Came across this article about not considering yourself a burden, and knew instantly that this is some shit I have to write about.

The fact that I don’t really want to talk about it is proof of this.

See, I am exactly the sort of person that the author of the article is addressing. I do consider myself a burden to others, and feel great guilt about it. I consider myself to be a liability to anyone who associates with me, and especially anyone who actually lives with me. And I don’t open up to people because I feel like I am toxic inside and exposure to the “real me” under the persona would both hurt people and drive them away from me.

Plus, to be honest, I find it very hard to believe that someone will actually be there for me when I reach out. There have been so many incidents in my life (especially my early life) where asking for help backfired and ended up just reaffirming my own worthlessness that I just plain stopped trying.

And not long after that, I stopped believing that help was even possible.

And it’s more than the fact that I have never been self-sufficient. I absorbed the idea of myself as worthless and unwanted from a very early age. I can’t remember a time when I felt truly appreciated and loved and valued. At best, I felt like it was okay for me to be around as long as I didn’t remind people I was there.

That’s a hell of a way to spend your formative years.

Of course, intellectually (yes, we’ve hit that part of the blog entry) I know that there are people out there who love me and value me and like having me around. But knowing and believing are two very different things, and I honestly can’t say that I believe it. Evidence be damned. When something is a deep enough part of your psyche, it is impervious to such a weak weapon as evidence and reason. It is bulwarked by the much more powerful force of the need for the psyche to maintain structural integrity. You can’t change that without more or less having to start over.

Or at least, it takes time to shift the structure away from that particular load bearing wall. Because it has to be done very, very carefully.

My self worth has risen considerably over the last few years. I can sort of believe that I have a lot to offer the world, as long as I don’t push it to far. I believe I am talented. I believe I am intelligent. I believe that I am a great writer. I can even, on a really good day, believe that I am fun to have around.

But deep down, I still feel worthless and terrible and toxic. I recoil in horror and disgust at anything that reminds me too strongly of myself. It’s taken a long time for me to even be willing to read something I wrote, and even then it has to have lain fallow for a long long time in order for it to no longer reek of “me”.

Makes editing kind of hard to do. This self-loathing.

I work to displace the bad with good, but healing is tricky when part of you, a big part, does not even think you deserve it. Depression is the only illness that forces its victims to blame themselves for it. I know it’s not my fault and that I was a victim of a pretty lousy childhood. I know that it’s a result of a lot of trauma and isolation and other bad stuff.

Yet I still blame myself. Like I said – knowledge and belief are often very far apart. Deep down I still hate myself. Even in my best conception of my self, I still feel like I have to prove to the world and to myself that I am worth something. That I can justify my existence. That I am not, in fact, a massive liability on the world.

I suspect a lot of people in the entertainment industry are dealing with the same kind of issues. The world is run by people with something to prove, after all.

It is hard for me to actually imagine being okay with myself. I have been apologizing for my own existence since the day I was born. I honestly don’t know what it is like to feel sufficient unto myself. I try to imagine myself wealthy, powerful, influential, universally hailed as an unparalleled genius, and a genuine force for good in the world, and it all sounds marvelous, and I would enjoy if greatly, but the thing I can’t imagine is any of that changing that certain fundamental variable of my basic self-worth.

Maybe there are people in my life who would be glad to help me. People who sense my pain and my damage and really wish they could do something to help with my burdens, but I just won’t open the door for them by asking for their help. Maybe it would be kinder to others if I let them help me.

But deep down….. I don’t even believe that is possible. I can’t make myself believe that it is possible for someone to truly help me. I guess that hope was extinguished a long time ago. All I can imagine coming from letting people in to try to help is them getting hurt and having some of their own joy destroyed before they leave me completely in order to get some distance and try to get their own heads back together before they end up just like me.

That sounds like it is probably insane. But I can’t think my way out of it or around it or whatever. Not yet. Not all variables are open to being changed via an act of reason. Some of them can only be changed through hard emotional work.

I know there will be a time when my variable does change. And I know that at the time, it will seem like a revelation, like something I should/could have realized a long time ago.

But I’ll know that shit ain’t true.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.