disaffected

nothing at work (and in some cases beyond) is making much sense to me these days. i've lost my confidence and faith that anything that i am doing is making much of a difference. every idea i have, every plan i make is shadowed by this sense of futility. i have certainly lost most of the belief i've had that who i am and the approach i would like to take to my work has the necessary support that they need from my direct leadership let alone those even higher in the organization.

it just feels as if the very nature of this place continues to shift in a way that i can't possibly truly successfully accomplish the work for which i feel accountable. sure, i can do "stuff," but that's not the same thing as getting the right work, the most important work done and done well.

it's hard to stay engaged and motivated under these kind of circumstances. it's harder still when your entire emotional makeup not only does not support you but seems to be working against you. it's not about being able to stay positive, it's about how do i not let myself be overwhelmed by this pervasive sense that the entirety of life is a ridiculous joke and the laugh is on me.

i have never been this deeply mired in disaffection, and it is draining me of whatever bit of meaning and purpose in life that i have left (which, truth be told, ain't much). and i ask again, "why is this happening to me?"

spirits in the material world - the police  

a (very) distant memory

i know there was a time that i didn't feel the way i do now. there was a time when my days and nights were not filled with thoughts of the pain and futility of life; a time when i didn't wonder how i would make it through the next day or the one after that or why i even felt it was necessary to do so.

there was time i experienced more joy than sorrow, more light than darkness, more loving companionship than days of desolate isolation. there was a time when i felt that life was more about possibilities than disappointments, opportunities than obstacles, fulfillment than frustration.

i know there was this time, but with the prolonged and continuing amount of time i have been immersed in depression, i can't seem to remember when or where that time might have been. and i ask myself, how do you find your way back to a place for which you have lost sight of having ever been there in the first place?

i remember - sarah brightman

why can't you think of anything positive?

oftentimes of late, i think that people react to my depression and the perspectives that it yields with the question that is the title of this blog entry and the questions that are articulated in the lyrics of this song. interestingly enough, they are at times the same questions i've asked myself (even though some of the dimensions like "family," "friends," or "fortune" aren't present to any great extent in my life). unfortunately though, i've reached a place where it is really the questions in the chorus that reflect where my spirit truly lies.

is it my calling to keep on when i'm unable? i don't know, but if it is, would someone please show me how?

offer - alanis morissette

a pain so great

just prior to yesterday's starbucks incident, i had been walking through the adjacent barnes and noble, in the grips of some pretty intense emotional distress. as the psychic pain mounted and my attempts to manage it seemed to be failing, all i could think was how i wish i could just have something, anything that would take the pain away and provide me even a momentary relief.

it was at this point that i had the thought that it was no wonder that there was such a high incidence of drug and alcohol abuse among people with severe, chronic depression. the pain can be so great that i could see why people would accept any means of escape, no matter how severe or damaging it may be in the long-term. i speculated that even with a great insight into the effects of addiction (having experienced it in my partner from my previous relationship), i was still susceptible to the lures of finding relief in controlled substances. all it would take is receiving an immediate respite from the many times a day onslaught of negative thoughts and feelings, and i would be hooked.

i guess the challenging thing is that when medical science and therapy have failed you and you don't want to engage in substances that in the long-term will do more harm than good, the thoughts of taking the route of a more permanent solution as a means of escape become even more pervasive. as i stated last night, there is at least one factor that prevents me from seeking out that solution, but as each day goes by and is characterized by the same intense struggles, a bit of my resolve falls away.

something has to give soon. it will either be this pain so great or it will be me.

imaginary - evanescence

bt no. 1

so longer term readers of this blog know i'm a big bath-taker and often during a soak in the tub i will have some thought that either clarifies some issue with which i'd been dealing, explains why i've been feeling the way i've been feeling, or expresses some underlying truth or fact about my life. often i will share those "bathtub thoughts" here. starting with this entry, i've decided to capture them all in a numbered series with the title abbreviated as "bt"-s.

tonight's thought is pretty simple and is as follows, "it's probably not a good thing when what keeps you from killing yourself is the fear of what will happen to you in the afterlife if you take your own life rather than the belief that your life is worth living or that what is causing you pain will ever get better."

overlooked

sometimes i have these moments where the strong emotional response elicited from a particular event speaks more to a deeper pain that i am carrying than to the actual incident itself. i had such a moment today in, of all places, a starbucks.

it started out with the normal routine. i'd ordered a grande cafe mocha and a brownie. when i got to the end of the line, i was handed my brownie and waited patiently (at least at first) for my coffee order. i watched as the female barista moved with maximum efficiency preparing one order after another. as i watched her call out orders that were ready and observed the people retrieving them, i started to notice that not only had the people who were in line before me had had their orders fulfilled, but people not just immediately behind me but those who had just entered the store were also getting their beverage requests completed. i looked on for a few moments more and saw that nothing resembling what i ordered was being prepared and so approached the counter to ask if she had my order. she looked around and responded, "no i'm not seeing it," but politely asked what my order was and proceeded to immediately prepare it.

after she'd given me my drink, i remembered that the cashier had been involved with a fairly lively conversation with the person immediately in front of me in line. it was clear that the customer was a fellow employee stopping in to use his employee discount to get a drink, a snack, and some chat with his co-workers. it occurred to me then that after taking my order i had not seen the guy working the register had not picked up a cup and written my order on it and placed in the queue of orders placed for the barista to fulfill. i gathered that with his focus on his friend, i'd been overlooked in the shuffle.

there was something about this thought of having been forgotten in the light of other activity that hit me pretty hard. as my heart and mood sank deeper and deeper, i wondered what was happening to meet (not that i had been in all that great an emotional space walking into the starbucks in the first place). it didn't take long for me to realize that this particular event was touching on the same painful emotion that my current experience with my friend has been. simply put, whether you call it being overlooked, forgotten or discarded, it all sums up to this feeling that i am not a priority to anyone. there is no one for whom i am of a level of importance that i receive a desired degree of focused attention. i am always at most an after thought and in the case of my friend i am feeling that i am no longer much of a thought at all.

i've shared earlier in the week that i, at one time, had thought (and certainly hoped) there would be more to this particular relationship, but life seems to have other plans and now i must endure the painful process of letting go of that particular desire. i will say now as i did then that it is not easy and i imagine that whenever i think about this particular person now and well into the future there will be some level of pain in my heart that i was not enough (or too problematic) to maintain his interest.

it's interesting that even a simple slight in a starbucks can be a reminder of a circumstance that is rife with so much emotion, so much pain.

i have no idea how many times i've shared this song on this blog, and yet i can't think of another one, with my admittedly limited capacity for immediate recall, that captures the emotion of this entry better. so here's one more time.

tapes - alanis morissette

sooner than i thought

i heard this version of this song earlier this morning. i thought about the context in which i shared this song with a friend (and even reflected on it in this blog). the specifics of the context are different. the result is the same and as i predicted my friend's hands appear to have been wiped clean. as i listened and wept, i thought, "i guess a few years later came sooner than i thought."

hands clean (acoustic) - alanis morissette