The Patriarch in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

There’s an amusing little parallel between the renovation of this house and my own life right now. But I don’t want to think about anything too deep, it’s depressing.

I only really have about 4 days left of classes. That really doesn’t make sense to me considering all the work I have to do between then and now, but it’s true. Afterward, I have a weekend off and then I had back to Sacramento for a few weeks of family vacation. I hesitate to call it rest because I really don’t know if it will be restful. Word is they still haven’t figured out where I’m going to sleep.

You know, I’ve been thinking about something. When I get done with school, I think I’m going to go on a social media blackout. No Facebook. No Twitter. No Instagram… I think this might be my one exception as it has always existed for me. I really need to take a critical look at a few things and figure out where I’m at.

I think I’m lying to myself about a few things. I’m really good at lying to myself. Usually my self-deceptions are so intricate and complicated that it takes me years to fully unravel the kaleidoscopic mysteries in which I have tangled myself. That whole Jeff the Jew thing took over five years to really get sorted and laid to rest.

The things I wonder about are my friendships. I find my friendships to be very unsatisfactory. Now, I don’t believe that it is the fault of the other people, I truly believe that there might be something critically wrong with me. I think that there are some things in my periphery that are obscuring some things that need to be addressed.

For instance, people I consider my best friends barely contact me. The great example would be Richard. I was so excited to see him, for him to move to Los Angeles and be close to me. I saw him more when we lived hundreds of miles away. HIs attempts to contact me had always been consistent up until recently. One of my friends said it was because he got a new boyfriend and I dismissed that out-of-hand because he’s had relationships previously, and there is a dip in communication but it was nothing like the drought in which we currently find ourselves.

Or my childhood friend Sarah. Admittedly, this might be something of my own doing simply because Sarah has been going on and on for some time about wanting to settle down and get married. To me, it sounds like obnoxious desperate white lady drama à la Charlotte from Sex And the City. I love Sarah and I get it, but I think that it made me a little less enthusiastic about answering the phone when her name popped up in the caller ID. So, obviously, the calls became more and more infrequent.

I think I’ve really hit a serious depression in my life. I’m not saying it to get sympathy; I’m saying it because I believe it to be true. I go through the motions of what I’m supposed to be doing with my life, but there are some days where I miss class, I don’t get out of bed. My tutoring hours have been almost completely removed, which means that I have technically “lost” my job. All because I rationalize away the necessity of going to work.

I believe that is one of the signs of “clinical depression.” For the tutoring center, we had to take a workshop on how to identify depression. We all joked that it would be inappropriate for us as tutors to make inquiries about our students personal lives, but now I wonder how long I’ve been like this. What has precipitated this stagnancy?

Perhaps finally getting a break, after over five years of college, will help me gather my thoughts to the point where I stop asking questions that I cannot answer. I never actually try to find answers, I just end up asking more questions. Having space-to think, to breathe, to sleep-might finally give me enough peace-of-mind to seriously consider the ramifications of what is happening at this point in my life.

I think one serious sign of my depression is the fact that I’ve been entertaining the thought of having children. There is no clearer sign of me being in a crisis than when I consider having children. The only constant in my life has been my desire not to have children-don’t confuse that with the statement that I won’t have children-therefore, having one of the core concepts of my self-identity seem to fluctuate shows not only that I’m having a crisis, but how I resolve this crisis will greatly change the landscape of my life.

There may be no coming back. I could decide that I want to be a father.

No one is safe.