i just finished watching one of my favorite movies: garden state. if you haven’t seen it, go out right now and rent it. while it occurred to me tonight that not every one can appreciate it the way i do, i nonetheless think that its definitely a movie that every one should see at least once. zack braf is brilliant and the sound track kicks ass.

have said all that, i feel the need to expound a bit on the notion that while the movie is brilliantly written, it is geared toward a certain demographic; people like me. more specifically, twenty-somethings with issues steming from low self-esteem and a stranged childhood. of course, i didn’t think my childhood was strained or abnormal at the time, but looking back, i have to believe that there was something about my childhood that has caused me to constantly doubt myself and my self-worth. i think without that experience or realization, while you can certainly enjoy garden state, i don’ think you can appreciate it in quite the same way. i don’t think you can relate to it.

along that same line of thought, i don’t you can relate to, or appreciate the ending without having some of that same self-doubt and lack of self-worth. without spoiling the movie for those of you that haven’t seen it, the ending is inspiring for people like me: those trouble twenty-somethings. the ‘moral of the story’ is that life is life. its good, great, lousy, frightening, fucked up, and very much worth living. bad things are going to happen, things are going to suck occasionally, and you’re probably going to fail from time to time. but things are also going to be good, fun, funny, happy, and interesting. the trick is, according to the movie, is to take the good with the bad. life is life and, for better or for worse, its worth living.

of course, the trick is to actualy live: to learn to take the good with the bad, the successes with the failures, the joy with the sorrow. unfortunately, despite the movie’s unique and brilliant lesson, this is something that, in 27 years, i have been unable to do. i guess i should put so much hope in a movie, no matter how inspiring it may be.

drugs that alter my brain chemistry didn’t work.  now my shrink thinks meditation is the way to go….

i don’t even know how to respond.

you may or may not be aware, but i’m not a terribly happy person.  that’s not to say that i’m unhappy.  i used to be able to say i was unhappy.  depressed is a better word, but in this instance i don’t want to associated with the clinical definition, so let’s stick with unhappy.  i used to be unhappy, but i’m not anymore.  i’m something else: something between happy and unhappy.  a limbo of sorts?  i have no word to describe the feeling.  discontent?  maybe.  i don’t really know.  what i do know is that its not a feeling that i’m particularly fond of.

my mom seems to be of the opinion that this is normal, that most people go through life feeling like this.  and she may be right, but i nevertheless have a hard time believing it.  i mean, if most people walk around in their lives feeling like this, it might explain some of what’s wrong with the world.  i mean, shouldn’t we enjoy life?  i mean, isn’t that the theme of so many countless books, movies, and songs?  even the most famous latin phrase would suggest otherwise….

and maybe that’s my problem.  maybe i don’t know how to seize the day.  i haven’t learned how to enjoy life and to make the most of it.  i think i’ve spent the last 27 years waiting for something to happen.  have i been putting off life because its easy to do so?  i think its safe to say that i’ve been drifting through life to this point.  could it be that i’ve gotten so used to floating that i’ve forgotten how to swim?  or, is it that i never really learned how?  regardless of the analogy, one thing is very clear; i’m terrified.

i’m terrified of everything it seems: of failing, of disappointing my father, of being hurt, of change.  i’m afraid that all this fear is going to keep me from being happy.  more than anything else in the whole world, i just want to be happy.  i’d say that i’d gladly give up everything i have in exchange for happiness and self-esteem (you could use the word confidence as well).  i’m convinced at this point that the two go hand in hand.  you can’t have one without the other.  it makes sense, because in all the length and breadth of my life, i’ve had neither.

i’ve been in therapy now for a little over two years and recently was prescribed wellbutrin (an anti-depressant).  after taking the medication every day for nearly eight weeks, it was doing me no good, so i my doctor told me to stop taking it.  i always said that medication would be a last resort if nothing else could fix me.  well, my last resort didn’t work.  what the hell am i supposed to do now?

i had a dream about katie the other night.  needless to say, any dream involving her is bitter sweet.  and that’s understating the matter.  whenever she enters my thoughts, my heart aches, my stomach knots up, and my brain looses focus for anything else.  to some small extent, i relive our turbulent relationship all over again.  thankfully, thoughts of her are both brief and rare.

