Trivial Pursuit?

You know how sometimes you’re just going along like normal, doing your routine, and suddenly everything just freaking falls out from under you? And it’s not even all really falling out from under you, it just seems like it?
Almost every time I’ve felt like this, I recognize it right away. It’s easy. And I know it’s just negative thinking and if I can spot it, I should be smart enough to outthink it. Like, combat it with positive thoughts or go work out and forget about it or write it all down in this blog. But it doesn’t work – I just go back to this thought that I am not working properly. That I won’t go back to normal. And then I feel completely crazy. To illustrate, I guess I have this example from when I was younger…
It was dark, and I was driving my dad’s pickup home from Canada. I didn’t want to go home yet. I kept thinking about the rides home from our beach house when I was a kid. I never wanted to go home then either.
It was winter break, and Dad and I were heading home from Victoria and Vancouver, B.C. in 2004. We went on a whirlwind tour of every used bookstore we could find, in an epic search for Dad’s beloved Rex Stout mystery series. I even had a glass of wine with my dad for the first time, and I wasn’t even 21! I had a wonderful time – a bright spot after a school term in which only thing I enjoyed doing was running. I ran and ran and ran. I ran in the middle of the night and sometimes twice a day. Sometimes I pretended like someone was chasing me just to see how long I could last. I felt like I accomplished something, however small, after I ran. Like if I couldn’t go to class that day, at least I could go running.
Anyway, the news was playing on the radio in the car, and the financial analysts were talking about the stock market and numbers and I couldn’t stand it. I was embarrassed because I didn’t know what all of it meant – and it didn’t matter that I’d never taken a business class or paid attention to economics; I thought I should have somehow learned something about investments in my 20 years of living. So I asked my dad what the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index are and what the difference is and who needs to know about them. He patiently launched into a basic description of them. Somehow, in the middle of the explanation, I got this crushing feeling that I didn’t understand and I would never understand - that I didn’t have the potential to understand. The more I tried to concentrate, the more I kept thinking how hopeless I was as a person living in society who didn’t even know basic facts about the economy. And then I started to get scared, like terrified, that I would never understand anything important. That I would never be normal. That I couldn’t even listen to an explanation that I had asked for just moments before. That I was a selfish, horrible daughter, and I wasn’t even able to go to school. That I wasn’t a good example for my little brother. That no one would ever love me because how could they? Even I didn’t love me. That I couldn’t help anyone else because I couldn’t even function on a basic level. That I should run more. I should eat less. I probably shouldn’t have children.
Then suddenly I was crying hard, and snot was running into my mouth and I couldn’t really see the road and I hated it. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. And simultaneously like I shouldn’t breathe. There is nowhere to go and hide if you’re unexpectedly crying in a car, unfortunately. I wanted out of my skin. Surprised, my dad told me to pull over at the next exit, and to just breathe and try to calm down.
That’s how I feel. The world is not literally falling out from under me, but it seems like it is. The DOW and the NASDAQ aren’t really that important, but they certainly were at the time. And I still honestly don’t really understand them, but I’m not even going to get into that right now. Because I don’t care enough about that stuff currently. Is that what needs to happen? To just not care enough about whatever it is that’s bothering me to the point that it goes away? That appears brilliant at first, but then that means I wouldn’t care about my future.
All this is just because this week several little undesirable things occurred and I started thinking I might be stupid again. For one thing, I took a biology quiz and FORGOT TO ANSWER A QUESTION. It was weird. Then I simply didn’t follow directions on another one. Which is also out of character. And then I got this genius idea to contemplate my future. Insert ‘horrible’ for ‘genius’ in that last sentence. I feel like suddenly, at 26, I’m realizing (again!) that I wasn’t really meant to live past 30. I can never envision myself clearly in the future. When I envision myself in the future, there are like hundreds of possible strings of future me. One might be doing respiratory therapy in some hospital and coming home at night to feed my kids. One might go to grad school for psychology and in ten more years start counseling people (but that one isn’t sure if she even should counsel people since she can’t really figure out her own mind and if it can even manage grad school). One might be writing novels that never get published (or finished) and scraping by on a clerk’s wages. One might be going to school forever and never figuring it out but surviving on whatever jobs are flexible enough to allow for a student lifestyle. One might have sabotaged herself because she couldn’t figure out where her string was supposed to go or whether it started. One might quit caring and move into a jungle. And each string has like four splits: kids and husband, no family, just husband, and just kids. And then there are a few more strings that aren’t quite thick enough to come into the picture. Ultimately, none of them are strong enough to follow.
Then, after 2 months and about a week of not pulling my hair once (which is longer than I’ve gone probably ever except when I shaved my head), I pulled my hair. So then I thought I’d just stop again, since I did it before, but seriously I probably pulled more this week than I would have if I’d been mildly pulling all of the two months! WhatEVER! Yesterday I realized it was the 14th of April, and not the 12th, which is what I thought. So, I decided to (re)do Adam’s taxes on paper since TurboTax couldn’t identify him the first time around. They are the easiest taxes ever (plus our state forms), but even using a calculator I was off by HUNDREDS of dollars. It took me literally like three hours. I mean seriously! It’s never taken that long before. Fortunately my dad knows at least as much about taxes as he does about the DOW and the NASDAQ. And I listened this time. But then today I took a chemistry quiz and forgot like a third of what we learned. Like…before I understood the concept of one of the things we’re supposed to know because it’s fairly simple, and then I got the quiz and it was gone. Necrosis of the brain. And all class period it was still jumbled, and even now I am uncertain. I guess the difference between 20 and 26 is that this time I didn’t cry in the car on the way home…but I was on the verge. It’s a good thing Brad is so funny and practical.
So the title of this blog is the best I could come up with. Certainly I’ve encountered worse than missing two points on a biology quiz. But not much worse. My life is pretty darn good in general. I chose trivial examples because the whole thing, the world over, the pursuit of whatever I’m supposed to be doing, just seems insignificant sometimes. One thing from biology this week struck me as interesting. When a cell realizes its DNA is damaged, it simply destroys itself. That’s a natural thing. It’s called apoptosis, or cell suicide. I’m just wondering what made my brain cells notice their DNA is freaking damaged. Because that’s stupid.
Clearly the only string I should follow is the one I’m already on, because it’s the only certain one that exists. But sometimes I forget about a third of that concept, and suddenly the whole thing disappears. The good thing is I’ll probably remember sooner or later, and this whole thing will just seem…well…trivial. In the meantime, I’ll just keep sliding along this thread until I get somewhere.