I Don't Even Know If I'm Lying

I can't seem to write lately, I seem tapped out, though I know I shouldn't be. I have some kind of skin problem, with some kind of lesions on the side of my body. I thought they were pimples at first, but they've been there too long. I want to write, but I don't have time to write. I'm just wasting time (wasting time wasting time wasting time wasting time...)

I haven't felt right in some time. I'm having trouble keeping it together.

I'm suffering from existential despair. I keep dreaming of a different life, a life far from here that would be so much better. I keep fantasizing of the different person I would be and the friends I would have. I like myself in these false memories. It may just be that I don't fit in with college students at all. I am not spiritually a part of that desired market, the Dane Cook generation, the Family Guy generation, the Quotable Pop Culture generation.

I've been reading Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy by William Barrett; this is my pleasure reading. Writing on Kierkegaard's philosophy, Barrett says: "Despair is the sickness unto death, the sickness in which we long to die but cannot die; thus, it is the extreme emotion in which we seek to escape from ourselves, and it is precisely this latter aspect of despair that makes it such a powerful revelation of what it means to exists as a human individual. We are all in despair, consciously or unconsciously, according to Kierkegaard, and ever means we have of coping with this despair, short of religion, is either unsuccessful or demoniacal. Kierkegaard advances two general principles that are in advance of nearly all current psychologies: (1) Despair is never ultimately over the external object but always over ourselves. A girl loses her sweetheart, and falls into despair; it is not over the lost sweetheart that she despairs, but over herself-without-the-sweetheart: that is, she can no longer escape from herself into the thought or person of the beloved. And so on, for all cases of loss, whether it be money, power, or social rank. The unbearable loss is not really in itself unbearable; what we cannot bear is that in being stripped of an external object we stand denuded and see the intolerable abyss of the self yawn at our feet. (2) The conditions we call a sickness in certain people is, at its center, a form of sinfulness. We are in habit nowadays of labeling morally deficient people as sick, mentally sick, or neurotic. This is true if we look at the neurotic from outside: his neurosis is indeed a sickness, for it prevents him from functioning as he should, either totally or in some particular area of life. But the closer we get to any neurotic the more we are assailed by the sheer human perverseness, the willfulness, of his attitude. If he is a friend, we can up to a point deal with as an object who does not function well, but only up to a point; beyond that if a personal relation exists between us we have to deal with him as a subject, and as such we must find him morally perverse or willfully disagreeable; and we have to make these moral judgments to his face if the friendship is to retain its human content, and not disappear intoa purely clinical relation. At the center of the sickness of the psyche is a sickness of the spirit."

Bolded emphasis is my own.

It may be that it is precisely because I'm neurotic that people here will not deal with me, or fear to deal with me. Of course, there are the empty platitudes of "I'm always here to listen", but even on the occasions that this is true, simply listening is not sufficient. I see so few people actually understanding, or telling me anything that isn't simply grasping for easy answers. I am finding college to be the constant regurgitation of mass media information and repeated slogans, and so little independent and serious thought.

I want to be able to talk again. I'm so silent now because I have nothing to contribute anymore, and when I do open my mouth to talk, I don't feel like I'm really talking.

I am an English major. My relationships with other English majors is often tenuous. Some consider me a hero for the way I stand up to pompous windbags who are obviously more critic than writer (all seeking to be the next Edmund Wilson. Then of course, some of the stars of the English department also can't stand me, or will begrudge me for my philosophies beliefs. Case in point of one girl who was going to try and take me to task for admitting that I was an existentialist during class one time, but was too drunk to put together a coherent sentence.

It would just be nice to have a meaningful conversation again.

The criminally under-appreciated band Too Much Joy. The deeper meaning of quite a few of their songs were often lost in the juvenile humor they would often mask themselves with, but now that their entire catalog is online, it is much easier to see they were too smart for their own good. Their most sincere song, "Half Life", off of their album finally... (but played much better and with more heart on their superb live album Live at Least), is the perfect song for despair in an existentially unsure modern age and the loneliness and isolation that many of us feel. I quoted the song before for my end of post quote, so this time for the end of the post, I would like to post the song's entire lyrics.

There is no space
For what you need to know
I'm the forms that I must fill out.
I'm happiest alone
I'm miserable that way
All this stuff just wants to spill out.

I take pleasure
in the simple things
I love my headphones
and my wedding ring

Are you talking to me now or reading from a script?
What's that supposed to mean you say you wanna be yourself?
I don't think you really know just who the hell that is.
You spend half your life
pretending you're like everybody else.
(like everybody else)

I tell the same joke
many different ways
but you never seem to get it.
You're jerking off
to catalogs
don't you feel a bit pathetic?

You spend half your life remembering your life when you were young
half your life dreaming how much better life can get
well everytime you make a choice, hey half your life is gone

All you've got's a few good dreams
divided into many small regrets.
(like everybody else)

I never take any pictures
just try to remember
all I remember is trying.

Here's a story I like
I think it happened to me
I don't even know
if I'm lying
if I'm lying
if I'm lying

Are you talking to me now or reading from a script?
What's that supposed to mean you say you wanna be yourself?
Well I don't think you really know just who the hell that is
No I don't think you have a clue just who the hell that is
So what's your half life?
So what's your half life?
So what's your half-life?
So what's your half life?

You spend half your life
pretending you're like everybody else.