If I close my eyes I smell the butter of fresh popcorn and hear the whirring of a laptop powerful and bright. Can taste the dichotomy of the crisp melting of the popped kernel in my mouth, feel the happiness of being in a desk chair in front of a screen and surrounded by books.
Then I open my eyes and see I have to edit everything I've written to be even vaguely coherent.
Happiness is hard when you're never satisfied. When the childhood curiosity stapled to your youthful lips never unpinned as you aged. Neither did the idealistic expectations. Couple that with a pessimistic anxiety disorder and a mood disorder to swing things between the two disparities and it gets a little more complicated.
I've been my most relieved and anxious in this place of empty, of nowhere, that I've settled myself into for the next three weeks. A piece of me enjoys the rest and possibilities. The other hates it for those exact reasons.
I need to breathe, I tell myself. Being so separate is my fault, I insist.
But another voice in my head pipes up quietly, offering a new idea. I'm demonizing myself for not being ideas, for not being normal, for not being one.
But perhaps be bipolar, in more ways than just disorder, is exactly what concocts the human I like being.
Perhaps the great empathetic thoughtfulness yet great introspection work so well in tandem.
Maybe the assertive extroversion yet pleasured isolation balance in their own, special way.
In a way, I might just need to look back on the old Sunday afternoon specials and speak to myself the lessons of their half-hour programs. In particular, admit maybe its ok if I'm weird. perhaps its ok I just be the own odd balance that is me.
The Nowhere, the empty, can be itchy with the possibilities sometimes. Yet these moments, that help me breathe through my own neurotics and idiosyncrasies, may just be the best kind of nothing.
Maybe the bothersome nowhere can also be something grand and great for me as well.
There perhaps is another side of nowhere, and perhaps it is my favorite.
