Words from a friend

Sometimes (or most of the time), expression is much clearer when helped along through by a friend, through correspondence.


1. Progress has been little to none. I don't understand the word "progress" anymore as I don't see anything worth progressing in. I reread my previous words below, and that man that I was sounds very optimistic. In reading all of pessoa's reflections and in doing my own, it's so interesting to see the ups and downs of attitudes and perspectives. Flippant state of mind. but is there a constant joy that will raise me from the floor every morning?

2. You know, the idea of progress is tricky.

I really think that progress is this weird thing that happens and
doesn't happen. Like you have to "show up" and work at it happening.
And even then, I wonder how much progress is always forward-thinking.
I was out for a walk last night, it was nice and cool up here in St.
Louis Heights, and I thought how we are always revisiting our past,
how in this ultra-connected world, we're supposed to be every part of
ourselves all of the time. It's like if a molting snake had someone
following behind it, always collecting the skin that it had lost,
asking the snake to put back on the skin it had already moved on from,
grown out of. "Love me for the man that I am, not the man that I
was," the Avett Brothers sing.

This morning on the way to school I was reading some of one of
Frederick Buechner's biographical books and I felt more myself than I
had in a long time, like that moment a couple of weeks ago where, for
thirty minutes, I felt genuinely happy again for no real reason. But
something about what I read this morning reminded me that something
about life is very, very good. That books are important and people
are more important and that "everything's lost and everything's found"
all at once, again and again.

Or something like that. There's something about the day to day that
we have to master, that we have to shape and form and guard. You'd
think I'd have that down by now, but I don't. And you'd think more
people would talk about that kind of thing, but they don't. Maybe
that's the curse of being a single guy. But I'm holding out hope for
the summer days where I have less to worry about and more time to
maybe get a little closer to the person I want to be.


3. I feel your words have helped me today more than it would have earlier. I find myself in a hole of invisible terror.

I believe that you are right about having to "show up and work at progress". I've not been doing that, but rather, I've been waiting to have a desire to work at progressing. again, it is the tiredness. and also, perhaps, a fear that if I try, I will fail. an insecurity.

The past. I realize that I am everything of my past, even as I am not thinking of any of it. While at the same time, I am an entirely new person. I hope I am becoming a better version of myself with each step, but I fear the hard times that I will need to pass through in order to reach that bettered self.


I've been dealing with my anxieties with alcohol and the such. It doesn't help. It distracts from progress, it puts off confronting the future for momentary pleasures and sometimes no pleasure at all, it just gives me simple ignorance. But sometimes I see myself clearer, and I see that the inner self is exposed in the drunkenness. Inhibitions drop, and you perhaps turn into an exaggeration of your inner emotion. You laugh longer, cry louder, hug harder. But the mornings are much lower, and I end up wasting hours lying on the floor, feeling sick, wishing and sleeping. I wonder if this depression is purely me, or if it is simply a voice of doubt that the real me must conquer.

I am looking through my journal, I know that I have experienced that happiness you spoke of. and it's strange because I find it amidst these depressing entries. life is good. and though I feel down right now, I look outside, and the sun has just broken through the clouds. I feel a warmth that can't be explained.