I just graduated from high school. This is crazy. I'm excited and terrified and overjoyed and incredibly sad. However, this mix of emotions is not new to me. I felt this when I moved for the first time. I felt this when I left my last school. I felt like this when the school before that closed.
The emotions I described -- sad but also happy, excited and scared -- are indicative of a higher, more profound emotion. Allie Brosh described a similar emotion in her article "Depression Part Two", an emotion called "crying".
During a bout of depression, she found herself crying about nothing in particular, and that she was just sad for the sake of being sad, and that she couldn't help it. "I call this emotion 'crying' and not 'sadness' because that's all it really was. Just crying for the sake of crying. My brain had partially learned how to be sad again, but it took the feeling out for a joy ride before it had learned how to use the brakes or steer."
She ended up just sitting on her kitchen crying about nothing. But she tells her story better. Go read her article. It's wonderful and beautiful and amazing.
image: hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com
Property of Allie Brosh
Since apparently bloggers get to make up new emotions, my emotion would probably be called "Lasts". Lasts is an emotion you feel when you know you are going to experience or are experiencing something for the very last time.
It could be something you love or something you hate, but either way, if you're consciously aware that it is going to happen or is currently happening, you're going to get the Lasts.
If you just experienced something awful for the last time, like when you hand in a final test for a class you hated, you're going to feel mostly happy. However, there will be a twinge of sadness, because everything good that happened in that class, no matter how small it was, is now gone.
When you finish that class, the positive experiences, like when you pranked the teacher with your friends, or when you got partnered with that really cute girl for that one difficult group project, will be left behind in that room without you. Sure, you'll have memories, but there is something significant about the physical. Places, objects, people...these are all things that make experiences more real, even when they're over.
However, a good friend of mine told me that you cannot prolong the positive by moping. The often times negative nostalgia that comes with Lasts is never conducive to anything. You may be confused and upset, but that means the only thing left for you to do is to press on and try to experience something new, exciting, and lovely.
Image: wannabehacks.co.uk
I hear blogging is a great medium for self-expression. Also, it will be around as long as the Internet, so there's that.
Now, I realize better than most that you cannot simply chose to not feel something. Sure, you can put up walls and try to hide behind them, but the emotions will still be there. Waiting. Watching. Hungering.
But it's not all that bad, really! What I've come to realize is that the sadder you feel about something ending, the more awesome it truly was while it happened. Those little twinges of melancholy you feel when something ended that you thought you'd be happy about? That's your subconscious reminding you that it wasn't all complete suckage.
So I guess, in a way, you can prolong the positive, if not by moping, then by remembering. Because those experiences are never truly gone. I mean, in a literal sense, yes, they are. Time travel is most likely impossible without irreparably damaging the fabric of space-time.
That's not what I meant though. We can relive those past experiences in our heads with out memories. We can reminisce with our friends. We can cry on their shoulders and laugh out loud around campfires and we can shamelessly embellish our old stories to our children and their children.
Embrace the feeling of Lasts, because after all, all endings are simply preludes to great beginnings.
Obviously the situations are different, but I find there to be a certain level of both profundity and applicability here. "The pain now is part of the happiness then." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrXU3oZEqiA
ReplyDelete