I stumbled upon some random person's old, abandoned blog, and I found this and I read it often because I love it so much. I read it the first time around Christmastime, and it has stuck with me since then. This post is from 2008, but some are even older, and he's so very fascinating to read...There's just something about growing up and realizing there's so much more to life than being sad... it doesn't get you anywhere and I think this is a great way to put it:
i used to be one of those kids who romanticized sadness and self destruction
i only really felt like an artist when retracing the hurt and the ugly feelings
i only felt like i was really living when i felt desperately like i did not really want to be alive
i used to think the only truly beautiful people were the truly sad ones
but now
when i have seen and tasted so much that is sweet
and have realized that all of the joys and pains i have experienced and want to experience
are dependent upon my being alive
not just surviving but really, euphorically, violently alive
i can still find beauty in sadness
but i understand that that beauty in pain and struggle
only exists in contrast to the joy that is sought beyond that unhappiness
and i can no longer enjoy things like the poetry of sylvia plath
and i honestly most of it as totally self indulgent
and petty
and i now wish that all those who feel how i used to feel
and romanticize self defeating self pitying despair
would learn to stop fighting their own happiness
and grow up
and feel the sun on their skin
and the bitterness in the breeze
and the blackberry tingle on their tongues
and start living for something else than their own eventual "perfect and romantic" suicide