Every­thing ever said about the rel­a­tiv­ity of time — be it seri­ous or jokey or wrong — is right. Short expanses of time can be unen­durably long, long stretches of time can pass by with­out notice, and now lasts for­ever while the past and the future never existed and never could or will. I whiled away last Sat­ur­day by sleep­ing until two in the after­noon, tak­ing two hours to con­sider myself fully awake, and then pretty much plop­ping myself under a blan­ket in front of the TV for 10 hours, at which point I went back to bed. I think my psy­che required such a day, as I had essen­tially been on the go (Yale, Mass­a­chu­setts, Penn­syl­va­nia, San Fran­cisco, San Diego) for the bet­ter part of a month. At one point, I had only slept in my bed 8 days of the pre­vi­ous 28. Con­sid­er­ing my needs of the world and its needs of me, it is occa­sion­ally required that I achieve a fully veg­e­ta­tive state.

As a mod­ern gen­tle­man, I tweeted about this at about 3am that day — er, early the next morn­ing — and remarked that my apart­ment was pretty much a black hole that day. This was largely in ref­er­ence to a) the flex­i­ble nature of time, espe­cially in a self-contained/-constructed envi­ron­ment that the out­side world does not intrude upon b) my mood, which was a type of void, albeit non-consumptive c) my gen­eral incli­na­tion to sit in the dark. I received a response that sug­gested that my heart was still beat­ing, prob­a­bly inter­pret­ing this mes­sage as a depres­sive cry for help, not even remotely unheard of on Twit­ter and/or Face­book. OK, per­haps call­ing it a sug­ges­tion is not giv­ing the respon­der any credit, because, obvi­ously, my heart was and is still beat­ing. It’s a fact, was a fact. Flip the coin over, though: my heart was beat­ing. Also, the sky was still blue, apples still fell from trees, and the inter­na­tional crim­i­nal and enabler of ped­erasty now known as Pope Bene­dict XVI still wore a funny hat. In other words, acknowl­edg­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of life is of no help to peo­ple who do not want to be helped.

Now, let’s not read ahead of the script: I am not a per­son who does not want to be helped. I just wish to point out that it is hard to help peo­ple who may be depressed because their brains are not like non-depressed brains. Fur­ther­more, depressed brains are not even like other depressed brains (related: the per­sonal nature of death, noted in an old post I wrote after Chris died), so con­nect­ing as a depressed per­son to another depressed per­son is one of those things that seems eas­ier than it actu­ally is. You think, “oh, I’m in that club, we speak the same lan­guage.” Not so fast my friend.

So, did I just gloss over admit­ting to being depressed right now? No, I did not. I didn’t admit it because it doesn’t need to be admit­ted. First, there’s no stigma there to me, and I sure as shit hope you don’t stig­ma­tize depres­sion either. No way in hell you’re per­fect, chump. Sec­ond, I am prone to depres­sion, but because of my out­look on life and my (improved but still irk­some) dis­con­nec­tion from myself, I don’t notice it so eas­ily. +1 to myself, eh? Ahem. Finally, I am not depressed right now…but I can’t help but think I should be, and/or I may be headed down that very road shortly.

I’m work­ing on two years (prob­a­bly at least a year to go) of emo­tional roller coas­t­er­ing that is only appar­ent to me when some­one else points it out (friends, ther­a­pist, etc). I have had many oppor­tu­ni­ties to be joy­ous and depressed in that time. I remem­ber times of ela­tion; I remem­ber being crip­pled occa­sion­ally. Right now, though, I have a future. That’s sorta fucked up for me. I’ve never had one of those before. All I had was stuff that hadn’t hap­pened to me yet. Now I have stuff I haven’t hap­pened to yet. I have been told this is the way you end up think­ing when you’re on the home stretch of col­lege. I have this quar­ter to go, and then, inshal­lah, one more class that I can take any­wheres before I’m up and offi­cially done (though I can actu­ally grad­u­ate at the end of May). It’s exhil­a­rat­ing, aston­ish­ing, and fright­en­ing. This means I occa­sion­ally feel like cry­ing, but never really know why.

The other angle to this awk­ward state of Mic­ahly affairs is that I have learned what opti­mism means. The last few months have had very seri­ous moments of despair and rage because there are some things I sim­ply can­not con­trol, namely the emo­tional states of peo­ple dear to me. (This also means that, some­where along the line, I gained a lot more empa­thy than I pre­vi­ously pos­sessed. That’s a shocker, right there.) All I can do is hope that things get bet­ter, right? Well, I’ll be damned if that kind of corn­ball sen­ti­ment wouldn’t’ve caused my patented Glare of Cyn­i­cism at pre­vi­ous points in my life…when I thought being a real­ist was the way. All along I preach grey areas as the truth, and I paint myself into a black cor­ner. Cyn­i­cian, heal thy­self, eh? No easy path, though: I never saw it hap­pen, so I can’t explain it, but appar­ently I learned that opti­mism and real­ism can coex­ist in the same personality. Now, I won’t be the annoy­ing moth­er­fucker who gets preachy and tells you why you should live like him and why your ways of view­ing the world are wrong. As a real­ist, I know that shit ain’t gonna fly. As an opti­mist, I know those who want to talk about it will.

Well, yeah, I’m about to grad­u­ate. Appar­ently, I have learned skills that will help me have a suc­cess­ful career in a field I enjoy (at least, I’ve been told I am emi­nently employ­able: as grad­u­a­tion approaches, I find that I think I haven’t learned any­thing. I hear this is nor­mal). I will look for a job in San Fran­cisco, a city I have fallen for deeply and feel is NYC’s only rival in this coun­try. I will look to cre­ate a home, and pre­pare myself for what I hope will be decades of learn­ing more about myself and the peo­ple I care about, hav­ing new adven­tures, while earn­ing an income that allows me to sup­port myself and some­one else. I believe all of these things are pos­si­ble. Actu­ally, I think they’re pretty likely. So then, why am I ter­ri­fied? Well, I think the future is ter­ri­fy­ing only when you have one. If you believe you don’t have a future, then you can’t really be scared of it (that’s logic, kids, sorry). The default human fear of the unknown is what makes your future ter­ri­fy­ing, even if you do think It Will Turn Out OK. Of course things will change, and the future you depict now prob­a­bly won’t show up the way you envi­sioned it. Change is inevitable, just make sure you’re chang­ing as well. Uh-oh, I feel myself veer­ing off towards preach­ing again…

Then, in sum­ma­tion: I am not depressed, though I may become so (albeit for good rea­sons, but it will not stay). I am ter­ri­fied, though I feel things will be fine. The future is com­ing, but you won’t notice it, because now is end­less and it’s the only thing you have con­trol over.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

•