Spiraling Down

It may sound absurd but don’t be naive
Even heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed but won’t you concede
Even heroes have the right to dream
It’s not easy to be me
-Superman (It’s Not Easy), Five For Fighting

One thing I’ve often struggled with is randomly triggering deep feelings of blah. Something triggers, and within five minutes I feel like my whole world is crashing down around me. I know it’s not, I just randomly and inexplicably have feelings of despair, hopelessness, and loneliness that seem to come out of nowhere and knock me down.

I’ll be fine — I’m used to the rhythm. It just sucks that every now and again, things are going great, and boom, I feel like crap 5 minutes later.

My personality probably only makes the problem worse. I’ve always loved the heroes in stories, the dads that always know just what to say, the people holding everything together. Superman is one of my favorite characters, and I would totally be him if I could.

But I can’t, so I try the next best thing. And that’s why I’ve generally thrived on a career (web operations) where I go from fire to fire, putting them out with my crazy diverse deep geek skills in everything from regexes to vim and bash. I love swooping in and saving the day. (obligatory xkcd) I like fixing problems, so people have tended to let me do it.

But, man, what happens when I can’t fix my own problems?

What happens when I can’t keep running?

What happens when I can’t keep making it work by my own force?

What happens when I’m just done?

The ironic thing is that things are just really great. I stood worshipping at Controlled Chaos and looked at my “crew”–the core handful of 6th grade guys that always seem to want to hang out with me (unbelievable, right!?)–and picturing in my head what they’re going to be like when they’re 22 and graduating college, or 42 and raising a family, or whatever.

And in my leader group I said everything is good. I escaped a job that had been burning me from both ends of the candle, and burning me out like crazy, to a new job that is better in almost every way and going really well.

I feel like God has me exactly where he wants me. And I hate Christians that blame “the devil” for every bad thing in life, but part of me does wonder if the times when everything is going great but everything still feels like it’s falling around me are partly attacks because I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

I just always go back to Jesus’ promise to give us life and life to the full. I try to put too much on myself. I never grew out of wanting to be superman. But if I will have anything left at all to give, it’s going to have to come from Jesus. My well has dried up.