12.09.2007, 10:05 pm
There have been various times in my life when I've believed, albeit falsely, that I was an idealized amalgamation of American virtues. Satisfied, grateful, ambitious, humble, hopeful, honest, hard-working...and an endless series of other cardboard traits equal in merit to those ellipses. Just words. Labels for feelings so big and loud that they cannot be boxed up using such neat, standardized language. However I believed I was more than these labels, but a larger label to act as an umbrella under which these incongruous concepts were sheltered. I believed I was happy.
I don't know what it means to be happy, but "happy" as a general adjective to describe one's psychological state is a very big concept. In Spanish there are two verbs which both mean "to be", although they each have incredibly different meanings. One is more an immediate description of the self, such is your personal health or a recent physical alteration or mood, and the other is more a statement about your personhood such as your gender or your personality. I can say, "You are so nice!" in reference to a particular act you've engaged in, or I can say, "You are so nice!" and therefore refer to your entire character as an individual on the whole. We do this in English, also, but in Spanish it's far more apparent because they actually use different terminology rather than leaving the ambiguity up to the listener to decipher.
So I am happy, and I am also not happy. I can be both. I can smile and laugh and feel good and have fun, but I can also be unhappy. I don't like my life. I didn't like my life one month ago. I didn't like it three months ago, or six, or one year, or four years, or 10. Call it white, upper-middle class, privileged malaise if you like. Call it the American Blues. Refer to it as yet another one of capitalism's self-destructive woes. Call it whatever the fuck you want. I have no one passion. I have no one great skill. I am on a path I chose but I have no fucking idea why. I have no true friend in the world to even pass the time with.
Today one of my friends who's just transferred to UVA made the comment that we should hang out this weekend because he's yet to make any friends on campus. I laughed and said I've been there for a year and I still haven't. I have friends, sure, but true friends? People I would call if I were sobbing and sad and lonely and scared? There is no one.
I have happy moments, sure, but I am not happy. I have been given all the tools in the world to be successful in life and yet I sit here writing about how I've done absolutely fucking nothing with them. I blame no one but myself, certainly, and this is why I tell no one.
Not sure if this counts as "no one" since...no one really reads it.
