Leaving aside all the usual warnings about how this post is about as angsty as 50% of all blogs on the Internet are anyway...
As you could probably tell, if only from yesterday's post, I've been feeling pretty depressed lately. Now I'm sure everyone knows, in a general sense, why... That being my breakup with Kate (4 months ago... Geeze, I'm pathetic.)
Anyway, what I'm still trying to figure out for myself (And obviously thinking about way too much) is why I'm feeling depressed in a more specific sense. As in, what exactly it is that is keeping me so sad.
When I first started to feel it, I liked to believe that my sadness was just due to a general sense of loneliness - That since the breakup I was having less contact with friends than ever before in my life, perhaps when I needed such contact the most, and this was getting me down. While that may've been true, I don't think that it's really the answer. While the company of friends can wonderfully distract me, keep me happy while I'm seeing them, or talking to them, even sometimes up to an hour or so after I've stopped doing so, it seems to have no lasting effect. Once the distraction wears off, I tend to feel just as bad, if not worse than ever. Additionally, the gradual increase of vivacity in my social life ever since my breakup has not been accompanied by any noticeable improvement in my overall mood.
The theory which I would, for probably obvious reasons, most hate to be accurate, but which I'm often worrying may be, is that I'm still hopelessly in love with Kate. Clearly that would just suck beyond all potential of written expression, and would be pathetically... pathetic and depressing. Unfortunately, whenever the possibility even comes to my mind I tend to blast it out with whatever force I can muster, so I really can't say that I've impartially weighed up the possibility and rejected it. Unfortunately, there is also some evidence to support the theory, such as the fact that even just seeing Kate can sometimes be, as it was yesterday, a powerful trigger of depression.
But anyway, my third, and favoured theory is simply that I miss being in an
intimate, loving relationship. This really seems to me pretty likely... I mean, after over 2 years of having complete emotional interdependence with someone, always having someone to talk to, to share my thoughts and feelings with, to be with whenever I wanted, to share the triumphs and joys of, to feel completely secure around... And all that jazz... It is understandable that I might now feel somewhat wasted, empty and... Incomplete now that is gone. It would perfectly explain why seeing Kate might trigger my anxiety, as she would serve as an obvious reminded of what I once had.
I thought of another theory while I was angsting over this last night... This is the theory that unlike in those 3 cases, where I want something, be it company, Kate, or Love, and am not getting it, rather I am simply feeling loss. I feel unhappy simply because I have lost something very dear to me. Like... When I was walking home from Uni I saw some kid walking along with her father, and she dropped some cheap, crappy toy (that, context suggested, had just been purchased) on the floor, and it broke. She started crying. No amounts of assurances, by the father, that he would buy her another one, perfectly identical, would make her stop. Perhaps, I figure, analogously, she was not so much sad because she wanted a crappy toy, or even any identical crappy toy, and she no longer had one, but rather she was sad simply because she had this sense of loss.
Anyway, I'm not sure if that last theory is really coherent. The analogy is stupid anyway, because she was probably just sad because of the embarrassment and shame factor of now relying on her father to buy her a new toy. As for my own woes, I'm sticking to the third theory for now.
As for how I feel about it... Well, the one piece of advice most given after my breakup was that whatever I was going through, whatever pain I was feeling, millions of people had felt it before, and I'd get over it with
time. I've been beliving it, and I still do... But I suppose maybe I was just getting a bit worried that 4 months had passed, and I felt no real improvement (And maybe a bit of deprovement). Perhaps, though, that is simply to be expected - After all, it was a long relationship, a good 1/8th of my conscious, memorable life. Perhaps I have just underestimated the time it will take.
As for what I'm going to do about it... Well, I have a few vague ideas. I realise just passively waiting until my sadness goes away is probably the stupidest plan possible, and it's not one that I am very intent on. Maybe I'll write about my plans sometime, as this whole writing thing has made me feel a bit better, but not now. This post is long enough as it is anyway.
