16 February 2008

The Sad Second Post

In my real life, where I am a person with a name and where revelations have consequences, I could never say how unhappy I am.  There are a number of reasons for this.  First, I've been unhappy for quite a while, and I have told people, and I feel it's got to the stage where continued announcements about that are just boring.  Second, there's nothing anyone - including me - can do about it. Announcing unhappiness doesn't make it go away.  Third, the events that have made me unhappy are ongoing and un-fixable, and also, I think, trivial.  So if I were to announce my unhappiness to those I know, I would either be searching for a solution that isn't available or hoping for a resolution, an easing, that isn't possible - and I would feel embarrassed.

But I am, indeed, deeply unhappy.  Part of this unhappiness stems from my situation.  Part of it, however, stems from my unhappiness that I can't make myself stop being unhappy.  I know that this inability to stop is situational.  My life -- job, place of residence, social existence - are very unsatisfying at the moment, so my initial unhappiness has nothing to offset it, and the source of my happiness, when I had it, was very very important.  So both positive feelings and negative feelings take on a vastly magnified importance.  But I hate the fact that I would like to feel good but can't.

I am also deeply unhappy because a thing happened to make me unhappy, and even if this thing is resolved in a positive way in the end, it still will have happened.  Whatever moving on I do will be moving on in spite of caused unhappiness, rather than moving on from happiness to a more settled kind of happiness or to further, greater happiness.  A Bad Thing will have to be got over.  I thought (I really did think) that I was going to get to be happy, and now it seems that I will only, at best, have gotten to be happy, then unhappy, then happy again.

I'm also unhappy because, if this bad thing isn't got over (and there's a huge part of me - most of me - that believes it won't be), I will have had to suffer a very painful loss.  This is the part that's trivial.  Everybody suffers painful losses, and many of those losses are far worse than what happened to me.  I wish I could just put this quotidian and relatively small occurrence behind me, accept it, and move on.  But I can't.  And that inability makes me feel inadequate, or inferior.  I am suffering A LOT over something that many other people seem not to suffer over at all, and that upsets me.  

And finally I think I'm unhappy because I understand.  If I were in a situation where I could be angry, simply angry, I think I would be happier.  But in this situation I understand all motivations; I can't blame anyone.  So I don't even have the pleasure of feeling wrongly, purely - what I have of that feeling is alloyed with understanding.

And finally, yes, I am unhappy because I imagine - and all evidence suggests - that I am unhappy while someone else is happy.  I am a valuable person, and I have to suffer while someone less valuable just gets to be happy.  And, again, if there's resolution, how do I not let it stick in my craw that someone made me unhappy and got to be happy while I was still suffering?  And since I don't believe in karma, or that people suffer as a result of unconscious unhappiness, I don't even have the pleasure of saying, "Oh, well, that person is probably actually unhappy and dissatisfied, or will be."

I've waited a lot of life to be happy, and it seems to me terribly cruel that I should not have been so for longer than five months by now.

1 comment:

Craig said...

I really do understand: to think really is to be full of sorrow and leaden-eyed despair.

That I can't change, but I promise that at your shindig tonight I'll at least try to make you forget about it for a measure.