If I’m going to be honest about this whole positivity thing, I have to admit to myself upfront that being positive has always been a problem. Not much of a realization there really. I just naturally lean toward seeing the negative aspects in most things vs. the positive. For the longest time, I’ve been fine with that. I’ve reasoned that the world needs those who can point out the flaws in the system that others take for being wholesome or pure. I’ve reasoned that my presence was needed to counterbalance the bubbly optimist who seems ignorant to the harshness that life so obviously and unflinchingly kicked in the faces of so many with so little regard. My job was to bring reality to those who couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with it.
If I’m going to get anything out of this venture, I have to also admit that mentality is complete crap. What a moronic sense of self-importance. What a self-posturing position. What a self-defeating escape. What a drag for everyone around me. But, hey, a moron can justify just about anything he’s determined to when given enough time alone to do as much, and I’ve seemingly always had a healthy supply of alone time. Funny how that works when you convince yourself you don’t really like people all that much anyway, that they don’t have much that’s constructive that you can benefit from, and that you’re better off not being in their company. The more likely reality all along, however, probably was it was me that people didn’t like that much and it was me that couldn’t offer much that was constructive, and it was others who were better off without my company.
When I think about the possible reasons I am the way I am, it’s not all that difficult to find solid leads. It’s not difficult for example, to understand why I’ve always been more apt to view a challenge as being a pain in the ass vs. being an opportunity. Although my life hasn't been exactly full of strife, I haven’t been handed a whole lot, either. Pretty much what I have, I earned. I’m proud of that, but also, at some point along the way, you just get tired of working. Hence, a new challenge just becomes more toil.
I’ve never been clinically diagnosed with depression, but the signs are clearly there. I’ve always moved through periods where it was easy as pie to see God in all the details to periods of time when it was easy as pie to see nothing but shades of black. Often, within the same day, I can be filled with such enthusiasm concerning my possibilities and future; be so certain of my abilities, intellect, and place in the world; and feel so confident and intact only to gradually shift into a condition of feeling lost, desperate, confused, misunderstood, and beyond dreary. In such moments, I literally feel I’ve accomplished nothing that I can take pride in, nothing I can point to and say, “That’s mine, and I’m proud to acknowledge it.”
Drinking has always accelerated this transformation, sometimes scarily. Drinking has always been a pleasure-pain proposition for me. Those early drinks are bliss. Laughs. Joyful recollections. Beauty. Those later drinks are hell. Self-loathing. Judgmental declarations. Stupidity. I rarely drink these days, but when I do, pouring drinks on this personal torch of mine instigates a fire that’s likely to be fueled on aggression, meanness, and eventually sadness. There’s nothing passive about the way alcohol can enable me to find kinks in the system and verbally point them out. Depending on which side of the line you’re standing on, you’re a target for my judgment, no matter how longstanding our relationship has been. My drunken bravery sees all things true, and my drunken mouth reports it the way I see it without much of a filter between. The problem is my drunken bravery amounts to really nothing more than me being a short-sided dick who is only reporting about himself but is only too dim to recognize it.
I’m not fooling myself into thinking that by forcing myself to find something positive in what surrounds me or what I read or what I hear each day for an entire year that I’ll be able to permanently jail my demons and never hear their taunts again. I am convinced, though, that by purposefully stepping toward joy and rapture and maybe letting it wrap itself around me even temporarily, I will be changed for the better. God (whatever that means) is in the details. I’ve always been able to see the details; it’s just that I’ve always concentrated too hard and too long on the wrong details. It takes courage and bravery to be positive, to live positively, to believe in positivity. It doesn’t require much mettle to deem everything as being shit. I’m tired of seeing so much shit.
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