The Odd and the Wonderful

The ball of yarn with ten threads

02 Jan 2011 Leave a Comment

by Silbena in Personal Tags: frustrations, ponderings, sleep deprivation, suspense

Note from after completing this post: Don’t take this post too seriously. At the moment, I’m happy, content, excited. I have my ups and downs, and always have. Unfortunately, the post seems more grave in its disjointedness, and that is simply because of the physical tiredness of not getting much sleep in two nights in a row, and some trouble with a constant sleeping rhythm before that. I apologise in advance for the impossibility of this post. :3

I’m quite sure that my absence from blogging can be understood and forgiven this time, especially since in the past week, I’ve started to write four different blog posts at four different times, and never gotten past the opening paragraph. Holidays have always been difficult for me, mostly because I haven’t had much activity and when I don’t have much activity, when I have to come up with things to do by myself, I always descend into lethargy and melancholia, which often drains my energy to the point where doing mentally challenging things like writing or reading (I’m reading Jack Kerouac’s On The Road at the moment, and boy is it difficult to keep track of, especially when tired), and the notion of leaving the house becomes nigh impossible. This summer was going to be better than others, mostly because I have grown tremendously as a person in this past year (more on that later), and I have become stronger and more able — but with my father’s illness, I had foreseen that this will be one of the most difficult summers of my life, instead.

Of course, I hope that this won’t be the case — I’ve got some things scheduled for next week, mostly going to the city to spend the money I’m earning from the job I now got back, since the cinema I worked at six months ago finished renovating. That’s another way I can tell I’ve matured: my work was distasteful to me before, because it was hard for me to take complaints or misplaced aggression from customers — mostly because I’m essentially very eager to please, and take criticism and other than sorts of comments very personally. My parents have always said that I’m three times as hard on myself as anyone else is, and this at least has been correct — but now, like I was saying, it is not nearly as bad. I have matured in understanding that someone else’s stress or anger or misplaced hatred toward pricing (amusingly common — why would they whinge about ticket prices at me, the person selling them to them? Do people really not understand that my position is very much casual, I’m just a cashier, and the prices are waaaay beyond my control?) is not my problem at all — and why feel upset over something I can’t influence? Anyway, like I was saying, I’ve got some things planned for next week, and on friday, my significant other and I, alongside my little sister and my parents (yes, even my father, to our delight) will be hopping on an airplane toward northern Australia.

Let’s just hope that it’ll have stopped raining by then — though I’m not very hopeful about that either.

As you might notice from the way I’m writing, though, I’ve still not quite recovered from the state of… distraction that the recent unfortunate events have caused. I’m not sure if my tiredness and lethargy and the way in which I find myself losing the thread of logic in a conversation, or failing to interpret someone’s intentions in a conversation (something that I’m usually very good at) are caused by my customary summer condition, or by my father’s illness and the psychological strain it has placed upon me and my family. It always seems like my problems come in flocks, and it is hard to separate cause and effect into a neat thread — instead, I’m left with this bundle of problems and no real way to solve it, except to cast it all aside (or solve it by using my scissors) and plough ahead.

But as always, it’s more than just a bundle of problems. I’m known to be controlled by the depth and unreliability (in the manner of moodswings) of my emotions; positive as well as negative. I’ve always viewed myself as in need of a definite balance — because I feel so deeply about everything, I don’t think it will ever be fully possible for me to just be mellow or content and peaceful with what I have. Instead, I strive for balance: great happiness and great sadness go hand in hand. I don’t fear sadness, nor have I ever shied from it; I cry willingly, and it’s an inexplicably good feeling whenever I do, very similar to the overwhelming joy of being, well, overwhelmingly joyful, to feel like your heart is bursting from the sheer enjoyment of life. I don’t feel bad for feeling sad, though sometimes even the smallest setbacks will feel like the end of the world to me, though they aren’t, and still are, at that moment (and how grateful I am for my significant other to understand all of this, and to be able to comfort me accordingly). The feeling I most fear and hate is exactly that lethargy, which takes away my energy to feel much, except for the consuming tiredness.

So I suppose that in this disjointed way, I’m trying to prove to myself that the fact that I cry on maybe five nights out of seven is not a bad thing at all; it might purge some of my lethargy from me, giving me hope to somehow sort out my head from the knots of feelings and thoughts and the directionlessness that always camps on the borders of my subconscious and conscious.

I repeat that I realise that it might be impossible to follow the train of thought in this post, and it’s mostly because I started writing it around four in the morning last night, or morning, when I was feeling thoughtful, and continued it now, in the following afternoon, when that blueness has disappeared and been replaced with an excited contentment. But more than that, this rambling is very much representative of the manner in which my thoughts and feelings and intuition and physical feelings, too, are in chaos — interconnected and confusing. I feel so much, and there are so many reasons I could feel that way for — the sheer amount of things that are happening and that I am feeling makes it very hard to make any order in my head at the moment, never mind my life. Maybe the solution to this would be to stop thinking about it so hard, and dispose of the symptoms before I can take care of the causes — because right now, the symptoms are preventing me of functioning as fully and smoothly as possible. I should stop thinking so rationally, stop trying to trace back all of these feelings and pains, and instead just allow myself to feel them; and then to deal with each of them as they come along.

Sure, the easiest way to solve a problem is to go way back to its cause, but at the moment, that is impossible. I’m a human ball of yarn, but instead of just having two ends, I have something around 20. It’s so hard, being young and clueless. And at the same time, I hope this uncertainty and discovery never ends… I’d just want a more physical, active discovery, instead of this self-centered mulling that I do. It’ll be all better when forces beyond mine begin to control my life once more.

That’s something I’ve always been good at… Incentive is not really my thing (though I can most definitely take the reigns to my own hands if needed, or if I feel like I can do a better job than whomever it is holding them at that moment), I’d much rather someone told me exactly what to do, so that I can then focus completely on doing it to the best of my ability.

Peace and thoughtfulness and the soft comforting beauty of sleep for everyone; let’s hope that next time I come back, I’ll be a bit more coherent and have happier things to talk about.