Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

Its an awful feeling to know that the thing that you desire the most is something that you have utterly failed at. Time and time and time again. Unabashed, utter failure. And it was not for lack of effort either. In fact, a sustained and unbearable amount of energy has been dedicated to the pursuit of this objective which has eluded me completely. Not only eluded me, but blatantly mocked me and disrespected me at every chance.
So I give up. I give up on my hopes and dreams of love and romance. Sure, I still have the strong urge to punch cuddling couples in the face. I still feel the keen knife of envy as a breathless stab to my stomach when I witness two people in love. But I have to let go of my aspirations for being one of them. I have to let the dream die. Because its too painful to keep trying and failing.
It hasn't all been bleak. There have been many fun and carefree moments. On a drunken night earlier this month I found myself underneath the Brooklyn Queens Expressway overlooking the fetid Gowanus Canal. I was pointing out an enormous mound of scrap metal over which cranes with giant claws labor day and night gathering fistfuls of junk and hurling them into a container barge waiting on the brown water. I don't know what it is about this grim wasteland of twisted metal that fascinates me but I have spent hours watching the cranes pick at the never-diminishing wreckage. The guy I was with was a 'famous composer' (as my friend had said after introducing us) and music promoter who was finishing up his PhD at Princeton. Somewhere in the middle of my rhapsodizing about the big junk heap he grabbed me and started kissing me. It was snowing. And for a moment everything seemed perfect.
Needless to say things went downhill not much later. Our mutual friend called me asking where we'd gone. We ended up at a bar, all quite intoxicated. We were there about an hour. I went to use the bathroom and upon returning I noticed he and my friend were gone. Disappeared into thin air. Or rather into the cold night without me.
So nothing can get my hopes up these days - not swimming in the East River during the middle of a hurricane with my demented Serbian crush, not making out by the Mediterranean with a sexy Italian painter, nor drinking champagne with a slick guy from Dubai, not even kissing a cute young Princeton Professor by a scrap metal yard.
Its all for naught. I am alone and that's it. Might as well accept that this situation may not change.
***it should be noted that as I'm writing this I'm lying in bed listening to Bruce Springsteen (to block the sound of my roommate snoring from the room next door) and eating prunes. I have one missed call...from my mom! ha ha... Yep, gonna be alone forever!

The Downside of 'Always Looking on the Bright Side'

I found this old post on my abandoned myspace account, written several years ago. But I still feel the exact same way today!

Tonight while eating at my favorite hole-in-the-wall pizza restaurant I was privy to the sort of dime store psychology conversation that always makes me cringe. One guy was saying to his friend 'You shouldn't worry. You are just wasting your time. I try to always look at things in a positive way.' This is the kind of conversation that for years has made my skin crawl, it brings back memories of countless earnest conversations (on my part) that often ended with statements such as 'you are so negative', 'you need to change your attitude' or my all time favorite from my very own mom 'just be grateful you aren't … insert here latest natural disaster, catastrophe, war etc… starving in Africa, fighting in Iraq, drowning in floodwaters' etc… This type of stock answer to another person's vulnerability signals nothing less than a dismissal of the other person's emotions. What one wants here is often EMPATHY not a lecture on the joys of positive thinking! By the way, according to Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary empathy is defined as the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another. To me the key parts of this are understanding, and being sensitive to.
I had a conversation with my Dad this weekend about empathy where he stated that he is 'practicing empathy'. I was aghast – does one really need to practice empathy? I kind of thought it came naturally. I guess I should have known better. It appears that a lot of people are extremely uncomfortable with the expression of raw human emotion in others. To me that is a shame, as our ability to communicate our emotions and thoughts (whether pleasant or unpleasant), is what makes us unique as human beings.
So, what's so bad about being negative sometimes anyway? According to several psychological studies depressed individuals actually have a tendency to assess their self and their environment more realistically than non depressed people. Also, depression itself can be viewed as a catalyst for change; often times people experience depression because there are things in their life that are not working. Depression is a sign that old patterns need to be overcome and new ones formed in their place.
I find our culture's obsession with positivity very annoying. What it seems to boil down to is people don't really want to take the time to understand another person's struggle and/or they don't know what to say or do when confronted with intense emotions. Instead we want to placate others and ourselves with such superficial statements as 'it'll get better', 'try to think positively', 'you get back what you put out' etc etc which basically invalidates the other person's emotions. To me fake-ass positivity is a far worse crime than negativity because it is so condescending, trivial and easy to dish out. Laura Bush's infamously insensitive remark to displaced Hurricane Katrina victims that things had 'worked out well' for them is a perfect example of this kind of crap.
Lest I appear to be a horrible curmudgeon, I must confess that I DO want to be happy, perhaps even more desperately than others. But I believe that happiness is something you work for, something you struggle with, something that is rare and precious and private and different for each person. I don't want to be a dilettante at happiness - skimming along the surface of things without any true understanding of their nature. I don't want my appetite to be spoiled by something fluffy, sweet and ultimately unfulfilling; I want the real thing in all its complexity and richness.
Besides, some people are just so much more charming when they are down. I could barely listen to The Cure after 'Friday I'm in Love' came out. The sappy silliness of that song just made me cringe. It could never, ever compare to the somber splendor of 'Pictures of You'. I certainly hope no one ever told Robert Smith to just 'snap out of it'! If tortured artists weren't so tortured we'd spend the rest of our lives listening to 'Don't Worry be Happy' rather than 'Paint it Black'. I mean come on, is that really any way to live? !

http://home.avvanta.com/~charlatn/depression/worst.things.html