Damaged Goods

Alright, I promised an update before the usual end-of-the-year rant recounting the major episodes. This might prove to be a little problematic because of the temptation to simply make this the end-of-the-year rant.

School's finally out, and with good cheer too, up to a point. My journey out here in the midwest is as harrowing as running along a metal cable strung across the Grand Canyon. I made some friends [maybe], hurt myself plenty of times both physically and psychologically, and at this point, am pretty much unsure how I am supposed to be feeling internally, and also how to proceed externally. Long time followers of this humble blog are also well aware of my usual end-of-year afflictions with regards to the passage of time. With so much mess to sort out, this post might end up taking a while.

I've always had a mild case of misanthropy. I don't really like people, a learned response that took ten years to create during the ages of six to sixteen when my atopic skin was at its maximal level of nonsense. I tell you, people can be harsh and uncaring, deliberately drawing unnecessary attention to deficiencies as a part of making themselves feel better. More than ten years since then, the same conclusion can be drawn---people still like drawing unnecessary attention to one's deficiencies, as though one were not fully aware of the situation. But something more had developed in between that dark formative period and now; I still haven't figured out what it is. Suffice to say, my interactions with other fellow humans have felt shallow of late, and sometimes, even mildly manipulative. I don't think that I have had an honest heart-to-heart conversation with anyone for the past two to three years, only dragging myself out to say something only because a problem needed solution and there was no where else to run nor anyone else to go to.

``Friends'' is such a strange word. In this time and age where everyone can communicate effortlessly with anyone across long distances, what truly makes up a friendship? Is it a group of people you ``hang out'' with, or a group of people who share a common goal, or is it some other yet talked about definition? I see people, but I'm having a hard time trying to acknowledge them, if such a term exists. I meet many new people each day, but how many can I truly call ``friend''? I'm probably just belly-aching here, but among the rants there might be some truth. I think that as I progress through my life past thirty and beyond, I will have to wrestle with this issue more and more as everyone's life diverges greatly. Heck, I don't even know what my life is like a couple of years from now, let alone predict where the people I used to share a period of my life with will be. The Internet might have brought some people closer, but to me, it did nothing in drawing me closer to anyone.

Hurt. That seems to be a big part of this leg of my journey through this pitiable caricature of a life. I don't even want to count the number of physical injuries that I had taken the last couple of years alone, but psychologically and emotionally, I think there has been lasting damage. I no longer have much self-confidence, am happy to hide away as much as I can even to the point of eschewing an outright indignant defense where needed, and can no longer think properly of things of great importance, distrusting my instinct and my own judgement. Kudos to the process of the PhD... nothing else in life can traumatise oneself so fully psychologically, save being on the front lines in a battlefield. I used to think of myself as an intellectual---now I'm happy if I am smarter than a field potato. I used to see myself as being different from the legions of people out there; now I realise I am just the same, if only a little more rebellious, and therefore in need of getting put down lest I become a danger to myself or to others.

I am damaged goods. I wonder what will become of me.

The end-of-year afflictions are beginning, but strangely enough, I feel more numbed than anything else. The mind seems empty of thought and emotion, and I pass each day in a trance-like state, never really able to think because of a massive sharp pain that occurs in the left hemisphere. Sometimes I wonder if that's because I hit my head one time too many, but it's hard to tell short of a full medical examination, which I don't really have just cause to get (damn thing is expensive and stigma-generating---better to live in ignorance than to have knowledge of the underlying problems). New year's is just another date on the calendar, and my ``birthday'' (technically the birth anniversary) is just drawing a blank in my mind in terms of what I'm going to do on it. Overall, a very muted affair compared to the past.

Well, that's all the update I care to give for now. Maybe next time I will have more to say.