Saw the sunset driving to the grocery store. As I started down a hill, a break in the tree's, and a magenta haze, with purple mountain silhouette emerging from the fluffiness, sharp and crisp. And a single wisp of cloud, bright blazing orange.
Gencon was very fun. It made me happy, it made me laugh. Being with friends and fellow gaming enthusiasts. People who like to dress up in costumes and play games and sword-fight. People who like anime and solving puzzles and magic and fantasy. People who needed some way to be with friends, because for one reason or another, sports wasn't an option.
I fought with some professional boffer sword fighters, I learned the secrets of making boffer swords (fun noodles (the pool toy), pvc pipe, and packing tape, mainly) I participated in a Mystery science theater 3000 with hentai, I played true dungeon, where I went into a dungeon with some friends, solved puzzles together, fought monsters, and role-played. And I made some new friends.
Then on the plane ride back I promptly started feeling very bad. Hit by the truck of sadness. I've been trying to process through it in two ways: trying to trace back the answer to the question, "who is feeling these feelings?" and alternately just feeling the physical sensations accompanying the mental anguish. The second one is more do-able, though less powerful and immediate in it's results, but sometimes the issue takes some softening up before it can be penetrated directly with the light of awareness. Whatever this is, I'm on to the next cycle of whatever it is I'm dealing with.
I'm going to take an intuitive stab, and say it's my identity as someone who is put upon by depression. For a long time I've seen myself as a somewhat Byronian character (not Byron Katie, but Lord Byron, the poet, who was very melodramatic, romantic, brooding.) It was how I coped with the shittyness of my life as a kid. I was lonely, I loved girls and the love was unrequited, and I was too shy to really make something happen. I was too shy to do anything, and I didn't have the attention span or discipline to excel in something and thus feel good about myself that way. So, I interpreted that as meaning I was just cursed by life. Which I still feel is a fair interpretation. I just bit it with the birth lottery, and randomness gave me a bum hand.
Interesting that I also sometimes think of myself as exceedingly lucky, to have been given all the opportunity and teaching that I have gotten. The circumstances, the people who've crossed my path, the experiences I've had, my families support. It's really a mixed bag, and I see the glass in the light of whatever I'm going through at the moment. It just so happens that for the first part of my life, most of those moments were negative. More recently, there's been more of a balance, beginning to lean towards more positive even. Dan's suicide temporarily changed that balance back to mostly negative, but that is moving slowly back up to where I was. Which apparently is not a given, in the case studies with these kinds of things. I may have some fucked up karma, if you believe in that, but I've still got better luck than those who are fucked up and never learn ways of healing and real growth. Though I guess there are other ways of dealing with that stuff. Like breaking a bone, even if you don't set it right, given time, it will heal anyways, and you'll adjust your posture and gait so you can get by.
In any case, I was recently reminded of one of the best "experiences" I've ever had. It lasted for about two weeks, I think, but maybe it was less. It was characterized by incredible surges of bliss and energy. As far as I can remember (which is pretty badly, I admit) the main theme of that time period was that I took the point of view that everything that happened to me was a lesson, and really lived that.
The dude I'm working with suggested I take the perspective of being the healer, rather than the victim, of the depression, sadness, whatever. I like that.
He also reminded me of the saying, that you are what you eat, and what you eat is not primarily what comes in through the mouth and gets pooped out the butt, but what comes in through all the senses, and the mind. This is one of the reasons I often do so little art: If I create something, I like to create from what I am feeling, right then, and if that is something negative, I don't want to release that into the world. I don't want someone reading what I write and being brought down by it. I realized I might be doing that with some of what I post, since it is sometimes rants of that nature. I'll try to keep that in mind for the future, and save the toxic stuff for my private journal.
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