Why Am I Am the Way That I Am?
Are you?
This one’s for EE
One of the greatest closing lines in literature belongs to Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “I been away a long time.” Six short words, not even grammatically correct, but they contain so much depth. He’s been physically away from home, yes, but more significantly, he’s actually become someone else. He’s been convinced that things about himself - about his physical stature - perceptions that are manifestly false, are accurate.
That’s what the mind can do. Fear, anger, anxiety, depression, stress - these can all lead to the erasure of the self. Everything you care about, everything that brings you joy, everything that motivates you, your hopes, dreams, goals, hobbies, passions, relationships. They can all disappear, and you’ll wonder how you ever cared so much about them. You might even tell yourself that this new you you’ve developed into is the real you, the true you, that you’re youer than you’ve ever been. And you'll probably believe it, and it even makes sense. Why should you still get excited about the things you loved as a kid or a teenager or the last time you felt happy or anything at all? No one can be an astronaut and a fireman AND cowboy. I mean it’s sad, yeah, but you’ve tasted life, you’ve matured, this is who you are now. Maybe. But maybe all it takes is for someone or something to come along and change your perspective, a McMurphy to challenge The Combine.
In May 2020, I left dreary Erie for sunny Tallanasty, and it turned out to be one of the most miserable experiences of my life. I was attending FSU, and although I was required to reside in the state of Florida, my courses were primarily through Zoom. So I found myself in the midst of a pandemic, hundreds of miles from anyone I knew, in a city where most businesses were either closed altogether or takeout only, and I was even cut off from my classmates. It was a lonely time, to say the least. There were days, many days, when I struggled to get out of bed by 4 pm. After a year, I had enough.
In July 2021, after a quick jaunt up to Kentucky, out to LA, and back to Tally through Texas, I packed my bags, and set sail for home. Upon arriving back in old Erie, I stopped by my former employer on a whim and got my job back. And, not to be dramatic, but it kind of changed my life.
Getting out of bed, out of the house, having a purpose, working, talking, laughing, socializing, making friends - I felt like Dorothy in Munchkinland. Wait! Wait! Wait! This is how I’m supposed to feel. Ok, sure sure sure, I don’t have all the crazy ideas I had when I was a kid. There’s something to be said for maturing. It’s healthy, in fact, to temper your expectations. I’ll call it wisdom. But just because you’ll never be as horny as you were at 14 doesn’t mean you can’t feel anything at all.
This is why I always take people’s self-evaluations (self-diagnoses?) with a grain or four of salt. It’s easy to feel feelingless, there are plenty of hypotheses on the seeming decline of mental health over the past 15 or so years, and when you don’t feel like you have a self, it’s tempting to choose one. You see someone on TikTok going through the diagnostic criteria for some rare psychiatric disorder and you say, “Yeah, that sounds like me.” But it’s probably not. I highly recommend this post by Freddie deBoer.
As usual, once I started writing I started rambling. My point here is that you should have an open mind about your mind. You might have some serious problems, plenty of people do. But you might just be going through something, and it’s ok to accept that you’re ultimately going to be ok. There’s no shame in not having a mental disorder.