This video describes me perfectly. It’s almost chilling.
I mean, wow. That’s me to a T.
Let’s go through his list :
- Often an unconscious wish to die. Um, yup. And sometimes not so unconscious. When you are raised to feel like your very existence is unwanted and unwelcome and made everything worse for all your loved ones, there is one very simple solution : stop existing.
- Pessimistic, skeptical Figures he’d say some bullshit like that! Seriously though, yeah, that’s me. I do my best to resist the pessimism as it is both irrational and self-destructive, but sometimes my feelings demand it. And skeptical, well, I used to publicly identify as a skeptic but then I grew skeptical about THEM.
- Mistrust of others. Definitely. But I hide it well by being really good at “reading” people and thus being able to understand and predict them, making trusting them a highly informed choice. What I truly lack is faith in others. Or anything else.
- Suicidal fantasies. For a long time, yes. But not lately. I get an occasional surge of the wish to die but my defenses shut that shit down HARD right away.
- Great difficulty believing they are loved. Ayup. Big time. I know there are people who love and care about me in this world. But deep down I don’t feel it so deep down I don’t believe it. Knowing is information. Belief is an emotion. And for me, the emotion just isn’t there.
- Deep shame. Oh HELL yeah. I feel ashamed to be alive every waking hour of every day, and probably in my dreams too. No matter what I logically “know”, down deep where it really counts lies a deep feeling that I shouldn’t be here, that my entire existence is a mistake, and that everyone wishes I would die quietly in a ditch somewhere so they can be spared the embarrassment of dealing with me.
- Deep insecurities. Uh huh. Punctuated by the occasional island raging egotism, which is another form of insecurity.
- Deep loneliness. Always and forever, yup. Unless I learn to open up and let people in and actually fully relate to my fellow humans, I will remain an alien on ice far from his home planet. The loneliness cuts so deep into me that I can’t imagine what it’s like to feel anything else. Luckily, I have good friends and when I am hanging out with them, the loneliness retracts somewhat.
- Never feeling like they belong. Belonging, what’s that? I felt like I belonged with my UPEI friends, more or less. Yay fellow nerds. But that was many winters ago, and the ice has grown mighty thick on my heart since then.
- A constant fear that they are unwanted. Check. I feel like I am always moments away from those I love figuring out how horrible I am and leaving me forever. And if that ever happened…. well, I guess I’d just die.
- Deep fear of rejection and abandonment See the previous entry.
- A constant feeling of being a burden and a pain. Bingo. Deep down, I feel like I make life worse for all who know me. And I know how insane that is. But that’s all it is : knowledge. My belief in my being an unwanted burden remains unchanged.
- A longing for connection, but a fear that if anybody (etc). Right again. It’s hard to get close to people when you feel like you’re an imploding sack of actual shit and that if anyone gets too close, your illusion of worth will fail and they will run away screaming and cursing your name.
- Irrational fear that boss will fire them or the relationship will end. Pass. I’ve never had a job or a relationship so I would not know. Maybe?
- Success won’t last etc. Also pass. You have to do things to be a success. I don’t do jack shit.
- Sabotage good things. Probably. I need more data.
- Reject them before they reject you. I can imagine myself doing this, given my tendency to leap to deranged negative conclusions.
- Deep anger at self, world, God. Well obviously not God, as I was raised without faith. And the anger at myself is a shadow of what it used to be, mostly being replaced by the much healthier emotion of self-pity. But anger at the world? I have so very very much of that. And part of me really wants to lash out.
- Deep self-pity. Well yeah. See previous entry. But self-pity is way, way healthier than self-loathing. Take it from me.
- Drawn to people who will reject them. Hmm. I doubt it. I am far too sensitive for that. If anything, I would be drawn to people who hyper-accept me.
- Become a people pleaser. Entertainer. Same thing, really. Hey, look at me, I’m all funny and smart and deep! Pay no attention to the suppurating turd behind the curtain, he is unimportant.
- Becoming a perfectionist. In a few things, maybe. But mostly no.
- Not able to receive love. You betcha. I know it’s out there waiting for me. But I can’t receive it yet. I am just too cold inside.
Phew! That’s it for now. Analysis to come later.
More after the break.
Everything will be
Inspired by this video.
Bill realized that he’d lost the ability to remember how he got places.
In his memory, he just was one place, then in another. No transition, no delay, no time spent in between. Just one location after another, without so much as a fade to black or the familiar click of a slide projector to separate them.
He knew that this must be wrong. You simply can’t get from point A to point B without passing through all the space (and time) between. Something must be happening to him in between places, but for the life of him, he could not remember what.
Of particular note was his daily commute. It took nearly an hour (the view of the river from his bungalow made it worth it) and the first and last ten minutes of it involved navigating his way through dense, busy urban areas full of traffic, one way streets, stoplights, and other complexities that made it pretty much impossible to simply zone out like you could with highway driving.
Not without ending up as street pizza.
So surely something must be happening during all that city driving. Something worth remembering. A cop arguing with a pedestrian. A minor fender bender. A particularly flashy digital billboard. An amuse bit of graffiti. Something.
But no. Two hours of every weekday were gone from his memory like they had been snipped out by God’s own video editor.
Bill had no idea what happened to him during those lost hours.
And increasingly, didn’t care.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.