I’ve written many times before how much I miss the way so much in my life used to be. Whether swing dancing two to three times a week, visiting friends in different parts of the US, having meaningful connections with lots of people, enjoying greater financial stability, spending time with my dog Sawyer, or just feeling like things are ok and would get even better later on, life was pretty good for a while. I’d gladly take any wonderful year or even just a great season from my past over the existential nightmare that’s grown and festered over the last eight years and yet somehow still gets called “society.”
Above all of that, I miss who I used to be. Although I’ve long struggled with anxiety and depression, those have both been especially bad over the last year or two. Add some various flavors of anger to the mix this year and that’s a recipe for misery. It’s also a far cry from how I used to feel. I miss my innocence from early in life. My current frustration and cynicism with much of humanity is in stark contrast to the hope and optimism I had as a little kid. Back then, I thought most humans I’d encounter would be nice, and that the worst interactions I’d have would be limited to fights with a few close family members. Many decades of interaction with all kinds of humans in various jobs, social circles, and elsewhere has shown me how wrong that sentiment was. Learning how awful humans can be (especially when they know how to navigate a situation with civility yet choose hostility) across countless negative experiences with other humans has been one of the most painful experiences I’ve ever had. I constantly hope that humans will rise to the occasion, and I constantly feel disappointed when they instead sink even lower. There seems to be no depth to which this awfulness cannot go.
Regardless of how anyone else behaves, I’d still feel much more comfortable moving forward in life if I could recover who I used to be. The person I was for most of September 2021 could handle challenges of all sorts much more easily than who I am now. Despite some big setbacks leading up to and around that time, enough was still going well in and around me to put me in a great life situation; my life would have only gotten better had things continued along that path. Now, even when things are going well for me, I seem unable to make them continue as such or take advantage of them in a way that will take me to the next level. I’ve gone down many levels since this time three years ago, and I fear I’ll never get back to the place I once was, much less go beyond it.
I sometimes have a wonderful waking dream. In this dream, I’m a little kid again, my mom has come to give me a piggyback ride to the family room, Sawyer is there (and will live just as long and healthy as I do), there’s been peace the whole time within my family, and all is well in the world. For all I know, given how many times I’ve been sound asleep yet had an incredibly realistic dream in which I was convinced I was awake, that could still happen. I could be having an extended dream that feels like decades have gone by while I’m still less than ten years old, or I could still be in my first sensory deprivation float in early 2019. If anything along those lines is actually happening, then it gives me hope that my dream will someday come true. However, I’d hate to someday wake up and find that life is far worse than it is now, or that my current existence will keep getting worse almost every year. That’s bad enough as a nightmare, and even more dreadful as reality.
Hearing Weird Al’s song “Skipper Dan” for the first time back in 2017 and resonating with it even more now than I did then shows me how little progress I’ve made in the years since. There are still great opportunities on the horizon, some closer than others. How many of those will blossom into the life I’d like while there’s still time, I have no idea. If I’m actually still healing old emotional pain (it’s often hard to tell, especially with so many turbulent years in a row), then it stands to reason that there’ll be more progress in more areas as the pain decreases. It often seems as if I’m stuck and either making no progress or regressing in many areas. I frequently wonder if this will be the pattern the rest of my life follows. One way or another, we’ll find out together.