I don’t know if I have a troubled past or if I just have trouble with my past. This website is my past, my tangle of thorns. Here all that I once was is laid bare and I can see what was going on three or four years ago in that thing behind my eyes. I feel disconnected from that person’s consciousness. I feel unassociated with them. I feel like their entire identity is different from mine. I know they were me at one point, and I have trouble dealing with this fact.
They were “edgy.” I didn’t realize how edgy they truly were until I realized nearly all their posts that didn’t have to do with gaming were trying to incite arguments. I suppose they did this because they wanted a reaction, and liked arguing, though they were terrible at it. They did not care about being right so much as going against established norms so long as there was justification for doing so, even if it was incredibly poor.
I suppose going against established norms has continued to be a big part of my life, but in different ways. As a self-proclaimed artist, I have a constant desire to innovate, and that applies to everything. I want to be creative and create things, and the only way I’ll do that is through change. I am constantly trying new things and approaching things differently. I suppose they were too, and that’s how I eventually ended up with the disconnect I feel to them. They were far more of a conformist than I am. They had some thoughts of their own, but they were underdeveloped and unfounded.
They had no passion. For anything. It was a constant struggle to find something interesting. They majored in Physics, which they thought they liked; I major in English, my passion. There is nothing I enjoy more than reading and writing literature. They knew they enjoyed writing and had received positive feedback for what they’d written from their parents and professors, but “didn’t like reading” and didn’t figure it would be a viable path to pursue. But those two concerns were conquered.
They had no friends and didn’t know what having friends meant. A friend is someone you can have deep conversations about anything about and feel comfortable around them always. They would not experience such a thing for years. It was perhaps a year ago that I came into the picture, when I made my first real friend, at 21 years old, over the internet, as the physical world lacked selection. To have someone to just talk with, to just be around, to experience life with, O what insurmountable bliss it brings me! Oh, just, subtle, and mighty friendship! You have rebuilt me, I have changed forever, and will never go back.
Or that’s what I hope. In my reading of their posts on this site, I see reminders of myself, things that are me in them. They are minor, yet significant. Whenever not trying to prove a point, their writing style was, while underdeveloped at times, rather admirable. They used short sentences and wrote with concision, while, due to my artistic ambition, I do less so. I assumed my old writing in blogs would have been terrible, and for some it was, but for some it was the opposite to that. I look back and see a different writer, but not a bad one when focused, rather one who could write well but didn’t have anything good to write about.
I do feel like sometimes I still act like them. But it’s a rarer thing now, and only happens when I’m angry. Maybe they were just angry all the time. My past still upsets me. I was a horrible person, a bully in school and online. I was violent and hateful and discriminant. I hate that person. I hate my entire childhood, including those years when I was a teen, and wish they could be erased from memory. I do not want to be that ever again. I hope I will outgrow this, I hope I will grow larger than this and forget it, I hope that I will get over this; I know it’s irrational and probably sounds crazy, but this is my primary mental ailment. To quote + Show Spoiler +
perhaps for the second time, as "Oh, just, subtle, and mighty friendship!" is also a quote from him but with opium replaced with friendship.
Thomas De Quincey, from Confessions of an English Opium Eater:
One memorial of my former condition still remains—my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton)
code tags [ code ] useful for preserving alignment, doesn't word-wrap though and the font is a mono-spaced one.
One memorial of my former condition still remains—my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton)
With dreadful faces throng’d, and fiery arms.
quote tags [ quote ] literally designed for quotes, has small font and light text though
One memorial of my former condition still remains—my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton)
With dreadful faces throng’d, and fiery arms.
italics [ i ] This is supposed to be the format when quoting something isn't it? But maybe not for this type of quote One memorial of my former condition still remains—my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton)
With dreadful faces throng’d, and fiery arms.
blockquote would be ideal, but it doesn't work in these comments.
I don't quite get how the line of Milton is supposed to fit in there. It's a quote in the quote right, or did you add it? If not how is something still but has heaps of dreadful faces and fiery arms? Poetic dissonance affects me.
When I gaze upon the face of my past my stomach turns with not disgust, but rather embarrassment, as the disquieting emotion.
On February 01 2017 06:24 Korakys wrote: Alternative formatting options for the quote:
code tags [ code ] useful for preserving alignment, doesn't word-wrap though and the font is a mono-spaced one.
One memorial of my former condition still remains—my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton)
With dreadful faces throng’d, and fiery arms.
quote tags [ quote ] literally designed for quotes, has small font and light text though
One memorial of my former condition still remains—my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton)
With dreadful faces throng’d, and fiery arms.
italics [ i ] This is supposed to be the format when quoting something isn't it? But maybe not for this type of quote One memorial of my former condition still remains—my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton)
With dreadful faces throng’d, and fiery arms.
blockquote would be ideal, but it doesn't work in these comments.
I don't quite get how the line of Milton is supposed to fit in there. It's a quote in the quote right, or did you add it? If not how is something still but has heaps of dreadful faces and fiery arms? Poetic dissonance affects me.
When I gaze upon the face of my past my stomach turns with not disgust, but rather embarrassment, as the disquieting emotion.
Thanks for the formatting tips! It's been a while since I last posted here.
It's a quote in the quote. De Quincey had a thing for quoting lines of poetry. "Still" is not being used as an adjective but as an adverb.
I definitely feel embarrassment as well as disgust. I imagine how people in high school think I must be now, and how far that is from the truth.
And to JimmyJRaynor, I guess I should just focus more on the present and not worry about the past so much.
EPT
