They keep passing. Sometimes I feel like I have so much going on in my head that I can't even sort it out enough to decide how I really feel. I am influenced by so many different thoughts, feelings, the troops of questions that come marching through my head on a constant basis... never to be answered, only contemplated, endlessly, frustrations that I don't know how to express or relieve. Mostly with things outside of myself that I feel I have no control over...like this world. This government. This impending war. The hypocrisy of individuals, including myself. All of the things that make me sad that I can't stop from happening like child abuse and hunger or sick people with no place to go and no one to help them. All of the things that infuriate me like anti drug commercials that focus only on marijuana while ignoring the fact that drinking alcohol is one of the biggest problems in this country among high school and college students, causing more deaths, more unsafe sex and more misery than marijuana ever could. I have yet to see a single ad aimed at young people which discourages drinking, while marijuana is portrayed as the root of all evil. But people eat it up like hotcakes. These lies. And any person who cared to become educated on the subject of the history of marijuana and the "war on drugs" would see that they ARE lies. Lies which make money.
People are angry when a high school girl refuses to salute the American Flag. They scream at her and protest her, all the while insisting that she should be glad she lives in a free country. Do these people see what they are doing? Trying to take away the freedom of others which they so valiantly defend AT THE VERY SAME TIME? Do they see their own hypocrisy? Do they see that living in a free country means that you can show your disapproval with the government, IF YOU SO CHOOSE?
The worst part is having people treat me like I am overreacting to these things or that I care too much. So emotional. So dramatic. So passionate. It's too much. No one could possibly FEEL that much. No one could possibly NEED to feel that much. It's just so unnecessary to be so excessively receptive to every single little thing going on around you. I remain unchanged.
The truth is that I'm happy. There's nothing wrong with my life. I have the same troubles and worries as any average person. No more. I have a good home, an amazing man, a great job...lots of friends and loved ones. I cook, I write, I love music. I enjoy life. I have more resources and good fortune than many women my age and with my level of formal education. I am not clinically depressed, nor do I have a medical anxiety disorder. I am just a horrified person. I can't watch the news and forget the last devastating report instantly to move onto the sports and weather. I am still thinking...
I can't ignore the blatant manipulation going on in our society. I can't pretend that things are right when they are so so wrong. Not for me. For others. I'm fine. I'm a fucking hypocritical bastard just like everyone else. Though I spend a great deal of time thinking about that and trying to fix it somehow. I hate it when other people do things that are rude or just irritating, even if I do the same thing myself the very next day. That's so fucked and I'm not proud of it, but I'm human. I don't hate people. I just don't understand why we do the things that we do. I don't understand why most people don't even have the slightest ability to view themselves. Why people are in such denial about who they are, yet so ready to judge one another.
Do you ever wonder, if your life was a movie and you were watching yourself as the main character, how you would feel about yourself? We all have things that we don't want others to do to us, but we don't even think of it that way when we do it to others. We all want those who are close to us to be faithful and loyal and true -- and we'd be so hurt and angry if they weren't -- and yet so many of us will fail to be faithful and loyal and true to others. This is why most people are not simply just bastards, but hypocrites too.
Maybe the fact that I brood over these types of things and spend such a great deal of time contemplating the consequences or the result of my words and actions (most of the time after the fact ... a belated conscience? It would be nice if it could arrive on time...) is what causes me to be so overwrought. Anyways it seems like in the past few years my conscience has grown to a weight and proportion which is almost unmanageable. I seem to manage though. I have not let myself go completely insane yet with my relentless observations, self scrutiny and the barrage of silent questions that implore me during nearly every solitary or remotely idle moment. Sometimes my memory scrambles after select tidbits of thought to save for later so that I can - for some curious reason - write it down. Unfortunately, my magic memory basket is pretty shabby at times and the hastily collected thoughts and muses bounce off into oblivion like grains of salt accidently tossed from a knocked over salt shaker during my daily, bumpy ride home on New York City's ancient tracks.
Posted by Maria at February 26, 2003 11:26 AM | TrackBack