Tougher Than It Is
Or : On Being An Upper Middle Class White Brat
It's really been hitting me these last few days; it's something I started realizing this Summer, and I'm finally coming to understand it completely.
My life is perfect. My life has always been perfect. My life looks as though it will remain perfect, unless I take special measures to make it less perfect. Some part of me has known this for years, but now that I'm finally stepping out the phase of my life where I feel angst for angst's sake, I can see it for what it truly is.
Don't get offended or put off, please; I'm not writing this to gloat. In all likelihood, your life is just as perfect as mine. I haven't done the proper demographic research, but most of the people who read my blog have, at some point in time, attended a private school. My understanding is that, typically, my readers are white, a fact which neither comforts nor perturbs me; people will read what they want to read, and they will read what they can identify with--if the manic-depressive ravings of a well-endowed (and moderately-endowed) college kid doesn't draw a line around the block, you won't find me surprised.
But why is it that I realize this now? Well, I've been living inside my head for a certain number of years (that certain number is beyond my determination, based on questions of when true consciousness begins, as well as the relative speeds of consciousness; I believe that I think at least three times as fast as I can express those thoughts) and, throughout those years, I've focused more and more on a sense of emptiness. We've called it emptiness, we've called it the void, and I suppose it's tangentially connected to that thing we've called restlessness; no matter what you call it, it's what keeps me depressed.
When I have a real problem, I'm fairly quick to diagnose it (never without help, and the list of those who help me is too long to list here) and start working on fixing it. However, the characteristic element of this emptiness is that I don't know what causes it. For years, the single-most disturbing feature of my depression is that I can find no reason behind it. I see, now, that the answer was right under my nose.
It's not that I've got no reason to be depressed. It's that I'm depressed by nothing. Nothing depresses me. Nothingness, specifically the nothingness that characterizes my life and my struggles, depresses me.
It depresses me to know that I could stop working for the rest of this semester, or even drop out of college, and I'd still be pretty much okay. I could keep living, eating, eventually get a shitty job somewhere. There's a lot of filial funding dangling above me and, simultaneously, below me as a safety net. As far as I can tell, I'm living the best possible life for myself right now, but I could fall apart a hundred and one times before it even became a real problem.
When I say a real problem, I don't mean "My parents get mad at me, stop thinking of me as responsible." I also don't mean "My parents get fed up with me, and decide to stop financing my laziness and existential angst."
The closest I will ever come to a real problem goes something like this : I've dropped out of college, destroyed my parents faith in me by being a worthless layabout, got kicked out of the house, had to move into some second-rate (not third-rate. The parents would never allow it) apartment, wasted all my money on booze and drugs and couldn't make rent. That sort of trouble would require tremendous effort on my part, and I've been raised well enough to avoid even the top steps of that spiral.
Even that which I just described doesn't even border on the sort of hardship that millions of people go through on a regular basis. That depresses me. It makes me feel like less of a human being. Symbolically speaking, getting braces was like having the silver spoon I was born with welded onto my teeth. My position in American society, and even my position in the world, is inescapable.
So what do I do about it? On the simplest, least effective level, I get depressed; both because my life is trite and simple, but also in an attempt to make it less so. On a less subconscious level, I do things to make my life a little tougher than it would be normally. I'll stay up far later than necessary, sometimes just so I can struggle through the next day as a diligent worker might. I work for hours, hammering boards and securing fiberglass roofing materials with my bare hands, then wake up early and drive 8 hours to St. Louis, just because it makes me feel like more of a veteran to have done it the hard way.
If I were ever captured (by who? Who knows? Maybe you) and they threatened to torture me unless I told them what they wanted to know, I'm pretty sure I'd pick the torture, for at least a few minutes. I do not know agony, and so I sometimes neglect to avoid it. I'm not a masochist; I don't cause myself harm or hardship without a separate end in mind.
This is not a closed issue for me. This seems like it will be the defining struggle of my adolescence, if not my entire life. I would love to hear what my readers (that's not a typo, Carl) think about this.
-Alan
It's really been hitting me these last few days; it's something I started realizing this Summer, and I'm finally coming to understand it completely.
