Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Throughout the most recent few hours of this day I have been wondering if despair is too large and scary a term to use in a blog posting. Is despair really part of what I am feeling? I think I would rather imagine despair knocking on some exterior door and trying to find a way into my heart and mind but failing to do so. Regardless of the technicalities of my situation I feel quite low at the moment. I suppose this is only natural considering I am once again doing an outpatient treatment program.
Quite honestly I feel very weary at the moment. I have been thinking of this movie that has always held a special power in my psyche. The movie is Castaway with Tom Hanks. In this movie Hanks plays a FedEx engineer, Chuck Noland, whose unexpected trip to the South Pacific around the time of Christmas permanently detours the course of his life. His plane crashes in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. He is the only survivor of the crash. He somehow manages to wash ashore on an uninhabited island. Four years pass. His fiancee and friends assume he died in the crash and move on without him. He is ultimately unable to escape the island. Then one day a piece of a port-a-potty washes ashore on his little island (thousands of miles from the location of a city it is labeled with, namely the city of Bakersfield, California). Noland uses the piece of debris to fashion a sail. He finally finds himself able to escape the island but then is confronted with violent storms, hunger and the immense vastness of the Pacific Ocean.
In my opinion the most heart wrenching scene of the movie takes place once Noland is adrift both literally and psychologically. An empathetic viewer will feel immense sorrow for him as he weeps underneath a tropical sun. He later casts his oars away. It is clear all hope of ever being found has left him. His grief and hopelessness is as immense as the ocean surrounding him as he resigns himself to a fate of never being found. One cannot help but feel his heart has filled with despair. Then, unexpectedly, and long after he has given up hope, he is found. He eventually finds his way back to Memphis where he had once lived. Everyone had moved on without him. His former fiancee grieved his supposed death, moved on and married. Time did not wait for him.
Lately I have been feeling a bit like Noland felt after he found himself seemingly endlessly adrift and beyond hope of ever being found. I feel myself tempted to be consumed with despair. Just like Noland's character I have found myself reaching a point in which I do not want to keep trying anymore. I just want to give up and stop trying. I cannot force the Cosmos to pay attention to me. I cannot force someone to give me a job of any sort. I cannot force my life circumstances to change. I am incredibly bone weary of trying to create a new beginning for myself.
Tomorrow is another day. But in this moment I find myself not at all savoring the idea of getting up to greet a new day. If nothing changes despite all your efforts it can become difficult to remain motivated to keep trying. Eventually it might feel as if life is a farce. I have reached that point.
Throughout the most recent few hours of this day I have been wondering if despair is too large and scary a term to use in a blog posting. Is despair really part of what I am feeling? I think I would rather imagine despair knocking on some exterior door and trying to find a way into my heart and mind but failing to do so. Regardless of the technicalities of my situation I feel quite low at the moment. I suppose this is only natural considering I am once again doing an outpatient treatment program.
Quite honestly I feel very weary at the moment. I have been thinking of this movie that has always held a special power in my psyche. The movie is Castaway with Tom Hanks. In this movie Hanks plays a FedEx engineer, Chuck Noland, whose unexpected trip to the South Pacific around the time of Christmas permanently detours the course of his life. His plane crashes in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. He is the only survivor of the crash. He somehow manages to wash ashore on an uninhabited island. Four years pass. His fiancee and friends assume he died in the crash and move on without him. He is ultimately unable to escape the island. Then one day a piece of a port-a-potty washes ashore on his little island (thousands of miles from the location of a city it is labeled with, namely the city of Bakersfield, California). Noland uses the piece of debris to fashion a sail. He finally finds himself able to escape the island but then is confronted with violent storms, hunger and the immense vastness of the Pacific Ocean.
In my opinion the most heart wrenching scene of the movie takes place once Noland is adrift both literally and psychologically. An empathetic viewer will feel immense sorrow for him as he weeps underneath a tropical sun. He later casts his oars away. It is clear all hope of ever being found has left him. His grief and hopelessness is as immense as the ocean surrounding him as he resigns himself to a fate of never being found. One cannot help but feel his heart has filled with despair. Then, unexpectedly, and long after he has given up hope, he is found. He eventually finds his way back to Memphis where he had once lived. Everyone had moved on without him. His former fiancee grieved his supposed death, moved on and married. Time did not wait for him.
Lately I have been feeling a bit like Noland felt after he found himself seemingly endlessly adrift and beyond hope of ever being found. I feel myself tempted to be consumed with despair. Just like Noland's character I have found myself reaching a point in which I do not want to keep trying anymore. I just want to give up and stop trying. I cannot force the Cosmos to pay attention to me. I cannot force someone to give me a job of any sort. I cannot force my life circumstances to change. I am incredibly bone weary of trying to create a new beginning for myself.
Tomorrow is another day. But in this moment I find myself not at all savoring the idea of getting up to greet a new day. If nothing changes despite all your efforts it can become difficult to remain motivated to keep trying. Eventually it might feel as if life is a farce. I have reached that point.
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