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ON ADDICTIONS, ILLUSIONS AND GETTING OVER MYSELF
Published at www.halfproject.com July, 2002
“…What tangled webs we weave…” - Lord Byron
I usually do my work (school or otherwise) early in the morning, while most people are asleep (I didn’t say all because I could name a few people who share the same creative working time zone with me). Aside from the fact that the dark has a way of squeezing my creative juices out of me and tapping into the deepest niches of my mind, part of why I love working while the sun is out is because I get to have such awesome breaks in between, specially when I feel like I’m getting stuck. When I start feeling like I need to take a breather, I climb up to the roof of our house and lie on my back, light a cigarette and just stare at the night sky. After spending half the total of my working time up on the roof, taking all those breaks, I’ve come to learn that the darkest, blackest skies are the most beautiful ones when the stars twinkle the brightest. As I take a drag from my cigarette, I’m reminded once again of the reason why I let myself dwell on my depression – because finding the beauty in it could be compared to a gorgeous night sky.
It’s a very unhealthy addiction, I know. Recently, my dwelling on it has already actually gone to the point of nearly driving me mad, but I have to admit, part of why I keep dwelling on it is because I let myself. Because despite the pain, and the hurt, and the suffering, and the agony that I know I put myself through, I love the highs and lows of being in the middle of an emotional roller coaster ride. Maybe I’d get off it someday, but that’s a long time from now.
- first draft of this piece, as I considered writing something about my addiction to my depression
Ever notice how complicated things can get? And what’s so frustrating about it is the very fact that it could have been avoided. But why bother avoiding it, you ask yourself, when in events faced with the option to make a decision whether to choose simplicity over complexity or vice versa, more often than not, we choose the latter?
One word: DRAMA.
Complications, conflict, confusion, controversy, chaos and a lot of other c words seem to convey that tempting hint of excitement that we all yearn for to spice up our, what we usually think, are boring lives. When it gets right down to making a choice, at the back of our heads, we ask ourselves, why bother avoiding all the drama? Choose simplicity over complexity and lose my chances of living a life filled with excitement? No, thank you.
Allow me present the usual pattern: you notice a teensy-weensy issue at its fetal stage and before you know it, controversy is created at the slightest hint of conflict. Now throw in a pinch of negativity, a dash of sarcasm, an ounce of complication, and dump in a bunch of different emotions – make sure they are experienced at the extremes – and voila! You’ve got yourself drama with a capital D.
Are the seemingly unattractive descriptions making you cringe? Think again. Drama is both an aura and an attitude, quite attractive when carried well, even capable of drawing people to it…to you. It’s an addiction that’s very hard to walk away from because the thrill factor of experiencing the emotional highs and lows of being strapped in the middle an emotional roller coaster ride is none like you’d experience. It’s a fashion statement – a hot accessory, to be exact – that never goes out of style (no, teenage angst did not die with Kurt Cobain). And it’s something that we all are capable of having. And if we don’t have it, we manage to create one in no time at all, because admittedly, we need it to assure ourselves that we are alive and breathing, drama and conflict and intrigue being that which makes us feel. Or so we think.
Take with work (school or otherwise) for instance. There’s never ‘just enough’ of it – there’s either too much work to be done or none at all, and both are sources of drama! When I’m loaded with too much work, it’s “I don’t have a life anymore!” And when there’s nothing to be done, it’s “I’m bored to death” all over again. Sounds stupid, I know but, oh, the feeling of complaining about something! It almost makes you feel like you’re someone really interesting, because nothing is ever enough for you – like your contentment gauge can never be met by earthly standards. It never really matters whether it’s something as superficial as how I look physically (Omigod! There’s a zit on my forehead! I look so dorky with my glasses on! Are the black circles under my eyes noticeable? This outfit makes me look fat!), or something as trivial as deciding how to act around an ex-boyfriend – who just broke up with me a month ago – and his present girl-toy (Do I give a fake smile and play nice or do I ignore them completely?), or something as considerable as the growing generation gap between my parents and I (My mom doesn’t understand that life begins at 10:00 p.m. on Fridays and Saturday nights!) Bottom line is, such matters could be handled in such simple – not to mention civilized – fashion, but it’s hardly ever done that way. Everything always has to end up turning into such a big, fat, negative deal (the zit, the ex-boyfriends, the generation gap, etc.) just so my life would be more interesting, just so I would be more interesting. Or so I thought.
