19 November 2011

DIG

Funny that I end up working for a paper called Dig. I've had a thing about shovels and holes for as long as I can remember. I looked back at some old journals and noticed the theme laced throughout them all -- this fear of digging my own metaphysical grave.

While I hold a title that calls me a journalist, I'm still very much outside of that world. I haven't embraced the role so much as I've merely put on a different pair of shoes. Every new world I step into never has my full attention. I'm half-focused on remembering the details of the new one, so I can accurately describe it to the one I left behind. As far as I know, I've never not been this way.

I could take that one way, and say that it makes me more of a journalist than the journalists, as it's a journalist's job to treat each situation as if no one outside of them knows what it looks like.

But I could go the opposite way, and pin this behavior on a character flaw that I've been aware of for a long time -- the one where I can't ever completely leave a world I know for a new one.
I can't identify with anything. I can't call myself anything, be it writer, journalist, or otherwise, because the moment I do, it will become false somehow. And if I can't immediately see how it's become false, it's because I've stopped examining myself -- my actions, my ambitions, my emotions, my motives.

It's simultaneously a fear and a fact within myself; as scary and real to me as credit card debt or cancer. I've wondered why, for a long time.

I'm terrified of letting my life go unchecked, because if I let it go too far, I feel myself digging a hole. And it's not an emotional hole -- it's not depression, anger, or "the blues" -- it is a real, physical hole. Every day of my life, I'm horrified that I'm going to look up one day, while going about some mundane business, and realize that the hole is too deep for me to climb out of.

It's one thing to know I'm in a hole, but quite another to know I've somehow missed the part where I dug it.

Thus, every day of my life is spent making sure I'm not in too deep. I'm always looking for the shovel in my hands; always watching for the people with shovels in theirs. They're looking to bury me as much as I will inevitably bury myself. It's borderline paranoia.

My justification seems to lie in the people I've watched throughout the years -- there's a drought of self-reflection where I come from. The city issues shovels at birth, and when you leave, you keep it. Some of the things I saw there were enough to bury me. I'm not entirely sure that they didn't.

There are so many people in the world who don't let things get to them. They don't live in fear of what they might do to themselves, because they know where they're going and what they want. They've seen the things that I've seen and worse -- they've all watched people bury themselves, and are sure that they won't.

I'm wary of people that sure of anything. The only absolute is that we all end up in a hole by the time it's over.

I can't ever leave a world completely for another, because I make the mistake of caring about the people in both. I never wrote anyone off, and I still don't. I can't look away or "cut my losses," not because I pity them or because I'm sad for them or because I want to save the memory as a cautionary tale. I can't look away from someone who's visibly digging their own downward spiral, because whatever awful thing I'm watching is the truth.

You can tell yourself that it's their truth and that you don't have to deal with it, and that works for most people -- but if it's only their problem, you wouldn't have any losses to cut. Being affected is the default. I have been affected. It's not a weakness; it's time we start admitting that when things get under our skin, it's simply part of the human experience. Because I've seen people bury themselves, I know that I can, too.

Sometimes I try to simplify the purpose I've given myself. I can write, I can relate, I can speak, convey, invoke, whatever you want to call it. The simplest I've ever gotten is this: I can't ever leave a world completely for another, because I subconsciously refuse to believe that there are two. My purpose isn't to tell people that -- it's to make them understand that.

The closest I might ever come is by demanding my own honesty, by digging up things inside of me and forming paragraphs of my faults, how I came to them, and what I think about them. Even if it never leaves my head, it's worth it.