Every now and then I get a clear reminder of what I’ve done and who I am, and how everyone else feels about that. I live in this state of denial and emotionally distancing from it the rest of the time. Like I know, factually, what I’ve done. And how horrific everyone feels it is. But that knowledge doesn’t fully connect. I have this emotional shield of rationality, where I disconnect. I detach emotionally.
But sometimes an explicit reminder cuts through, and I remember. I remember what I’ve effectively been trying to bury for 17 years. I remember I don’t want to live in this reality. I don’t want to live with the knowledge of what I’ve done.
I don’t know if it’s pride, or shame, or something else. But I don’t want to live in a world that designates me as endlessly suspect. A dangerous animal to be carefully managed and contained. I don’t want that relationship with society. I see no meaning in that status.
So I’m too proud to be everyone’s villain. To forever be bowing and scraping and begging for forgiveness. But at the same time, I don’t have strong enough self-esteem or an internal sense of meaning to live in defiance of what everyone else thinks. I don’t have it in me to go full-villain, as much as the idea is appealing at times. I don’t see any meaning in that life either.
I just want to end this existence. To not be me. To not have the awareness of these things in my mind. And the only way that can happen is through death. And I’m terrified of death. And I don’t want to devastate my family. And there is a huge part of me that still very much wants to live an imagined life that isn’t mine.
So I’m sure I’ll keep on pushing that clarity back down and clinging to fantasy and denial. Tomorrow I will wake up and have a little distance back. My mind will reconstruct the walls. But I will never move on from this. I will never be free of it. It will always be there, dragging me down. Because of my fundamental resistance to accepting the reality. My refusal to accept my place at the bottom of society. My inability to find meaning in who I really am. I will continue to exist in misery and dysfunction for as long as I live.
9 comments
Hey dude, i know this might seem stupid, or useless, but its really not.. ithought the same, but after this happened, everything changed.
please consider following god, to be christian. its so worth it.
and besides, whats the harm? if everything is going wrong, or if your stuck no matter what, then whats the harm?
just try. please. this has helped so many people, it isnt just a coincidence that their lives magically get better after, its really not a coincidence.
trust me.
have faith.
That’s actually a good suggestion. It won’t work for someone like me…I’m an Atheist, you might even say an Anti-Theist like the late C Hitchens.
So for me religion was like a child’s puzzle or toy that I solved when I was a child (I left Christianity in my early teens) and it holds no interest or fascination for me anymore.
But I won’t be so dismissive in it’s therapeutic aspect since I’ve heard of many people who suffered and ‘turned to God’ and found solace and happiness.
If it works for some people, who am I to deprive anyone a way to find some healing and peace in their lives? This would only work for those who feel they can learn something from it.
Despite being raised in a Christian culture, going to church as a child, daily prayer etc, I never really believed. Although I think it’s entirely possible that this world had a creator, I find it unlikely that any creator cares about our individual experiences.
Even if I were to find that the Christian god actually exists, I think it would just give me more questions. I don’t find any comfort or hope in the idea. The manifestation of a god in human form, only to be tortured to death, does nothing for me. I don’t see how that impacts my guilt or shame in any way. I don’t see how it saves anyone. It doesn’t make sense to me.
So it’s not about whether or not it does harm to believe in it. That’s not how belief works. It’s about it not making sense to me. It not fitting with my perception of reality. It not providing hope or solace to me. So I don’t trust it. I don’t have faith. I don’t think it’s the case, and I don’t particularly want it to be the case.
So I have made my share of stupid mistakes and blunders in my life. Two that drastically affected me and have hampered job opportunities and another that’s created problems for me with people I know.
One reason was that I got mixed up with the wrong crowd, hung out with people I should’ve avoided…and another comes from my own stupidity, esp. in my early teens.
There are some mistakes that people might forgive and forget, but others they’ll never let go of.
And the thing is that even if you did something stupid as a child, they treat you as if you were the same as an adult at the time with the full knowledge and experience you have today.
It’s one injustice after another over something that was stupid, largely harmless (nobody got hurt) but it’s more of a shame aspect.
The thing is that it’s super-easy to be the ‘victim’…people automatically side with you and paint the ‘perp’ as bad/evil, etc.
They can’t see that even if you made a stupid mistake as a kid, that you were a victim of your situation that made you do something wrong.
Reputation is pretty much everything in life…if you have a bad one from doing something wrong/evil, then you’re pretty much a ded man walking to others and I can see why some people have gone to great lengths to keep things ‘under wraps.’
Because once your rep is destroyed then your life is over…or you’d have to relocate and start a new life. If you’re famous then you carry that with you wherever you go.
Anyways, I learned a lot…such as you might be able to forgive yourself, but other people won’t…but fortunately in my case there’s really just one person who’s “not cool” with me let’s say…but everyone else is.
If I could take back those errors, obviously I absolutely would, in hindsight…and I’m sure my life would’ve probably gone a lot better. Though it’s always possible I could self-sabotage for other reasons…though I think realistically I would’ve done well for myself.
In your case, it seems like it’s a millstone around your neck. But I think a lot of it is your own guilt and refusal to move beyond and maybe find a new way to re-integrate back into the world/society.
