I have no idea what to write for this month.
Two weeks ago I wrote a draft that was angry and expressed my increasing confusion at the apparent absurdity of life. Life had become tiresome, like it was running out of fuel. I've spoken to friends, mentors, pastors and even gone to see psychiatric nurses (the worst appointment I've ever had, but that's another story). I felt like I'd done my best at trying to help myself and all I'd done was tire myself out; naturally, I wondered why I should bother, and started to stop caring what people thought of me or my actions, since nobody could hold it against me that I hadn't at least tried. I was particularly frustrated and bored with attempts to 'make my own meaning'. 'Roads' by Portishead or 'From now on' by Supertramp were two songs that accurately reflected the spirit of my life. Then, the other night, I had the realisation that God loves me, which is something I'd not considered or really believed for months. Through that, I realised how it is love that holds all things together, since life without love lacks meaning, warmth, drive and desirability. I still wanted to write an angry blog (why do I keep writing 'glob'?) and so I tried to deny that realisation. I couldn't help it though; it just went round and round in my head, warming my heart. The next morning, though, I was back to feeling like Camus was right: life is absurd.
I suppose I've been given a choice, in that I know that the love that comes from God (reflected in the first two commandments) is what provides meaning, but will I choose to believe that? Anything else - any attempts to 'make my own meaning' - is like being outside on a winter's night, drawing a picture of a fire and breathing on it in an attempt to create warmth. It's silliness. The book of Ecclesiastes comes to mind. All truly is vanity. 'Hevel': a mist, or a breath. I could put my everything into a family, or a job...even a charity; but at the end of the day, everybody will die and everything will eventually turn to dust. Why bother? I have been going slightly mad, to an extent, rather like The Master in Dr Who. I've stared into the vortex of time, of apparently endless nothingness in day after day of mind-numbing repetition, and it's had an effect on me. A good friend I've recently made met up with me a few weeks back. We'd both had a bad week. We talked...and laughed. That's all I can do. I've cried, screamed, sat and stared in silence...but nothing quite expresses how I feel, except for laughter. It's not a malicious laughter that enjoys others pain like some sort of Bond villain, but just a helpless giggle at the craziness of it all. Life is not what I expected it to be. I have a loving family, friends, food, a warm bed and much more, yet I'm going mad. The majority of you reading this will probably think I'm sounding melodramatic, and that's okay. Maybe it's just my depression, or a 'quarter-life crisis'. Y'all don't know all that's happened, and I won't waste my time trying to convince everybody that I'm not being a drama queen. Why would I bother, after all? Ahahaa...
I met up with my pastor a little while ago and described everything to him. He reckons that something isn't right with my view of God. I think he's right. Looking back, I didn't think God loved me. Going by my experiences of the past couple of years, I felt little reason to believe that - though my depression almost certainly had an effect on my hindsight. I felt bullied, by a cruel bully. I could have avoided a lot of pain, but I felt like a lot of it was not a result of choice. However, knowing that God does actually love me changes everything. I've been trying to hope without love, which meant all hope is empty and actually undesirable. Faith without love is bitter and stagnant, relying on rules and unable to help itself from just being 'religious'. People drift apart without love. It goes deeper: without love, everything drifts apart. If you don't love your work, it becomes a chore. If you don't love a partner, they become exhausting. If you don't love food, you won't make a proper effort to eat properly. If you don't love your body, you won't take care of it. Entropy is inevitable. Everything falls apart. I've been dying. Not physically (yes, I get that we're all dying, har-har, smart-arse), but emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Life without love, is dead. I couldn't help thinking why I hadn't yet committed suicide - the depression doesn't help, but it was more than that - since life without love is an oxymoron. I have previously written that God is the source of life and love. Those are inseparable. God=Life=Love. Remove one and things start to fall apart. Love isn't inherent in the natural world, according to Darwin: ‘Man descended from apes, therefore we must love one another’ (Vladimir Solovyov). It requires effort. It requires effort that I don't have. I need an external source. My life kinda still had God in it, but I didn't think He loved me. Therefore both my understanding of God and my actual life started to fall apart. Trying to have love in my life without God doesn't work because I can't provide what I don't have. If you can, great, but I can't.
I didn't know what I'd write until I started writing. I'm still angry. I don't want to believe. I'm going to be visiting friends very soon because I can't stay in Torquay any longer. I want to be distracted all the time. I feel like a burden to people, though I'm not quite sure what else to do because I've tried so many things and listened to lots of people in trying to help myself. Now, I'm out of energy. I don't deserve any commendation, since I'm not intentionally 'making it through' this. I'm being dragged through it, face-down. I make things worse for myself a lot of the time and am sometimes very tempted to just buy a ticket to the Philippines and disappear. I don't know if any of this has helped anybody, it would be nice if it did. I didn't really want to write a blog, but I promised I would, and I'd be annoyed later if there was a gap where this month's post would otherwise be. If it's confused and bitty, then it's perfect.
That's it for September. I haven't got the energy to think up a thought for the month.
