digitalalterego

How do I become a person, or have a personality when I am what I consume?




When I listen to new music I think about showing it off to my friends, or the way that it fits like a puzzle piece into my patchwork quilt of a music taste, or what I could take from it in order to make my music. It's the same with most media, too.

I can't just enjoy something, and I'm more in love with the idea of consumption than what I'm consuming!

I finally bought the first half of the Devilman manga, which I was overjoyed to find at a cheap-ish price. Lucky me. I wanted it for so long, but... Now I have it it doesn't feel as good as I thought. What is the point in accumulating material possessions when we are just going to move on and start wanting the next thing? And the next, and the next, and the next...

I don't have any particular taste. My entire opinion on music is whatever sounds new, and fresh to me. Must be the same for everything else. Things don't really excite me anymore, I guess it's a side effect of growing up that I'll just have to get used to.

When people ask me what I like I can only say, "I like a bit of everything".

I like the idea of being a fashionable person, I hate buying new clothes.
I want to be an artist, I don't want to make art.
I think of myself as academic, but I don't actually enjoy learning new things.

So who am I? 

 I've finally accepted that I'm in an in-between period in my life. I was scared of change at first, then I became depressed when nothing really changed how I thought it would. I'm still feeling deeply depressed at the moment, honestly, but I've reached a stage where I think I'm over the hump of it.

Somehow, that idea of being over the worst of it doesn't make me happy. Because everytime I try to move forward, there is a niggling self-destructive part of my mind that wants me to go back, go deeper than ever and not come out. I guess I feel like the only way I can get real help is to do something drastic. Coming out as being depressed when your life is completely average, when that depression hasn't outwardly affected your life in any visible way (yet) feels so embarrassing to me. It shouldn't. Rationally I know I can just ask. There are ways I can get help. But I feel like I don't deserve them, and I feel ashamed of the way I am, I suppose. I used to think that I was a a reasonable person but emotionally it turns out I am very unreasonable!

The most baffling idea that keeps coming to me is that if I get better, then what was the point of feeling bad? If nothing changes but my mood then why did I even bother being depressed? As if that's something I chose to do. Why not make the most of this bad mood and make it even worse? Until you're forced to change? Forced to drop-out of school, society, then life? I always question why I wish for bad things to happen. But I know rationally the reason is I want a scapegoat... I won't feel bad for no reason if something bad happens. That's my excuse. And if something so irreversibly terrible happened to me, I'd have no choice but to force myself to change and get better in some way. I'd need to force myself to *hope*, something I'm too weak to even imagine right now.




So the stage I'm at right now is me trying to pull myself up by my bootstraps and change myself. Not that I'm doing a good job at it! I know what I need to do to get better, but God it's hard. Why is it so hard??? To do things that used to be so easy. Things that seem so easy for everyone else... I suppose when you do nothing all day doing just one thing turns into a massive ordeal. While if you are constantly busy, one more thing doesn't really mean much. I miss being busy. But at the same time I feel so sluggish at the moment, and I keep crawling back into bed whenever I have something to do. If I got a job, would that make or break me?

I managed to get off my ass and attend University the past 2 days, even if it was just for one mandatory lab each day. I thought being at University would suit me since I enjoy learning and I always have, but since starting I find no motivation to learn. Just "enjoying" is not enough anymore. And all the people. I'm trying to accept that I am a fundamentally unsociable person. I met a few people but more than the thought of doing work, it's the thought of seeing those people again and having to explain the reason that I haven't contacted them in weeks. Even worse is the feeling they'll think I don't care about them, or I was avoiding them, or that they just lost interest in me... That's a bad habit of mine, I hate people seeing me as weak, or any kind of negative trait really.
Also the comparison. Aren't I just like every other directionless first-year student? Everh seasonally depressed teenager coming up on exam season? Those naive kids who got good grades so took the path that seemed most familiar, only to realise there is no path that doesn't require hard work. I'm just like every human ever who grew up not knowing the world and was one day forced to know it. I'm just like every other selfish person who thought they were different from everyone else and exempt from the mundane, when the only true thing about that is that I'm selfish.

Will I go to my seminar tomorrow? Seems I won't. Maybe I'll surprise myself. Will I go to my lectures in the afternoon? Even less likely. But I'll try and get something done. I don't know yet whether this in-between time will end on its own, or if I need to find a way out.