your will is not as strong as it used to be

[enthusiastick]

I do not think it will come as a great surprise to anyone reading this blog that I've been a touch on the lonely side lately. I am not talking about the fact that sleetfall, my primary friend in Boston, spent a week out of the country recently. Although that may well factor into my emotional state, the loneliness I am referring to here is of a larger (and, more specifically, romantic) nature. I dunno, lately I've felt sometimes like I've... reverted, or something. A lot of days my mood is no better than it was back in high school. I'm up, I'm down, I'm all over the place from moment to moment. I take great manic pleasure in the little triumphs, but some days I feel like I have nothing to look forward to, and I fight with myself just to get out of bed.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but I mention it because theferrett has been married for six years today, and rollick wrote an entry that happens to mention a party I very much would have liked to go to. In the case of the former, I re-read some of the things he wrote, and I admire his bracing honesty. And some of the things he writes about love and life make me feel all goofy-happy-smiley and warm inside. I don't think I could ever write that way about my own past in this blog. I haven't had the same volume of life experience, for one thing. But more to the point I can't see myself being that honest out there where anyone could read about it. At the moment I can't articulate why, and its bugging me.

In the case of the latter... man. That, in capsule form, is one of the reasons I really genuinely do miss Evanston. I was talking with thablueguy recently about how I simultaneously miss and do not miss college. I don't really want to go back to that place in my life, not exactly. I don't miss the drama for a second. But I miss the people, and I miss the atmosphere, and I do still hope to get some of that back. That's maybe one of my worst fears, that I won't be able to. If I had to articulate a nightmare scenario for me, it would be finally going back to Chicago only to discover I was not welcome there, actively not wanted back by all the vibrant personalities I've missed. Brr.

Blue sort of half-joked that he missed the potential for sex that existed in that college atmosphere. I'm paraphrasing that pretty heavily but I hope preserving the intent of what he said. And we laughed, but man was it sort of a mirthless, just-a-touch-desperate laugh.

College was just so different from everything else in my life. It was larger than life, the colors were brighter, the people so much more open. We were loud. I don't mean that in a bad way; people were loudly themselves, or at least what they imagined themselves as being or becoming. People were less afraid to try new things, because we were giants, out there ruling the world. The whole of American society is in a way devoted to people between the ages of 18 and 25, and for a little while there you can be Kings, if you're willing. Champions. Heroes.

OK, this entry has really ended up somewhere different than where it started. I was going to ramble for a bit about my need for a date, in an attempt to infuse actual life into the dry musings of this blog and also in a paean to the honesty of theferrett which I'm trying to move myself towards. But now I'm talking more than that. And I've been sitting here trying to edit this, to make it into a coherent essay with some discernible topic. But screw that. If you take away nothing else from this entry, take away this: once upon a time, my life had moments, instants, where the air seemed to positively sing with potential. And I have not felt that way for what seems like a long time, and I want to again, maybe I need to. And I don't know if I ever will. And when I'm having a bad day that scares me, and when I'm having a good day it pisses me off, but either way, I don't know.

Comments

[rollick.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, when I write up a post like that, I'm always thinking of you first and foremost. I don't know if I'm trying to tempt you back (I know, I know, you're working on it, but I'll believe it when you're here) or just give you an update on what people are up to (even when I'm jealous over things I wasn't invited to or couldn't make it to, I still like to read other people's reportage on what people I know have been up to), but in my head, I'm talking to you.

I miss college too. There are many aspects of the person I was then that I don't miss at all, but I do miss the sense of discovering other people who were all as eager as I was to get to know each other, and who were open about themselves and their lives, and even eager to reveal themselves to each other. Watching Lost over the weekend, I came to the episode where two of the characters play the drinking game "I Never." I was instantly enamoured and wanted to play it as a group party-type game. (Preferably with weakish drinks so everyone didn't fall over dead after five minutes.) Chris poo-pooed the idea for various reasons, chief among them that it would get too personal too fast, especially under the influence of alcohol. I couldn't help but think of the people I knew during college who would have loved that game and leapt on the idea. And I miss them. Like the mother of a teenager who misses the version of her kid who was friendlier and more loving when he was eight, I miss the versions of those people I knew in college. I still know some of them, and they aren't the same any more. Neither am I. Maybe I do miss the person I was in college after all.

[pooka-madness.livejournal.com]

... but in my head, I'm talking to you.

OK, first of all, that's one of the nicest things anyone has said to me recently. It made me smile.

Second of all I'm really coming back this time. Seriously. I was hired for the job I'm currently doing with the understanding that once I'd finished the training course I'd work out of the Chicago office. So barring my being fired, which seems less and less likely every day, I'll be moving back sometime this winter.

[rollick.livejournal.com]

Like I said… I know, you're working on it. But it won't be real until it happens.