Introspection, Part One (Or, Confessions of a Pessimist)

I’m in northern New Jersey now, in the hotel.

Did not want to leave today, and was upset in the morning. My mood was fragile and didn’t think I could stand so many days away from home, from Boyfriend. Felt a strange anxiety; wanted to be home to make sure everything was still okay.

Once I was on the road, I felt calmer. I realized that traveling alone, while not as fun as traveling with Boyfriend, does give me the chance to think through things uninterrupted. When I’m with people I’m too outward looking, too concerned with being pleasant and liked. Only when I’m alone can I really think my own thoughts.

Perhaps the next three days I will use the chance to sort things out.

I am so totally manic-depressive. I exhibit classic symptoms. I have periods of elation, light-heartedness, and joy. Then I have bouts of intense sadness and dark thoughts. Rationality does not help in those moments. It’s no use to think about how absurd it is that I feel depressed, when I should have so many things I feel good about.

I have a job that interests me, when many people are unemployed or hate their jobs.

I have a boyfriend who is kind and patient and loving. He knows how to comfort me and when to leave me alone.

I have a “bright future” ahead of me. I am going to a law school that sounds very good on paper.

I have loving, supportive, and liberal parents, who listen to me and who are close to me, even though we don’t always agree.

I am healthy and, other than my possible alcoholism and my aforementioned manic-depressiveness, have no major illnesses.

I live in a country that is easy to move around in, easy to move out of, that offers me a lot of flexibility and freedom (although this freedom sometimes terrifies me).

I should be happy all the time, but I’m not. What depress me are often not concrete and specific things but abstract, philosophical questions. I think about the fleetingness of life, the fragility of relationships, the inevitability of change, lost loves and faded friendships, the largeness of universe and our own insignificance. And I am amazed how everyone can go about as if they do not carry wounds, as if they will not die someday.

In high school I once had a conversation with a girl in my class that I really didn’t know very well, not before and not since. But that afternoon we met in the library and began talking. Mostly, I was talking about these things. Afterwards, she joked that it was the most depressing conversation she had ever had.

But these thoughts are with me every day, like old friends. In the same frequency as men think about sex (which I guess is once every 5 seconds or something) I think about how everything must change, must end, and how we can never go back to what we once were, that every day lost is a day we will never see again. Sometimes these thoughts do not affect me. Sometimes they affect me deeply. But they are there no matter what.

In college I learned that my friend S took Zoloft because if he didn’t, he would have obsessive fear of death. I am pretty much the same way, though my obsession is not as specific as fear of death but fear of change, of endings, in general. When I’m happy, in the back of my mind there is always a voice that asks: “Is this the happiest I will ever be? Will it all be downhill from here?” When I’m sad, I’m not surprised.