I Was a Teenage Anarchist

Today's post is brought to you courtesy of me not being able to sleep back on January 12th. Much of this was jotted down and set aside to be forgotten. A lot of the writing I do these days is set aside to be forgotten. Because this is my blogging revival month I will pick these thoughts out of my mental trashcan and turn them into a post. Enjoy my mental trash.

I have a lot of angst. If you read my blog back in it's glory days you know that angst was the name of the game. It was an all the angst, all the time type situation up in The Chronicles of Chris. Back in those days my angst was mostly about three things:

1. Girls
2. Friends
3. Being inadequate

I was afraid no one would ever love me and I would die alone. I was afraid that I would forever be trapped in my missionary kid isolation, without friends. I was afraid I would never be good enough, that I was a failure from the start.

Now my list is slightly less diverse. I've condensed my angst into two very similar thoughts:

1. I didn't turn out right. I took a wrong turn somewhere and it's my fault.
2. I didn't turn out right. My life has been too abnormal and fragmented. It's not my fault but I can't fix it.

When I was young I was obsessed with the "could bes" of my potential future. Now that the future is here I'm obsessed with the "what ifs" of my past. It's not that my life turned out bad by any means. I'm happily married. I have a job that pays my bills and doesn't violate my ethics. I have a cute cat. But it's obsessive, this constant "what if."

Sometimes when I'm laying in bed trying vainly to fall asleep I'll feel a pang in my chest. I've led a life characterized by impermanence and I often mourn the "could-have-beens." I miss Estonia.

I'll listen to Streets at Night, most of which seems to have been filmed in Tallinn, and just have an unnamed longing. A part of me wishes I could relive my youth and be a better person. Waste less time. Be more than I am. A part of me wishes I could go back to that home. Portland is also home, but it's not complete. Neither is Estonia. They're 2 pieces to a puzzle that don't fit together. But They're the pieces I have, so I just try my best to make do and not feel the jagged, unfitting edges grinding against each other.

It's called being a TCK. Third Culture Kid. Kid, not adult. Some part of me believed I'd grow out of this. Other people move as adults, but they have a solid, complete base they are launching from. A whole, fitting puzzle. I just don't. I have no secure base. How can I begin to even try to figure out what's ahead if I have no real idea what's behind? I Visited Estonia this summer with my wife. So much has changed. But the heart was the same. I miss it so much.

Sometimes I'll have a specific image, Kadriorg, the tram stop at Tallinn university, the sky over red Old Town roofs, and my heart will just cry out. I don't know why or what to do about it.

I've never consciously admitted this to myself but I think nights like tonight are a part of why I quit writing. When I'm writing I become self aware and introspective. Sometimes I can't turn that introspection off. When I'm self aware I can't just distract myself from my frail human mind by scrolling through Facebook and binging Netflix. These are my stuffs, my painkillers and antidepressants. I'd rather feel nothing in digital oblivion than be sleepless at nearly 2am while my cat worries about me.

When I was younger I was passionate about changing the world. In college my roommate and I went door to door with petitions and got involved in student government because we were angsty young anarcho-activists with a need to improve this crappy world. I wanted so desperately to do something good. I was disillusioned with "the system" but I had hope things could be better. I had hope worth fighting for.

Now I'm still disillusioned, but I also feel entirely disenfranchised as well. The world is crap, but I don't feel that I have the power to do anything about it. But now I can't help but wonder what would have happened if I had kept my will to fight? Who could I be if I wasn't beaten down by "the system" or "the man." Could I have made the world a better place? Should I have? Am I failing myself? Sometimes I feel like there's a sixteen year old boy looking at me over the span of 10 years with a fire in his eyes question how I could have become this lame old man?

I'm actually extraordinarily intimidated by that 16 year self judging me. Back then I used my blog as this lens to examine my life and realize how awesome it was. I'd be like, "today I walked home and I was listening to music. Then I started running and felt like a ninja. I'm so freaking cool." Now my blog is still a lens to look at my life, but instead of thinking that I'm a ninja, or cool at all I look through the lens and say, "today I went to work. I sat in my office for 8 hours, then came home to my small apartment and educational debt to do dishes. Sometimes I play video games too. Also, I'm married. But no life is perfect, right? Right?"

In one of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books he describes time and alternate realities as spokes in a wheel. For some reason that has always stuck with me as I think about my life. Each time you choose a path you kill an entire alternate reality. The paths branch away and what could have been is gone. I wish I could write an email to alternate Chris, hear how things turned out for him. What if Chris had never left Portland as a kid? That one doesn't trouble me too much. What if Chris had never left the US? That one's a thinker. What if Chris had somehow found a way to stay in Estonia, or go back after college? What if I had pursued my writing? Or an education in psychology? Or a revolutionary activism? What if I had pursued anything at all?

It leads me to this crazy question: who am I now with all these jumbled, unmatched pieces? Does the sum of these parts even equal a whole? I don't know. Moving to another country and being a TCK wasn't my choice, so if going down that path screwed me up I can blame other people. But does that make it better? Does knowing that other people screwed me up making my being screwed up any less difficult? Then there are the choices I could control, like giving up on my writing. Did I fail myself? If I'm messed up and disappointed with my life and it's all my fault, well, am I just the worst?

So there you have it. Here's my thoughts that keep me up at night. Aren't existential crises great? I hope you've enjoyed this whiny manifesto. Check back tomorrow for some (hopefully) less whiny nonsense. Here's hoping you have a night free of existential dread.