I dislike quotes and yet I love reading quotable material. Including song lyrics.


I had this uneasy feeling all day, which reminded me strongly of how I felt from the time I was about twelve until seventeen, for at least a majority of the time. It the feeling of being so confused, that the only plausible thing to do was to grow older and wait for time to show me out of my confusion. Not that it would be a magical and painless transition, but more that time would give me the cognitive abilities necessary to help drag myself out of this deep confusion. Although it wasn't exactly confusion. It was also frustration, and quite a bit of yearning. Sometimes I would be so bursting with this pent up yearning for an unrealized ideal that I would fantasize about jumping off buildings, just to release all the caged energy that felt physically trapped within the coils and springs of my heart. The frustration came from my continual inability to actualize whatever it was that I was yearning for. I wasn't even able to properly identify where these intensely felt emotions came from or why altogether, although I knew it had to do somewhat with several different things.

Maybe it was angst. Angst for love which I knew I had never had and therefore could not possibly understand. Angst for achievement, which I knew was the one expectation that I could never really exceed for anyone other than myself. And even then I never really lived up to the expectations I held for myself. Never the A student, nor the first one picked for anything. Always well liked, just never able to properly achieve what others had set for me to do. Never able to achieve what I used to think I wanted to do.
Maybe it was angst towards god. I never once confessed a single sin to my bishop. Never in my life that I can remember. It might have happened once when I was a child but not since puberty that I can remember. I told him that I had never even heard of masturbation, or that I tried it once and didn't like it. (hahahahaha).
I would get so nervous before meeting with him, and I would turn red and sweat and shake, but I never said a word. I told him that my language was perfect (hahahahaha). I never cussed. And since I hated being around the kids in our ward, no one could tell him otherwise.

I remember being forced to go on a camp out once as a boyscout (Which was extremely rare since it was difficult for my mom to make me do anything I didn't want to do. This is a skill I've honed almost to an art with certain people in my life, although I don't use it quite as much anymore).

Side Note: My sister acted "tough" and would yell at my mom if things weren't going her way. This only made my mom want to punish her and force her to do exactly those things. I on the other hand would listen and give my opinions, especially if I knew that they would find favor with the listener. If I was kind to her, she would be kind to me and let stop going to boy scouts and skip school whenever I wanted. But I wouldn't skip school to go smoke or anything like that. I would usually end up spending those days listening to my mom sadly reminisce about the divorce, which are some of my most vivid memories. Probably because my dad never mentions the divorce. He never even talks about my mom as if he ever loved her, or as if they were ever together.
Side side Note: I even recently asked him to tell me about meeting my mom. He told me he couldn't remember exactly when that was. He got that far-away, misty look in his eyes and barked a laugh. I waited for something more. How he forget something like that? That seems so important to me, when they first met. In every movie, even the fucked up ones, the two people can Always remember when they met, even if it's the only thing that they remember. I know that they met probably about thirty years ago, but that doesn't matter. He should remember. But he just said he didn't. Then he sat down and looked at me. He told me that it was weird because she had been dating his older brother Del, and that's how he knew her. Then they broke up but she continued to hang out all the time until one day she put her hand in his lap and grab his hand while they were driving somewhere with some other people. That was when he realized that she liked him. Then they got married. He told me that she was looking for a father and he wasn't able to be one for her, since he was still a kid. No feelings at all. It was all her. She liked him. She made the first move. She needed something.

Then he looked at me again and laughed. I looked him in his eyes and realized that he wasn't actually looking at me. He was somewhere else altogether at that moment and wherever it was, it was genuinely funny. Like realizing that the worst moment of your life was really nothing more than a gigantic and deeply disturbing joke. A joke this entire time; and you're just now starting to understand it. I didn't know what to do so I started laughing too.





Maybe the angst is over the past. Maybe I'm still trying to get over things that are perfectly normal. Maybe all my yearning and frustration still exist. I know that when I was seventeen, for a brief time everything in the world stood still and I was one with god, time, and love. There was nothing I couldn't understand or overcome. Well all moments of clarification pass. Reality sets in and the cycle begins again. And when we're at the bottom of the cycle we think we'll never make it to the top, and when we're at the top we're so sure it will last forever, even when we know that it won't. I haven't finished this up but for tonight I think that I'm done.

Physical and spiritual are equivalent to me right now. Transcendence is momentary and fleeting. That doesn't mean that it is meaningless to search for it. Just don't make it your life's pursuit. Instead focus on thinking and doing for yourself. I think by doing for ourselves, we're able to see more clearly what needs to be done for others so that they can also do for themselves. Charity should not be lifelong, only until the person in need of charity is able to start pursuing the idea of themselves.

Goodmorning.