Doxic
I like to look at my Facebook 'memories.' It's become a nightly tradition, a way to look back at little snippets of ideas and gauge my distance from them. Some of them are really cringe-worthy. Some are funny. Some are sad.
I do this because it's hard for me to remember the specifics of who I've been on the scale of years. The nature of my personality disorder has the nasty effect of divorcing me from that perception. There is no past or present or future - there is only now. Everything that's ever happened is now. Everything that's now will always be.
This fucks me up in a lot of ways, but just now, as I write this, I realize this has a great deal to do with the cyclical nature of my issues. It's hard to let old things go. It's hard to acknowledge change.
That's why, tonight, I looked at a post from 8 years ago, and it looked exactly like something I post today: a cryptic song lyric meant to express how I'm feeling, some hidden facet that I don't feel like people see when they consider me.
Yes, it was a Radiohead lyric. Shut up.
The last couple days have sucked. I've been kept up by this gnawing doubt that I've struggled to define. Something about me, about my future, has felt off, some lingering question that, perhaps, I'd buried, or ignored, or something like that. It makes me do that thing where I want to reach out to people and say something sad so they'll love me and make me feel better for a little while, wholly failing to resolve the actual issue.
That was a bit mean to myself, I suppose. I do that because it's a natural thing to do. I hurt, so I look for relief, and that doesn't make me a shitty person. I'm not a shitty person. I'm not a shitty person. I'm not a shitty person.
The question is this: what happens if I achieve my dreams and it doesn't fix me? What happens if I'm successful and I still feel empty inside?
My counseling session this week was fairly heavy, and it dealt with this a little bit. We talked about my fears of trying, about what the worst-case scenario of trying was, and it ended up being no worse than it is now. The intent was to make me feel better, to assure me that even if I aim and miss, I'm no worse off than I am now, but the thing is that I already knew that was the worst-case scenario.
Things not getting better than they are now is exactly the thing I'm afraid of. What if this is as good as it gets? What if nothing can fill that void?
This, naturally, brings the bad questions. What's the point? Why bother? Who gives a shit that won't themselves die at some point and completely erase you from reality?
The thing that makes this hurt as much as it does is that I know how to fix me. I know that the things I dream are not fairy tales, and that even if they were, fairy tales come true all the time. I know that the moment I become myself, everyone will adore me. The people who most know who I am adore me. They think I'm a good person, that I'm brilliant and lovely and that they're glad they know me.
I change their lives for the better simply by being myself. That is the dream. That is the fairy tale, and I already achieve it simply by trying. The only difference between the real and imagined here is the degree by which I let myself simply be.
And there it is. There's the knot in my psyche, the paradox tethering me to this constant spiral.
I'm tired all the time because I push myself too hard to be what I think people want me to be instead of what I am. I spend all my energy, not on becoming myself, but on avoiding becoming myself.
I don't immediately know why. Maybe it's because I'm afraid of accepting who I am, or maybe it's that some part of me doesn't want to be happy. I don't know. I don't really care, either.
The why, for once, doesn't particularly matter. I wear myself out not being myself, and so I lean too heavily on coping mechanisms, and that's what keeps me in my rut. That's what keeps me too tired to cook my own meals. That's what paralyzes my thoughts so I don't feel up to creating. That's what stifles my hope for the future so I don't let go of this pain that defines my limits.
Slow down. Don't stress. Just be. Maybe it's not the deeply poetic answer I wanted, but it's the correct one.
I do this because it's hard for me to remember the specifics of who I've been on the scale of years. The nature of my personality disorder has the nasty effect of divorcing me from that perception. There is no past or present or future - there is only now. Everything that's ever happened is now. Everything that's now will always be.
This fucks me up in a lot of ways, but just now, as I write this, I realize this has a great deal to do with the cyclical nature of my issues. It's hard to let old things go. It's hard to acknowledge change.
That's why, tonight, I looked at a post from 8 years ago, and it looked exactly like something I post today: a cryptic song lyric meant to express how I'm feeling, some hidden facet that I don't feel like people see when they consider me.
Yes, it was a Radiohead lyric. Shut up.
The last couple days have sucked. I've been kept up by this gnawing doubt that I've struggled to define. Something about me, about my future, has felt off, some lingering question that, perhaps, I'd buried, or ignored, or something like that. It makes me do that thing where I want to reach out to people and say something sad so they'll love me and make me feel better for a little while, wholly failing to resolve the actual issue.
That was a bit mean to myself, I suppose. I do that because it's a natural thing to do. I hurt, so I look for relief, and that doesn't make me a shitty person. I'm not a shitty person. I'm not a shitty person. I'm not a shitty person.
The question is this: what happens if I achieve my dreams and it doesn't fix me? What happens if I'm successful and I still feel empty inside?
My counseling session this week was fairly heavy, and it dealt with this a little bit. We talked about my fears of trying, about what the worst-case scenario of trying was, and it ended up being no worse than it is now. The intent was to make me feel better, to assure me that even if I aim and miss, I'm no worse off than I am now, but the thing is that I already knew that was the worst-case scenario.
Things not getting better than they are now is exactly the thing I'm afraid of. What if this is as good as it gets? What if nothing can fill that void?
This, naturally, brings the bad questions. What's the point? Why bother? Who gives a shit that won't themselves die at some point and completely erase you from reality?
The thing that makes this hurt as much as it does is that I know how to fix me. I know that the things I dream are not fairy tales, and that even if they were, fairy tales come true all the time. I know that the moment I become myself, everyone will adore me. The people who most know who I am adore me. They think I'm a good person, that I'm brilliant and lovely and that they're glad they know me.
I change their lives for the better simply by being myself. That is the dream. That is the fairy tale, and I already achieve it simply by trying. The only difference between the real and imagined here is the degree by which I let myself simply be.
And there it is. There's the knot in my psyche, the paradox tethering me to this constant spiral.
I'm tired all the time because I push myself too hard to be what I think people want me to be instead of what I am. I spend all my energy, not on becoming myself, but on avoiding becoming myself.
I don't immediately know why. Maybe it's because I'm afraid of accepting who I am, or maybe it's that some part of me doesn't want to be happy. I don't know. I don't really care, either.
The why, for once, doesn't particularly matter. I wear myself out not being myself, and so I lean too heavily on coping mechanisms, and that's what keeps me in my rut. That's what keeps me too tired to cook my own meals. That's what paralyzes my thoughts so I don't feel up to creating. That's what stifles my hope for the future so I don't let go of this pain that defines my limits.
Slow down. Don't stress. Just be. Maybe it's not the deeply poetic answer I wanted, but it's the correct one.
Comments
Post a Comment