Longing & Desire

I find myself stuck on the themes of longing & desire. Maybe that's because they're sort of universal; everyone has -- at some point or other -- yearned for something they simply can't have. It is when these feelings become overwhelming that I am most moved to write. Somehow, pouring my pain and discontent onto the page bleeds it through and out of my system.

The problem is that it doesn't actually fix anything. I can't find release or escape enough from the torment. I sit at my computer and binge watch TV shows or movies so that I can keep my brain occupied because during the quiet times, in the spaces in between, when all I have is myself alone, the floodgates open, and I am once again stuck in the mire of desire. I feel like I'm drowning in a deluge of muck and grime, unable to breathe or move or even simply be.

So why am I so fixated? Why do I keep going back to that place? Am I some sort of masochist? Do I somewhere, deep down, enjoy the torture? Maybe. I don't know. What does it matter anyway? Torture is torture.

Torture is my lot in life.

I wonder what it is like to be truly happy -- not for a moment, but for a sustained length of time, for a week, or a month, or -- God forbid -- for a year! Don't get me wrong, I do know happiness, and I do feel it often, in fact. But it is always dingy, marred, colored with a dank overlay of that misery which waits just around the corner.

I suppose the true question becomes What can I do with it?