A couple weeks ago I went rooting through my old closet at my parents' house, looking for my photos (yes, printed photographs) from a trip to the Southwest which Mike, Reid, Brandon and I took in 2002. I was vaguely despondent when my search failed - and not for the first time - for I have lost so many such mementos of the past - especially from the period between 2000 and 2005. During those years I struggled with persistent depression and the associated medications. It was also during that time I learned, slowly, to reconcile my inner world to the outer world. Having effectively been an only child (my brothers are 12 and 14 years older than me), that process was not easy, because my inner world was, by that time, both well-developed, and completely detached from reality. I was fixated on notions I wished not only to understand, but to know completely - enormous, opaque notions like identity, meaning, and transcendence. Further, I was deluded into believing that the bridge between my inner and outer worlds - not so different, I might add, from the bridge between childhood into adulthood - existed in the form of a soul mate from the outer world, who would understand me, profoundly and completely, and pull me towards her, into that outer world. Worse, I spent much of that period believing I knew who that person was - someone I had already lost forever. I was thereby left to wander a world that was, in a sense, post-apocalyptic, though the wasteland into which I had been banished was internal, not external.
I had forgotten those notions, having inadvertently re-written my early 20's in my memory over time as a stage when I was universally depressed, living solely in my room, searching for answers. But something wonderful happened yesterday - I found a CD-R on which I had backed up a tremendous amount of material I had written and compiled (especially photos) during those years, including a daily journal running from 2001 to mid-2004. It confirmed for me that my narrative, if at all correct, was a reduction of something much more complex. That's what happens with the past, of course - but, it was wonderful to see so much fuller a picture, once again, and to be better reminded of what my life during that period was actually like.
So many things happened to me during that time, and I went through so many shorter, more subtle and nuanced phases. But, one thing was confirmed - I spent much of that time obsessed with the particular concepts I noted above - especially the notion of meaning, and the role that other people, and especially the elusive 'soul mate' had to play in the process. Yes, in three years' worth of journaling, I used that term many too many times.
Particular periods stand out. I spent the fall of 2003, especially, fixated on people - the people I knew, and who I wanted to know and how to find them - and in people, I found powerful reflections of myself which I had long failed to see. I think this time was a flickering candle in the darkness, when I began to bring the two parts of myself together.
That November, I moved into a house with my friends, soon after which a series of changes occurred in me - as if an inevitable result of that event. That spring, I completely stopped drinking, started exercising, committed to learning to play guitar, met many new people and made many new friends. That May, I started dating someone I would stay with for three years. In the context of the prior years - brief, low-quality relationships, like small islands within an ocean of solitude - it was interesting to read my journal entries because it was obvious that finding someone was not the random occurrence that I had always believed it to have been.
Of course, finding her in particular was a random occurrence, but the idea that I found someone was not random - it is clear that I merely had first to change myself and my habits to become a person that would find someone. The person I had been those prior years and the person I became that spring were both strongly predisposed to find exactly the sort of people I did during those respective periods of time. It is so obvious, reading the progression in the writing, and blessed now with the distance provided by time, which grants me some amount of objectivity, and clarity.
Before that spring, I was insular, withdrawn, and without motivation. And just to give one example of how my thinking was backwards, I had often thought of drinking as a social means to the end of finding someone - a way to be in the suspected right places at the suspected right times. I couldn't have been more wrong. It was when I stopped drinking that my interaction with girls - and especially the sort of girls that I would want to know - increased. The progression in the journal is clear as day. Not only was I talking to more people, but it was more meaningful - our interactions were not trite, superficial, or forgotten. Suddenly that February, the entries start to refer to hanging out with new people, sharing better experiences with new and old friends, and being told that particular people wanted to see me. And, although it could just be confabulation, I remembered most of the interactions and events referred to, and I slowly recalled feeling so much better about myself than I had - perhaps ever - even acknowledging that fact to myself.
It is remarkable how many of those people I had either forgotten, or forgotten that the particular events of that period of time occurred with. It is a sobering reminder for me, because for a long time I was obsessed with the idea that I would not, could not forget people and the times we had shared - I believed that remembering was one of the most important functions of friendship, because I believed that a great deal of the profundity of life lay in relationships and that memories were the base currency of life itself. (this final point is tricky, because in a certain sort of way, I think this same "base currency" is still implicit underneath many of my thoughts and decisions, though I no longer think of or acknowledge it explicitly in my thoughts)
Oh, and there's more good news: among the pictures on the CD-R were some scanned photos of the trip I was searching for - much better than nothing, at least! With all the photos I found - both from this trip and other occasions - I plan to create a new Facebook Album: "Look How Skinny We Used To Be"
No comments:
Post a Comment