I'm having some sort of existential crisis. It's not really related to my pre-Christmas depression; I don't feel the same weight I felt then. I can't even really relate it as an explanation; it's an on-going thought process that isn't bearing any fruit, if that makes any sense. Here's how a typical thought process works (and imagine this strung out over five days or so; we're not talking about rapid quick-change five minute thoughts):
-"I'm so happy. I live with the man I love, we have good times, we're bumbling along with laughter and a healthy sense of what we want and where we're going...
-"Wait. Where are we going? I'm 25 and my life's going nowhere! I'm screwed! The classes I'm taking now aren't useful, I don't have any money, I can't support myself, S has no direction; MY BOYFRIEND HAS NO DIRECTION, we suck at life, we're totally not successful....
-"Well, fuck success anyway. What the fuck is success? I'll be damned if I have to sit in a cubicle someday just to make enough money to buy a huge house for kids I don't want so that I can buy an SUV that I don't want. That's not me. This is definitely more of my style, even if it means I'm not successful by society's standards....
-"Oh god, I'm definitely not successful. I'm not successful at anything. I couldn't get into grad school, I can't figure out what the hell I want out of the next few years, except for things that I can't have, and it seems like all my family my age is lapping me in the race of life....
-"Hold on, this isn't a competition. I refuse to let other people define what I should be, and how I should behave, and how I should live. This is where I am now, and even though I don't want to be here in two years, it's served its purpose quite well. I don't need to follow any schedule other than my own."
And back and forth and back and forth. On the elliptical machine the other day, I realized that I was, if not where I necessarily want to be physically, doing better emotionally than I have been for a long time, and that alone was okay. But then I was thinking about what S and I could realistically hope for after our lease is up here, and I don't have a clue. I don't have an inkling of where we can go, or what we can do. We're both sort of non-cubicle people, and this world is set up for cubicle workers. He has less ambition than me, and that's saying something, because I have slightly more ambition than my sister's cat. Do cats have ambition? Me neither.
Sometimes I think that I threw myself into the library thing because everyone has something, but not me. Because I know I'll be good at it, and it's marginally more interesting than anything else I could end up doing. But really, I don't want to be a librarian. I don't know what I want; I'm 25 now and I think I'm supposed to know. Or at least that's what I think other people think. How concerned am I about it? Maybe less than I should be. I worked happily in retail, with no ambition of moving up for almost three years, and I left because I thought I had the idea that would save me from this moorless life, and it didn't. I still don't want anything like that; my ambitions lie elsewhere. I want to read good books and eat good food (complicated by the diet, no doubt about that) and travel to interesting places. I want to love well, and be loved well. I want to be able to think about more than if the bills got paid and if we can afford this or that; I want to think abstractly and idealistically, to think outside of the box and avoid the box. There doesn't seem to be a place for someone like me in the pantheon of workers. There is no job on the planet that sounds like a good job to me, and if you think I'm exaggerating, I'm not.
This isn't really a new thing for me. I've felt this way since high school and before, even as far back as eighth grade. We had to write "career reports" in eighth grade and I made up a career that I wanted (journalist, ugh) just to write the damn thing. Everyone seems to know what they want to do, at least the people that I know. And if they didn't know, they got a job anyway. I find myself unable to make that concession. It's deeply unrealistic, I totally know that, and it's sadly idealistic and weird to not be able to compromise yourself just to make money. I always tell people that you know, you do what you have to do to make a living, but I feel really disconnected from those words, like I don't know how to make them work in my own life. It's frustrating and scary to be here, but at the same time, sometimes I feel like I have freedom that no one else not in this position has. And sometimes I feel like a big loser.
And right now, apparently the war between the big loser side of me and the freedom rules side of me is being fought at the front of my brain, because it's all I've been thinking about for about, oh, I don't know, 6 months. For a long time, I think the big loser side of me was winning, propelling me to school and a "career", but now I don't feel happy. I don't feel anywhere near as happy as I was at Borders, and I can't say why. I feel deeply unfulfilled, and I'm scared to spend money on a Masters degree that won't make me a better, more fulfilled person, and I'm afraid to say that I think that the degree won't help. I sometimes get on S because he doesn't know what he wants to do, but it's the pot calling the kettle black. I feel like shit, typing that. I'm going to finish up this post and hug him all night, and apologize until I'm blue in the face, because I'm such a hypocritical bitch.
I'm sorry, S (and world). Because I don't fucking know either, and that feels better than wearing a librarian costume right now.
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