Vent

#1

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Speaking of writing, which is I guess all that I ever write about, I read some journal entries of Sylvia Plath today. It was a strange experience. I felt like I was transported temporarily into the mind of another person, a young woman in this case. She writes her entries with such remarkable clarity, an authorial voice that I’ve always struggled to see myself possessing (Not that I want to be an author). I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between her journals and a published work of fiction. My journals when I was 18 and younger had nowhere near that level of elegance, and instead you’d find a mixture of cringey spammed excitement and incoherent existential queries. My tumblr private blog, suffice to say, is not my best work.

I apologize beforehand to myself or to anyone else who is about to read this paragraph.

(In the future, I want to write on honing down the reason I’m so fixated on my perception of my writing lacking that “authorial mark” (Maybe (Probably) it’s because I don’t read enough which means writing down my thoughts may be fun, but reading them a clunky mess) (It may also be because I participate in self-criticism while I’m writing (I mean who doesn’t) and while I’m thinking (which has actually been a positive habit in my life(I want to write more about this later)) and that these branches of self-criticism and divergent thought aren’t really conducive to the linear experience of reading (Wouldn’t it be funny if I made an interactive journal with branching paths and everything? It would actually make so much sense considering I’m a game designer(As much as I want to comment on shuddering at the feeling of calling myself anything whether it be a writer or game designer, I would also like to say to myself that it’s not that serious)), and also whether or not it’s a good idea to write down immediate raw thoughts that manifest themselves to me in parentheticals).

I started reading Sylvia Plath because there was an excerpt that caught my attention a year or two ago: 

“Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars — to be a part of a scene, anonymously, listening, recording — all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night…” - Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

I read that in passing somewhere, Twitter, Reddit, Google Images, who knows. But I was so drawn to this passage that it somehow stuck with me all these years, to the point where I asked Twitter about *the name of a poem about a woman wanting to talk to truck drivers, but can’t because she’s a woman*. Surprisingly, my old coworker and  D&D player, Hannah, came in clutch almost immediately with the title and a screenshot of the passage.

Maybe I was so drawn to this passage because I related to it so deeply and honestly, as much a guy could relate to an experience caused under the circumstances of being a woman. But it was the longing to mingle with strangers, “to be part of a scene, anonymously, listening, recording”, the freedom to walk down the path of understanding someone to their core. Somewhere along that path there is a wall blocking the way, in my case it isn’t womanhood, but it’s the practicality of everyday life. That wall is my impatience with others when they fail to articulate their thoughts and feelings, that impenetrable masculine stoicness when I try to know guys, and the dangerous and inevitable sexual attraction that boils up when I try to know girls. That wall is there in all my familial relationships, my friendships, but thankfully not my relationship, which is why I treasure it so much. 

It’s occasionally lonely, and had I not built a deep relationship with myself and with Lisel, that loneliness would be crippling. But even so, those fleeting moments when I feel far away from everything still ache. Especially when I think of the people whose lives around me are so tumultuous, or people who feel trapped inside their own head, when I think of my struggling sister, or the Michael who nobody wanted to talk to. I feel pity and guilt for my inaction despite the glaring truth that I’m capable of helping people ,or at the very least, capable of trying to. Then there’s also that longing to find people who I admire, who I long to observe and prod for their internal processes, someone to contend and compete with. There are so many people who have their own answers that I could never figure out on my own.

I think for most of my life, I never felt “part of a scene”. There’s always this considerable distance between me and the people I care about, and the people who care about me. I’ve always felt that I was watching from afar, laughing and crying to myself, a comfortable distance away from the claustrophobia of intimacy. And yet, the casualness of groups had always given me a hollow sensation that I never feel when I’m by myself. That’s another wall: having to wade through the shitty muck of casual conversations, personal baggage, and human flaws. You usually gotta dig through the dirt to find gold. Sometimes it’s all just dirt. 

Which brings me to the thought I had this morning that I originally wanted to write about. After thinking about my sister, and my own battle against my shitty habits, I realized that I kind of forget I have free will sometimes. It’s like what my dad would say to me as a kid whenever my reluctance from eating vegetables went on for too long, “It’s all in your head.” Albeit it completely ignores the reality of mental health being a real and legitimate obstacle, sometimes it’s what I need to hear. Even though most of the day I’m making choices about what to eat, what to play, it usually doesn’t feel like I’m exercising my free will. 

This is of course, the distinction between unconscious habit, and conscious thought. Both have their place, unconscious habit saves us from spending the mental toll of actively making choices all day, and conscious thought is what takes the wheel when our habits drive us off a cliff (hopefully much sooner than that). 

When it comes to longing for deeper relationships and conversations, I’m not in an inescapable scenario. I’m fortunate enough that I’m not circumstantially trapped due to my gender or society or anything like that. What drew me to that passage was relating to Plath’s loneliness, but also the realization that despite the fact that I feel these walls are insurmountable, most of my walls are really just in my head, not physical or societal.  I can actively put my mind to jumping through these hurdles, because frankly, my walls aren’t as tall as Sylvia Plath’s. It also reminds me why it’s so important to break down these walls that prevent other people from surmounting their challenges. 

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And since it’s relevant, I broke down a wall yesterday. I talked to my sister after she got into a fight with dad, and gave her advice on her whole situation. I don’t normally talk to anyone in my family in that way, and I don’t think she does either, so it was new for both of us. She’s slippery, it’s hard to get her to empathize with my parents, and she seems to be stuck in her head with layers upon layers of defense mechanisms. I don’t know if she’ll be alright in the end yet, and like I said, I feel guilty that I haven’t done more to help during these past years. But it's a first step.