Dawn of Understanding

It's finally occurred to me. I finally understand why people fight so hard to stay alive, just to breathe, just to wake up one more day. It's not even complex, scientific, religion based, or out of love. It's because life itself is beautiful, it's because the sensation of being alive alone is enough to live for.

Honestly, I'm almost embarrassed to have not seen it before. It's so simple, but I don't think that someone who's dead inside can look at life the way you have to look at it to see that. Those lost in despair cannot see the good in life, and I have been lost for all of my life, until recently. Just as death knows nothing of life, life knows nothing of death. I am glad to have been able to see both sides of the spectrum, and I respect both greatly.

The simple sensations that come from life are enough, no, they're more than enough. Waking up in the morning and taking your first breath of the day, the sight of a beautiful sunset, the smell of spring flowers, the sound of rain falling and the feel of the embrace of another. All these simple things are such great reasons to be alive, being alive is a great reason to be alive.

I love it, I love how simple it is. Most of all, I love how I feel now, finally understanding it. I feel like all of my problems and worries have washed away, I am at peace. I have never felt this way. It is amazing to appreciate life for simply being alive. It's beautiful, the world is so beautiful when you take the time to really look at it. As ugly as the human race is, as much evil as there is in the world - there is beauty to be found if you are willing to look for it, and I never was. What a fool I was, to take all of this for granted. Still, you must be foolish to appreciate the knowledge gained through your years.

Haha, I am smiling. I'm smiling! This is unimportant to you, the reader, for you do not know. You simply have no idea what I have been for the last sixteen years of my life. But none of that matters now, it just doesn't matter at all.

I'm alive. I love you, I love me, I love the world. Thank the universe for it being here, and for allowing me to be here with it.

May love find you every day.

This may be farewell, I don't know that I need this blog anymore. I have grown beyond my petty problems, there is no reason to fret the things I had worried on. There is no reason to be sad, not with all this beauty and love abound.

Real life? What's so real about it?

"Real life," I love that phrase. I use it pretty often, but then again I couldn't put a name on it honestly. I usually use it in the context that real life is anything not on the internet.

In all honesty though, I ponder the meaning of reality constantly. It's funny how humans make labels symbols and concepts for things that never existed before we thought them up. I mean, if nothing was ever there to ponder over the essence of reality, would "reality" ever have existed?

For example, no one cared about gravity; knew it existed; or even questioned why they could stand on the earth until Newton got hit by a falling apple and said "what the fuck man?" That, ladies and gentleman, is solid proof of why sometimes thinking can simply lead you to a paradox with no answer, and drive you mad. The power of thought, the power to bring things which don't even really exist into the "reality" of humans. For whatever we think must be real, must have meaning and most assuredly must have a place in the universe.... right?

I think humans are the most arrogant pieces of shit in the universe you know, well, maybe stars have us beat. Still, the fact remains that we put names to things, give them characteristics and then label them as to their importance. Who gives us the right? What makes us the identifiers of all that is and all that will be? I think we all could learn from the humbleness of people such as Gandhi.

Ah but it's just a dream, to think that people will ever wake up to the fact that they're just specks in the grand universe. Not that we even know if there's only one universe.

Then again, maybe life is just a dream. Maybe this is all just some experience we're allowed to have and we'll all wake up one day thinking "man, that was a crazy ass dream." Perhaps we're all just thoughts, fragments of lost principals and morals or ideals in some greater being's head. Somehow aware of ourselves in some kind of subconscious way, yet none of us are without end.

Such is the way of things, to live and to die - that is the fate of humanity. Nothing more, perhaps maybe a little less though.

Just thinking about society

All the rules, implicit and explicit, of our world really rub me the wrong way sometimes. Our reality is a bit askew, if you ask me. Just because we're at the top of the food chain we feel like we define the laws of reality or something, telling people how to act and what to eat and drink. I think we overstep our bounds pretty regularly when we do things like that. A society is nothing but a group of individuals, that's right, individuals. The whole is only as great as the sum of its parts, we diminish the whole when we tell the parts what they will be, and limit them to that definition of acceptable.

Haven't we been shown enough times by now that breaking the rules really can bring about a good change? I mean, if Da Vinci hadn't cut up corpses we would not have modern medicine today. If astronomers hadn't fought the powers that were and taught that the world was round we might even still think it's flat.

I'm not gonna list examples all day, I just want to state my case and point here. You can't limit people by laws and then expect to grow as a whole. If the individual parts are limited to the point of not being able to reach their full potential then the whole feels the same limitations, and therefore cannot reach its full potential.

It's sad really, the way people just accept the limitations that are forced upon them by a society of people whom are also limited. It's like we just inherit the bonds of humanity and are shackled upon the insurmountable wall of society. Never to be truly free, never to break our bonds and shout from the mountains who we are and how we are.

I might be labeled crazy for having different ideals and beliefs. I might be weird and socially unacceptable because of who I am, hell I might even be impossible to get along with because my beliefs contradict yours and I wont back down on them. There is however one thing that I am not, and that is chained. Your world will not hold me down.

Super pumped

Super pumped to get my copy of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim today. Gonna be so fucking sweet.

Ah, had to get that out of my system.

On a more meaningful subject, it must suck to have to write those fear blogs. Well, not have to but you get the point. I don't think I could keep my sanity while writing about being stalked by some kind of paranormal abomination. I mean, I already look over my shoulder pretty often because I feel like someone's watching me. I already hear things like my name being called or other shit, I don't need any more influences from my inner craziness to pull from.

