Next Wednesday is my 48th birthday.
But I am pointedly not making a list of things I want for my birthday.
Why not? Because nobody ever gets me anything off the list, so what’s the point? They just get me whatever they feel like getting me. My desires have nothing to do with it.
Apparently, nobody gives a crap what I want. Presumably, actually reading the list, then picking out what they are going to get me, then going through the process of actually getting me that thing is way more effort than they think I am worth.
I mean, who do I think I am, someone who matters?
So fuck it. I am not going to go through all the effort of making a list and investing my hope that someone loves me enough to read it and get me something from it any more.
I am tired of getting my heart broken.
Besides, whatever it is, I could probably just buy it for myself anyhow. I have almost $2K in savings at this moment, roughly $1.5k of which is spendable cash. I can buy a lot with that kind of money.
I don’t know why people don’t read or use my lists. Maybe it is just too much like dealing with me personally, and we all know what a torturous nightmare that is.
Then again, maybe it is just because they know that no matter what they get me, I will smile and thank them and be grateful no matter what it is.
So why go through all that hassle when the reward is the same regardless?
It’s just not in me to complain about a gift. If all someone saw fit to give me was some pocket lint, I would still thank them meekly.
I’d be emotionally devastated, but I would thank them.
And what makes it worse is that it is so hard for me to think of things I want in the first place. For the most part, most of the time, I have no idea what I want.
It’s how I adapted to being powerless for so long. If you have no power to attain what you desire, the only way to make the pain of unfulfilled desires go away is to learn not to want things in the first place.
That’s why I have so much cash saved up. I honestly have no idea what to do with it. There are so many possibilities, and I lack the healthy connection with my emotions needed to cut them down to just things I actually want.
I feel like this represents a tragic lack of imagination on my part, and that bums me out.
But it’s really hard for me to imagine something that would make me happy, or happier at least. I am so accustomed to just making do with whatever life begrudgingly gives me and being grateful I get anything because whatever I get, no matter how small, is still infinitely more than I deserve.
Because I deserve absolutely nothing.
I don’t even deserve to be alive and take up space and use up precious oxygen that could be breathed by worthier lungs.
How dare I.
So yeah. No more birthday and Xmas lists. Nobody fucking cares what I want.
But that’s okay.
I’m used to being powerless.
More after the break.
How to avoid avoidance
Not technically the name of the video, but I like it.
I thought this video touched on some thing worth talking about concerning my AVPD, so I thought I would using it as my jumping off point tonight.
And here’s the comment I left :
“My life is a cage, but on stage, I’m free” – Will Smith in Boom Boom Shake The Room. I am way, way more comfortable on stage, too You know why? Because on stage, you’re not interacting, you’re performing, You know exactly what it is you are supposed to do and what your role is. Suddenly everything is simple. There’s no tricky social situations full of unknowable variables. You do your thing and that’s it. It’s almost like magic if you are AVPD like we are.
me,the comment section of the video featured above
I figured I would share some of what I have figured out about us AVPD types and why we feel how we feel.
One funny difference between me and him : if I was at a crowded party and the room suddenly went quiet, I wouldn’t get nervous.
I’d get LOUDER. Because now I have an audience and I want EVERYONE to be able to hear the brilliant things I say!
Then again, I am, as we all know, a big ham,
Oh, and of course, I am one hundred percent on board with him about going with you gut. As patient readers know, relatively recently I figured out that the problem that leads to my paralytic indecision is that I am trying to solve complex problem entirely by intellectual means and that’s just plain impossible.
Too many variables in too complex a configuration. The human brain has limits.
And so the only way out of that is to go with your gut. Call it instinct, intuition, the fast circuit of the brain, or whatever.
But that is clearly the only way out of the forest of indecision.
So you don’t know which way is out. So what? Go whichever way seems right. But go. Don’t stand there like Buridan’s Ass, transfixed by indecision.
And don’t be so damned afraid of being wrong. People are wrong all the time, including those people who seem so confident and vital, and they survive it.
I swear, fear of pain and fear of being wrong are the worst, most crippling fears around.
But it’s early days yet. In order to truly progress, I will have to go against every single malformed instinct I have and put myself in some kind of situation where I need to engage without having time to think about my answers.
Just thinking about it opens a black hole in the pit of my stomach.
But it is the way forward, and I will get there eventually.
Nothing can stop me now that I know where I am going.
I may not move fast, but I never stop, either.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.