“It’s 1977 and THIS IS BORING!”
Perhaps the words of this journal now seem heavy. Maybe you question whether you should continue reading. You’ve gone through 1975, 1976, and now it’s 1977. It’s probably beginning to seem like you’re reading much of the same thing over and over and over—boring! Second grade, third grade, eight grade, back and forth, back and forth. This is tedious work! Nothing is happening. It’s time to stop reading and bail out! It’s painful to continue. Now, maybe, you can understand the way I felt. Maybe you can understand why I yearned for a place where I could avoid the pain. But no, there was no place for me. I couldn’t put the book down. I had to push forward because I couldn’t say goodbye to myself.
But perhaps at this time I was handling it differently. I wasn’t experiencing such wide swings of emotion. I nonchalantly stated, “I’m still screwed up.” The whole thing was “matter of fact.” I wasn’t depressed. I solemnly accepted the pain. Maybe I kept myself thinking so much that I didn’t have time to be depressed. I was too busy fighting, and as long as I did, I knew there was hope. The most important thing isn’t always where you are, but where you’re going. I was focused on where I was going; therefore, my situation seemed improved. I knew that in the end, I’d leave the room!
The lizard would cause pain until I solved its puzzle but success demanded monotonous hard work. This wasn’t about having fun. “Feel the boredom,” I’d tell myself. It was like being stuck in a small room for years, and you can’t get out! You look at the same walls over and over and over and over and over again. When I began the fight, I thought I would have beaten the feelings a long, long time before. It was a good thing I didn’t know the truth! Maybe I never would have tried.
You the reader can go home. You can leave, put down the book, and never read it again. But for those caught in this malaise, they must first remove the garbage to go home. They must first see their walls to leave their room. You the reader become the enemy. You don’t understand. You don’t see it. You think we’re weird. “Oh, he isn’t that bad!” you’ll say. I can hear it. I can hear you. That’s what you’re thinking. I know that’s what you’re thinking. You don’t understand. You question why someone should feel bad. You question why someone should have feelings. You’ll say it happened a long time ago, it shouldn’t matter now. You’ll say that we should grow-up! You can breath so you think we can, but you left the room and we’re left behind.
To win the “Battle of the Minds,” we must not only overcome the inner world, but the outer: people. We must overcome people and their opinions and thoughts. It becomes difficult to relate to people. It’s as if there’s a glass wall. They swim in their world, and we can’t enter. What they care about seems foreign. What they think about seems foreign. We can pretend to understand, but don’t. We can pretend to belong, but don’t. There is so much inside us that they don’t see. We can’t share ourselves with people who don’t understand. There are two worlds, theirs and ours; theirs seems so perfect, and ours so awful.
This journal is a part of the world people want to deny. Yes, I say deny—but one other thing: A part of everyone, at one point or the other, one variation or the next—a part of everyone is in us and in this journal. They smugly say its not, but it is, and as they deny us, they deny themselves. They’ll say they know nothing of this sort, all the while holding in their own pain. They become our biggest enemy, not even willing to stand beside us or acknowledge us—its because they deny the pain they feel inside. So I push forward alone… The tedium of time is very heavy; but I see the vision, I see where I’m going, and will never let go…
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