That being said, I have to say: cudos to those of you that do. For the most part, the ones that I follow have a feeling of realness, of urgency to them. It takes some well placed talent for writing to be able to create something that can communicate urgency and emotion through words.

A new approach

It seems the common dive in and tackle it method will not work with my issues. Seems it's time to hit the books and handle things one at a time. Oh well, taking it slow is probably better anyway, all things in due time. For right now I feel a little better knowing I'm making progress, slow but sure.

I wonder sometimes why people give diseases names, or why we even have symbols for psychological diseases. I mean for the most part they aren't even sicknesses, just problems that need dealing with. Giving a group of symptoms a name makes it feel like something entirely new, so you completely miss the way to solve the problem. All people with "psychological illnesses" should just remember one thing: the whole is the sum of its parts. The roots of the problem are where you start. For the logger who starts at the top of the tree will find himself falling out of safety.

Last few days at work have been rather productive at least, with my mind a little clearer I've been able to get many things done. When it comes to my job I am one magnificent bastard, but I think I make up for that by failing at just about every other aspect of life haha. It's ok though, I don't really care about success I'm more about just enjoying things as they are. I am complacent in my current state of mind and life.

The ol' Dalai Lama was once asked what surprised him most, and the way he described man from that answer pretty much says everything about humans - everything I try not to be. "Man, because he sacrifices his health in order to make money then he sacrifices his money to recuperate his health. Then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present. The result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived."

There is wisdom to be had in the minds of our forebears.

The first steps: What are feelings without emotions?

As a child I threw my emotions away, sealed them behind a door where I stored other seemingly useless junk. I was, at that time, served with constant bad emotions and thus developed a loathing for them - and an affinity for ignoring them.

I spent my days in a world of my own creation, a glorious realm of dreams, imagination and victorious battles against fictitious foes. I had a brother in arms, my closest friend, he and I went through most of the same things and were inseparable. We lived in that realm together, separate from the rest of humanity, bound by our similar plights and unwillingness to kneel or admit defeat.

Children have such great weapons against bad feelings - creativity and the ability to dream. As you grow older you are educated and taught that those things are not real, and thus stripping them of their power. By the time you are fourteen education has stripped you of your defenses and thrown you to the wolves, and then it's sink or swim.

We grew older and colder, more apathetic with every year and every episode of terrible home life. Through all of that we grew closer and more attuned to the needs of the other. Back to back we fought such terrible foes as depression, suicidal thoughts, the deaths of our closest family members, one sided love and the worst of all - an inability to relate to peers whom were simply not even close to our level of maturity. We were ancient men in the bodies of teenagers.

The resulting apathy, withdraw from society and total withdraw from any form of self was an inevitability. Only now are we able to go back to our roots and deal with sixteen year old demons.

A conversation from the present:
Him - "You know, facing them is tough even now. When those emotions break through I just feel desperate, I can't cope and I break down. At least you have figured out how better to deal with yours than I deal with mine." Me - "It's funny you should say that, I was kind of thinking you deal with them better than I do." Both - "*Laugh* *understood and non-awkward silence* *Lighting of cigarettes*"

The systematic breaking down of an existential improbability.

This journal of sorts will now take a turn, and change into something new - as will the person writing it. In order to grow as a human I must understand myself all the good, the bad and the ugly. As such I will be storing research and thoughts here in relation to such a subject as what lies beneath the cracking walls of my inner defense.

This post is the beginning, and as with all beginnings there are terms which must be gone over and explained - such that the definition and use of said terms is set in stone.

First off, mental walls. Mental walls are formed by people under extreme emotional distress and are typically formed to function as a protection from the situation they deem unacceptable. These walls become their safety and their most imminent danger. They will seal the person up, cutting their ties and preventing them from making new ones.

Secondly, unreality. I will use this term loosely as it is simply easier than explaining the realm between reality and dreams that exists within the mental walls of one locked in one's own head. Think of this as more of a reference to a place than as a term objectively defined.

Finally, the beast. The beast is me, and I am the beast. We are two sides to a whole, always at war and never willing to give an inch to one another. This ubiquitous explanation will seem to fit like a glove the deeper into my story I get. You will understand the duality of my existence, or maybe not - we'll just have to see.

Today I set out on a journey to try and understand the feelings I sealed away so long ago, feelings that have set unattended for sixteen long years. Opening old wounds is a painful thing, but I have no time for weakness - no time to bleed. There is only to scar over and to move on, for growth is not something that can be put off until tomorrow, no - now I must grow or perish.

A short note before I end today's post:

My mental walls function in more ways than one. Their obvious purpose of keeping unwanted trespassers out of the deeper reaches of my conscious being is merely a secondary reason for the existence of my walls. My walls are primarily there to separate me from myself, to keep locked away that which should never be set free - my unbridled wrath and my inability to stably control the beast.

For sixteen years I have let anger, hatred, depression, and probably the most desperate times of my life sit and writhe beneath the shadows of mental walls. For sixteen years I have denied myself the ability to heal, to forget, and to let go. Over time that writhing mess has been twisted, contorted to a beast of a nature I am unable to deal with. I am at war with myself, and I can't blame my other half for being pissed that I left him in the cold abyss to grow morbidly hideous. Sometimes survival leaves us with few choices and without the luxury of kindness however, I did what I had to do.