Inconsistency has been my closest friend for as long as I can remember. As I write this paper, I’m not even sure how to begin explaining inconsistency. How can such a strong emotion that has such a significant impact on my daily life ever be put into words? It’s exhausting, it’s discouraging, and it’s, well, inconsistent. Sometime I don’t even know what inconsistency is. Is it indecision? Apathy? Confusion? Who knows. The lasting repercussions cannot be defined or put into words, yet it manifests itself in every part of my life.
It’s like having two separate brains that constantly argue and never rest. Two brains that so strongly battle to pull me in opposing directions I can hear and feel the seams of my head bursting and nearly splitting in two. The sound of ripping flesh echoes through my ears, leaving me holding my head in my hands, hoping my true thoughts are never exposed.
Who I am is a total mystery even to myself. Am I an artist, a musician, an athlete, or an intellectual? I’ve never been passionate about anything, never been exceptionally gifted in any area, yet I can do many things at a surface level of satisfaction. It’s like having your limbs stuck in every accessible window, yet still looking for the open door. The whole world is open to me, but I don’t know where to begin. I’m being pulled in a thousand different directions and I can’t stop it.
An endless supply of masks hang on the coat rack, waiting to be donned at appropriate times, and an endless list of roles I play each day patiently wait nearby. I’m afraid who I want to be has lost who I am in this inescapable sea of plastic and acting. In a group of conservatives, I’m a liberal. In a group of liberals, I’m a conservative. In a group of intellectuals, I play the educated college girl, but in a group of spiritual hippies I wear the role of a horoscope fanatic. Whatever situation I am in, I adapt to fit the established social expectations. However, my one constant is knowing that there will always be a wildness about me that will forever seep through the cracks of the masks I create, presenting itself in almost undetectable ways. In a way, this is a kind of comfort; knowing there are still trickles of me left.
Though I am often too embarrassed to publicly admit it, I know exactly what I desire in life: to live a hundred different lives and to live a thousand different experiences. To live the childhood of every culture and person, experience heartbreak and destruction and, as strange and disturbing as this may sound, to hit rock bottom. I have this desire to know for myself every emotion and experience talked about. Many people are satisfied listening to stories of things that have happened or watching movies about heartbreak, but I want to live these things. I want to know what these things feel like.
Eventually, all this leads to a state of sheer and unreserved apathy. You begin not to car about anything. School, relationships, family, and hobbies you once found fascinating become tiresome and vexing. Making simple decisions becomes trying and impossible. Subsequently, you learn to cope by ignoring people, things, and ideas, losing yourself to the endless maze within your own mind. A coat of apathy can be one of the most powerful tools known to mankind.
Even this paper instigates feelings of inconsistent reason and logic. In some ways I find writing this to be surprisingly therapeutic, but in other ways I find it absolutely ridiculous, overly introspective, and disgustingly childish. The feelings I’ve expressed above are very real to me, but maybe this is because I’m overdramatizing the affects they have on my life. Maybe these gruesome battles in my head are because I allow myself to dwell on these things, believing they really do tear me to pieces. Perhaps the best thing to do is ignore them, bury them, and live as though they do not exist.
So I am left with a big blob of confusion and inconsistency for a brain, somehow understanding that life is simply a series of compromises and beautiful unknowns. Nothing can be planned, for I know not what I am capable of or who I am going to be from one moment to the next. Inconsistencies, inconsistencies. As I sit here at 2 in the morning, enjoying the solitude of a meal with my papers, I realize that I am finally at peace with this reality—the reality of a life unplanned.
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