Thursday, June 19, 2008

What's bothering you?

Another one of the those questioning things brought on by Bogha Frois - when confronted with a down mood, she asks "What's bother you?" and then she asks "Why is that bothering you?" and then, "So what's really bothering you?". And on and on it goes.

Friends - they serve the useful purpose of pushing us and punishing us in ways that we would never do to ourselves.

And what has come out of this little exercise? Not the bottom of the hole, I'm sure, but I dredged something out.

I feel alone.

Alone, yet surrounded by people. It's an odd problem, yet one many writers far better than myself have plumbed: the idea that in modern society, we are more than ever surrounded by people, yet we are more than ever isolated.

What do I feel alone from? Those deep relationships that we all hope and hunger for, at some level.

Why? I realized that I am living a separate life. I am essentially living a form of opposite life from my family: I get up early, drive either alone or alone in essence, work all day surrounded coworkers, some of whom are good friends, but many of who are those whom we know because of convenience, rather than desire. At home, a brief time with the family as well as trying to accomplish those things that I want to do, and then bed - in theory by 9:30, although it probably should be earlier.

The other thing - and this is where my imagining comes in - is that I deeply desire the approval of others, especially others whom I think of as desirable or important. That, I realized, is what has driven my (at times) intense desire to be noticed by people whom I would otherwise not worry about: I perceive them as important or valuable or lovely or desirable, and so want them to like me. And when they don't (because, I think like me, they are often thrown together into situations of necessity or convenience rather than choice), I become disappointed or morose about the whole thing.

Is it the bottom? I don't think so, but we're digging down.

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