Spiritually Hungover
2025-11-02
I'm currently in the airport waiting on my flight back home to start boarding. I feel spiritually hungover since yesterday was such a long day. Once all of the reception stuff was finished, I went straight back to the hotel so that I could decompress and go to bed. There was a lot of socializing, a lot of talking with people, and a lot of tension preceding the ceremony. That makes sense though—it's a wedding. I'm very happy for my friends and their marriage, and I feel very privileged to have been part of it. Now that it's over though, I feel immensely relieved.
There was a certain weight to the whole trip, though. My closest friends are all getting married this year. There was one in June, the one I just attended, and another one next month. Of course, my friends are very dear to me and I feel fortunate to be part of their lives as they take those next big steps forward. I look at my own life and I don't feel jealousy, but I do feel a certain fear that I'm going to get left behind. As my friends keep moving on with their careers and their families and everything else, there won't be any time for our friendships and we'll grow apart. It wouldn't be out of anything malicious, but just something that feels natural, I suppose.
I don't know if I'm still feeling or perceived as somewhat juvenile as a single guy with not a lot of career or romantic prospects. I don't know if I'm stuck or behind or whatever. I think I'm just afraid of a future where I am completely alone, that I didn't do what I had to do to keep people in my life. I fear for a day where I am bound to solitude. Once my parents die, there won't be a whole lot for me to hold onto. I fear that I might drift and keep drifting and riding through life trapped in a dearth of connection.
I don't know what I have to do to cultivate more strength in this regard. Taking care of just myself is a monumental task, let alone others. Many times I feel as if there's not enough I can do to have people love me. I fear that I just don't have what it takes to dutifully protect, provide, and support other people. It might be that I'm too selfish and absorbed in my thoughts that there's not much left for others to take from me. The feelings of inadequacy are overwhelming. I know that in the depths of these perceptions, they're lies being told to me because my brain is constantly overclocked.
There's too much going on in my head all the time. It is taxing to have a constant sense of coherence while staring into the infinite expanses of experience. I see things that others don't, but it's hard to communicate those things to them. Because of that, it makes me perceived as some kind of alien presence. I constantly feel as if I have to boil myself down and even censor myself for others. This lack of unbridled self-expression is taxing. It makes me want to be selfish.
Going to the weddings has made me feel lonely. It's a tough thing to talk about, especially in public like this, but I think it's important to let these things out. I have high expectations of myself, but I seem to not even be able to meet a typical level of expectations. It's just that so much of what people think they want out of life is such bullshit. Most things in life are boring, evil, or both. I don't want to be the kind of person that people expect me to be, and the fact that I am met with a degree of resentment towards this notion makes me just want to quit altogether.
But I know better than that. I have to keep pushing forward. I have to keep seeking because if I don't, then that's what will ultimately kill me.