Whining about something as stupid as a bad hair day made me feel like I had more personality. Fussing about how clothes in my closet aren’t arranged according to color made me feel like I was the woman of the house. Calling up friends and complaining to then about something as annoying as an insensitive boyfriend not calling when I was sick on the account of being out with his friends (guys could be such jerks, I swear!) made me feel like the world revolved around me. Panicking about something as disastrous as the potential of not being able to meet my thesis deadline made me feel like I was doing something that would benefit the whole of mankind and change the world.
Ah, to dwell on the negative – don’t we all love it at some point. You know how it works – it’s never good enough, there’s always something wrong somewhere, the grass is always greener at the other side of the fence, as the cliché goes (or everyone else’s, for that matter except your own). The thing with drama is that it creates this illusion that ruminating on discontentment, depression, desolation, despair, destructive mode and a whole lot of other d words make you more alive – almost as if you’re more real when there’s conflict in your life as it seemingly adds more depth to you personality and gives you more character. For instance, when I’m depressed, I really play it up by using my melancholy to “be sad but be beautiful.” And what about that endless chase after finding the true meaning of life? That age-old idea that somewhat goes that in order to achieve finding life’s true meaning, you first had to suffer. Okay, granted, there’s some truth in that. Of course, that is until we force ourselves to suffer as we relish in our own mind-made miserable dramas in order to get to that point. But you do have to admit that more to that, drama in one’s life also has its perks – it gives you the license to drag your friends to wherever you want to go as soon as the sun sets, no matter what day it is (to either clear your head or whine abut whatever’s eating you), the right to smoke a pack of cigarettes (or more) a night and the excuse to stumble into your house, drunk, just at the break of dawn. Hell, you’re fucked up, anyway! Go ahead, waste away and self-destruct – it’s the only way to go! Right? Wrong. Because once this happens, the tables have turned – no longer are you in control of your own life, rather, all the little dramas that you have so craftily created has gained power over you. And this makes you less alive than you are.
When I was brooding on my own dramas, I felt that I was a woman of substance. Substance abuse, that’s what – I ended up drowning more caffeine and inhaling more nicotine than my nervous system could handle. The work that I either had too much or too little of? I let it all slide, until I realized that the books and papers I had to go through was piling into a mound that was starting to resemble that of a garbage dump, right beside my desk. I could no longer distinguish a bad hair day from a good one. It didn’t matter any longer whether my clothes were arranged according to color because they ended up strewn all over the room (on the bed, hung at the back of a chair, even inside my desk drawers!), clean and dirty ones mixing together (ick!). My then-boyfriend and I went our separate ways to adhere to our own calling (him in pursuit of fame and fortune, me in pursuit of contentment…and a guy who deserves me). I didn’t touch my thesis for a whole two months, which put me way behind schedule, giving me a real reason to panic this time.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
As it turns out, sooner or later, the drama that you yourself contributed to creating catches up with you, and before you know it, you’re digging yourself a grave deeper than you could ever climb out from. It doesn’t make you more of a person, it doesn’t add to your character and it most certainly doesn’t make you more alive. Truth be told, when I was stuck in my own making-my-life-more-interesting-by-making-everything-complicated phase, I felt more dead than alive. Not to mention neurotic. And chasing after the idea of finding out life’s meaning? Screw that thought, I’d say. And screw life. Finally, when I knew I was on the brink of going completely over the edge, I tuned out and cut myself loose from all sources of my ingredients for drama – I spent some alone time with myself. And it was over this period that I was able to liberate myself from the ideas that with drama in my life, I would be more of a person and that I would discover the real meaning of life by dwelling in it. I quit wearing it as a fashion statement and finally got over my addiction for conflict and intrigue. Most of all, I got over myself.
It was then that I realized that it wasn’t drama that could make me feel alive – it was passion – the passion for doing the things I love, the passion I had for the arts and music and theatre and reading and writing, the passion for reaching out to others and making them happy. Simply put, the passion for living life to the fullest. And it was this passion that made me see, hear, smell, touch, taste and feel the beauty in everything. In turn, I started to realize that there is so much in my life to be grateful for – what the hell was I creating all those little problems for? What the hell was I complaining about? Life has too much good things to offer – why bother dwelling on all the negative aspects of it? I was too busy looking and poking at all the imperfections there is in my life that I failed to see the beauty in everything. I’m glad that I did, because if anything, it was this that made me feel more alive than ever. And this time, it was no illusion.
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copyright valerie v. mayuga 2005 |