leaving the nest

I honestly don’t know if I’m making the right choices, the biggest one recently I’d say is moving out a month ago, but big ones have been taking place for the last 2 years and will continue to take place probably multiple times over the next 5.

And overall would be this transitionary time where I’m leaving my “old life” behind. Already moved out, soon to be married, and I can’t feel the joy of it without the pain of what I feel I’m losing. I’m just marching forward with “the plan”, because it’s scary to really critique the plan.

I feel blind to my finances, it’s like a shadow creeping behind me, a little distant but approaching behind me.

I feel like I left behind my support system, I don’t see my parents every day anymore and it kinda hurts a little to think about. I remember that I wanted to venture out on my own so badly at several points of time, so why now that I actually finally materialized that reality do I feel like I’ve lost something? It wasn’t impulsive I don’t think, it was deliberate and planned, and still it doesn’t feel like a pure step forward. I replaced pain with other pain, maybe joy with other joy?

Fundamentally I’m so uncertain about whether my trajectory is good, or whether I’m heading down the road to doom. You know the scariest part? I’m not as afraid of catastrophe as I am afraid that things will just remain as they are; you would think that the worst that could happen is that I go broke, my marriage fails and falls apart, and that I’d have to return to a previous stage of life. But that’s not what scares me right now (okay of course it does, but it’s not the scariest possibility anymore).

The scariest hypothetical is that the plans I’ve already set in motion succeed but the result hurts me rather than makes me happy, and it’s too late to salvage a life worth living (whatever that means).

Actually, not me, I am fundamentally fine with being miserable because I’ve lived miserably for so long and I at least know how to function with some basic chronic misery, but the few people in the world that can be hurt by the outcomes of the actions I take. I’m talking about my parents specifically, and possibly my hypothetical future children. Yes my to-be wife as well, but I’m more worried that she’ll irreparably hurt me than I’ll irreparably hurt her, because she’s stronger than I am and has a stronger support system in life than I do and she’s fundamentally more compatible with the world and existing in it than I am or ever have been.

Sometimes I feel like staring up at the sky, fist angled up with exasperation and questioning aloud “Why?!”. With that singular question what I mean is

• Why am I the one who is always scared
• Why am I the one who feels uncertain
• Why am I the one who has a problem with things
• Why am I the one always hurting, usually myself
• Why am I the one who might be doing it wrong
• Why am I the one always questioning myself and everything around me
• Why am I the one who can’t seem to adapt to the life I live and the world I find myself in
• Why am I the one always sad and feeling the hurt more than the happiness

For years, at so many times in life I’ve questioned whether I did something wrong, whether I missed a core step or two of what one is supposed to do to live, whether I missed a memo that answers the questions that plague my attention every couple weeks/months

It’s like I’m attempting to imitate what I think life is supposed to be like, rather than actually knowing/feeling what it should be like for me, which itself is an idea that I have based on what I think “living life“ is supposed to be like.

At every step I find the ratio of uncertainty to certainty increasing, and I have the notion that it isn’t supposed to trend in that direction if things are being done “correctly”.

What now? Nothing, I continue. One day either I die in a circumstance I don’t account for (which selfishly is on the cusp of being a relieving idea), or events happen that result in an involuntary attack on my own psyche/body and I’m broken forever and the “I” I refer to now no longer exists (or is different enough that none of what I think now matters), or just a slow erosion of hope weathers away my ability to even reflect on the pain I feel. I feel pretty confident that pain will always increase disproportionately to contentment for me in my life, that’s why I’m silently glad that one day conscious experience will end (or so I think I guess).

I don’t know what to name the feelings I have sometimes, “sadness” doesn’t quite capture it and always brings with it a follow up question “why?”.

If i attempted to explain myself to someone, it’d sound reflexive and stupid

I’m sad Why are you sad? I don’t know, because everything?