Know Thyself

entry the 10th

3:33am central time zone
Sunday
the crossroads

Spam Count: 333



I said before that I would create a post when I had hit a turning point, and that I would try to keep this blog interesting. That should account for the long gap between this post and the previous one. If I were keeping to that, the gap would be even longer.

I helped my brother with another skit yesterday. Maybe that's interesting. But it's not what this post is about.

Looking for jobs online has been like peering into a glass made of my own patheticness. I feel like I've worked my fair share of dead-end, manual labor type jobs, but the only positions outside that world require education and experience. Obviously. We all knew that.

I just woke up from a dream. In that dream, I was still in High School, and had been for the last nine years. About half-way through the dream, I realized that I had graduated in 2001. Why was I still here, and when would I finally leave? None of the other students realized I was older than them. I got the sense that it was time to go, to finally move on.

I've been having dreams similar to this, off and on for more than a year. Considering that I sometimes sleep for eighteen hours a day, this dream-world has come to feel like a second reality for me. Even now that I'm awake, I feel like it's true, that I really have been stuck in that past existence for almost ten years now. I'm not a big believer in dream interpretation, but I think the meaning is pretty apparent.

For the last few days, I've been considering getting back into college. I would probably start out taking a few hours at Calhoun Community College, then go on to bet my bachelor's from Athens State, probably in a field related to computer programming. Why computer programming? It's something I already know I can do, and it's something I know I could find work with here in Huntsville.

The decision seems very rational. It's probably the wisest thing for me to do at this point. But I'm afraid.

I'm afraid I'm still not strong enough to handle college. I'm afraid my motives aren't good enough. Maybe I'm deceiving myself into taking this seriously because I just don't want to face facts and go out and get another crappy job--one that I'll probably have to keep for the rest of my life.

Safe to say, either way, I'm afraid.

In the middle of all this anxiety and navel-gazing, something occurs to me. It was in high school that I first started to understand that there was probably something medically wrong with me. I had known since I was about thirteen that I was sadder than most other people, but I thought I had some good reasons to be (not going into that in this post). By the time I was about sixteen, I started to learn more about clinical depression, and I was hesitant to apply what I was learning to myself.

In a real way, the last nine years of my life have been about exactly that: figuring out and coming to terms with my diagnosis. I was misdaignosed with unipolar depression before I had my episode in '08, at which point all doubt about my mental illness disappeared (and I also learned why the antidepressants hadn't been working a few years before).

It's true: Part of me still doesn't want to accept living with this disorder. Part of me is still attracted to suicide. In a way, the last nine years have been a slow kind of farewell to life. First detaching from college--the "normal" path of a young man's life. Then detaching from family and friends when I moved into that trailer park and shut down socially. Then detaching from functionality when I quit my job to go back to school, only to stop attending classes. Then detaching from sanity when I went manic.

But I won't kill myself. And, if not, I should start accepting life again, and move on.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. The two-minded man accomplishes nothing.

Time to choose one path or the other.

sincerely,
fiasco joe

"You can't see past a choice you don't understand."
-The Oracle