whitestar333

I just had an emotional breakdown.  I realized that I have no idea who I am.  I was on duty this graduation weekend and I watched as high school seniors received their diplomas and cheered and laughed and cried as they were all saying goodbye to their friends and teachers.

I did not cry.

Perhaps tonight is a culmination of all of these memories brought back by some cruel emotional necromancy.  Even my facebook cruelly reminded me that, yes, everyone but me, is in a happy relationship.  It also seems like bad programming that Okcupid keeps reminding me that the last successful date is now "seeing someone," and keeps reminding me of this fact even though it occurred several days ago.  Fuck you, Okcupid!  Shut up!  I know already!  It also doesn't help that a recent ex wrote that she "finally found a man who will put her first."  Well shit.  That pretty much sent me into this spiraling depression I'm currently in.

I sat on my bed and tried to sleep, just let it all go away, and I found myself talking to God.  I haven't done that in 4 years.  The last time?  Patty broke up with me.  FUCK!  Why do I do this to myself?  Why do I keep harping back to these moments in my past where I was emotionally scarred.  I'm afraid to fall in love again.  Perhaps it's my logical mind reminding me that relationships only lead to sadness and heartbreak that prevents me from getting the nerve to ask that attractive math teacher out for drinks after work.  Perhaps it's when I look at the two girls who just said goodbye to their boyfriends as they not only graduated and left the school, but left the country.  Or maybe it's the sophomore boy who came to me yesterday asking for my advice about his psycho girlfriend.  All of these things make me so cynical of relationships, that I find my default reaction is "Eww" when I see two high school lovers rather that "Aww."  Love only leads to heartbreak.

Then why am I heartbroken now?

I feel like I've been dumped... not by a recent romantic interest but by life.  I feel like I'm wandering through my life and I only just realized that I'm lost.  I feel like no one cares about me.  I know it's not true, but I feel like I've been giving out so much advice to my friends, trying to be a good friend, that I don't even know who I am anymore.  I feel lost in the woods and the only thing left is just to keep walking forward and hope that I can find my way out.  Fuck.  Where are all of those friends I've made along the way?  I don't expect them to know what I'm going through or be able to help, but isn't this the part of the movie where some attractive woman comes along and discovers me and loves me for who I am?  Oh wait, wrong gender stereotype.

I'm alone.  It's even the worst kind of alone.  I'm stuck on a campus surrounded by people but I have no friends.  The only human being who has even displayed an iota of concern is one of my advisees.  "You need a girlfriend, Mr. J.  You need to stop being a wuss and just ask her out!"  I blushed because this one student saw right through my rough adult facade.  I almost cried right there.  The reason why I've been so unhappy here these last two years is that no one here understands me.  It's worse than when I was actually in high school - at least then there were people with whom I could actually be friends.  Here, it's just people with whom I work, but the worst part is that everyone around here is friends.  Again, I'm all alone, surrounded by a network of people who all love each other.  Fuck.  I just wish someone would just say "Hey Matt, you look down.  Want to go out for a drink?"  I can't even bring myself to talk to anyone or ask them to hang out because I'm embarrassed or scared or some shit like that.  What the hell is wrong with me?  Why am I all of a sudden chicken shit?  Since when do I not have any friends?  My life has never been like this before.

I'm so alone...  even my dog hasn't come to see why I'm crying...

I've even resorted to growing my hair out again... a vain attempt at feeling younger and maybe more attractive.  How pathetic am I?  I was once so secure with myself but lately I have just fallen to pieces.  What is wrong with me?  I just want to disappear for a week.  I don't know, maybe take a train out to Chicago by myself.  Drive up into the mountains.  Randomly visit my aunt in New York.  I just need to find who I am again and figure out what the fuck is wrong with me.

Truthfully, I hate myself.  I am a very insecure person.  How can I fix that?  How can I overcome my flaws and love myself for who I am when I don't even know who I am?  How do I find myself?  The only answer that rings in my head is "God" but perhaps that's just my upbringing, my disembodied superego reciting mantras which I studied and had slowly compressed into my memories for the better part of 16 years.  Maybe there's some truth to it, however.  Fuck religion.  I mean maybe I need this disembodied "God" and the solace that his existence offers to my mortal mind.  I remember reading an article years back about how religion is (ironically) evolutionarily favorable, and leads to a healthier mental state.  Maybe my unhappiness is a result of my disavowing God's existence upon the revelation that the Bible and Christianity is essentially full of shit.  Maybe I need God like I need some anti-depressant.  Maybe the Church needs to start marketing like the pharmaceutical giants who get bigger by the hour.  They both lobby Congress enough, at any rate.

I hope that airing all of this can maybe let me get some sleep, but I feel like in the morning all I'm gonna feel like doing is eating a bagel and telling my students that they are going to fail their trimester exam.  Looking back, I guess my depression has lasted all trimester but I've just been in denial or unable to figure out what's going on.  Who am I kidding, I still don't know what's going on.  I can say that Lydia breaking up with me (again) and finding someone else doesn't help.  It also doesn't help that pretty much every girl I've been on a date with in the last year has found a boyfriend, and pretty much all of my male friends are in relationships.  Fuck my life.  I'm tired of being alone, but now that I know that, I know that there's no way I can have a relationship until I get the fuck over this.  Fuck.

