There’s so much misery inside of me, that I’ve spent so many years burying. Parts of me I didn’t know how to fulfil, or was too scared to. And in order to bury that misery, I’ve given power to other parts of myself that are insatiable, compulsions that never bring real peace or satisfaction.
So now no matter what I do, some repressed part of me will be screaming for the alternative. Contentment is not possible. It’s just a question of which path brings less misery. And knowing that makes me want to give up. But I won’t let myself end it. I’m too afraid of death on an instinctive, primal level.
I wish I hadn’t done this to myself. And there’s no going back. For now I’m stuck being this person, with a mind that’s constantly tearing itself apart. And in the grand scheme of things, none of it matters. A few more decades, maybe less, and all my neuroses will be just dust on the wind.
But living with myself in the meantime… it’s just a constant cycle of low-level self-destruction. I make bad decision after bad decision, in order to try and avoid having to face the true level of hopelessness inside. It’s always easier to run from it, even if you’re just delaying it catching up with you, while sabotaging other aspects of your life. Because there’s no solution. There’s no consolation. There’s just the brute fact of what you are, and what you want, and the conflict inherent in that.
4 comments
Not to get overly technical, but can’t you deprecate those strategies that aren’t working? I get that it’s a radical move, but the stuff isn’t working, so your investment in it is irrelevant compared to that it’s getting between you and relative satisfaction.
Not that misery is entirely avoidable, yet anyway. The point is you are describing a kind that could be, would be if your brain worked differently, and all of that is down to code, aka thought patterns.
There’s got to be some way to alter your approach, such that instead of repressing and avoiding emotions you charge them head on. My approach goes like this; find where it hurts, examine it over and over until I desensitize it. I’m still perfecting that approach, but that basic approach to negative emotions seems like a valid strategy.
I think I know where you’ll go here; “I’m not worth it”, am I close? Well, for an external force to make it happen maybe, maybe, but you have to live in the brain you are looking at remodeling. Even a little better function gives huge profits in energy not lost to despair, achieving more things you want to achieve.
That’s probably the sales pitch you need to land; that it’s worth the effort to create dramatic change. It seems like a slam dunk from the perspective that if dramatic change can create a savings of just 10% of the energy you spend being frustrated, in a few years that grows to much more. What’s more; when you make some improvement it’s likely that more options will open up, meaning you can recapture more of that lost energy, a positive feedback loop.
hmmmmm, I might be somewhat toxicly positive right now. If so, please feel free to disregard it. I just did my dishes and feel like master of my domain, little victories feel huge when they’re all you’ve got.
I find trying to examine my pain “head on” tends to lead to feeling empty and unmotivated. If I fully acknowledge the reality of it, it just leads to a kind of “oh, there’s actually nothing for me in this world” reaction. I could just lie in bed all day and do absolutely nothing, and not care. Which is probably fine in some circumstances.
But then the awareness/fear that I need to do basic stuff (work, shopping etc.) to survive leads to inner conflict. Because when I face up to the things I find painful, I don’t actually want to survive enough to do what’s required. I don’t care enough. My existence is meaningless, so prolonging it is pretty meaningless. So I have no motivation to do what’s necessary.
But the fear grows greater and greater, so I determine that I must do things to suppress the knowledge of what I find painful, in order to convince myself that it’s worth making the effort to survive. I must lie to myself in order to create a sufficiently compelling reward to dangle in front of my lethargic carcass.
Little victories can indeed feel huge. Providing you’re able to consistently frame them as victories. The problem I find is that the more often I do a thing, the less significant it seems.
It sounds like energy budgeting is a major component of the problem. I’ll be blunt; sometimes you’ve got to figure out the bare minimum to survive and do that. I find myself eating poorer quality and uncooked food…. but I eat, which is marginally better than not eating.
The thing is to capture those moments of aspiring for more, like wind in a sail, and using them specifically on things that matter, things that’ll make it easier for you to get by.
After being sick for so long, I accept that there will be days I barely get out of my chair. Yet, I get by. I always have the energy to walk from my bed to my chair, and at night to reverse the process. The change of scenery helps.
Right now is the time of year my ambition peaks, I have more ideas than I do energy, by a long shot. So I garden, that always pays back, and organize things when I have the energy. I have this ambition right now to get my office/living space in order and set my 3d printer back up. After years of neglect, I’m finally ready to attempt a project on it again.
I’ll do it too. I may not accomplish much on a daily basis, but it adds up. I don’t know that my life is any sort of model, apart from that I manage not to hurt myself or the people around me, and that took years of careful work and study.
Yes, energy and motivation are a huge part of it. Even figuring out which stuff to prioritize with what energy I do have is mentally taxing.
Getting out of bed to eat, shower etc. is level 1, and some days I struggle with even that. I can spend hours trying to persuade myself to get up, but I feel so tired that a part of me just refuses. Going out to get groceries is a whole extra level, and most days I can’t bring myself to. Doing exercise or cleaning is another level up, and I can go weeks/months without doing either. And beyond that is the big the stuff I actually need to do to improve my life – building social skills, finding more work, improving my health.