Sigh

The horrors persist, but so do I

I sat down fully intending to write a funny piece today. Something light, and stupid, and enjoyable to get some weight off my chest.

“Pokémon meets Freud” I wrote, ready to dive into a satirical essay where I’d psychoanalyze the life out of people’s Pokemon choices. I had all the archetypes mapped out, sorted by how many people had chosen each. I was gonna write about Jigglypuff, the tortured poet, and Eevee, the queen of adaptability. Hell, I even had planned a whole tarot deck with Pokemon. But as I started to write, shit happened.

It’s crazy how the tiniest thing can ruin one’s day. How one little moment can pop your little bubble of having a good day and send you spiraling, and leave you numb. I haven’t been having good days lately. Life happens, and you make what you can out of it. But today I had managed to shake all my worries away, all the sadness, emptiness, anger at the world. I thought I was ready to have a good day, I convinced myself that was the case, I forced myself into that mindset. And one tiny, little disruption absolutely ruined it and sent me back to where I was when I woke up: the land of despair.

Forced optimism is something I first encountered as a teenager. My mom was starting to lose her mind and she found solace in Buddhism, Hinduism, mantras, meditation, manifestation… I don’t think she ever understood what all that was about, but she started imprinting it onto me and my sister. I thank her for that, as I myself found solace too in the core ideas of what she was preaching. It was easier to be optimistic when I was promised happiness if I wished for it hard enough, long enough, with enough faith.

Manifesting became part of my daily life, a way to deal with all the bad things that felt worse than they were for the intensity of a teenager, and with all the truly horrible things that I chose to label as “character development” to not lose my mind like my mom. I don’t know why it never worked. Maybe it was because I didn’t have enough faith. Maybe because it’s not a magical magnet but a mindset shift that allows you to grow taller by believing you can and acting on it. I’ll leave this one to the esoteric professionals.

As I grew up, I started noticing nothing had truly changed and so the initial awe I felt about it turned into a dull, bitter feeling of helplessness. But I never stopped trying, in hopes that “long enough” meant many years. Forced optimism became a lifeline, something to reach for when I’m drowning in myself. A little push towards ignoring the entanglement of ugly circumstances we call life.

It usually works, but only if it comes hand in hand with isolating myself from the world. Because just like today, and like a clock announcing midnight, the smallest disruption turns the illusion of happiness back into a pumpkin.

I call myself a hypocrite every time I catch my brain red-handed in the act of lying to myself about how I’m feeling. I tend to be honest about what flavor of emotional exhaustion I’m experiencing each day, as I strongly believe acknowledging emotions helps you work around them. But sometimes that becomes a bit too much and I need to take a day off from psychoanalyzing myself (we’ve come full circle here) to recognize the wonders this world has to offer and joke about becoming a grandmother for baby pill bugs, or put on rounded glasses and blame the Pokemon’s mothers instead of my own.

I choose to lie to myself sometimes so I can feel like I’m staying alive (I know you’re singing along to the Bee Gees now) instead of just surviving.

Maybe I can lie to myself tomorrow again and let you know what Pikachu’s mother did that made it unable to control its emotions.