to live deliberately (spoilers for dead poets society)

I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that was not life and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I have been thinking about this. About how much Dead Poets Society affected me and what it means and how it made me feel. At my friend's house in the middle of the night after a decadent Christmas dinner and hours of chocolate and Christmas telly I decided to finally watch a movie I'd been told to watch for years but I'd never quite got round to it. And there it was, in the Christmas RadioTimes, circled by me because I'd been given the mission to seek out what was worthy from among the piles and piles of crap on television on Christmas day. I was the last one awake but I wanted to see it.

It's the best film I've seen in my life, or at least the one I love the most. I bought the DVD and rewatched it on Boxing Day and I cried again and thought all over how important it is that Neil dies because sometimes even if you understand the beauty in the ugliness of the world it's not enough, and how important it is that Todd lives, that he stands up on that desk and speaks those defiant words, because sometimes despite knowing all of what killed his friend you still have to keep trying. To live deliberately. To suck the marrow out of life. To not discover one has not lived.

Neil, for all he had to suffer, did not think as he was staring at his father's gun that he had not lived. He thought, in all his young stupid wisdom, I have sucked out all the marrow of life but if I carry on, when I come to die, I will discover that I have not lived.

I'm not going to kill myself. That's not what this is about. I just understand so much of what they feel, those kids who feel so strongly about things, who so easily find that life is not worth living. Who care. Who will fight and stand on a desk and say O Captain, my Captain, and everything will stop and be okay for a second. Those kids who are only starting to understand how wonderful poetry can be and how important it is to feel the words, to experience the world. And I am not experiencing it yet, because I am always hiding a little, from myself, from others, always pulling back a bit because it is too dangerous for me to live deliberately. I want to. I need to. Things need to change.

I am writing it down lest I try to pretend I never promised myself this. I am going to go where my friend told me to go and talk to the people I need to talk and after eight years of agonising pretence and guilt and pain oscillating wildly I will go and ask for the help I need. And it will be okay, that I am like this. And I have people who care.

Anyway, nothing about this really makes sense. I mean come on look around nothing here makes sense so what does it even matter. I am an emotional mess, once again up at five in the morning struggling to understand when it's my own life and when a book a movie a line in a poem a story in my head or something else not real but it felt real enough to me so it should count. I love Dead Poets Society. Not sure exactly why so much and I merely scraped the surface and then my thoughts got away from me and turned into something else. My heart aches for those boys. And then it slides from that to

I need to stop pretending I am always okay because it's hard and I can't do it properly and every time I crack a bit it hurts the people I wildly care about because what can they do to help me when I do nothing to help myself? I am going there, talking to them, doing what my friend told me to do, and I am afraid but I need to face it I am an adult and I can't forever run from things I don't know. And it will be hard and it will hurt but it will be okay. Sooner or later.