Healing Together, Walking Together

[Ed. note: After I wrote the essay Falling Down, I authored the update below. Please read Falling Down first, if you have time. Thanks!:]

While my wound is healing, it still hurts when I walk or put pressure on my left leg. I did see a doctor, even though it cost me a $25 copay, and I had to pay $15 for the supplies to treat my wounds. That's okay - I know that I have to stay in good health, and can't get an infection.

Speaking of old wounds, I have been feeling some anxiety about my social situation lately, although I suspect my fears are overblown. It's just difficult for me to avoid my apprehensions even when I have good reasons to suspect they're ill-advised.

I can recognize that many of my friends and the groups where I associate are trending in different directions than I am. Once again, tonight I am going on a date instead of spending time at an outing with some of my closest friends. Almost every time, I feel stupid afterward for missing good times with my friends in exchange for an at-best-mediocre date.

So why do I keep making this trade? There are a few reasons: I do feel lonely sometimes, and I very much want a relationship. Also, while I know my friends are close to me now and I cherish them, I feel vulnerable relying so much on the same people for so long. I want to expand the circle of people I know, especially people that I can keep close to me.

Sometimes I worry that my interactions with my friends and people I meet are two one-sided, too focused on myself and my needs. I want to be a better listener, a more generous and more supportive person. I feel inadequate in that effort in part because I realize that I'm not inclined to take initiative. I'm not always a demonstrative person, and I don't tend to go out of my way to connect with people. I have an inkling that I may want to change this feature, but I'm not sold yet, let alone wise enough to decide how to change.

I just feel like I don't know enough about myself, or about other people yet. This sense of ignorance feeds my insecurities, too...and already, we've returned to a focus on *my* issues - when I'm trying to think about others.

Cutting myself some slack, though, part of the reason I have focused more on my own reactions than those of other people, lies in good intentions. There have been times in the past when I've tried to connect with people in counter-productive ways and seen my outreach backfire badly. That is a major influence on my current instincts of deferring to other people or focusing primarily on my own perspective.

Focusing on myself has long felt like the safer and more courteous option. I am tortured by worst-case scenarios; I can't escape the fears I have of repeating the debilitating mistakes I have made in the past.

As Neil DeGrasse Tyson says, every day you can ask yourself two things to become a better person: 1) what have I learned today? 2) what have I done to help other people? Considered through this prism, I feel positively overall about the strides I have made to be a better person towards my fellow human beings.

I want to focus on the positive lessons I have learned, not on the dread or shame of past mistakes. I want to have the comfort level to take risks, and the discretion to take smart risks. That goes back to why I am going on a date tonight instead of spending all my time with the friends I already have: I know I could take the safer option, but how is my life going to improve if I always fall back on what feels safe?

Sometimes, I fall. Sometimes, I fall because I've done something rather stupid. I have wounds that have healed, and wounds that are still mending. Sometimes, old pains flare again, and it takes all my strength just to walk on my own. Yet - sometimes - putting one foot in front of the other makes me feel more powerful, wiser, and bolder with each towering step.

Watching those who are attempting the same journey, I wonder how I can do my best to help others. What does that promise mean? How do I fulfill this commitment? I have no idea. But first I'm going to get up, and I won't be going alone.

Life Precedes Words

[Ed. note: I actually composed the following essay before I wrote Better Living Through References, even though I published the latter essay first on this blog. I intended the essay below to serve as my reintroduction to this blog, this time:]

I have allowed some time to elapse since the last time I updated this blog. That is true for a variety of reasons. In the past few months, I have started a paid internship which has become a temporary job. I am cautiously optimistic.

I am hoping to secure something more permanent while I continue my current work. I am heartened to have something steady while I keep searching, but anxious for the low margin of error I still have. I have faith in the skills that have gotten me to this more positive place, but still feel trepidation for the uncertainty ahead, just as I often have in the last few years.

I've also spent some much needed time relaxing with my friends. In between worrying about my work, whether I can pay my bills, or how I'm going to coordinate my living situation, staying in touch with my closest friends has been more invaluable than ever.

While I have wanted to expand my social circle, by and large, I'm spending time with the same people that I knew when I left college. Another side project, my writing, has been largely hit-or-miss. I've faced prolonged dry spells and feelings of inadequacy, laced with some intriguing experiments and inspirations. I do feel that I have progressed as a person, especially as a young adult seeking to be more independent and responsible. That quest continues to be my main objective.

