What Do I do....

This is the worst! I want to do so many things but thinking about doing them turns me off from doing them.  I'm so confused. AH.

Lost?

     I've been under some delusion that my purpose can only be defined (the fact that it needs defining is problematic enough) in terms of academic pursuits.  But I'm really not academic. The closer I come to feeling like my Self again, the more aware I am to a general feeling of unfulfilledness within the academic bubble. But in what?  Why is it that I can't seem to find my ground here? I'm comfortable with the ways  things go but that's not the same thing as belonging, is it.  I've felt more comfortable in environments I've never been in. Airports,  restaurants, yoga studios, France. So I know it isn't because I'm unsure of  unfamiliar things around me.  It's something deeper.

Getting My Annotated Bibliography Back
     I was given an assignment.  To find 5 sources revolving around any and all forms of reception and expression in regards to particular poet. In my unfortunate case I was assigned Eugene Lee-Hamilton.  Never heard of him?  Yea, neither has 90% of the rest of the world either.  As such, his virtual presence is limited to casual name dropping, mix-ups with similarly named gardeners and janitors, cumulatively more famous than the poet could ever even hope to be. Despite this considerable elusiveness, I tried.  I tried.  I tried despite not caring anymore.  Which in its own way could be construed as more challenging because I'm fighting with not only myself and my utterly desolate plain of Motivation but with the logical side of myself, the side that is currently proving to me how useless it all is.  How important is it that I "suck it up" like 'all the other university students' indefinitely 'out there', floating as indistinguishable from the aether of my hypothetical imagination. 

      She didn't even grade it.  Didn't even validate it as "attempted" by giving it an F. Instead I 'get' to do it over again.  I suppose the world would like to see this as a situation in which I illustrate some degree of gratitude. 
I haven't quite made it that far.
My thoughts are simpler. I can't yet decide if I even want to do it over again or if it's easier to just accept a fail and move on.  I can move on.  I'm good at 'moving on'.  Aren't I?  I think too much.  Why is "easier" always 'bad'?  Why would it even exist if it was bad?  I suppose it's the metaphysical equivalent of fast food on the soul. I feel like I've been eating at a raw, vegan, fair-trade hippie joint up 'til now and it's about time I maow'd down on a greasy helping of MSG laden Chinese noodles and fried beef parts. Give me Freedom.

     Doing it all in order to secure my future, hey. Aren't we all as miserable as we are because we've forgotten the art of living in the moment? Is living in the moment too easy? Not worthy of consideration because there's no hypothetical future on which to derive some false sense of accomplishment over merely because you're doing something hard, potentially soul-sucking right now...in the moments we're ignoring?

Logic, in Karlynian:

    You don't pursue post secondary? You're lazy. Stupid for choosing ignorance. Must have low, if any, standards of excellence for yourself. What do you expect to DO with your life.  Nothing, because that's what not going to university will get you.

     Travel? That's an excuse to distract people from your inherent inability to think the way University Thrivers think.  You can't operate at the level they do naturally, even when you try.  Have you seen your papers, lately? Your test scores? Assignment marks?  You're not even in the same league. Go do something sub-par.  Like teaching.  Traveling. Both.  It's all you'll ever accomplish, if that's even the best verb for what you'll have done. 

    What defines value? Why am I so uncreative, so unassertive as to unconsciously absorb non-Karlyn-derived esteems of value, then assign them to my own method of being? It does me no good whatsoever. It blinds me from myself.

    I can analyze but that isn't what fulfills me. And what is academia if not a bunch of people stuck analyzing the intricate details of other details derived from other details?  Then they write about it in whatever style suits the details they want to further elaborate upon.  If the older, detail-obsessed kings and queens of the academic realm don't agree or think you detailed your details improperly, you don't get to share your details with other detail-obsessives who actually subscribe to the journals those kings and queens nest upon. I don't think I'm as proficient at it as the academic world requires.  Do my high's from teaching stem from this misunderstood notion of myself?  I'm lost all over again.  I don't know anymore how authentic my interest in teaching is, anymore.  I  think it was a desire born out of misconstrued notion of reality, one that dictates value and worth of any kind being born from my academic success.  I'm scared that the feelings elicited within myself when people understand my explanations are no longer Real. I'm scared I'm setting myself up for failure.  That I even think I know what 'failure' is. I'm lost.

Just Pretending

I'm just pretending I can do this.  I don't think I'm supposed to be here, or at least not as a student.  Perhaps a janitor or an invisible shadow would be better states of being for me while here within these scholarly walls.

     You're all English majors" she said.

