'I Don't Know' is Okay

It feels like I'm drowning.

When I get anxious, it's like the concept of time ceases to be. All I know is the panic I feel in the moment, and the terror I feel about the unknown. I am consumed by the fear that some little thing I do or say will result in my getting beaten or berated.

My adult life has been primarily centered around one thing: knowing the unknowable. I rehearse everything in my head. Every conceivable interaction I might have in a given day is drafted and scripted. I review all the things I might say, and I try to determine the worst way those words might be taken, and then I gauge my ability to handle that potential response.

That used to be good enough back when I thought I had people mostly figured out. It is a bitter irony that as my understanding of the world expanded, my willingness to engage with it decreased. I had social moments, but, after some relationships ended badly, I sort of gave up on the idea. 

I've been getting better. I entered a therapy program that has done wonders for me, or at least has enabled me to do wonders for myself. I am a thousand percent better today than I was when I started it. I've moved into my own place. I'm learning to take care of myself. 

I 'graduate' from the program in January. I am terrified that I might not be ready.

I know shit.

I am not as unlearned as I sometimes accuse myself of being. I have learned a great deal about human nature and relationships. I have learned a lot about how certain aspects of the world work. I never did well in school for psychological reasons, but I have accumulated a wealth of knowledge about a wide variety of topics.

I just don't talk about any of it, or at least not openly. I talk to certain people about certain things. I keep my conversations limited to mostly-private conversations. It's 'safer' that way. Better I only look like a fool to one or two people than to expose myself as a fool to everyone, right?

One of my deepest, darkest fears is that I'm actually an idiot. I'm afraid that all these things that people have said to me about my intellect or my creativity is bullshit - not that people lie to me, but that I've somehow fooled them. It always comes back to that.

That's the thing that makes child abuse so vicious. Over time, you convince the child to abuse themselves.

I am not an idiot. On a cognitive level, I know that. Thanks to this program whose end is rapidly approaching, I've started to believe it. This recent uptick in self-doubt is push-back. I am getting better, even though part of me still doesn't want to.

Last week I talked with my therapist about my philosophy, and I realize that I haven't really written about that aspect of myself very much, at least not beyond a few neat little soundbites. Hopefully, in the near future, I'll get the energy to write about that in full, but I'm gonna talk about it a little bit here.

I am an existentialist/absurdist. You can wiki that shit, but I'll give you the gist: I believe that there is no inherent meaning to existence. There is no set 'reason' for our being except for that which we derive for ourselves.

Existentialism is an eclectic discipline. It sort of defies traditional structure because that one central idea means that a person's view is only ever true for them. That's why you see a lot of blending when it comes to existentialist thought. Existentialists are often confused with Nihilists as they share a similar view that life is inherently meaningless.

The difference is that a Nihilist believes that existence means nothing and nothing one does truly matters, that nothing is truly 'authentic.' An Existentialist believes that the value of existence is derived from one's self, that the individual is solely responsible for discovering what it means to live an 'authentic' life.

Absurdism is another school of thought that shares a similar premise, but it deals more with exploring the 'absurd' dynamic of humanity searching for intrinsic meaning in a universe devoid of it.

The point is this: my realization of the lack of inherent meaning in the universe was not a point of despair for me. It was a point of freedom. It was ultimately this philosophy that allowed me to start putting myself back together - a sort of kintsugi for the soul.

Something has to give.

Storytelling is what I've got. Throughout the last decade and a half, that has been the one consistent passion in my life. Everything about my existence has been geared for this purpose. When I'm rehearsing shit in my head, I'm forming narrative structures. I'm exploring the branches of the various 'maybes' and 'what ifs' that might result in a more interesting outcome.

All of my escapism is about narration. I help run a Star Trek game that lets me tell some crazy-ass stories. I play role-playing games in order to create and explore character ideas. I watch professional wrestling because of its emphasis on nonverbal storytelling. I am ever looking for new forms of expressing a narrative - it's the thing that gets me up in the morning whenever I wake up.

It's also the only real chance I have at any kind of fulfilling career. I have been told since I was a teenager that I am a gifted writer. My vision of success for myself is wholly dependent on having an exceptionally successful writing career. I have at least two huge ideas for stories that I think can be obscenely successful.

I am fucking terrified to write them.

It all comes back to that same fear. What if I'm not actually good at this? What if I fail at this thing that I've made my happiness dependent on? What if I'm just not able to tell the stories the way I want to tell them?

So I avoid writing like the plague. Whenever I get some kind of breakthrough while darkwriting (working the narrative out in my head), and I think about actually starting to get the narrative written down, I shrink away from it. I just stick to my games and my consumption of other people's work as a half-assed way to sate this need in my soul.

It doesn't work, of course. I get left feeling empty, or I just transfer my insecurity to the games I run or am playing in. I tell myself I need more time to figure shit out. I do everything but the one thing I really want to do because I am scared that I will fail.

Life is not a story.

The thing about my fear of the unpredictable is that it's based upon a faulty premise: that life is a narrative. It is not. It is not constrained by logical conclusions. It is not intended for any specific audience. The arc of one's life is not something that anyone but you can grasp, at least as it plays out.

When I panic about social situations, or when I dither about my own prowess, I'm thinking about it as a narrative. I worry about what some theoretical consumer of my life's narrative might think. I hold myself to these standards that are, in truth, entirely fictitious. 

I am not living an authentic life because I am not living my life.

I don't know what the future holds. No one does. I don't know how well I'll do without this program. I don't know whether I'll be a successful storyteller. I don't know if I'll achieve a fraction of my ambitions. I don't know whether I'm actually intelligent, or if I only know enough to delude myself. I don't know the course my life will take from here.

For much of my life, 'I don't know' has been wholly unacceptable. I have equated that with danger, and it has caused me to hide as much as possible. It has caused me to break up my personality and only dole it out in measured portions to a select few people who support me because I can be reasonably assured that they won't make me regret it.

I no longer wish to live like this. 'I don't know' must become an acceptable answer. 'I don't know' is okay. This is my mantra now. 'I don't know' is okay.

'I don't know' is okay.