Where I work they do something called a loop test to check if lines are working. Much like all techie things it’s boring but fortunately it’s quite simple – you send some data, in a pattern, round a ring. If it comes back just the same as it went out, there’s nothing wrong. That's all there is to it. Like I said, it’s simple: copper wires are quite easy to repair.
I don’t work quite the same way, and we both know it. When I tell you that I don’t want your help, it often means I do. It means I don’t want to ask, or I feel stupid, uncapable or unworthy. I want you to take my problem away, or tell me everything is going to work out for the best. But when that message comes back to me around that loop I don’t get what I want, I get what I told you I want. And there’s nobody to be angry with but me.
When I tell you I want your help, that’s not what I mean either. You tell me it will all be okay, that it won’t always be like this. That’s when I come to life, taking great delight in telling you that things will only get worse. I go into detail about all the ways that you’re wrong. I wonder, at times like this, whether it’s your help I want when I ask for it. Or is what I really want the opportunity to shoot you down?
It’s like regressing to being eight, stamping my feet and saying it’s all ruined. Worst of all, I know I’m doing it even as I’m doing it. I wonder if it’s because I spent so much of my childhood wanting to be a grown-up and now I am it’s seductively easy just to act like a child again. “There’s a big bit of you that enjoys being unhappy” my mother said in a hurtful moment in my teens. It was said to wound, the way things in families sometimes are, and it stuck. I’ve always worried that it might be true, I still worry now.
I am not as easy to fix as a copper wire. But you never stop trying. You tell me it’s your job, and I believe it is.
100 Words: Fog
16 hours ago
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18 comments:
I've read this post four times now and I still don't know what to say other than...I've read it four times.
I want to say I love this post but not sure if that sounds appropriate.. I guess I can completely relate to this post..esp about the part where your mom said that there's a big bit of you that enjoys being happy.. in my case it wasn't anyone, it was a tiny voice inside my own head..
A lot of melancholia yesterday and today. There used to be a big part of me that enjoyed being unhappy. I couldn't switch it off, especially during the winter months (plus fall and early spring). When I lived alone, I indulged it, but once I married, it became very unproductive and I had to change. Antidepressants and therapy were stage one. (Grandkids were stage two, but that came much later.)
Your week sounds exactly like my week. Exact feelings and all that.
The world is a stamping ground for misfits: it's histories and histories old, and poor buggers us, we're dead by 75 (less if we overdo the fags/booze/fat/fuck/sniff/snort/death/biff/smack/miscellaneous misfortune thang. We really don't stand much of a chance. Just noticed you're on Twitter so I'm heading over in order to link up. Later on tonight I "will have twat".
O melancholy. How lovely thou art.
But it's easier, isn't it, being unhappy? I've always thought so.
I've become somewhat aware, however, that the dark side of me -- the part that believes everything is ruined, that it's all for nothing and will end abruptly -- is also what feeds the brighter side of me, the one who finds humor in the dark.
Is it the thin light of winter? Our dispositions? A post-modern contrivance?
No, I don't know, either.
Pearl
You know, reading about myself is not easy. But thank you for putting it so eloquently. I, myself, would have just stamped my feet like an 8 year old and whined, "But you should have knooooown when I said I didn't want your help that I meant that I diiiiiiiid want your help."
Know how I know? Because that is precisely what I do.
We all like to role around in the melancholy every now and then. To wade through it, savouring every moment. We wrap ourselves up in it, a veritable moat separating us from the world. I so like this, it's like picking a scab, to expose the wound underneath, then sitting there confused watching as the life blood slowly rises from the scrape.
I know someone who enjoys being unhappy and sometimes I want to kick them really hard in the shins. I can empathise with someone who genuinely feels unhappy,but I get impatient with those who indulge in it.
I don't think you indulge in it Mr London Street. For what it's worth, reading your blog often makes me happy and so I hope somehow the knowledge of that makes you happy.
You strike me as the happiest unhappy person I know. Or maybe you're the most unhappy happy person I know. Either way, it's much better than being a happy, happy person. They suck.
Speaking as one who just
lost twelve hundred words to the silicone pit of oblivion, I know what you mean.
You remind me of Bukowski, hopefully i'll have time to read back through all your posts sooner rather than later.
God, apparently it's January... SAD, anyone? Are you all right? I don't believe so. Sending you a warm American hug from... wait for it... America.
Lame. I know. xxx
Blogland is full of malaise and discombobulation. Who's up for organizing a Party? I will make the trifle, with multicolored sprinkles. Sign up for sausage rolls and cucumber sandwiches. What else?
In describing your state, you've depicted mine as well. And in my case, the desire to ask for support, a friendly ear, what have you, is usually overridden by the conviction that I'm bothering others with the same old complaints-- and driving them to demand why I can't just buck up and get on with it.
Solidarity.
I think this universal sadness has much to do with worrying. Like when you are happy, you worry that you are going to be sad - an impending doom! But when you are sad, the worst is already happenning - the suspense is killed :P
Thanks everyone for such kind words about this one. I can't think of anything more detailed than that to say about this post really; I get this more often than I should lately so if nothing else it's nice to feel like people got it and that I'm not completely alone.
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