I have been discussing my interest in the disability community with people from several organizations. My work in health and aging advocacy provides a natural segue to the disability world. I devoured the book "No Pity" by Joseph Shapiro, which chronicles the development of the disability rights movement and describes the challenges that people with disabilities face and overcome.

In parallel to this exploration, I have spent more time reflecting upon my identity as a person with a disability. I have not reached the end of my deliberation, nor do I expect to reach an end - everything I consider is a reaction to the evolving situations in my life, and I relish the opportunity to grow as a person and immerse myself in new experiences (and as clichéd and stilted as that sounds, I believe that attitude and embrace it fully).

So, I am trying to manage all of these different ambitions and necessities before I feel composed enough to express myself coherently on other topics - before I have time, or before I have inclination. I realize this is all elaborate excuse-making, but I also have a cynical faith that the best inventions of human reason tend to be rationalizations. In a last-ditch effort to be somewhat genuine, I am sharing my rationalizations here.

I hope to write more often in the near future. I hope to update this space with something to pique interest. Whether that hope materializes, I cannot predict. I have often hoped on one hand, and schemed to act differently on the other hand. If I have any shot at delivering on these promises, I must scheme to reverse myself again, and return to my original intentions - which change too rapidly to measure.

Yes, those who know me and follow my vain attempts at writing have learned that uncertainty is my crucible and my companion...the catalyst that overwhelms my reluctance, feeds my devotion, and yet, undermines my ability to articulate anything close to the thrill and fervent terror my mind evokes.

My entire life is a somersault: when I dare to reach new heights, spinning in the air to keep my balance, I am stretched so far that I am unable to bring my thoughts to the surface. It is in that brief moment afterwards, when I am standing on solid ground but still remember the sensations of leaping, that I can properly share a true vision of movement.

Okay, that's the round-up of what I haven't been doing, and what I don't know. Eventually, I'll return to tell you about another time when I haven't done something else...

Existential Sonatas in Pacific Time

I almost forgot to write a blog post for today - then I realized that even though it is technically early Saturday morning...for me...that my blog publishes my date-line according to Pacific time. So it will appear that I did write an entry for Friday! Muahaha! Of course, that I'm telling you about this insight does undercut my point, but I'm still happy to attain the technical accomplishment of keeping my promise alive for one more day.

I've been paying more attention to my experiences of time since I started my most recent internship. I've had days where I feel that I just arrived for the office opening at 9 am ten minutes ago -- when it's already past 6 pm. Some parts of my day feel especially fast or slow.

Lunch, overall, moves very quickly but each moment passes meaningfully. I am aware that I am running out of time - I know if I'm outside the office longer than I want to be - I can feel the moments expiring as they happen, individually and in sequence. But then what feels like ten minutes, when I look at my phone, was actually half an hour.

After work today, I met several of my close friends. One of these friends is a physics major. He told me that he gets aggravated by his quantum physics class which starts at 8:55 am. Or, as I told him, "you get mad about your 8:55 am quantum physics class that starts at 3 pm?"

I feel no fear when I'm with my closest friends. I say absolutely preposterous things. I utter words that would be reckless for me to say anywhere else. I am greatly fortunate to have such wonderful friends in my life. I've felt awkward and apprehensive around other people so often before now, that making and keeping friends has eluded me for some longer stretches of my life than I care to admit. (For instance, pretty much my entire freshman year of college.)

I have zero shame when I am with my friends. Even when I do something that I legitimately regret, I am able to move on and not hold onto the guilt as I would in other circumstances. My friends tolerate my quirks and don't judge me negatively.

It is now so late that I don't feel like writing any more words. I heavily resist the impulse to write further, yet I still feel incomplete. Tonight, I am thankful for my friends, my internship, my family, my senses, my learning, my home, and my creativity. I am thankful for time and change and entropy. I'm thankful that when I got really hot water from the cooler at work, that eventually it was only lukewarm so I could drink it before I left.

Everything ends, even days that you measure in Pacific time. But the most important thing is to make the most of the time you have, and that's what I'm trying to do. I am, again, exceedingly appreciative of the time I have, and to those who are sharing that time with me as we all journey into the unknown future.

Emptiness

My mother once told me that she sees the world much like I do, only that she can't imagine that there isn't "something out there".

