I have this tendency to live in the past, and to brood on it endlessly.
One thing about me that I don't think people know is that I am repulsively sentimental about the past. Not in a reliving sense or wishing things were different, but exactly as you expressed. We moved so much that I always had a tendency to want to hang on to everything about the life I was leaving behind. Not only that, but I can still relate to the me that used to be. I remember how I thought at 6, at 10, 22--my timeline is very clearly demarcated in respect to age and where I was at the time but it almost folds over on itself, because I'm just me. This maudlin sentimentality extends to pasts that aren't even mine.
Like when I read about people, or see old photos or gravestones, I always study them; I think about those people, who they were, what their lives were like, what did they want, their families, how they got on, were they cookie-cutter citizens or modern, independant thinking women trapped in the frock and petticoat covered bodies of their times. And how they, as does most everyone, just disappear into the ether and this slab of stone is the only thing that tells us they were ever here. And that people who are related to them, probably don't even they existed--that there was this person on the planet who was and isn't. I'm not sure why I still like cemetaries despite the teeny bit of melancholy--except that I think I like feeling that way, it keeps me real.
One crap thing about getting older is that it's harder to completely fall into something. People don't understand that mentality and it never feels like the freedom exists to just dissolve into something as completely--and despite every intention of not conforming, I think we all do just a little bit. Maybe that's why it's never as raw and easy and real like the first time. Jaded, older, whatever, like you said.
It's also hard to feel like I'm living in stasis, which I sort of am. I keep being the same, for the most part, but time plods onward. Nobody I know has a life like mine. I've never shared interests with people for the most part, only sort of just shared space until I was bored or out of obligation or whatever. This past year has been so wild in finding people who enhance my life and have the specific strengths which will allow me to grow as an individual.
I look at people my age, people who are as much older than I as I am you, and it makes no sense to me--they make no sense to me. And I know I won't change. I haven't, I can't and I never will.
Just you watch. People like us get Alzheimer's, because then we just live there permanently.
...just thought I'd babble back at you to show that there are more pathetic and sad cases of dorkness which eclipse your own.
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Date: 2004-10-13 10:17 pm (UTC)One thing about me that I don't think people know is that I am repulsively sentimental about the past. Not in a reliving sense or wishing things were different, but exactly as you expressed. We moved so much that I always had a tendency to want to hang on to everything about the life I was leaving behind. Not only that, but I can still relate to the me that used to be. I remember how I thought at 6, at 10, 22--my timeline is very clearly demarcated in respect to age and where I was at the time but it almost folds over on itself, because I'm just me. This maudlin sentimentality extends to pasts that aren't even mine.
Like when I read about people, or see old photos or gravestones, I always study them; I think about those people, who they were, what their lives were like, what did they want, their families, how they got on, were they cookie-cutter citizens or modern, independant thinking women trapped in the frock and petticoat covered bodies of their times. And how they, as does most everyone, just disappear into the ether and this slab of stone is the only thing that tells us they were ever here. And that people who are related to them, probably don't even they existed--that there was this person on the planet who was and isn't. I'm not sure why I still like cemetaries despite the teeny bit of melancholy--except that I think I like feeling that way, it keeps me real.
One crap thing about getting older is that it's harder to completely fall into something. People don't understand that mentality and it never feels like the freedom exists to just dissolve into something as completely--and despite every intention of not conforming, I think we all do just a little bit. Maybe that's why it's never as raw and easy and real like the first time. Jaded, older, whatever, like you said.
It's also hard to feel like I'm living in stasis, which I sort of am. I keep being the same, for the most part, but time plods onward. Nobody I know has a life like mine. I've never shared interests with people for the most part, only sort of just shared space until I was bored or out of obligation or whatever. This past year has been so wild in finding people who enhance my life and have the specific strengths which will allow me to grow as an individual.
I look at people my age, people who are as much older than I as I am you, and it makes no sense to me--they make no sense to me. And I know I won't change. I haven't, I can't and I never will.
Just you watch. People like us get Alzheimer's, because then we just live there permanently.
...just thought I'd babble back at you to show that there are more pathetic and sad cases of dorkness which eclipse your own.