Back

       I've been back in PA for a few weeks now, untangling knots. I tried to write about it before, but I thought that maybe my vehemence was blinding, so I waited. Now I've come back to what I started and finished it.

       I am sitting on a mattress that hurts, in a room that is no longer mine, in a house full of junk, in a place where there is nothing to see or do, and I am angry. I keep telling myself that the world doesn't owe me an instruction manual. I remind myself that no one lied to me on purpose. I point out that I can at least take comfort in that fact that I was right about so many things. None of it helps.

       I can't even have a nice, satisfying rage, because there is no one to be angry at. I can only sit here, stewing in my frustration, trying desperately to have civil conversations about what I am going to do next with people who really love me and deserve none of my muted prickle.

       I'm not disappointed, because disappointment implies that at one time you fully expected something good, and that expectation was somehow dashed. I, on the other hand, have simply returned to a state of desperate longing that was, for a few brief months, lifted hopefully. I am not disappointed. I am back.



       I have been trying to find certain answers for years, and the search has driven me up walls, into clinical depression, through migraines, to defensive apathy. It has stolen my voice, my drive, my faith, my relationships. Sometimes I can get peace by pretending that the question is not important, or that the answer will come when I stop trying, like it seems to come to most people, but that never works for me. When I stop and try to seize the moment, live in the now, go with the flow, I get momentary respite and then redoubled problems, so I've learned to trust myself. I've learned to pay attention to the voices in my head. I've learned that my instincts are worth obedience. (I've learned to take other people's advice with a grain of salt. Other people tend to dislike this.)

       I don't know what to do. I have not known what to do for a long time.

       I know that some people do, but I think that most people don't. I think that most people don't even realize that they don't. They fill their voids with religious conviction (but I am tired of talking to someone who won't talk back) or romantic relationships (but they end badly when begun for selfish reasons) or the never-ending quest for money or prestige (which has been soundly condemned). The few self-aware, intelligent people that I know of that are also happy have found something that they are passionate about, and they cling to that and focus on that and ignore everything else... but I don't have a passion.

       I don't know what to do. I have not known what to do for a long time.