Balance

I don’t know how to balance the conflicting parts of my mind. My reasons for thinking I should be dead seem fairly compelling, from some perspectives. I’m not going into them here because of the guilt that involves, but lets just say I’m a really shitty person in certain ways. Family aside,it would be better for society if I didn’t exist anymore. I’m too morally compromised to be allowed to continue to live. What I am can’t be made right. And part of me just wants to stop resisting that fact – to finally end it. So the fucked up part of me that shouldn’t exist is wiped away.

But there’s also this incredibly strong desire to live in me. Parts of me desperately want to find some meaningful connection in this world, however impossible that seems. To find a partner, someone I can actually open up to and relate to, without fear. Someone I want to spend my life with. Perhaps even start a family.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t want anybody I cared about to be involved with me. To invest trust, or a sense of meaning in me. I honestly don’t deserve it. I shouldn’t be around people. I can’t imagine ever taking the risk of showing anyone my true self – it could bring ruin upon my family if they spoke out. And no one could tolerate that truth. No one should live with it. I’m pretty sure any woman I could have any respect for would be repulsed by it. That would be the morally sound response. I’m the last person who should have a family. And I don’t want to pass my misery onto others. I’m selfish, and lazy, apathetic, and neurotic. I wouldn’t want to inflict that on another generation, still less someone I loved.

So I should avoid all relationships, and live as a hermit. And yet, ‘the heart wants what it wants.’ This desperate longing won’t go away, however impossible it seems to fulfill. So I’m left trying to think of ways around all that. Some way I can find a woman capable of understanding me without being disgusted by me. Some way to avoid them investing a trust in me that would be shattered if my past ever caught up with me. Some way to have a real connection, without having to reveal the shameful truth.

And then there’s still this huge messed up part of me, wanting to be set loose to do it’s thing. I think I do a better job of containing it right now than I have in the past, and I think I can probably stop it from directly impacting anyone else. But it’s not going anywhere. It’s too crucial a part of me to let go of. And that’s a risk I shouldn’t be taking, morally. I shouldn’t be around people. I should be off living as a hermit. Or I should be dead.

So that’s where I am, with all these contradictions within me. Trying to find some kind of balance. To the parts of me that want me dead, I say that I will research methods, and try to obtain equipment, and have plans in place. And if certain conditions change, I tell myself I’ll go through with it. If the truth about me comes out, or if I’m made homeless, or I run out of money, or become disabled, or get a chronic illness, or feel that I pose more of a threat to others. But until something changes, I tell myself I will prepare, and wait.

To the parts of me that long for connection, intimacy, to somehow be known and understood…I tell them I will try. I will somehow search for that impossible woman capable of understanding the truth about me without being repulsed. Someone I actually want to be with. Or failing that, I will find some way to be in relationships that doesn’t require the other person to invest trust in a false idea of me. I will somehow make it clear in the early stages that I’m not worthy of such trust, in a way that doesn’t drive everyone away. I will look for some feeling of connection in more superficial relationships. I will likely never have a family, unless something so fundamental changes within me that I can be sure it’s the right thing. But I tell the part of me that wants that that it still might be a possibility, somehow.

To the evil in me, I say that I may indulge it in fantasy, whilst always inhibiting it’s interaction with real people. That it will never be let off it’s leash except in statistically impossible circumstances, but it has free reign in my imagination.

But honestly, I’m fucked. There is no reconciliation between such drastically different ways of thinking. Someone is either pursuing real intimacy and connection, or they’re not. Resolutely removing themselves from the world, or not. Giving in to the evil inside, or resisting it. ‘I’ am a wretched compromise, a nothing.