I have had a revelation!
Well, I've had a bunch, but I don't quite trust my ability to record them at this point, you'll know why once I muster up the guts to actually get into it. Hell, I don't even know how to get into it. It's been a really long time, I'm so out of practice.
Let's try and retrace my steps. How did I used to do this? Oh yes, I sat here and I opened up into the all-accepting cyberspace, and at one point; words started to hold on to each other's shoulders, form an orderly line and do the cha-cha!
Oh lookie, I got a spark!
But let's not get ahead of ourselves here, and most importantly, let's stop beating around the bushes.
I've been having such a horrible time lately, and it felt like I had lost all sense of hope in things, people and myself. In fact, even as I was inspired, I resolved to wait for 24 hours just to see if the flame will actually twinkle down to a kindle and eventually get pissed on by an unaffected defense mechanism passing by on the way to the bathroom. Then I realized, hell, it probably will, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try and keep the fire going. It's the most I've had in months. If I can hold it off for just another 24 hours, by Odin I'll take it. It's a good start, it's a place to start. So here I am, trying to verbalize what the hell happened in my head and why it was so starkly different from everything that has taken place over the past year.
Growing up is a real bitch, in a number of ways, but perhaps the worst part about it is that grownups forget what it's like to be a kid. They forget the magic, the awe, the misplaced hope. But most importantly, they stop themselves from trying because trial and error taught them not to, after a certain point anyway. Grownups forget! I've been growing up, I forgot, and revisiting some of my old posts on here jolted my memory to many things that fell through the gaps as I parried life's attacks on my sense of self and understanding of how things went, as they go.
My days have been the same, but today was one of the hardest. I had slumped into bed after virtually flinging myself at about three dozen unexpected employers; using the powers of power lines to bunch myself up into a cannon and launch it across the Pacific, tunneling through the cross-continental wires and probably landing on a bored HR manager's desk. Statistically speaking, a middle-aged 'she' would likely dismiss me for being that far and requiring visa sponsorship, and I would wallow deeper into the same hole of despair that led me to apply abroad in the first place. I had simply applied to all the jobs available within borders, even the ones that I didn't want, and came to the conclusion that my career was over.
My slump was the mother of all slumps, I wasn't even mentally punching it out anymore. I had, for all intents and purposes, merged into the beanbag and started watching Scrubs for what must have been the hundredth time since I first met John Dorian on TV after school and realized there was someone out there who was like me, in every single catastrophically strange way. It had become my restore point, and many a breakdown was spent hiding it out in my stinky bat cave with an endless junk food supply and a variety of exotically roasted coffee beans. I was down, and I had given up. Then I came across this.
I had written this when I graduated from college. I remember that day really well, I spent extra time on campus trying to get some form of closure, trying to find the gold buried at the end of the rainbow, and spent the whole day flitting back and forth between both ends across campus without finding any. I ended up spending my last day with two friends that I actually was not that close to, and I took three polaroid pictures with them; two of which never came out. I kept the overexposed film anyway.
I also remember how I felt that day, but I didn't remember what I was thinking about or why I felt that way. It took me completely off guard that I struggled with every single situation I worried about in that painfully young post, for months, when I got my first house. I just forgot that I started worrying about it that early. But that's not the point.
The point was in how I looked at things around that time, and how different it is from how I have come to see things.
It made sense, retracing my steps. I followed the breadcrumbs down my own timeline and briefly stepped into my younger self's shoes on the trip to the observatory, quitting my first full-time job, getting my first iOS game out, getting my heart broken by a thousand friends on a thousand and one nights, and generally getting torn apart by loss and grief over grandma and everything that happened down that yellow cobbly road; feeling everything all over again, exactly like I did the first time around. I actually got the rare gift of seeing myself grow up, shatter and get here, and somehow, here doesn't feel as real anymore. It has lost all power over me. I've seen how it came to be, and the monster is not as big as its shadow; I've just been cowering in a dark corner on the wrong end of the candle for too goddamn long.
And I forgot, because grownups forget.
I forgot so many things. In fact, there are entire areas of my life that are now lost to the ether because I didn't write about them here, but it wasn't just writing that I was doing when I came on this thing. I was figuring things out, I was verbalizing how I felt about things, but most importantly; I was clawing at the debris avalanche, digging magic, awe and hope out of the horror of everything and burrowing my way back to the surface. I will be coming back to those later, I will make time, if I can find the courage. But this is toil for another day. Now, I'm trying to string some words together and remember how I did this.
Writing for a living really was the worst thing that happened to my writing, but that's NOTHING compared to what it did to me. I completely lost my voice over the years. I got...old. Listen to me, no space metaphors, no stubborn grumpiness, just complete and total resignation. Shame on me, the world went ahead and turned me into a goddamn pleb. It reached into my soul and took out the small oxygen-rich plant I kept hidden at the back of my head for dark days when my exo-suit ran low and I was too far away from my starship; with no jet fuel to spare for remote vehicular recall.
