momentum...

I am not sure why I blog so much about nothing at all, I don't even know who is reading this darn thing, but they assure me people do so I keep tap-tapping away.

I am finally finishing this book I started months ago. I am not really that slow a reader but I hadn't really gotten hooked by it yet. I guess as fish go I am one of those massive, graceful, legendary types that swim deep where it stays cool, steady and dark all year round. When I do chase tail I take a good hard look before I bite in the first place and make sure I'm not being suckered into something else entirely!

Well, as far as books go at least!

So I am reading Prozac Nation. I know you probably know all about it, saw the movie and read the tee shirt but I didn't know anything about it until recently. I was reading another book I borrowed from the bartender at my former watering trough and he is mentioning this bright young author who everyone thinks is the greatest thing of our generation, but who he realizes rather quickly is just a terrible person. I must know more I say to myself but do not do anything about it right away.

Then one day I just see her famed book laying around belonging to no one and start reading. Since no one bothers saying, hey, that's my book, give it back" I decide to adopt the orphan and vow to bring it back and leave it where I found it as soon as I'm done. I end up finding it again months later and I still haven't finished the prologue.

Guilty as charged.

So I am bored and in need of something to pass the time at work. Apparently my coworkers do not like it when I talk their ears off about nothing in particular. It has been "mentioned." No worries, I am not hurt. I am Jack's F**king Ambivalence. I don't require my colleagues to adore me. Not at all.

Anyway, I am somewhere nearing the end of the second third and it occurs to me that I really hate this girl. She purports to represent all the screwed up youth of our generation whose parents divorced and abandoned us all the while carrying on like she is the only one this has happened to and she carries the enormity of an entire western culture's wasted life and yet somehow it isn't so bad that she can actually take matters into her own hands and end it all like any pen or poet worth their salt would have done long before.

I totally understand why this other author despised her because I can see it clearly in her overindulged premature memoir. Come on she isn't even 10 years older than me. Is it time for me to find a publisher for mine?

Of course the sick part is I identify with nearly all of it. Not the drugs part. Not even the alcohol part. Not the being pregnant and not knowing it part. Not the psychologists and psychiatrists. Not the institutions. Just about everything else though.

I mean, I feel exactly the same kinds of things she is describing, yet somehow I don't completely fall apart. Somehow I don't self-destruct in any sort of way that might be noticeable to others. Maybe that is why I don't come out of it. She describes her depression as spells that come and go and seem to me at least to be circumstantial even though she doesn't identify them as such. Early it is her father leaving (which is drug out gradually over years in her case, in mine the bandage was ripped away before I realized there was anything to cry about in the first place). Then it is her mother not mothering her enough or mothering her too much, depending on how she looked at it at any given moment. Then it is a variety of men she thinks exist to rescue her (and somehow she thinks of herself as a feminist in spite of her buy-in on the Disney semi-annual bull sale). The drugs and alcohol feed into it later on but I agree with her that they are just excuses, side effects.

I feel as though she is gradually building a case for why I should feel sorry for her as though somehow she holds the world record for suffering unfairly or something. What I really think it comes down to is a simple lack of fortitude. I don't necessarily blame her for this of course, it is circumstantial and a product of her nurturing but the simple fact that she is as intelligent as she is forces you to believe that at least she has the faculty to come to grips with what is happening and therefore holds the power to change how she sees herself. Instead she perpetuates it. To that end how can I continue to empathize with her if I believe that she already knows that she is now the source of her own depression and she ought to know how to come out of it. Without pills. Without codependent entanglements with random men. Without dragging those around her down in the process.

Of course all of this might as well be an indictment on myself. I may not explode into the self-destructiveness or even show the signs enough for anyone to see. Honestly until I read this book I wasn't even sure I dealt with depression at all. Of course I had my suspicions but easily rationalized everything away. All the signs were explained. I work nights so I have to sleep during the day. That makes it hard to sleep well so I sleep more.

My schedule and other life circumstances have conspired to leave me with a rather unfulfillng social life. I figure that more than explains why I am bored all the time and why I get down. Loneliness is a perfectly normal response to being alone all the time, right?

What I couldn't explain is why I haven't done anything about it. I am perfectly aware of myself and yet apparently not willing to change anything dramatically enough to have much of a shot at living a more meaningful life.

Well don't ruin the end of the book. I'm rooting for a classic suicide. The kind my tall, redheaded acting teacher always romanticized about. I get the feeling she'll eventually figure it out though. Bummer.

Oh FYI. This is also going to be my experiment at reading a book and then watching the movie. I think those people who are always talking about the book during or after a movie are pretentious assholes but that's just my opinion. So you can read, good for you. I can too I just chose to let others do the hard work for me.For now it looks like I have enough momentum to finish this one at least.

Peace,

b