A breakthrough : I now believe I really am a person.
It’s a faint and flickering belief and I can’t guarantee I will never backslide, but I am confident that I have made real progress and that nothing that will distract me from the goal of solidifying my sense of self as much as I possibly can for very long.
Now what the hell do I mean by being a person?
For a very long time, I have had a very weak sense of who I am. For the most part, if the subject came up, I eluded it with facile deflections and distracting performances.
“Who am I, really? Well I think that, deep down, I *SMOKEBOMB*”
Not sure why I was so afraid of the subject. My best bet is that I don’t want to get locked in to any particular identity and thus lose the protean edge I get from being a such a fluid and flexible shapeshifter.
Of course, patient readers have read my previous ponderings about taking that desire to remain maximally malleable too far, to the point where there’s no solidity to me at al, especially when there is nothing for my to adapt to.
Ergo, it would be much better for me if I could dial back that shit some. Maybe allow for some medium-term structure. It doesn’t have to be “no structure” or “permanent structure”. That’s a well no self defeating trick called “all or nothing”.
Or put another way, “only perfection is adequate”.
I think I can live with, “holds its structure until I need those resources for something else”. That way I get SOME kind of a skeleton for my soul.
Then again, that might be what I am already doing.
Dragged myself by the heels back to the point, I now feel like there is something good and strong and pure and alive underneath all my layers of shadow and ice.
I mean, logically, there has to be. I can’t be ALL illusions and fantasies. Somewhere in there has to be the illusionist and the fantasist.
But that’s merely logical. What matter is not what you think but what you feel. And I now feel like there’s something real going on deep in my layers.
And that’s a good feeling. It feels like warmth and light and an uplifting wind rising from that deep dark place where my life force begins.
My wellspring, I suppose. Guess I have one of those too.
Which brings me an important lesson : things are there even when you can’t feel them.
Remember, the sun never stops shining. Sometimes the planet gets in the way, that’s all. And if we wait the sun will come up again, right on schedule.
So don’t let depression fool you, All the love and warmth and connection with others you have ever wanted is out there waiting for you.
You just can’t feel it due to depression’s deathly numbness.
And knowing it is out there, with just a thin layer of ice and stone between you and it, you can confidently push towards it because you know it can’t last forever and that if you keep pushing against it, it will snap like a rubber band and you will emerge into the warmth and light at last.
And by you, I mean me.
And by me, I mean us.
And by us, I mean everyone.
More after the break.
Sign on an old fashioned steakhouse : “All our meat is plant-based because plants are what the meat eats”.
Hmm. Still needs work.
Whoever I want to be
When I was much younger, that’s how I would answer the question of who I was : whoever I wanted to be.
In doing so I thought I was being all tricky and mysterious and enigmatic and fascinating and cool. And I sort of was.
But mostly I was being a dick by fucking with people for no good reason.
People ask questions because they want answers, not riddles. If I thought it would impress people I was dead wrong. It just alienated them.
No wonder I had trouble making friends.
And would it kill me to just make plain ordinary sense when I am around “normal” people? Is small talk really all that bad? Does every conversation have to be loaded with intellectual stimulation, even if I have to drag it there kicking and screaming?
I feel like I have been a short-sighted spoiled intellectual for my whole life. Surely there were things I could have done to meet people partway instead of using my weirdness as a weapon to push people away.
But that’s the bizarre dance of social anxiety and/or shyness. You are lonely so you get closer to people but then you flip over into panic mode and can’t put distance between you and them fast enough and it’s only when you get that distance that you can calm down enough for panic mode to disengage and then you realize you just rejected the thing you want the most, and you are lonelier than ever, and depressed as hell.
No wonder we shy folk often choose to isolate ourselves instead. Sure, loneliness cuts into our hearts like it’s trying to split them in two, but at least when we are alone, we’re not hurting anybody and they’re not hurting us.
My word, is that sad. Sorry.
All my life, I have longed to be a part of things. To be included. To be connected with people. To stop being so god damned alone.
But I can see now that it wasn’t just a failure of my caretakers to help me socialize that has kept me all alone for all my life.
I’m a big part of it too. People tried to befriend me and I pushed them away. I didn’t even try to stick it out and try to find a way to relate and connect.
No, I either pushed them away or ran away and of course they never tried again because I had made it pretty clear that I neither wanted nor needed them.
And without even the common courtesy to do it via a loud argument, or even a quiet but firm rejection. Oh no, that would have been rude, and cruel.
Instead I just kind of faded away. Like ghosting them, but in person. And by doing so, I probably really, really hurt some people who only wanted to be my friend.
But I was listening to the panic and the fear, and it said get the fuck out, so out the fuck I got. I wish I could go back to everyone I rejected in this way and apologize to them for freezing them out in such a thoughtlessly cruel way.
I attracted them with my sunny affect and then froze them in my interstellar void.
And I am so, so sorry.
I don’t blame myself in a moral sense. After all, I was just a kid doing what made sense to me at the time. I didn’t have anywhere near the ability to understand what I was doing and why that I have now.
But on an emotional level, I feel terrible about it all, and wish with all my heart that it could have been different. My life would be radically different if only I had been able to overcome my social issues and made a real friend in elementary school.
Instead I have dwelt in the silence of my Midnight Tundra all my life.
And nobody can rescue me because nobody can even tell I am in distress. I hide my suffering extremely well. I don’t know why I do it, I just do.
But that’s a topic for another time.
Love you, my readers. You’re my lifeline.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.