A Treatise of Self

Today, I was listening to Everclear on my way home from class. Songs from an American Movie, Vol. 2: Good Time for a Bad Attitude. It made me realize that most of the music which made me like good music sucks. I mean, it’s an okay album. And I guess that the problem is less that it’s terrible and more that I just don’t really like rock anymore… (though I think my friends who are fans of rock will point out that it sucks)… but seriously. I just wasn’t really feeling it. It all seemed very lame and contrived. Though some of the songs are alright. I still like the title track a whole lot. Both on Vol. 2 and volume 1. I think it’s kind of how I feel lately.

I feel like I’ve just let go of or lost everything and I don’t know where to begin when I pick up the pieces. I’m happy when I’m around those people who are familiar either in their newness or their connection to who I have been, but I really don’t know who I am. I realized last night/this morning that that’s one of the things that bothers me most about my being cancelled from Madeline’s life. One of the things she said… “or how horrible it makes me feel to think of you boxing yourself up. in religion. in politics. in medication and neurosis. the way you fucking define yourself so thoroughly like giving yourself a label will let you know yourself more completely. i couldnt ever do that so thoroughly as you could. to me you are just jess. not a list of words.” I mean, I understand what she’s saying. I guess. And I know that I desperately used to look for words that I could fit into because I wanted to feel similar to my fellow humans. I seem to care about fitting in less and less. Maybe, I still care about it a lot… but I fit in without changing or defining myself anymore. And I think that’s really beautiful.

I mean, sure, I’m Catholic. But my reasons for being Catholic are its fluidity. It’s ability to adapt as a religion to people, circumstances, and eras. I love that to me Mary can be the linchpin of my connection to divinity and despite her not being divine, it’s still okay. That all of these Saints let me flex my religion to create a closer relationship to God. And that my relationship with Catholicism has changed greatly over this past year and a half I’ve spent believing. I was initially drawn to Catholicism because of the marketplace of ideas within its believers and the connection we all feel. Yet, now, I find myself drawn to the theological elements of it. I can defend my faith. To me, there’s nothing more wonderful in my evolution as a person and as a Christian than finding that ability.

And politics is just silly. Who am I politically? My facebook says that I am “Very Liberal.” I recognize that this is a lie. I tend to vote a purple ticket with democratic leanings. The red mostly comes in in offices where the State dems aren’t running real candidates. Or in offices that should mostly be non-partisan anyway. In terms of political theory, maybe I’m a democrat. The argument that I’m libertarian is pretty great too though. I just really fundamentally disagree with the economics side of libertarians. I think that if the government should function at all it is to protect us from business. And I think the job of the electorate is to protect us from the state. I really love anarcho-syndicalism. But I admit, I am in basically no way an anarcho-syndicalist. It makes the most sense to me, sure. But I don’t do it actively. For a while, it really frustrated me that people would criticize my loving anarchy. But I understand that I still shop in a global marketplace. That this laptop I’m blogging on is a mac. That I’m blogging at all. Hypocrisies. But I’m okay with them. I just think society should work together to take care of itself without hierarchy. Or without much heirarchy. Somedays, I think feudalism would be alright. Less the serfs. Just self-sufficient manors. Those days, I try to crawl back into bed and forget about politics.

Let’s talk about my neurosis then. I think that my neurosis is sort of an important definition to understand because it affects my interaction with other people, to an extent. I need to learn to cope with symptoms and the best way to do that is identifying what the symptoms are and then figuring it out from there. Am I still searching for a diagnosis? Fuck no. Maybe I’m Type II Bipolar. But then… my swings aren’t that dramatic. My manic episodes leave me totally unfulfilled. And I have more panic attacks than is natural. Maybe I have some form of an anxiety disorder. But that doesn’t make sense with my depression that certainly manifests itself as depression and not anxiety. I don’t know what I am. I know that sometimes I have panic attacks. I know that this emotion I’ve been living in the past few months or so is depression. And that it is not a feeling that I share with my peers. I know that it doesn’t interfere with my ability to be happy. I know that a manic episode is coming. Everytime I hit the highway I want to miss my exit. I want to put “405” by Death Cab For Cutie on repeat and decide where I’m going based on the direction of Iowa and my general feeling toward that state when I hit that sign.. Maybe I’m just crazy. And I’m not even on any medications. I don’t take them. Perhaps, I cling to this definition of someone who is crazy and does not take her medications. But I think psychiatrists are fucked up. Three cheers for self-medicating.

The other day I was talking to Kyle about how the overwhelming concensus of my friends and the people that I care about, according to one, is that I am crazy. That’s fine. He said: “You are crazy like I’m an asshole. It’s both your best and worst feature.” Well put.

I don’t know who I am right now. I feel distant from God. I feel isolated from my family. I feel like a lot of friendships which have been major defining friendships for the past 4 years of my life are fading away and will maybe not be obtainable anymore. I feel really fucking sick and tired of justifying all of this bullshit as “well, it’s probably best for them.” luckily for me, they’re not in my life anymore so i no longer have to consider their feelings.

In debate, we do this thing where we build arguments in constructives and then kick them in the rebuttals based on what we have time to defend if the argument has gotten messy, what we think we’re actually winning, and/or what arguments have the greatest meaning in the round. I’m just doing that with my personality. This is what I’m going for: Poet. Catholic. Debater. Historian. The most beautiful thing about this new definition is that none of those words actually mean anything outside of the context of me and how I define them.

• Category: Journal