I feel lost, sometimes

2004-02-05 - 1:14 a.m.

I completely did not mean for that entry to be the one that stayed on the "front page" for three days, and consequently I spent the time between then and now hoping diaryland went down while I was gone and that no one read it. I'm sure that entry isn't that bad, but I feel (and I've been feeling this a lot, lately) that it didn't quite capture the point, and that it left me looking a little foolish.

Speaking of feelings, how about we talk about my feelings now? (<- worst segue attempt I've made in a while, I think)

I've been feeling sad a lot.

I'm pretty sure it's not depression, mainly because I'm not only feeling sad - I have the full range of emotions, and when I'm depressed, I usually become very economical with my moods (I manage to cut my emotions down to three or four, usually in the apathy-to-self-hate range). I have happy moments, for instance. I laugh, and the laughter is sometimes genuine. I'm curious about things, I experience whimsy, I've felt compassion, gratitude, and whatever that emotion is that you feel for someone when you want to congratulate them, but it isn't really "pride", because you don't really have a stake in whatever it is they're being congratulated for. Is there a word for that emotion?

But in general, I've been feeling sad more than anything else.

I just look at where I am now, and my life seems completely alien to what I had expected. I didn't really expect to be starting over, I didn't expect to start 2004 in a bachelor apartment with no furniture and a world that is shrinking to whatever I can walk to in under ten minutes. I feel like I'm having to re-do the last 5 years over again, except that I thought I was done with the last 5 years. They were good years, and a part of me doesn't quite understand why I have to do them over but with less furniture, no alcohol, and alone.

I haven't really cried since the break up, which is a little surprising, I guess. I had expected some sort of an emotional blow out, not this lingering, slow-burn of emotion.

I wake up at night, and half the time I feel completely disoriented, not necessarily in place, but in time. I have these brief waking moments of panic that I'm late for something, that I overslept, or that I wasted a day in bed (whether or not I'm supposed to be at work that night and therefore should have spent the day in bed). I feel sort of lost all the time.

I figure it will pass. I'm pretty sure that I haven't lost anything essential to myself - I think I can still fall in love, for example - and I'm pretty early on in the "living curve" (hee! I just made that term up...feel free to use it yourself. Amaze your friends! Astonish your enemies!)...I'll feel sad at having lost a relationship, a home, and a set of possibilities, for a long while, I think. But I also feel relatively certain that I'll find other relationships, homes, and possibilities, and that those will be just as wonderful as the set I've recently traded in.

In the meantime, I go through the motions, I take the moments of joy as they come, and I save up for some new furniture.

Oh, and lots of heavy sighing, even if I'm the only one within earshot.

Cheers,

The Magus

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