A friend of mine told me yesterday that his life lately has been reverberating between depression caused by loneliness and a feeling of emptiness. During a conversation with the same friend, we agreed that individuals are often the product of their friends and their experiences. The interactions I have with my friends form a critical part of my personality, my values, and my character.

If I am without friends, then I am without scaffolding.

A former professor once gave my class an analogy: Alexander Calder was a famous sculptor, known for his mobiles. In a mobile, one object hangs at the top. A number of other options are attached one-by-one in a succession of linkages. The analogy to philosophy is that the object at the top in a mobile is the like the first premise of an argument or the first assumption in an ideology. Each premise or assumption in a philosophical idea is connected to its original ancestor, and a student of philosophy can't properly understand an idea without understanding its structure.

Perhaps one common thread from these experiences is the idea that society is a structure of people, and each individual person is somewhat responsible for developing his or her own structure of important people in their lives. So, a tempting question to ask is, what kind of structures is our society building?

In some ways, people are detached from each other more than ever. There are more alternatives for choosing parts of an identity or community, but the options available tend to be more superficial and less meaningful in terms of in-person relationships.

What does it mean to have a structure in life anymore? What does it mean to have a community? Besides my parents, I have little extended family that I can call very close. Even some of my close friendships seem to have a tenuous footing, and I have no other relationships. I live in a large city, surrounded by strangers. I have some powerful but alien-feeling tools at my disposal, but I'm not sure how I can bridge the gap.

The Internet is a great blessing to me. I can research different interests and try to find individuals or groups of people who enjoy some of the things that make me happy. Yet, many things I enjoy tend to be individual pursuits which are not readily experienced as a community. (Here, I note that the types of things that bring me pleasure are also expressions of the structures of my society.)

There is "something" out there, even if that something doesn't exist in the way my mother intended. There's a whole horde of people similar to my temperament and interests who could enjoy my company, but I will never meet most of them. I have given up belief in fate, but probability is a stranger master. It is humbling but perhaps self-indulgent to think this way.

When I was talking to my friend the other day who was complaining of loneliness and depression, he sought advice on how to develop a deeper friendship once he meets people. For that, I cannot help much. All I could tell him was that his chance of meeting people increased if he did things he loved. So that is what I will do. I will continue doing the things I love, and at least find a way to be happy through that.

So often, I think about my limitations and the limitations of my life, what I don't have, what I want to do yet haven't done. I need to staunch this overly negative apprehension before it dissolves my patience. I have some amazing blessings in my life (if someone like me can use a word like blessings, and I don't see why not), and I have a lot to give and create.

I am not yet empty, though I am emptying and filling again. Whether I seek nature, writing, or laughter -- the cycle of isolation followed by joy is my constant guide. Life, like the telling of a joke, doesn't contain its satisfaction in the punchline, but spreads its infectious ironies through every set up and every staggering contradiction. Emptiness can be its own scaffolding.

Up All Night: Honesty

I love my friends. Joking and trading stories with my friends makes everything I do meaningful. I would choose not to live if I had to live alone. I've never realized how badly I needed other people in my life until I moved to a new place and had to establish an entire life for myself! The course is mine...time to play. Friends are one of things I have now that I haven't always had. I've been extremely diligent in my pursuit of learning social etiquette. However much I've embarrassed myself while travelling this path, I'm glad that I'm on it.

***

Earlier today, I swam with a few of my friends. I'm not an accomplished swimmer. Mostly I enjoy stretching, floating, and kicking my arms and legs around in a wayward and uncoordinated fashion. When I was very young, I had just moved into a new house with my parents. We had an above-ground pool. I was playing in it with some other kids my age, and my parents made me leave suddenly. They told me that I had to leave because some people were working on our deck, but all the other kids were still there. I found out that I had to leave because we were all going to eat. That's when I discovered the concept of the "white lie".

"White lies" are like breathing to me. So many people around me do it, and now I catch myself telling them so often, that I'm no longer sure if honesty in itself is a virtue. There are so many other priorities that I've observed people to place over honesty: comfort, personal safety, simplicity, time-saving, peace, politeness, discretion, flattery...there are so many reasons not to be honest that I can't even list most of them.

