. From 1987 to 1998 I fairly consistently chronicled my feelings if not the actual events throughout my life. Frustratingly, I stopped journaling just as I met Sandy.
I shared with Sandy a couple of days ago that I have generally lived my life without regret. I still mourn things or glance back and wish I had been a wiser person at that time, but that from my current point in life, when I look back at a prior point, I rarely run what-if scenarios. What if I had student taught and acquired a teaching certificate in English language and literature? What if I continued with graduate school at 23? What if I had not dated or slept with that person? What if I had dated this other person? To each of these questions, the natural follow-ups are: Where would I be now? Would it be better or worse? I believe that Sandy can play this game. He can switch a past decision as if it were binary and end up at some happier place. I cannot. I cannot follow the thread beyond the decision point. Do you suppose this is a by-product of being naturally inclined to depression? I mean, really, the whole point of the exercise is to seek a better choice that culminates in some preferred prosperity, right? Be honest, does that sound like something a depressive might do? Do we sincerely believe that we would dream up a better today?
I meander. The essence is that I have only recently been wrestling with regret. Regrets about having children (for their sake, not mine), regrets about failing graduate school, regrets about losing years traipsing through an inexact career path, and so on. The regrets are not yet coupled with the nirvana that I would have achieved had I made the alternate choice, but they hover and whirl around my head in ways with which I am unfamiliar, while I work through the muggy muck that is my depression.
So I decided to go diving. I should probably discuss what I discovered, and what it means. I won’t. I just want to pass along little bits that I had written before. I will need to continue 1996-1997 in a separate entry. The final one included below seems an apt stopping point.
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“I am habitually misplaced.” September 1990
“It’s funny how slow I am sometimes. I was washing dishes when it all came together: Peppermint Patty is a lesbian.” November 1990
“I just know it’s getting harder and harder to come up with ways to keep myself going…. It just gets so hard. And I just get so lonely. I can’t figure out what is wrong with me.” 1991
“It’s the not knowing, can’t quite put your finger on it, wish you had a clue, an approximate forcast, all around no idea uncertainty that gets to you.” July 1991 – post breast reduction surgery
“For the record, I have been publicly depressed for almost a month now, which I’m trying to change. I am finding that it is better to be depressed to as few people as possible – it eliminates so many problems.” August 1991 – post weight-loss and makeover
Poetic jot: “So you want to be a liar. Think about the truth. It’s easy after that.” November 1991
Poetic jot: “Oh, don’t be so sad. It’s too simple. You’re only sad because you’re afraid happiness will spoil you.” November 1991
“I find it frightening that I can read my moods in the gaps in this journal. Shortly after my last entry I was happy and had been until this entry. I am so predictable, so obvious, sometimes so obsolete.” October 1992
“I’m a month and a half away from 24 years old, and my cycle of depression again returns. The last month and a half I have bolted from the lowest point in my life to a wonderful peak and seem to have fallen again. I’m terribly confused, unmotivated, and passively suicidal. I am a loss for words right now. They flit through my head in a rampage of moroseness. If I ever was losing my mind before, it was nothing compared to this.” January 1994.
“Maybe this mood will fade, as did the depression. I no longer flirt with suicide. It’s as if I am resigned to living.” May 1994
“I sat today in a restful way and read through my journals… I still flirt with my self-description and call it discovery. I don’t know that I’ve ever unearthed some true shining self in all these entries. Perhaps I’ve only reinforced and reiterated my continual self-hatred…. I find myself either happy, stressed or so depressed that I cannot commit to words. I do not say commit thoughts to words, rather I do mean commit to the words themselves. Words have continually been the love and turmoil in my life. I find in them something so pure and purging, and yet so painful that I am continually rushing to them and then running away again. It is at this moment that I wish to explain to myself that I must not punish myself for my formidable silences.” January 1996