     Well..I'm not.  But it sparks the notion I've always argued with myself over, the idea that people within a major have some magical power within themselves that is perfect for their major and allows them to rise to the specific challenges tied to that major.  Engineers have Math power, Englishy's have analytical power entwined with expressive grace.  I seem to fall short of the second half of all these powers. I can appreciate eloquence, yet can't seem to achieve it myself.  I can appreciate the intricacy of mathematics and how they become the window to the unimaginable, unthinkable, the ultimate grandeur of the universe, but I can't hold enough of its rules in my head at any one time to apply them liberally.  I'm so limited to my immediate environment...it's almost as if I have nothing to give without first being given something.  How useless is that.  I do nothing to contribute if I merely remodel what's already there. Why can't I be the kind that put something there first?

On My Way...To A Few Things

I originally deleted this post so that should Kirk stumble upon this blog, he wouldn't know the extent to my life and therefore have no additional reason to flip out on me.

Evidently I care no longer.

I messaged him. Tarek. It was a stumbling, rambling, indefinite bit of jabber but it got the job done: he's clearly very upset about my inability to love him back. As such I've found the motivation I needed to delete him from Facebook and even the messages between us. I wish it wasn't, but deleting someone on Facebook is the greatest way to ease into a life without them.

I'm surprisingly ok with this move, too. I keep dwelling on how upset he obviously is but nothing quite taps into my old, guilt-tripping Self as dwellage does. It's liberating and empowering to stop oneself and actually succeed in distracting that part of my self-deprecating brain. 

And I just dropped my phone into my tea. Ironic too, as I was about to attest to my increasing tea consumption and how British that makes me feel. I guess I have a lot still to learn about being British, as I can't imagine many of them take much time to steep their phones like I just did.

On a continuous note with regards to the theme prior to my phone tangent, I deleted Dexter and blocked his number. Kirk's too. I feel pitifully lonely and mildly sick, as both of them are currently ripping me apart via text message, but other than that, though...I'm sure there's a part of me deep, deep down that is doing alright. I did say "deep", right? K, just making sure. Naomi and my sister are so far my most effective painkillers. Let's hope my inevitable insanity stays subdued long enough to trick them into thinking I'm nice to be around. I don't quite know what I'd be like on my own. Perhaps I wouldn't be at all.

The Fog

     I think the root of my confusion revolves around love.  My ability to do it.  My awakening to it.  I'm still squinting, however.  I can't quite see it but I know something's there.  Finally. Or do I even want to see it? Am I even capable?  Maybe all I'll ever see is just that, an imagined notion that will always stay imagined, never realized, yet always bright.  For the first time in my life I'm thinking, genuinely thinking of turning myself inwards.  Of focusing all my Self into the words I WRITE rather than the facial expressions I make or the words I articulate. To be honest I feel like I'm lying.  If I feel a certain way, why shouldn't my entire being exude it?  Well, something I'm just beginning to learn: the ultimate expression of one's self is in the keeping of certain truths hidden from public view.  Smiling on the outside yet feeling a storm on the in.  Not something I could ever relate to in literature until now. I finally get why they always bothered to do something like that.  To love someone is to keep them safely from you. But that seems wrong.  But so does constantly vomiting your life-'s problems on that person.  So what do I do?

     Three people love me.
      Tarek.  Dillon. Kirk.
     They each mean something different.  Not to me, but as Love.  They love differently.  Obviously. Isn't the uniqueness of everyone a concept we learn when we're in kindergarten? (Why is it that it takes so long for it to become entangled with other aspects of life? Do I learn things too slowly? I think I'm one of the last to figure this out.) But I don't know what to do with these Loves.  I don't know if I should reciprocate them.  And how? How do I return love? I've never loved anyone before and known it.  When I did love someone, I didn't know what it was. It's gone now, though.  Can I even trust myself to love someone? What if I screw it up in the beginning? Or the middle? Why do I talk like it's some sort of method I need to follow, anyway? Like one day I'll get the instruction manual beamed into my conscious mind via some blissfully happy couple sitting across from me on park bench in London?  Because that's really what I feel like: like it'll all come to me overnight, that I'll just suddenly know how to love, how to be loved.  Before I knew it was me, I used to blame my misunderstanding on the Other.  That THEY were the ones who didn't know what love is hence their apparent love for me.  Because "loving Karlyn" is a logical pitfal.  It's a negative imaginary number.  It simply doesn't occur in any realm, physical or meta.  How could it?  The love I imagined they were describing was a nigh-sentient force, one that ensnares both people, surprising them both but effecting them at the same time. 'Suddenly' you're "in love". Whatever that means.  Then you look deeply into each other's eyes and really know the person.  And all the parts that you don't, you seem to bypass in the Logic Wagon and instead take the shuddering, creaking overpass of Living in the Moment and then turn into the cave known as Trusting in the Unknown.  HA. Literally: like that's ever going to happen.

     Love isn't like this for me anymore.  The problem is it hasn't turned into anything different, though.  Not yet.  It's still incomprehensible to me, I just now know what it isn't.

At least I'm staying true to my natural method of Understanding Through Deduction of What Isn't.  That's....helpful. Again....HA.