12.04.2005

 

Several times in the last week, I have been struck by how quiet it is when it's snowing. I never really noticed this living in Hastings, and definitely never noticed it living in Pella...but it is so surreally evident now. I live in a big city with half a million other people, yet when it's snowing and I'm standing on my back porch watching it come down and ALWAYS striving to catch the perfect flake on my tongue, I hear NOTHING. No cars, no voices, no music, no sirens. And it's simultaneously peaceful, beautiful, and kinda sad somehow.

I've been getting all pensive lately about where I'm at now, who I am now, who I thought I would be now, what I value now, etc. It's so incredible that with all the (albeit seemingly insignificant in comparison with the plight of some others') yucky experiences I've been through since age 16 or so, I have so far come out relatively unscathed to the naked eye. I totally have scars and baggage aplenty, but I don't think I wear it on my sleeve very often, or in the company of very many people in my life, perhaps. In the interest of being authentic, I suppose I should, but it also seems pretty fruitless, and maybe even rude, to pile my shit on people who already have their own shit.

Along the same lines, I'm reading Prozac Nation (finally, rjb!), and it is bringing me back hardcore to my former melancholia...well, "former" is really relative, cuz I don't think I've yet to totally get rid of it. Anyways, what I'm wondering every time I pick up this book and see how the author's childhood contributed to her depression is how dissimilar my situation is/was, even though the feelings she describes are chillingly similar. Am I supposed to just "get over it" since I don't have the precipitating factors of divorce or childhood molestation in my history? Or does the lack of these obvious things mean I have to look deeper to find the reason behind my madness? Like really examine my adolescence and read into every occurrence like some of the counselors I've been to have urged me to? I can't help but think that by doing that, I have not FOUND the cause, but only managed to MAKE ONE UP.

The mind reels.

While they like to talk everything through, to analyze and hypothesize, what I really need, what I'm really looking for, is not something I can articulate. It's nonverbal: I need love. I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on. And I know it's around me somewhere, but I just can't feel it. --E. Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

2:28 PM

Comments:

Very old friend reading your blog who remembers your childhood.

Have you thought that maybe it was the stifling, homogeneous, isolating, and hateful atmosphere in Hastings that may have been a contributing factor? After all, exurban Hastings had this way of exacting a price of teenage death on a larger than normal number of its inhabitants. You can only go to Vermillion Falls so many times, skip so many rocks over Lake Rebecca, witness so many barges going through Lock & Dam #2, talk to so many people about what a shame it is that there is no Spiral Bridge anymore before your world collapses in on a black hole of limited possibilities and callous indifference.

# posted by  Anonymous : January 08, 2006 2:06 AM

 

Hmm...well, I guess I would have to say that, no, I hadn't considered blaming Hastings. What I can say, though, is that while I was obviously aware of the evils lurking in our small-town-that-just-got-its-first-f'ing-starbucks, most of my childhood was spent juggling my passion for school with my desire for my peers to get that it was possible to be simultaneously smart AND cool to hang with (experiences that could've potentially happened anywhere), so I didn't really get too far into the H-town drama until it affected me personally. Which was only a handful of times, I think.

And for the record, I don't think my possibilities are limited in the slightest. Nor am I indifferent...I'm just socially paralyzed and underconfident.

But amen to the excessive teenage death. And please, Anonymous Blogger, a clue as to your identity, at least!

# posted by  Karen : January 08, 2006 1:54 PM

 

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