dreams, on the other hand, break me.  very rarely do i have a dream that lingers into the waking hours of my day.  it seems nowadays the only dreams i remember involve her.  i can have a thought of her and, with some concentration, cast it off.  the dreams are much harder to leave behind.  and i can rationalize two reasons for this.  all the dreams include two aspects that the thoughts lack.  one, in the dreams, she is always coming back to me, always apologetic.  she’s always aware of how she hurt me and confronts me to make amends.  in the dreams, i always, always, always get her back (though i always wake up before anything else happens).  two, the irregular and random thoughts are consistently devoid of any visualization.  my waking brain cannot accurately recall her face, her smile her cute little figure, the way she smells.  the waking thoughts are memories without substance.  the dreams, on the other hand, are in living color and full of life.  in my dreams she is standing in front of me.  i can see her curly reddish-brown hair.  i can see her smile and i can smell her perfume.  i can hear her voice asking for my forgiveness.

and i wake up.  just a blink before she had been standing before me, then i awake to more familiar surroundings.  all over again she’s gone and its all i can do to keep from curling up in a ball and weeping.

why would my brain do this?  if dreams are supposed to be our subconcious working out little problems, little dilemmas, what is it these dreams are supposed to resolve for me?  my waking brain has let her go, given up any hope of seeing or speaking to her again.  what could my unconcious possibly feel still needs to be done?  i used to see her everywhere: walking on the street, driving in her car, shopping at the mall.  now the only place she haunts me is in my dreams.  it’s the mornings and days that follow such a dream that make me never want to sleep again.

so, after much internal debate and, with the possible consequence of a suffocating dose of pity (ok, so pity may not be the word i’m looking for, but it’s the best i can do without a whole separate rant), i have decided to share the story behind my infamous nickname (thank you hal and leigh) and the reasons why i so despise it.

if you can believe it, i went to a formal dance in college.  i was in a tuxedo and everything.  amazingly, i looked pretty good.  my date to the shindig also looked good, if you can believe it.  the girl, my date was the younger sister of one of my frat brothers… (yeah, i don’t remember the details.  i think she was going school at ohio state in columbus and wanted to go to the dance.  i hadn’t planned on going, but somehow was talked into it.).  i don’t recall him have any issue with it.  in fact, if my memory serves me, we all went to dinner together before the gala.  (it was a great time, though there are aspects of that night that i will forever regret).  i don’t remember many of the details of the evening, other than i had a good time and, i think, my date developed a bit of a crush on me.  i could be wrong though.

at some point, either that night, or some time later, the girl decided that i reminded her of something from her childhood….  that’s right, you guessed it.  for reasons i will never fully understand, i reminded her of a carebare.  i guess it had something to do with the fact that i was kinda round and, apparently, cute.  i wasn’t fond of the simile then and i’m not fond of it now.  actually, i don’t think it turned into a nickname until a bit later, when my roommate, who thought it was so damn funny, that he coined the actual name: tenderheart.  that’s right, during the course of one night i had been reduced to a stuffed animal.  a cute, lovable, fucking cartoon character….  as friends will do, and fraternity brothers even more so, they began calling me that on a regular basis, simply because it pissed me off no end….

now, here’s the reason why i HATE that nickname so much….  i hate cute.  what i mean is, i hate the word.  i try to never use it and cringe when others use it around me.  what i hate even more is when people use the word to describe me, “oh, you’re so cute.”  carebears are cute and now i will forever associate the word cute with carebears.

sure cute has some beneficial uses.  puppies are cute.  babies are cute.  however, i have a hard time with a 20-something man being called cute.  cute is nice.  cute is friendly and cuddly.  cute is the friend that sits, quiet and concerned, while you bitch about the boyfriend who is did this or that to wrong you.  the cute 20-something is always the friend, never the boyfriend.  you can argue with me about this if you like, but i’ve have yet to see an example to refute this theory of mine.

women don’t want to date the cute 20-something.  women want to befriend the cute 20-something.  they want the shoulder of a cute 20-something to cry on….

say what you want.  call me bitter, or cynical, or narrow-minded, but while you might think the nickname is fitting (which it might be), now you know why the sound of it makes me want to put my fist through a wall.