Escaping the Mundane

When someone asks me how my day is, I know what the expected answers are. I am expected to answer with either “good” or “not too bad”. Anything exhibiting strong emotion in a particular direction requires more information than an asker is willing to hear. When I hear the question, even if I comprehend the meaning to be more of a polite social norm than a genuine inquiry, I find neither of those acceptable responses coming to my head. Instead of “fine” or “passable” or “so-so” coming to mind, I think of words like “uninspiring”, “mundane” or “quiet”.

I’m not sure if my attitude towards my daily life is my own fault. Maybe I should be happy for the mundane and the quiet. It certainly beats an awful day, complete with crying and severe bouts of depression. However, the alternative lifestyle of living in complete boredom does not feel like an escape for me. An escape from sadness shouldn’t just be lack of feeling, but joy or fulfillment. Recently I’ve had neither.

In trying to figure out the source of my recent nothingness I have attempted an examination of my daily habits. If I ask friends or parents for advice, they are quick to suggest that it’s possible that I don’t have enough endorphins. I don’t work out hence I am unhappy and unfulfilled. This doesn’t explain any of my endorphin-filled semesters at Groton where pure happiness still escaped me, or my entire summer, which was void of endorphins but full of bliss.

My daily activity seems not to have deviated too much from what is normal for me. I want to be able to blame my environment, the people around me or myself for my unhappiness but I’m not sure I can pin down a particular source. It’s terrifying. It feels strange to know that my emotional health rests beyond my control. I may have a great day, where everything is perfect, and then a series of two or three where my life feels empty.

I go through the motions of waking up, eating, working, school, café, work, hanging out and then sleeping; I find no pleasure in them, I just do them because I know that I should. Perhaps brief happiness is provided from an extra espresso shot in my coffee or a temporary sugar filled high. But for the most part there is nothing.

My goal for the next few weeks should be perhaps to deviate from my routine. It is possible that a change in routine could change the mundane to something more meaningful. Maybe I will try going for a run, or finishing my homework extra early and taking a crisp late-fall walk in the woods. I have reached a point of desperation with regards to my happiness. Others may perceive me as enjoying misery, but I truly don’t. I crave real happiness even more than people who are close to it and already have it.

But I feel lost. I feel like I have no tools by which to become happy. I merely exist. I am like a man in a world where fire is possible, but I have no match or way to ignite a flame.

First Return to the Circle

It feels weird to go back to the place where I grew up. Not home, one could hardly call what I did there growing up. Growing up implies change, a climax and a denouement.  Although pleasant, my childhood before Groton was mere existence. It was blissful and ethereal but just existence, with very little substance except the provision of a strong foundation for a personality to develop on. This is where I grew up, where I am now. 

The Circle remains unchanged, a fact that shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. Why would the circle change? It’s just a well kept ring of grass with apple trees and a soccer field set up in the fall. Perhaps I have projected a bit of myself onto the image of what I expected the school to be like upon my return. I have changed. I am a mix of things now: more worn down, tired, experienced, slightly wiser and I’m unsure if this is what happiness feels like, but I think I’m slightly happier too. I feel free. And even if the cliche has warned me of all the responsibility that comes with freedom, I am slowly learning for myself what that really means.

Walking along the familiar Chapel-Schoolhouse-DiningHall-Library path brings me back to my days here. I wonder if perhaps I just imagined it all. It could have all been in my head: the stress, the intensity of friendship, the power of all my emotions. However, as I walk around, I realize I am not entirely alone on my reminiscent journey. The present tense of the school walks with me, a representative of the not so distant past. The once-juniors and once-sophomores greet me with familiar looks I can identify as neither disdain nor respect. I am an anomaly, a strange figure to be seen. Groton has moved on, but I will never really be able to move with it. For me, Groton will always be viewed through a pinhole that can only see the years 2006-2011. 