My life is perfect. My life has always been perfect. My life looks as though it will remain perfect, unless I take special measures to make it less perfect. Some part of me has known this for years, but now that I'm finally stepping out the phase of my life where I feel angst for angst's sake, I can see it for what it truly is.
Don't get offended or put off, please; I'm not writing this to gloat. In all likelihood, your life is just as perfect as mine. I haven't done the proper demographic research, but most of the people who read my blog have, at some point in time, attended a private school. My understanding is that, typically, my readers are white, a fact which neither comforts nor perturbs me; people will read what they want to read, and they will read what they can identify with--if the manic-depressive ravings of a well-endowed (and moderately-endowed) college kid doesn't draw a line around the block, you won't find me surprised.
But why is it that I realize this now? Well, I've been living inside my head for a certain number of years (that certain number is beyond my determination, based on questions of when true consciousness begins, as well as the relative speeds of consciousness; I believe that I think at least three times as fast as I can express those thoughts) and, throughout those years, I've focused more and more on a sense of emptiness. We've called it emptiness, we've called it the void, and I suppose it's tangentially connected to that thing we've called restlessness; no matter what you call it, it's what keeps me depressed.
When I have a real problem, I'm fairly quick to diagnose it (never without help, and the list of those who help me is too long to list here) and start working on fixing it. However, the characteristic element of this emptiness is that I don't know what causes it. For years, the single-most disturbing feature of my depression is that I can find no reason behind it. I see, now, that the answer was right under my nose.
It's not that I've got no reason to be depressed. It's that I'm depressed by nothing. Nothing depresses me. Nothingness, specifically the nothingness that characterizes my life and my struggles, depresses me.
It depresses me to know that I could stop working for the rest of this semester, or even drop out of college, and I'd still be pretty much okay. I could keep living, eating, eventually get a shitty job somewhere. There's a lot of filial funding dangling above me and, simultaneously, below me as a safety net. As far as I can tell, I'm living the best possible life for myself right now, but I could fall apart a hundred and one times before it even became a real problem.
When I say a real problem, I don't mean "My parents get mad at me, stop thinking of me as responsible." I also don't mean "My parents get fed up with me, and decide to stop financing my laziness and existential angst."
The closest I will ever come to a real problem goes something like this : I've dropped out of college, destroyed my parents faith in me by being a worthless layabout, got kicked out of the house, had to move into some second-rate (not third-rate. The parents would never allow it) apartment, wasted all my money on booze and drugs and couldn't make rent. That sort of trouble would require tremendous effort on my part, and I've been raised well enough to avoid even the top steps of that spiral.
Even that which I just described doesn't even border on the sort of hardship that millions of people go through on a regular basis. That depresses me. It makes me feel like less of a human being. Symbolically speaking, getting braces was like having the silver spoon I was born with welded onto my teeth. My position in American society, and even my position in the world, is inescapable.
So what do I do about it? On the simplest, least effective level, I get depressed; both because my life is trite and simple, but also in an attempt to make it less so. On a less subconscious level, I do things to make my life a little tougher than it would be normally. I'll stay up far later than necessary, sometimes just so I can struggle through the next day as a diligent worker might. I work for hours, hammering boards and securing fiberglass roofing materials with my bare hands, then wake up early and drive 8 hours to St. Louis, just because it makes me feel like more of a veteran to have done it the hard way.
If I were ever captured (by who? Who knows? Maybe you) and they threatened to torture me unless I told them what they wanted to know, I'm pretty sure I'd pick the torture, for at least a few minutes. I do not know agony, and so I sometimes neglect to avoid it. I'm not a masochist; I don't cause myself harm or hardship without a separate end in mind.
This is not a closed issue for me. This seems like it will be the defining struggle of my adolescence, if not my entire life. I would love to hear what my readers (that's not a typo, Carl) think about this.
-Alan
posted by Alan Orlanski at 4:00 PM
1 Comments:
Hm... so I've been going through some of your older posts, obviously.
And I must say, this one rather depresses me.
I don't really know what else to say about that... huh... Interesting perspective, tho, if nothing else.
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