June 20, 2005 - 10:22 p.m.
What's With All This Self-loathing?
I'm tired of all this bullshit. I'm so sick of looking in the mirror and feeling like I'm "not where I'm supposed to be in my life." I'm utterly exhausted by all the pressure that I put on myself to be more, better, whatever...
But even though I'm tired of it, it doesn't just roll over and die. I feel slow and stupid, I feel like I'm somehow developmentally challenged and more and more I see it in the people around me too... There are sutble things I see, the ways everyone thinks of themselves.
I had a fight with Crash on Saturday. It was a really stupid fight... it was over something really, really dumb. The really commonsensical/weird part about it was that neither of us felt that the other was taking us seriously. Both of us also felt that people in general don't take us seriously. So here we were, taking it out on each other.
Stupid really.
But still the feeling creeps in, insidious. Just a whisper most days. I can feel its cold, scaly body creep up my back, perch on my shoulder and I can hear its voice...
"You hear that? He said this... He's implying you're flaky/dense/uneducated/
etc."
"Hey, he just said she's hot. You know you'll never look like that..."
Blah, blah, blah... Shut the fuck up.
I think part of it is that I'm so used to listening to it and letting it drive me either insane or to excellence that I sometimes feel it's worth it to keep listening. Because sometimes, just sometimes, it drives me to perform well.
But what about the rest of the time?
It's like an unhealthy addiction. It makes me feel poisoned sometimes. I used to be afraid to be intimate with anyone in any way (I don't just mean sexually) because I was afraid that if I let anyone in, they would sense the rotteness just beneath the surface. I thought all the emotions I repressed and kept from the rest of the world would become apparent and I would suddenly become this hideous caricature of everything I kept inside.
I've grown used to that feeling and I use it as a coping mechanism. I use it to keep people at a distance, even when I shouldn't.
I've grown used to the feeling that everything's my fault as well. Which is extremely self-centered. I use it to try to do well. I use it to push myself further.
I've gtown used to the feeling that I'm somehow underperforming, all the time, in everything I do. I also use this to push myself further and to believe that I can be somehow superhuman, if I just pushed a little bit further.
Jesus, no wonder I'm depressed. Problem is, how much of our society thinks like this? Why do we think like this? No wonder so much of our society suffers from problems like depression, anxiety, anorexia, obssessive compulsive disorders... Where did it start? It is all our own fault? Some people cope much better than others with all this information and these expectations that are thrown our way.
What are they doing right that I'm not? I'd love to blame all my little insecurities and mental stresses on society and what it expects of us, but I realistically see that I have the choice of whether to reject these ideals or not.
So where the hell do I start in all of this? Maybe by realising that some days are better than others and I think today I'm just having a bad day. I don't always turn in these circles like a dog chasing its own tail. Just today and some other days, but not all the time.
Truth is, no one can instantly become self confident or assertive. Yes, we have epiphanies and we come to sudden realisations, but putting them into practice always takes a little longer.
In other news, I've had more brief flashes of creativity. I don't know if it means that I'll ever regain the the ability I once had, but it's good to know I feel passionate enough about life that I want to write about it.
