"Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation."
Graham Greene
Writing for me has always been more of an exercise to unscramble my thoughts, to create something composed yet raw and realistic. I have absolutely no time to read things which are unmoving or so lost in fantasy that characters or people (as they should be) are only caricatures of human beings. There's a reason I'm drawn to autobiographies or writers who tend to use biographical details for their plots and characters, it's simply because it's easier to connect with something or someone which is possible and sound. As many of my philosophy lecturers told me in my first year of University, our minds cannot fully comprehend the impossible or the infinite, so literature/blogs/text in general has to be realistic enough for me to form some kind of connection with it. Good on all those people who love the imagined worlds and people of Sci-fi novels (I've read a few) or abstract works, they're not for me. I was never very good at creative writing, probably because of my preferences, so you will never see a blog post from me which is very far from the truth of the human condition. This is extremely autobiographical, especially this post.
The reason I'm telling you all of this (whoever you are), is because I'm going to do some soul sharing with you. It's a lot easier for me to share things anonymously this way, rather than express my thoughts or feelings vocally or visually, although I haven't tried the latter. I'm sure it would go incredibly wrong, I'm not very creative.
I have so much to share and get off my chest, but I'm not going to overindulge and send you poor people crazy with my maddening thoughts. There is one aspect of myself I will share though, only because I don't have a choice anymore, it's hounding me daily and clawing at the inner parts of my soul. I'm not quite sure how to express any of this and I have tried so many times to tell different people, but I choke and nothing rational ever passes from my lips. I'll give it a go here though and if this doesn't work, or doesn't reflect any form of rational thought, than I will just have to carry it with me and hope it doesn't drive me completely insane.
I have failed. I've said that before I believe, but this is quite different. This isn't me failing to diet and be like those girls from the magazines, it's not me failing an exam and not being as intelligent as I had hoped to be, it's me fundamentally failing myself and the people I love more than I can express here. I'm sure we all can understand the love you feel for a parent or a sibling, that familial love is what I'm talking about. The people I failed, apart from myself, are my mother and father. That's hard to admit, but this is easier than saying it aloud. Saying anything aloud or face to face with another person makes thoughts or feelings much more concrete and real, perhaps that's why I never could say any of this.
The one goal I set for myself, that never changed with my hairstyles, moods, age or "fashion sense," was to "fix" my parents. That sounds quite harsh, they're not terrible people that need to be cured of anything, but they're broken. It's not because they separated when I was young, they're far too alike to be committed to one another and are actually far better off apart. That insight did become more apparent as I got older though. My parents are full of problems, which I won't divulge here because that's their life and not mine to discuss, but their problems naturally affect those who love them. I love them, despite any issues they have, so it has always been my goal or the job I set for myself to fix them. The only thing I ever aimed to do was to make them happy. I've done that in some small ways I think. I did okay at school, I didn't rebel like my older sister, I didn't cause any problems for them, I even went to University, all of those things made them happy. That's not the sort of happiness I aimed for though, I wanted to make them genuinely happy not just with me, but with life in general. I wanted to take their problems away and cure them of any unhappiness, but obviously I couldn't do that. I couldn't make them physically better, I couldn't make them mentally better because I can't change the past they're both so unhappy with and being an adult, I have to deal with my own life and can't face all their problems for them. I wish I could though, every part of me wishes I could make them so much happier than they are. Instead, I'm reminded of this failure every time one of them feels down and likes to express how much of a fuck up their life is, how much better things would be had they done this or that, had they not had children or met each other. That's hard to cope with, especially after 15 years of it. Listening to your mother or father, when they're at their lowest, express just how unhappy they are and how much they regret, that's hard to ignore or forget about. Surely any child who loved their parents as much as I do would want to take that sort of regret and pain away? It's hard from me to accept I can't do anything about that now, that I can only comfort them in the present, even if that doesn't seem to help at all.
To realise that you have failed at something you made your lifelong goal is heart-breaking, crushing and has without a doubt brought me the worst despair I have ever felt in my life. Perhaps even worse is knowing (I wish I didn't) that I truly can't change a thing for either of them, that the goal I set myself is impossible and I was always bound to fail. That's probably due to my stubbornness, I always felt obliged to prove people wrong, to aim for impossible things. Unfortunately that sort of attitude has only ever brought me pain and wasn't worth the effort. Not many things are worth much effort these days.
I just needed to get that one problem out of my head, to ease the pain a tad. I know I probably won't find any answers to my problems, I've set myself up to fail at so many things. I'm sorry this has been yet another post of me rambling my way through illogical depressing thoughts and feelings. I couldn't think of any other way though and I definitely couldn't actually say any of this aloud. It was hard enough typing this, to form thoughts and feelings into written words I can see on my screen, it of course brought me to tears (not a hard feat).
We'll settle for this being a "secret," confined to this bizarre blog world, which is only a reflection of our digital personas, not quite reality yet. Reality bites.
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