I don't do a lot of diary entries here, but let me talk about Saturday.
During the course of various chores, I was outside when the kid down the street was washing his car. I say "kid" because I think he'd just about seventeen. Definitely still in high school. I've only seen him twice, but he's absolutely beautiful. That's not his picture over there, but there is a resemblance.At first I just perved on the beautiful view, enjoyment sprinkled with bits of guilt at leering at a guy young enough to have been fathered by me, if I was into that sort of thing.
But later the sight of him just made me sad.
And it took a while to reason out why. And, as usual, it stems from jealousy. The boy depressed me because he was beautiful and young, with all that time, all those possibilities in front of him. And it made me feel keenly just how much time I've wasted in talking about big plans and not working to accomplish any of them. Years of just existing without giving any thought to the time that was flying by, as opportunities dried up and my body got older.
Usually when I get to feeling like this, the more practical voice in my head pipes up to tell me to just get over it, that the two things I absolutely can't do is get younger or taller.
But some days, that voice is silent, and I indulge the sadder, more melancholy voice in my head - the one that ran my life for twenty-five mostly miserable years - and let it depress me. Yesterday was one of those days.
In the evening, as I was working on something, I watched a movie I'd purchased about a week ago but not yet watched, The History Boys. It was charming and cute and entertaining, the story of eight British schoolboys of fairly ordinary background who spend their last year in school preparing for entrance exams to Oxford or Cambridge (The soulless bureaucrat who runs their school calls them the "Oxbridge candidates.")
I loved the movie, but it didn't exactly improve my mood, watching young men about to begin their lives.
But today is a new day, and my attitude is better.
4 comments:
what? you think because you're 25 or 26 or even 30 or 40 or, gasp, older, life is over? it's just starting!
yea, we look at young guys and think how great it would be to be young, but we think those thoughts with all the knowledge we've accumulated in life, which knowledge we didn't have when we were younger.
life is a journey, an experience. you learn from mistakes and triumphs and go forward, hoping to reach a certain destination, but never really knowing where you are going.
i was glad to read at the end of your entry that your attitude was better. i hope it stays that way. focus on the positive in your life and on the future. and have fun doing it.
Whoa! I wasn't talking about a prolonged depression or anything, just a passing feeling of a few hours. I thought it was interesting that the sight of a beautiful boy could make me sad, so I tried to figure out why.
If it seemed really despondent, then I explained myself badly. Let me try again: Have you ever left work on Friday, all eager to get to a rather ambitious list of things-to-do that you've set for yourself? But you don't start on it Friday night and instead watch some crap on TV? Then on Saturday you get distracted by some other things or amused yourself by piddling around, but it's okay because you still have Sunday? But on Sunday you do more futzing around, always meaning to get busy a little later, then suddenly it's time to get some sleep, because you've got work in the morning?. The whole weekend is gone, and you've got nothing done?
Well, I've spent most of the last twenty years like that. And periodically, something - like the sight of that boy - reminds me just how much time I've wasted and it makes me a little sad. That's all I meant to say.
sorry if i read too much into your post. it seemed to me that you were beating yourself up over the past.
"Well, I've spent most of the last twenty years like that."
do you feel that you haven't achieved anything over the last 20 years or that you could have achieved more?
Maybe if you'd quit wasting your time blogging and posting pictures of shirtless men, you could get control of your life and do something meaningful. You may perhaps even learn to love yourself, which seems to really be your problem.
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