Despite my churning nostalgia, I feel a sense that I am still welcome here. Teachers and students alike greet me like a friend who is just taking the semester off, or a teacher on sabbatical. When speaking with teachers, I sense a shift in our dynamic. They are aware of my change, perhaps more so than I am; they recognize that society views me as an adult now, and they treat me accordingly. Our conversations mimic those between a close aunt and an intrepid niece who has been off exploring for a while but always knows that she can turn up and still be at home.

With students, things are slightly different. Many are happy to see me, glad that I have travelled so far to visit, and others seem slightly shaken from the norm as if my presence is upsetting a delicate balance they've worked hard to obtain. I don't mind. I understand their perspective, even if it makes my absence feel more real. I know I cannot live in this dream-like Groton world forever. 

A visit here must be short and brief for it to mean anything. My reconnection to my friends is a reminder to them that I am still a presence in their lives. I do not want to go to college and lose meaningful friendships to replace them with new ones. Having more friendships doesn't bother me, but I refuse to make new friends at the cost of my old ones. I see no reason to choose between one and the other. 

Being here has made me realize that I am at a wonderful stage in my life. Everything is accessible to me if I want it to be. My personal relationships with my old teachers and friends are evolving. I am becoming a different person without losing the essence of my character. I am still clumsy, eccentric and blunt but I have taken these characteristics and tried to grow up  with them. College has become less of a reinvention of Eriche Sarvay and more of an evolution.

With this evolution there is of course a struggle. It is difficult to feel like you are moving forward when some of the people you care about appear to be stagnant and content with this stagnancy. I have always believed that a personality is an art that should be molded and changed and experimented with until a person is completely happy with who they have become. 

Looking through my alumna tarnished lens, I see some who appear to be stuck, unable to be free from themselves. Within some, there is still superficiality, immaturity and an obsession with status within a Groton hierarchy. But how could I expect it to change? Again, I shouldn't be surprised, but I am. I wonder if the Groton circle curses us; I wonder if by being here we are forced to notice circularity and cycles more than the average person. For a Grotonian, everything returns to the same starting point, patterns repeat themselves and we feel ourselves reliving the same moments over and over again. 

If this is indeed a curse, it exists with duality. Interspersed with the feelings of repetition and occasional regret are the feelings of happiness, nostalgia, and blessedness. And I use the term in the least religious sense. Grotonians are lucky to be who we are, and although divinity is very much a construct of human society, it is impossible not to feel like being at Groton was some kind of luck derived from an inhuman source. Blessedness is the only term in my limited vocabulary that I feel truly captures this emotion, this luckiness to a degree of significance.

Changing Direction of the Wind (I hate titles)

I haven't posted in a while; it doesn't matter because no one reads this anyway. I'm thinking of changing the tone of this blog, mainly because I can and mainly because I want my writing to go deeper than it's been going lately. I feel like my mind operates in two realms: one realm is very much shallow and conforms to what is socially expected of me and the other realm is a deeper darker place where I can become more pensive and look at the world in ways that seems to eternally change and evolve. My shallow projections into society can be seen by everyone almost immediately. It is more difficult to share what is going on in my head.

Because of this, I want to challenge myself to publish more of my provocative writing. "Provocative" may be a strong word, but compared to what I have posted before, anything I have to say henceforth will certainly seem like it is from another world. I would not hesitate to suggest that perhaps my tone and writing style will change depending on my subject. My goal here is to explore my style and perhaps find a way of defining it. An educated person can read two passages, let us say one is from "Absalom, Absalom!" and the other is from "The Old Man and the Sea", and identify instantly which is Faulkner and which is Hemingway. Although I idolize them, I know that I am no Hemingway and certainly no Faulkner. I wish to pay respect to their craft in my own way.

This post will be a short one; I want to work on a short piece for tomorrow. I hope it's good. I'm really tired so the quality will be questionable. Maybe soon I will start trying to publicize this blog, although I'm sure everyone I care about has heard enough of my rambling.