I feel like this comment needs to get as much exposure as possible…
(copied from here)
I feel like this comment needs to get as much exposure as possible…
(copied from here)
Well, the good news is that the new antidepressant I’m taking seems to be helping. For all the people who said I was “over-thinking”, that may have been technically correct, but it was the wrong focus. The actual problem was that I was under-feeling, so any over-thinking was an attempt to fill in the gap. So, the actual fix wasn’t for me to work on thinking less, it was to figure out how to feel more.
The bad news is that the “feels” that I have been having are bad ones. To do a little “vaguebooking”, I really shouldn’t have been reading those old emails I was reading. …and no, they’re not to/from the person you’re probably thinking about. I know better than to read emails traded with her.
I followed a Facebook link to a web article tonight. This totally stood out to me:
Thinking “too much” about things would become a character flaw.
What people who know me need to understand is that when I hear the well-intended thought that I’m over-thinking, that’s how it comes across to me.
Something that’s so clear to me sometimes seems like pure fantasy at other times, and I think that right now I understand. Because of that, I think it’s critical that I write this now. For me, words are so powerful, that things that I’m feeling are simply not real unless I can explain them with words.
Here’s a quote I ran across tonight:
You’ll never be able to find yourself if you’re lost in someone else.
I think the quote is true, and I’m betting that most of my friends know who I think I was “lost in”. The real trick is, though, that there’s a big distance between realizing that and knowing what to do about it. I had become so comfortable being “lost in” her, that my first instinct is to do it again with someone else.
For anyone who didn’t catch the reference I made in my previous post here (stealing from Kevin Smith on that one), I don’t think I’ll be “chasing Amy” any more. In truth, I stopped doing that even before she left, but it’s comforting to finally (I think) understand the “disconnect”.
One of the basic contradictions I’ve been trying to figure out is the difference between how I saw Amy and how some of my friends saw her. As is always the case for me, though, I’m not able to fully understand something unless I have words for it. This morning, I think I finally figured it out. Hang on, because this one is definitely going to be a bumpy ride. 😉
I just tonight realized that my web log is the perfect place for something I’ve decided I’m going to start doing: making notes each time I notice myself feeling an emotion.
I was chatting with a friend online today, and she said something that just felt right. She agreed to let me quote it, so here you go:
I’ve come to the conclusion that the point of being alive (for me, at least) is to be known and know other people as deeply and real-ly as possible.
I had another realization before I got up this morning, and I want to share it.
As a total aside, I didn’t realize until today how much agreement I have with Penn Jillette. I really need to listen to and read more of what he’s said publicly about atheism. He has a talent for explaining things in a way that’s simultaneously easy-to-understand, compelling, and non-judgmental.