I woke up bummed out and I listened to The Smiths on the way to work and now I'm borderline on suicide watch*

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Late Night Melancholies...

:)  When I can't sleep, I probably shouldn't listen to electronic indy emo music.  It makes me thoughtful and doesn't aid sleep in the slightest.

I've noticed lately how my life can be divided into pretty clear periods.  And that friendships tend to not carry over from one to the other.  I move on, become a different person, and lose touch with even the best of my friends.  Seeing this pattern, does that mean that all my relationships will be transient?  Does that make the joys I experience in those few revealing moments any less real?

I wonder a lot if what I really want is a streak of uninterrupted happy.  I wonder if there's some sort of mental state where I can find contentment and happiness, some sort of "final stage" of my life that I'm progressing towards.  Each evolution so far has been a good one:  I've become deeper and more complicated, stronger and smarter with each era I've passed through.  I've lost innocence along the way.  I've lost tolerance and the broad acceptance of humanity that seems to only come from the very young and the very religious.  I don't mean acceptance in the sense of "I'm okay with you doing whatever you want."  I mean it more in the sense of... having the capacity to love someone regardless of their talents, past existence, or what have you.  Finding joy in everyone.  I miss being able to do that, but I don't know how to reconnect with it.

I'm always ready to move on before the period of life I'm in is over with.  My last year of my undergrad I had already checked out mentally.  In my head I was done with high school the summer before my senior year.  The year before that jump to the next stage was always built up to be trepidatious:  Junior High will be far more difficult than grade school.  High School is where things really get serious.  College will shape you more than anything else.  Graduate School is going to be super tough.

And it's yet to be accurate.  If anything, school has gotten progressively easier as I've gone along.  Less busy work, fewer assignments for more points.  More self-directed work.  As I go on, I find myself surfing on the event horizon of failure without a second thought of falling.  I worry about little petty things and get caught up in emotional quandries.  I think myself out of being happy and am constantly dissapointed in myself in spite of successes that I should be damned proud of.

I test high, on everything.  My grades have only gotten better as school has gone on.  Straight As this first year of grad school.  I graduated Cum Laude in the Honors college in my undergrad.  Top 10% of my high school class.  Gifted programs all up through school.  And in spite of it all, it's never made me feel special or important.  I've never felt like anything I've done has mattered.  And the only ways I've found I can find happiness are through doing small, gratifying things for myself:  playing video games, reading, enjoying quiet thoughtful time alone.  I never reach goals.  I never celebrate my successes.  Because every waypoint I hit just causes the next to pop up.  I grab the flag, but there's always another one.  The road never ends, and a thousand people have been down it before me.  All I'm ever doing is figuring out what someone figured out years before me.

And I'm wondering how I'm supposed to find gratification or achievement considering all this.  Or if those are things I need to be happy.

I'm tired of being special just like everyone else.

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