I still prefer friends who are too honest over friends who are too polite. I'll take honesty over politeness any day of the week. When I hear negativity or criticism, it's easy for me to have hurt feelings. It's easy because I tend to take criticism personally. That's the problem: what if people didn't take the observations of other people personally? Every human being is equally fallible, makes mistakes, screws up, is ignorant about most things...there's no shame in being wrong. There's only shame in refusing to make things right.

I prefer people who help me overcome challenges and improve my character over people who pretend that I am without flaws. I like people who have moxie. I like people who are assertive. Am I still going to use a lot of "white lies" in my daily life? Yeah, I am. I'm not sure what else to do. Honesty, in a social context, is one of those sticky prisoners' dilemmas: honesty past a certain point only works if everybody is using it, but people won't start being more honest by themselves. Who has to start?

I've learned an immeasurable amount in my life up to this point, and many of the things I've learned have taken me much longer to learn than most other people. I know sarcasm, snark, and white lies. I can deploy all of these in my interactions on a daily basis. Most people don't know that I used to have no idea how to do any of that. While I'm glad that other people understand me, I'm still puzzled that I need to learn how to hide my feelings to more clearly communicate with the rest of humanity! We are so weird.

Frustrations Of an Old Soul: The Internet

I'm a product of the Internet Age, yet I am still not used to living in an Internet-centric world, one which provides me a constant stream of information. I haven't fully accepted the immensity of knowledge I can access on my own, nor have I realized the implications of my access to such staggering data.

Numerous times in the past few weeks, I have asked some of my friends to send me advice, only to find my efforts redirected to Google or other corners of the Internet. This derailing upsets me. Yes, I am fully aware that I can find the information I want on my own. Is it unacceptable that I still consider human input more valuable? 

Maybe I'm upset because it's how I was raised. My father is a reference librarian. He's a member of a seemingly antiquated profession, one which still holds that actual human beings can help one another in their quest to more effectively find information. 

The Internet is so vast and impersonal. Is it wrong that I trust my friends to help me discover answers that are more meaningful and more personally relevant? Further, I'm annoyed that the social default among my friends is to trust the Internet for all queries. Even if using the Internet is more efficient, does relying so much on technology degrade friendships and relationships with contemporaries? I have believed in the past that the Internet has potential to bring people together - are we instead increasing the isolation between us?

*****

For my second Internet-related complaint of the day, I'd like to disembowel (or, more helpfully, disemvowel) one of the most particularly aggravating instances of Internet-speak. 

I keep hearing the phrase "I'm jelly" or "Are you mad jelly?". People say "jelly" instead of "jealous". As a writer, a poet, and a lover of words -- I am greatly offended by the vulgarity and inelegance of this usage. Consider the sound of "jelly" and its connotations:

1) It sounds weak, lame, juvenile, petty

2) It makes me think of actual jelly (as in, what goes well with peanut butter): soggy, sticky, gloppy -- saying "jealous" this way takes all the power out of the word - consider again:

JEALOUS

ZEALOUS

RIGHTEOUS

^These are all undeniably powerful, awe-some (in the original sense) words. "Jelly" renders "jealous" as a shell of its former self, and mashes a thumping, spirited, aggressive word down to a mushy pulp that's barely recognizable and hardly worth the same meaning. 

What would it sound like if we used the same pattern for zealous and righteous that Internet dwellers favor for jealous?

Imagine reading about the apostle of Jesus, Simon the Zelly. Imagine Samuel L. Jackson in "Pulp Fiction" -- remember that badass speech he gives before he shoots someone? Try to imagine Samuel L. Jackson furiously, feverishly intoning the "righty" wrath of his god. Doesn't sound so fearsome, does it? 

The sound and meaning of words are important. Now, I'm acutely aware that language and its usage evolves over time. I'm mocked Samuel Johnson for decrying the use of "chicken" as a singular noun in the English language. In this instance, though, when we consider the advantages and disadvantages of using "jelly" or "jealous", I hope I've convinced you that "jealous" is the clearly superior option.

Reflections From Leaving College

I became an entirely different person during college. I lost faith in the religion of my childhood (and became an atheist). I acted in a theater group for the first time. I started performing improv comedy. I started drinking (shortly after the theater and improv). I had (and ended) my first relationship (also after the theater and improv).

I thought honestly about my history with Asperger's Syndrome, and I met other people who shared some of the same stories. I had no close friends my entire freshmen year of college. During my sophomore year, I began to have more friends, but doubts and insecurities about the reliability of my friends plagued me constantly (shortly after the theater and improv). In that same year, I failed my first (and so far only) class (shortly after the theater and improv).

