chriskronen

You ever feel like you're withering away? Have you come to realize that you may be nothing more than a decaying, biological mass of flesh. A slave to impulse, emotion, and every illogical thought that find its way through that thing you call a brain? If so, you just might be me! Or everyone else! I'm almost 33 years old, I've been in the cold embrace of depression for what feels like a decade, I'll be surprise if I make it to 40. What do I have to look forward to? I never became a successful artist or writer, despite creating digital art and photography for at least a decade, I even wrote a novel, albeit, probably a shitty one. Younger me would be so disappointed. I was so full of life, of hope, and yet so naive. I leave you with a journal entry from days past, of the years I have wasted, and yet never came close to reaching such heights: 

My intelligence is diminished, dwarfed, by the oppressive anxiety. The relentless, incessant depression that eats away at my mind, my sanity, blinding me, distracting me from reality. From logic, from a semblance of clarity.

It’s not enough to be alive, just breathing, inhaling and exhaling. You have to live, have to thrive! What if you don’t know how to, what if you can’t live with yourself, with the thoughts in your own head? What if you feel like you’re not in control, that your mind betrays you, sabotages every chance to be happy. That creeping, self-destructive monster climbs to the surface, shows its grotesque face.

What if it’s your own face you can’t stand, when you look in the mirror all you see is defeat and failure? An ugly, empty shell of what should be a person. A person filled with passion, a vibrant, healthy person, that was once there, but is now fading before your eyes?

So you lock yourself away like some abomination, hide away in your tower, for fear, for fear of everything… For fear of showing your true face. Your hideous, empty, ugliness to someone, and they’re repulsed, or even terrified of what you are, or worse yet, what you’re not.

So, how do you fix you? How do you first learn how to just be okay with yourself? Before you conquer this almost elusive thing called happiness? How long can you hide that emptiness inside you, before others start to see there’s a piece of you missing?

I cleaned my closet out today. There’s a reason they use it as a metaphor. The last time I had cleaned my closet was at least several years ago. For me it was like walking into an ancient time capsule. An array of junk, clothes, electronics, books, sketchpads, photo albums. It was a bit overwhelming, “where to start?” I asked myself. So I just started with the closest container, an old Tupperware container to be exact. It had seen it’s share of moves, which was evident by the various words written on it with black marker. “Food refrig.” “Ed’s shoes.” “Grandma.” That last one hit me, my grandmother passed away recently. For a time, several years ago, she lived with us. “It’s just a container.” I had told myself, but nostalgia’s a funny thing.

    So I went through the container, it held old socks, some dvd’s, iPod charging cables, magazines that I had forgotten about. So I dumped it all out in the hallway, and made various piles for each item. Then I did the same with the next container. This time it was all clothes, they smelled stale. Clothes I hadn’t fit into in many years. Some of them I put in a pile, told myself that one day I could fit into them. The others were much older, probably from when I was still a teenager, I put those in a pile for goodwill or a thrift shop. I had even found my old uniform from my time in the Air force, and for a moment I ruminated on those times. I was neither happy, nor sad. I felt indifferent, as if those times, those memories and moments had happened to someone else. So I folded it all and placed the container and the clothes in the hallway.

    Then I moved on to the next box, a box that looked disheveled, and torn here and there. I opened it up and found an old journal from when I was a teenager. Reading it now after so many years, it felt like reading a strangers diary. I do remember the young summer love, and the raging hormones. Nostalgia is dangerous, it’s like a drug, and if you linger to long on those old memories it feels like you might never leave. So I placed it aside, not sure why. “Why not just throw it away?” I had thought, but a little voice in my head told me to keep it, that it was special, maybe even a part of me. The logical part of my brain just thought they were just a few pieces of paper, with words scrolled upon them, nothing more.

    Then I found an old photo album, probably the only one I own. It was pictures of me and my first girlfriend, my high school sweetheart. For awhile I got lost in the memories, pictures of myself younger, happier, more attractive. My mind wandered on the infinite possibilities that could have been, and all the things that did, and didn’t happen. There it was, nostalgia, worming it’s way into my brain. We are nostalgic creatures though aren’t we? Why else do we keep photo albums, trophies, souvenirs, report cards.

    The more containers I found, the more pieces of my life I uncovered, but it was all just stuff, old junk, wasn’t it? It started to feel like a metaphor for life perhaps, chucking out the bad and the old, looking to the future, and the items that still might hold use, that were still relevant. Yet another pile for the ancient, the obsolete, the bad memories, and the bad decisions. Just throw them out, start again. Of course you can do that with your old junk, with tangible objects, but those pesky memories are still there, seared into your mind. Nostalgia can turn dark, the sentimentality can pull at your hearts strings, make you long for better days. No doubt I must of romanticized some of the past, I don’t remember being that happy as a hormonal teenager, or a young adult in my twenties. Yet, still I find myself wondering, should I have figured life out by now? So many other people have moved on to greater things, they have great careers, houses, families, companions, love.

    Here I was, still in the same tiny studio apartment after six years, cleaning out my closet piled high with junk from times gone by. It was like watching my life in unfold in reverse, and I’m not sure I’m happy where it ended up. Yet, apart of me is optimistic, we can change. We can take things we don’t like, or don’t need in our life and throw them into piles, then move on to things that matter. We can make our lives cleaner, tidier, more wholesome than they were before. Although the memories will remain, I guess maybe I could sort those into a closet as well, somewhere in the corner of mind. Then I can move on, tried to look ahead, tried to figure out where it is I want to be.