I really like being alone
I love being alone. It is more familiar to me than anything and I am very attached to it. I dread going to work five days a week since I work with so many people (I'm a bank teller). But I am certain I could not live on fewer hours. I don't even spend that much money on things, like eating out, or groceries, though I frequently buy books and things from amazon. I'm keeping mindful about this. I don't even need that much to be satisfied. I'm rambling.
I like my cowrkers just fine, and the customers are alright for the most part, it's just exhausting and unfulfilling and relentless, five days a week, 9 hours a day, only two days of rest, if I don't work half a saturday. It's a lot of human contact. Some weeks it's fine, others I get really tired and I desparately crave solitude.
I've been meditating and learning about Buddhism at home for a little while now, and it's helped a lot. But this past weekend I bought beer again and I binge-watched an anime show on netflix, I smoked weed for the first time in six days or so (trying to quit for the sake of my practice).
When I try to quit weed, my existential depression begins to creep back in. I return so easily to the state of mind where I don't want to exist, I don't want to put in the effort necessary to live my life, I don't want to live my life at all, none of it feels worth it, I just want to cease to exist because I didn't ask for this anyway. So I smoke weed. Then I feel alright, I feel sane and rational again, at least for a time. But the netflix, the weed, the beer, the wine, the food, the masturbation, all of it constitutes escapism. Sometimes I even approach meditation as a sort of escapism, especially today, and I get frustrated because I can't concentrate, because trying to use meditation as a means of escape is like trying to bake bread in the refigerator.
It seems I would be better off cutting these things out of my life completely as I cannot seem to take any of them in moderation. But it is hard. And even then, I still have my problem of preferring solitude vastly over constant human contact but being unable to reconcile that wish with reality. I do not know why this is, but it is. I do not know why I exist, but I do. I do not know why I wish to not exist, but I do. I do not know why I do not enjoy the company of others. I love solitude, but it is like a rare gem. I can hardly ever find it, and when I do, it slips through my fingers so quickly.
Just being around people, even people I like, is exhausting, even if we're not actively conversing. It makes me long for solitude. This longing waxes and wanes depending on the cycling of my moods, and whether I have recently had a good deal of solitude, and more recently, whether I have just had a good meditation session.
Even when I am alone, it is hard to enjoy it knowing how quickly it will be over once again.
I do not know how to reconcile my intense craving for solitude with the necessity to live my life. I desire freedom more than I desire to live.
[link] [comments]
from Buddhism https://ift.tt/2Rnbw7O
Post a Comment