The summer after my sophomore year, I started seeing a therapist and continued doing so until the end of my junior year. Most of the times I went, I felt miserable while I was with a therapist. I didn't know what I should say. It was extremely difficult for me to express my feelings to a stranger...or even to myself. This chance to sort my emotions still helped me immensely, and the lingering impressions of this experience continue to benefit me. It's a strange wonder that I was able to journey through my senior year without any therapy and without paralyzing myself emotionally.

Senior year was rough, but mostly I dealt with my problems better than I had when I was a sophomore. First semester, I was insanely busy. I was struggling with keeping my internship, my classes, and my relationship functioning. I partly succeeded, then I spent the second semester of my senior year trying to save the things I still had left after my first semester. [That was supposed to be funny.]

One of the best and worst moments during college came for me near the very end of my sophomore year. I was at a Cinco de Mayo party with some kids from my theater/improv group, and two of my friends were talking with me - while they were quite buzzed. They told me that they were quite impressed by my ability to do improv, especially since one of them knew me as a freshman when we lived on the same floor of our dorm. She noted that I seemed very shy and not the kind of person who would thrive in improv, but she added that she was pleasantly surprised by the quality of my participation.

I was extremely happy to hear that praise: at that moment, I was very depressed because I had quite recently realized that I was, in fact, about to fail an important class - that I had yet to inform my parents - and that I was moving out and going back home the next morning. It was a dark moment for me, and it was the precise time when I needed to hear some reassuring and uplifting comments. That's one aspect of my life during the past four years for which I am especially thankful: that every time I've felt most alone, least capable of handling my problems, or most lost and vulnerable -- that I've still found some consolation to ease my way through the anguish, and somehow become a stronger, more resilient person.

Why I'm Writing (Introduction)

I'm not good at spontaneity. I should be. I write in spurts. I don't have enough discipline to write regularly - it's why I've never been able to keep a diary or a journal for more than a few weeks at a time. I want to change that.

I'm going to write whatever comes to my mind. This blog will be a space for me to accomplish that goal. I don't care if anyone else even reads these ramblings. Perhaps a few people will, although if they do read my writing in this space, I doubt they will go all the way back to my introduction. So, if you are reading this, consider yourself one of a happy (or unlucky?) few.

One of the great luxuries in life is to have close friends. This is especially true when you need someone to listen to your greatest fears, your insecurities, your ambitions, your dreams, and your hopes. Close friends aren't really a luxury - they're a necessity - yet not everyone has them, or has them to the desired degree. I don't.

That's part of why I'm writing - here, now. I'm writing for myself. I've heard advice before that said (here I'm paraphrasing) - "if you are writing for anyone besides yourself, then you won't be able to maintain the willpower to continue writing". I believe that's true, so I make two promises today:

1. To continue writing at least 500 words every day. 2. To write for a primary audience of one: me.

I am probably going to fail in at least one of these objectives. It's a personality trait that my ambition vastly exceeds my work ethic. I'm reasonably confident that, if previous efforts are any guide, I'll ratchet my pace down from once a day to a few times a week and then a few times a month. If I am able to write any more often than that, then I will judge this blogging effort to be a great success. That is my only guideline (besides trying to write at least 500 words every time I post).

On that point, why promise to write at least 500 words every time I post? While 500 words is an arbitrary goal, I don't want to cheat by writing something that has next to no content. I want to explore my thoughts - I want to roll around in my subconscious like a child rolling in a pile of fresh autumn leaves. I want to taste that freedom, so I need space to jump into.

Further, having a tangible goal is a great way for me to concentrate my thoughts. I've found that limits inspire my creativity, and I feel that this observation is true for many writers. Also, I can be an awful procrastinator, so without a specific guideline, it is likely that I'll only do the bare minimum when I'm not feeling inspired.

Lastly, I hope that writing more often will help me feel inspired more often. I want to unleash a virtuous cycle of writing. This project may help me begin that cycle. If you are reading this, thank you for following my journeys! As a final disclaimer: many of my entries will be extremely personal, difficult, or obscure. Sometimes, writing what's inside my mind will be a painful process. Please judge sparingly. I am striving to be as open as possible - that is all. Any other standard is beyond the mission of this blog.