Perpetual Motion

I'm going to write about my feelings and post them on the internet. Yes, it will be attention-seeking, but god damn it, people need attention sometimes.>

I'm in a bad way right now. I'm thinking a lot more about killing myself, and it's not as easy for me to dismiss those thoughts as it used to be. I keep ruminating on shit. I don't feel much hope. I don't see the point in trying to improve my life because I do not value myself, and the result is this oppressive feeling like I'm just kinda hanging around so that I don't hurt my friends.

Now, I'm fighting that. I'm always fighting, and I'm trying to work through the feelings I'm having. I've been whittling away at this latest ball of cancer, and the problem is starting to take shape.

Today I've been ruminating on a specific question about myself.

See, I have sympathy for pretty much everybody. I have sympathy for everyone who's gone through something similar to what I went through. I have sympathy for people who've gone through worse. I have sympathy for people who've gone through easier things. I have sympathy for the most vile of people - I have sympathy for Adolf Hitler, for fuck's sake. But I do not have sympathy for myself, or at least cannot sustain it.

My question is 'why?' Why do I sympathize so easily with everyone else, but can't for myself? I've thought about it a great deal, and I've been dissecting all the arguments that come into my head about it, and I've realized the difference between how I view myself and how I view other people.

I forgive other people for their bad days. When I look at someone who is suffering, when I see the negative things it's caused them to do, I understand that they do those things because other people did things to them. In my view, other people are doing what they can to cope.

I have no such forgiveness for myself. When I fuck up, it's because I suck, or I'm an asshole. Every little stumble I have, every day I spend not significantly improving myself is a failure to me. It says only bad things about my character.

So I have been asking myself why that is. I have been wondering why I'm so dedicated to not showing myself any sympathy, and I keep bashing my head against the question, and now I think I have an answer.
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When other people experience bad things, I view them as things being done to them against their will. When I think about the bad things I experienced, I think of them as things that I let happen to me.

Other people are victims. I am simply weak.

Why do I feel that way? Why can't I convince myself that I had no control over the things that happened to me, that there was nothing I could honestly do to fight back?

I realize now that I hate myself because despite all the shit my dad did to me, I still loved him. I hate myself because even as I was being terrorized and beaten, all I wanted was to make him happy. As he whipped me with household objects for minor transgressions, the thing I wanted most in the world was for him to be proud of me.

I hate myself because my pride was so completely stolen from me that I can't bear the weight of self-respect for more than a few days at a time. The abuse and neglect I suffered burned my identity to the ground and salted the earth, and no matter how much I build around it, my sense of pride remains barren.

I have to find a way to change that. And I will. For as shitty as periods like this can feel, it's part of the process: identify, analyze, and resolve. Piece by piece. Day by day. Closer and closer.

I'll be there soon. Just gotta keep pushing.