despite all this, i am not fundamentally happy. either now or in general. and when things are going well in my life, i invariably screw them up, moth to a flame. i can't keep a relationship together, probably largely because i emotionally overreact. i can solve anything quantitative, no problem, but when it comes to solving my mind i am a perpetual failure. i think part of this is the fact that i don't have any default action tendencies or default guiding principles. i basically never just go through the motions. i do and say a lot of things and many of them turn out to be wrong.
so i live this high-stress lifestyle, not really by volition but just because it's my nature. i'm incredibly dependent on people; i don't know how i became so extreme a people person, but there you have it. any evening i spend alone when i'm truly single (by which i mean single and not in any nebulous or developing situations) kills me. i can't live without romantic hopes and dreams. don't get me wrong -- the people i have those hopes and dreams about have to be the right people. it's not like i'm just looking for a carbon-copy relationship to hang my hat on at night.
and so when i don't have that person in my life, i'm extremely sad. i don't know which is worse -- the intermittent life-has-no-meaning fits, or the chronic not-truly-happy syndrome. they're both bad and i have both of them. i don't really understand why. i don't think it's classical depression; maybe it's perfectionism. my elitist theory is that i just think about so many things that some of them are bound to be bad, or depressing, or disappointing, and i focus on those because you don't really need to put a lot of thought into things that are working. so i spend a lot of time thinking about the bad things in my life, with obvious results.
either that or i blame all the sad music i listen to.