I don’t really want to die.
I just want to be anyone but me. Do you ever just feel like your life is a montage of mistakes? Like your heart breaks even with the smallest flaw? I don’t want to be so prideful. I don’t want to feel like I should be perfect–not because of the standards of anyone else, because let’s be honest, there are few people that spend enough time thinking about me and what I do to care if I’m perfect or not. No, this need to be perfect comes out of my pride, the arrogant little bastard that tells me I should be better than this, that I am great enough to achieve perfection, that I am falling short of my innate ability to be more than human. Damn my pride.
I don’t know how to break this pattern. I expect superhuman from myself, and my humanity just can’t reach those expectations. And I tell myself, when I make mistakes, that everyone else will hate me, but really, I just hate me. No one else expects something so utterly ridiculous. It totally immobilizes me. I don’t have the confidence to do anything with my life after I graduate college, because I am so damn afraid of making even the smallest of mistakes. My pride, my egotistical nature just could not handle another blow, and that’s fucked up. Will this stop me from living? It’s fucking trying. It’s definitely trying. I don’t know how to stop it. I feel so powerless and hopeless.
3 comments
Your post expresses a feeling I had all my life. Thank you for sharing. The perfectionism, in my case at least, seems to have unveiled itself at last as a device that keeps my self-critique going. Dislodging every single part of every single cell and every molecule of everything that makes us this ‘me’ I am stuck with. Right now I am at a critical point in my life. It’s been very difficult most of the time. But now I am middle aged and soon to be out of work. If I end my life, I want to quietly but not without empathy. I feel perhaps, deep down, that I could salvage some part of this. The whole way we think of our depressed selves as diseased, when we do accept the fact that we have a disease, is shaped by perceptions, be they our own or other people’s. Logically, therefore, even our perfectionism is part of what we perceive and construe as inseparable from who we are. The mistakes I made have had plenty of consequences. As a result I blame myself for everything that happened to me. And there is no escape–or so I perceive. Does knowing this help? I don’t know. As I type this, I feel a little subtle tingling sensation of warmth around my right shoulder and down my arm to my hand. The left side of my body, though, is doing most of the work–or so I perceive. I perceive the tingling sensation to be a good sensation, like the chestnut cake I engulf and the freshly brewed coffee I am sipping while the rain outside reminds me of past mistakes and missed opportunities. I am sure there’s plenty to love about you and plenty to love even in old me–I have been around for almost half a century. I feel I have mostly survived and occasionally I have lived. I wish you life whenever you can and survival when you feel you can’t live. There. Now the tingling sensation extended to the right shoulder and came all the way down the other arm to reach the keys of my laptop and hopefully you will register as some benevolent force. Some positive outcome that, at least for today, will feel for you less like survival and more like life.
That describes me, too. My pride comes from a severe displeasure in everyone I see around me. Beginning with my parents, extended family, associates and eventually society itself, I’ve spent a lifetime getting disgusted with people, and that has forced me to try to become some sort of superhuman creature who is the opposite of all of them. Only it doesn’t work.
I don’t know if pride is a bad thing. After all, pride is what makes exceptional people excel (otherwise everyone would be content to be average). The problem is when we become prideful beyond our abilities. Like a really slow runner obsessed with winning a race. I think it’s ok to push yourself beyond your limits, but try not to beat yourself up if you fail.
Listen to the arrogant bastard when he says you should be better than this. But at the same time tell him to get off your back because you’re working on it.
Thanks for the replies! When someone leaves a comment on my post, I always feel a little less alone, and that helps.
@Feelthelight, thanks for the well wishes. I think I can kind of relate to the critical point in life bit. I am about to end my schooling and go out into the “real” world (although, the world is so fake these days, I sometimes think it’s all a controlled, Truman Show-esque reality). I am afraid that I have nowhere to go even among all the so-called options. Yet, something in me thinks that both of us have something we can do to salvage our situations. I don’t say this to assume I know anything about you or your situation. Just sending some well wishes and positivity your way. If only life was possible to live outside of society’s box, eh? Then schooling and ending jobs and money wouldn’t define our lives. Anyway, I wish you much more life than survival.
@Salt, that last bit really hit me. I know I need to cut myself some slack. I think one thing my pride has right is that I am better than this depression thing. Not that I should feel bad about struggling, but I deserve better. I deserve a break. We all do. And we’re all trying. Thanks for that reminder. It truly helps.