This sucks.

So a really weird thing has transpired in the last couple weeks.  So a couple weeks ago, I was doing my daily check-in on Plentyoffish.com when I got a message.  "Hey Kris," I yelled across the room, "guess who just sent me a message?"  "Who?"  "Lydia!"  Yeah, as it turns out, one of my ex-girlfriends from high school (from 7 years ago) found me on one of the dating sites, and sent me a message.  I didn't know what to think!  Kris agreed - he didn't know what to think either.  He at least made me feel a little better by adding that Lydia was my only ex with which things ended on good terms.  Yeah, actually, he's right.  In hindsight it was a very good breakup - we broke-up because she was going off to college and didn't think long-distance would work.  Sure, I was pissed at the time, but I was an emo high school junior.  Hell, on our last day together we went and saw a movie (although I can't remember which movie it was) and then saw fireworks that evening in New Hampshire.

Fast forward a couple weeks, and now me and Lydia have a date on Saturday... I'm making dinner, she's making brownies (both at my place), and then we're going to see a movie (Avatar, by the way).  So I have to ask myself 'self, is this a good idea?'  I honestly don't know.  I mean she's a great person, and she's one of the least crazy women I've met.  But then, aside from the usual analysis of dating someone, is re-dating a good idea?  It's been 7 years, I'm sure we've both changed a lot, but is it a good idea?  Plus, she has a kid.  Can I handle that?  Apparently the baby daddy is an asshole and seems to be out of the picture, meaning possible implications for me.  I'm not ready to be a dad!  Let alone for someone else's kid.

My bad habit of planning ahead has taken over again, and I'm trying to just stay focused on what will happen this Saturday, as it might be all moot.  I still can't help but think that this is an interesting situation to be in.

So after a long time of putting this off, I have finally decided that I need to start a LiveJournal.  Why?  Because being a teacher means that I have to deal with overprotective parents who monitor their child's facebook after they're 18 years old, and they complain because I need an outlet.  This will be my new outlet to bitch and keep everyone informed of the goings-on in my life.

I think it's fitting that my first entry is about my new favorite movie: AVATAR.  I remember 12 years ago when all of the girls I knew were like, "OMG!  I SAW TITANIC LIKE, TEN TIMES!!!" and I rolled my eyes at them.  The only time I had ever seen a movie more than twice in a theater was Star Wars: Episode 1, and that was because a had/have a thing for Natalie Portman.  Well, now I feel like those giddy schoolgirls, "I WANT TO SEE AVATAR LIKE, TEN TIMES!"  I WILL break my movie-viewing record because this is definitely a better movie than Episode 1, and it deserves to be a benchmark for my movie-viewing.  The current Avatar-o-meter is set to 3, and I'm guaranteed to see it at least once more, this time in IMAX with Kris.

I absolutely LOVE Avatar!  I was fortunate to first see the movie in IMAX 3D - which, by the way, is definitely better than the regular digital 3D version - and I was absolutely blown away by the entire movie.  The first time I saw it, I was consciously that almost everything I saw was CG.  However, these last two times I've seen it, I'm becoming more aware of how REAL everything actually looks!  One of the final scenes where there's a very close blend of CG and live acting continues to blow me away.  James Cameron really made sure this movie would look gorgeous, and he absolutely delivered.  When you see the movie, don't focus on the CG and trying to figure out how they did it, but enjoy the little touches of detal - how the light hits the skin, how the skin actually has varied texture, the mannerisms of the Na'Vi characters, and the attention to detail in the biology of Pandora - and you will truly see why Avatar is such a wonder to behold.  I've been watching many interviews (which you should see AFTER seeing the movie, so as to not spoil any of the surprise) and I'm impressed with the attention paid to the production of the movie; James Cameron was working on the film for 12 years!  For example, they hired biologists, anthropologists, botanists, etc. to consult on the feasibility of the biology of Pandora and they created an in-house document called 'Pandorapedia', a 390 page encyclopedia on Pandora, as if it were an actual place!

While the movie was absolutely a wonder of technology and imagination, it has received criticism on it's plot.  I keep reading more and more complaints about how this is just "Dances with [space] Wolves" or even worse, a high school teen flick on the importance of not judging people.  Sure, there's a healthy dose of 'white guilt' in the movie, but since when is that a bad thing?  This movie might not throw you curve-balls like the Sixth Sense, but it does make one think about the parallels between alien civilizations and indigenous populations from our history.  Maybe it's the Aboriginal Australia class I took, but this movie echoes the lessons of our past - and ones that we should continually apply and consider for our future.  Isn't that what social studies are all about?  Then I think this is a movie that would be perfect for an anthropology or culture class - there can be much discussion about what defines a 'person' versus a 'human', and whether or not our basic 'human rights' extend to all intelligent life.

Avatar is a great movie.  It is a movie that will impress you with its extremely beautiful, and potentially real, world.  You might find yourself rolling your eyes or predicting the next big plot point, but how often does that happen in movies anyway?  Just because you've heard the message before, does not mean it's less valid, and it doesn't mean that you can't enjoy the movie for what it is: great entertainment.