12:53 p.m.||||2004-03-30
Lazy wrote an entry that reminds me of the Wolf novel "you can never go home again". And it's true. I think. In my dim perception of all things touched equally by nostalgia and disillusionment, returning to home is more internal, more a reality connected to being alive, a state of mind, than a return to a locality. Although, and I've never believed in geographical cures, I've also never tried to geographically cure anything. Except once, with Dave, in Chicago.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the future. I've spent a lot of time in various episodes of this, my life, getting jazzed over things that promise change, and encouragement - for a long time, it was music. Sometimes it was art or over wanting to get serious about writing. And then, I fail to follow through. And my plans change. And the plans I made seem absurd, their accumulation, the un-done plans, seems to make me feel like my life is less meaningless. And of course, plans I followed all the way through....end in a sort of "if that's all there is..."
And I wonder. What is happiness. Is it necessary. Why do I feel the let-down I do over what is pretty plainly just a course in life, full of good and bad. Why do I feel disconnected? Disenchanted. Were the great ideas really not? If they were and I failed to become them, am I a failure? Is compromise and sacrifice bad? Am I a sell-out?
My tendency is to say no, and I have veered from my own path willingly and often cheerfully. I have been skeptical about things turning out in any conceivably noteable way in my life for many years now, and am a lot less disappointed in the long run. That doesn't mean I don't still have aspirations, but I am not my aspirations. I do live in the moment frequently. I give thanks every day for my kid, who belongs to a club of kids given, I think, to those who might die from lack of purpose otherwise, which is not why I had him, but is something I see now that I have him. Because, no matter what vacillations I have in my own head about the meaning of my life, I can't be too bothered or busy with how great I might still turn out to be, in terms of my contribution to anything, the world, art, those words just sicken me as I write them, that seems so inflated and retarded, because I have this little person, who knows me as his mommy, and that one thought gives me a sense of propriety and belonging like nothing else I have experienced.
So the thing is, I'm always depressed. And I'm manic. And I'm dissatisfied with certain shortcomings of mine. And I'm caught in a cycle of roles that concern parenting, wifing, you know the drill. And I'm waiting. Waiting. For what? For Josh to grow up?
I haven't lost the will, you know. I am just lost. Period. And I haven't been able to go home again for like, thirty-three years. Which is why living on couches when I did was so appealing. I wasn't ever afraid to throw things away, including relationships, cause I wasn't ever home. I don't really know what that means.