Despite my best efforts to stay awake as long as possible today, I did eventually drift off, explaining why I'm awake just now in the evening. It's a gradual process to repair my sleep schedule and I consider for a moment that my work is probably in vain. I've never had an easy time sleeping on demand, even though I'm very often exhausted when I lie down. A lot of things contribute to my difficulty sleeping--there's anxiety, lack of adherence to routine, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn if poor diet was a factor as well. Perhaps most of all, I don't associate my bedroom with sleeping. It's a place where I spend most of my time. It's where I write, where I play games, and in a lot of ways, where I grew up.
How strange it is to be confined to this room after so many years. If I were in a more pessimistic mood, I would consider my current state a pretty harsh failure. My high school graduation is many years behind me and I've still only attended a handful of college semesters with no real direction. Despite my renewed lease on life, I still can't afford to go back to school, nor can I afford to start over somewhere new. I feel very strongly that this place is holding me back and that I'm running out of time, as young as I might be. It is tempting to wallow in depression as I have so often done before, but I'm really trying to make the best out of a bad situation. I'm trying my hardest to make myself a better person so I can be happy with me. When I'm happy with myself, I feel like I can accomplish so much more.
Still, it's hard to move on when this place where I grew up is saturated with so many memories. Despite going through a series of makeovers, its still the place where I spent months living with two of my high school friends. They were both in really bad situations at the time and I felt like I had no choice in the matter. My relationship with my mother was such that I didn't even ask her if I had permission for something like that. It was a stressful time that strained my relationship with my two friends. There was so little room that I slept in a sleeping bag. I wasn't long out of high school and unemployed, so I felt like this was the least I could do for my friends who both worked at a tough factory job. I can't say it was ever fun to be woken up at 7 in the morning by them rapping on the door after getting off 12-hour shifts.
This room is the place where I spent countless late nights playing Rock Band with good friends. At the time, I was beginning to open up and break out of my shell. I had been working a really physical job at Walmart for a few months, and I'd lost a noticeable amount of weight. I felt a lot better about myself and was extroverted enough to sing at the top of my lungs at these little social gatherings. I wasn't great, mind you, but I really enjoyed doing it. I didn't mind if my singing wasn't the greatest because that wasn't the point. Even though my job was often miserable, I was a lot happier in general because I felt like I was progressing in life. Having friends to hang out with is such an undervalued thing too and I took it for granted.
Maybe most importantly, this room is where I hung out and eventually lived with my ex-girlfriend. For the longest time, we lived together at a house she rented from her parents. When she asked me to move in, I was ecstatic. It really felt like progress to me, and it was wonderful to finally get out on my own. I was a little apprehensive, but I knew it was going to be okay because I thought she was wonderful and we got along incredibly well. At the best of times, I felt almost content. My depression was still there, lingering ominously beneath the surface. I know now that no matter how well things are going, the depression still lingers. It's something you can never truly quash. You have to learn how to live with it and experience it in a non-destructive way.
My ex hated the house we shared together. I felt her standards were impossibly high, but she had that right. She was ambitious. She knew what she wanted from life and wouldn't dare be complacent in the meantime. She contrasted those aspects of me in what I thought was a pleasing way. We had a lot of discussions about our future. She wanted to know what I really wanted to do with my life. She was already well into her career path and I was lagging behind. It was a major source of anxiety for her, especially since it was quite obvious she wanted to get on with her life. She wanted marriage, kids, and a guy with a career. I wanted none of these things, except for a vague aspiration for a career with no clear idea how to get there.
So it was that we ended up moving back into my old bedroom together. She and her family had put the house up for sale and my ex figured it would be silly to live there in the meantime. I was miserable with the idea. I felt like I'd made so much progress by moving out of my mother's house, and here I was again confined to that place I'd spend so many lazy, listless nights. Alone, and hopeless. I tried to explain how I felt but she dismissed my concerns. She never understood how much I lived in the present. I felt like I was going to be here forever. What was worse that I could tell we were drifting apart. We didn't talk as much. We had more awkward silences. She buried herself in watching anime and television while I played computer games.
She was disappointed in me. I didn't have the drive or the ambition she was looking for in a mate. We'd been together for so long but I still hadn't changed. She wanted to help me become that kind of person, but she'd come to realize that I was the only one that had the power to do that. At the time, I didn't know how to become that person. I was in love and wanted nothing more than to stay with her, but I couldn't be what she needed to be, so she left. I didn't yell at her nor even betray the slightest hint of emotion when she looked me in the eye and told me it was over. What I did say was possibly even more hurtful both to her and myself. "That's probably for the best."
Just like that, she was out of my life. I thought about how awful that was. We couldn't even be friends anymore no matter how much I wanted that. I'd spent years with this person as a part of my life and now she was gone. Naturally, it felt like a piece of myself was gone too. Our relationship at the end was not a happy one, but I felt no relief that it was over. I remembered the good times most of all, and miss them to this day. I will admit we were very different people with different outlooks on life. The level of effort required to maintain a relationship like that over the long term is gargantuan. When you click with someone and feel like you belong, though, it's heartbreaking to have that taken away from you. I think in the back of my head, regardless of how well things go for me in the future, I will always miss her. I will always miss what we had and what it could have been.
I spent a lot of long days in this room after that. I was unemployed and miserable with my life. It was a dark time for me and I feel like it stretched on forever. I was halfheartedly looking for jobs but in some ways I felt like I didn't even want one. It was easier for me to throw myself down on the bed and waste away. I didn't want to exist anymore. What little motivation I had acquired over the past two years evaporated and then I was back to square one. Just like it was back in 2008, I was depressed and hopeless, with no idea how to get out of my predicament. I knew that if I got a job it wouldn't magically make me happy. I felt like I could never be happy in this room that had so many negative memories attached to it.
When I received a call from an old online friend who said she needed a roommate, I impulsively accepted. Of course, she lived halfway across the country and I was unemployed and completely broke, but she seemed entirely confident that these weren't significant obstacles.
Tune in next time for Zack's Increasingly and Creepily Personal Blog Entries for the conclusion to this tale!
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