transition

In a fit of post-partum? depression, I dined last night alone, on peanut butter brown bread sandwiches and half a bottle of red wine in my new light-blue hand-blown wine glasses that refracts the light in a thousand different ways. Existential questions crowded my mind. Where we are going, why I am incapable of a successful relationship, why is everyone getting married (another close friend folded, to be registered in three weeks), what is the point of being educated when a traditional Asian family only values marriageability and childbearing capability as a woman, in short, just exactly, what is the point of living as I was and am a complete failure in all these measures. I contemplated (in an academic manner) twisting the nearest breadknife in my throat, but the possiblity of post-life nothingness, in short, my lack of a devout life enables no real eternal future, stopped me dead (no pun intended). Yeat's poem reverberated in my head: A waste of breath, the years to come, a waste of breath, the years behind. Although I wasn't unhappy per se (okay, who was I kidding, I was deeply depressed), in the sense that I realized quite rationally that I was fortunate and lucky to have led my life compared to victims of violent crime for example, yet, I did not have the confidence that quite simply, I would ever get it right. Relationships offer a fleeting elusive (illusive/illusionary)surcease from the daily travails, but only for the first part, after which the sturm und drang ebbs and flows. Work is best described as bailing out a leaky boat with a thimble (no matter what we do it is not enough), coupled with the fact that I was recently told that this work does not validate me, and I am not good at the work that validates me, which leaves me exactly nowhere (or hell in a handbasket) to go. And if both love and work do not work then, what else is left? I felt old. Fought with my parents, stalked my boyfriend (ex), bore a stiff upper lip of not caring exactly what an old friend said, buried my head in bottles of red wine (two over the weekend), contemplated starting on the whisky, deterred only by the fact that it was locally produced and I would be in pain the next morning (i am also a wimp). It takes a lot of courage to live, it is not just a matter of breathing one breath after the next. Hamlet had it right. As did Camus (i think). The only real question is why is it worth living? And I don't really know anymore. I am not suicidal, nor is this an obscure cry for help in our post-modern web world. Its just that, I understand that I am of some value in this world, and have a network of people who value me for myself, but ultimately, my existence is not life or death for anyone and perhaps that's what matters.

And its only the first week of the new year over. Glorious.