Now when bad things happened, I said of course. How else would they happen? I was no longer outraged. The bitches had finally got to me. And I don't even get to have a beard to make it worth my while. Oh, the utter disgrace.
Growing up had done more than make me forget and lose my sense of awe, it had gotten to me at my job too. I no longer found joy in learning. Things like status, respect and office politics took priority over what I wanted to do with my life, and consumed my energy. I was burned out, and I hadn't worked in years, not mere months.
I got old. I'll bet if I buy a copy of The Economist, I wouldn't feel 20% of what I felt back when it meant something to me. I lost my holy grail in the ageing typhoon, and then I went on and forgot what it meant to me. What's worse, I went on and forgot how it came to mean that much; the process of it all.
Growing up also got to me in all the places that no one should get to. It had seeped into the hidden reservoir that hosted my entire spectrum of emotion and poisoned it with an unadulterated sense of permanent dread. I am scared of everything, and everyone; because I am now aware of the amount of damage they can do to me. It is true that you can take so many blows in a row you recoil so far into yourself that you forget how it actually looked like, or how it was supposed to look like. My forehead is wrinkled, my face has sagged. I have to constantly remind myself to unfurl my eyebrows and curl my shoulders back into their proper location. My back is killing me from all the stress hunching. Public transportation is not exciting, it's season 5 of Fear Factor with just a touch of season 4 of American Horror Story.
Things have changed so much, but they have always been changing over the years. I couldn't find my way out this time because I had changed so much. I lost that kid, and that kid was wonderful and doesn't deserve to be hated for the mistakes that she did along the way. She was trying so hard, so honestly, so dorkily and - at times - so brilliantly, that it shone through the years and came through to me.
It's funny to think that in the end, I would be the one that ends up helping me. I will still give that 24 hours. But first, I must find the manual. There has to be a chip somewhere where I stored those parts of me, and there has to be a way that I can access it now. I might just go crazy in the process, but I'll still take that over how I've felt for the past few months.
It felt like there was no way out, like that was really it. Nine years of working my ass off, burning through what felt like about a trillion nerves, sawing my health down to a fraction of what it one day could handle, losing so much of myself and so many people I cared about to get here, had simply been for nothing.
Then I realized, that shouldn't have happened in the first place; simply because I never actually remembered getting to a point where that was my goal. It had happened naturally; I came here because I was frightened. I didn't choose this. I shouldn't choose this. This is not how I should go about this. I have put on the ring on my way to Mordor, and forgot to take it off. That led to me trotting about for several months mumbling "My Precious" and eating the pinky finger of whoever got in my way. I must throw the ring into the lava before the lava swallows me up!
I don't think that applies anymore. It hasn't been for nothing, I just got lost. That happens. I can find my way back to that healthy headspace, back to a place where the world didn't feel that small and hostile, back to a space that had a thousand sources of inspiration wherever I looked.
Growing up does horrible things to you if you don't keep it in check. It can eat up entire galaxies, munch them down to their very wavelengths until it felt like they were never really there to begin with. I can't let that happen, there was so much beauty there. There still is, I just have to try and remember how I used to find it. I had a process, I have a process for everything. Maybe I could follow the landmarks back home.
And even if I don't, I have to try, because this is the first time in months that I feel there is actually a way out of here. It's been so dark. I hate the dark, you can't see shit and I'm half blind already.
So much of us is lost when we start to view ourselves in context; another horrible byproduct of growing up. Everything is a competition; how well you live, how well you work, how well you lead your life and how well you handle your conflicts. It's been a tirade of self-doubt, endless comparisons and loss of path. I don't remember the last time I followed a Patronus through the Forbidden Forest. Hell, I don't even remember how that felt like. Growing up has been starving me of everything that I needed to survive, and I had everything that I needed right here. Distracted by people at every turn; friends, boyfriends, colleagues, bosses, enemies, frenemies and everyone else across the shitstorm scale in between.
I haven't dorked out in months. Years?
I haven't spaced out and entertained a thought that kept me company and made me feel fuzzy on an evening where the light fell just right through the blinds. I haven't drawn stupid metaphors out of any personal sidequests. Hell, I haven't gone on any solo adventures down the side streets of Cairo in...yes. It really has been years.
What happened? Did I fall into a fucking wormhole? Was I abducted by aliens and had my sentience overridden by a hostile species and just recently experienced a brief sense of awakening because an antibody got there on time for once?
Where the hell have I been? And how do I get that little kid back?
Should I even try to get her back? Or should I try to figure out who I am, at this day and age, following a different path? I sound so different, and it hasn't been that long. It would be a real shame if I survived all the crap that life flung my way thus far only to break over this. That would be like Voldemort's unfortunate little incident with an Expelliarmus charm towards the end. There's no glory in that, just bad nose jobs. I will not have it. Gosh, golly, I like my nose!
I think I know what to do. It involves a blanket fort, some maps and a whole lot of fun readable material.
I just need to remember how I used to play.
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