misguided fool
It’s 10:08 PM here in New York City where I live, 8:08 in the place I call home in Colorado, and 7:08 PM in California where I find myself mentally living these days. The life I’ve made for myself across this space in different time zones and mental states makes me feel nostalgic and distant and confused a lot of the time and I think I’m always trying to catch up with myself and bring myself forward to my physical mind and body.
It’s funny how things are so synchronistic sometimes. My friend gave me some advice today. When things are shit, to take the approach of sitting back and treating life like a movie, and feeling affected but not to a point where it’s emotionally connected. She brought me to Nico’s song “These Days”, and while I was reading the lyrics it brought me a sense of comfort. A little later in the night my roommate put on Cat Power’s cover of the song as I was reading through the lyrics again. It’s extremely comforting and familiar like a hug from someone you love, a sort of validation. Of what? I’m not so sure. But I feel like I’m floundering so much lately and that’s sort of what I needed in the moment. I broke down in tears when that song came on. Sort of like a familiar hug when you’re holding too tightly to your sadness and it just comes out of you.
The days here in New York have felt longer and more brutal than I anticipated. I feel a heaviness always and a cold reality check most days as soon as I wake up. If I sleep anymore that is. I can’t seem to find any sort of release here like I could in LA, and there’s always the question on my mind if I’m romanticizing LA now that I’m out of it.
I wake up around 10:30 most days in a foggy stupor and try my best to get my day going and find purpose in actually doing things. It’s cold and grey and I don’t feel any friendly eyes around me and in general I feel pretty alone, both physically and emotionally. It’s got me thinking about what actually matters to me and what would actually feel good to have in my life, the people, the atmosphere, environment, hobbies. How do I feel about myself even? Which clearly is the main issue. I feel like everything I do can be so stupid and even the things I’m writing about are so silly. It’s hard to have such self deprecating thoughts so constantly. I think a lot about what it might be like to really feel content with oneself with no qualifications needed to be in that state. No job, no piece of art, no connection, no significant other. I have been trying to figure out also what makes this life worth it in the end, and I’ve started to think it has a lot to do with the experiences, and the way you’re able to make other’s time on this planet a bit easier while you’re moving through the world. I think that might be the only answer a lot of the times. We’re all here together and life itself is a really strange and sad place. It’s not soft, and I think that we’re all here for whatever strange reason, but though we all have our different ideas of purpose of this short little lengthy breath of life we have, I think that there might not be a purpose other than to really feel and experience what we’re moving through. And by doing that, maybe just maybe, if we are working towards being our most genuine selves, we can make those we touch shoulders with have a little bit of an easier time.