I recall in grade school I went through different phases…in grade 4 I was shy, quiet, then I got bullied by this tall rotten kid.
Luckily my family moved and I went to a new school. In grade 5, I knew that nobody knew me there and I decided to re-invent myself and became more outgoing, less introverted…a joker also. I made a lot of friends and rarely had to deal with bullies.
Additionally though I know I made some stupid mistakes, I also know I’m a good, compassionate, caring person at heart, who just made some foolish choices. I don’t see it as a reflection of my own nature or a ‘flawed character’ like some might.
One good thing about having family/friends around is that they can give you feedback on certain choices so that you try to avoid making bad decisions. I still make mistakes…but rarely and unintentionally and apologize where I need to.
It’s all a part of being human, we all make mistakes…but we have to get up, brush ourselves off, keep going and try to make a better life for ourselves.
When you talk about “everyone” in such a case I’m not necessarily sure if you know the full extent of their character, and that goes for each and every single one of them.
Those same people, quite obviously, can and inevitably will be hypocrites, whatever stance in the situation they make clear or demonstrate to you not actually being their real thoughts. There’s a buffer between what they actually think, know, and are aware of, and how they want to appear to be. And a lot of the time, how these said folks all, for some reason, collectively appear to be as, are one minded. Anticipating, agreeing with what they think the majority will say, it doesn’t matter much to them if you are less of a fixture in their life but rather “something” that would be “more convenient to remove”. They don’t care whatsoever what you’d think of and internalize their words to be, truly they don’t even think of such things in the moment, they move on saying it’s “not their problem” because the truth is, they’ve left their problems and faults in the hands of another. Primarily yourself.
It’s safe to say that this society is full of “murderers that aren’t behind bars”, whether they are aware of it or not. That doesn’t apply to yourself, as far as they are concerned you’ve already “gotten what you deserve”, but what they forgot is that they have yet to receive the same for their actions in the past. Either their conduct with you, or elsewhere. It’s coming to them. I find it hard to believe that you of all people are at the bottom of society when there are people who will never speak a word about what they have done, nor have they ever faced repercussions for it, in situations where the institutions and governmental groups at play support their misconduct knowingly alongside the people around them, the corruption being far more prevalent than one would expect.
I’ve seen it only to know that they can’t paint it up. They act the same way they have, and they are the same person they have been, and contexts don’t stay favorable forever. Sometimes, truly, one would be on their own. At which point, what then? The very crap that gives the unworthy “power” is what also robs them of their autonomy, and therefore contradictingly, power. In this situation, just because they can act with it doesn’t mean they can act without it. See how they are when the tables are turned, they’ll be far more favorable towards their own asses I’m sure. And when that happens, you’ll tolerate none of it.
I mean hell, I’ll say something crazy, I don’t know what you did, but even if you were that person in the past who made use of such widespread corruption to basically try and kill me for all intents and purposes, if you have that much self awareness you’d deserve better. Not that “forgiveness” is part of that, but you at least matter more than what they think of you. Because that’s what they thought. Doesn’t take much effort to have an opinion, doesn’t it? All of a sudden these people think they can determine whether someone lives or dies from mere minutes. It’s never been possible, it’s especially hard to justify the killer who uses words instead of illicitly obtained firearms when the latter has to pop out with the gun and cannot hide while committing the act, meanwhile the former benefits from far more in comparison. Thankfully you aren’t in the role they willingly put themselves in, at least.
Not to say that none of that applies to me by the way. I mentioned the odds and I fall within them. A bunch of mistakes are of my own doing, but thankfully nearly all of them only affect myself directly.
You’re right that some proportion of individuals will be hypocrites, but when I’m faced with the overwhelming social consensus, and I can’t even disagree with it, I get to a point where I just want to check out. I accept their judgement of me. I don’t want to argue anymore. I just don’t want to live with it.
I am, effectively, at the bottom of society. Or so close that I get grouped in regardless. In people’s minds, I fit into the category of “scum”.
So in that case, I mean, thinking about it, it would be less about what other people think (and who those people are alongside their intentions) and more so about the nature of what you’ve done in a more objective sense? To whatever extent there is a standard sort of categorization for it, it once again being less about the people and more about the regret of the decision itself, it never really having any value in the first place and being easily seen as a mistake regardless of what the intentions were. In your case, furthermore seeing it as a sort of defining characteristic, if not in conduct then at least in terms of trust that may have diminished in comparison to what you previously had with others. You’d kind of want a blank slate more than anything else despite those moments seeming solidified.
In that case, you think about the reminders, yes, but do you think about the now? Is that furthermore necessarily the only thing making you not wanting to inhabit this reality, when obviously for those 17 years after and before them of course, your world has consisted of many more factors? Either way, you frame the “imagined life” (as mentioned in the original post) not as a change of actions but rather something improbable in a sense, turning back the wheels when each moment in time, despite how much they may look similar, are all very slightly yet undoubtedly unique, and therefore irreparable and irreplaceable. Not that things don’t happen after the fact, it’s certainly the opposite, things always continue, but it is also the case that once something happens, due to the nature of time it quite obviously cannot be turned back. It can only be, well, dealt with and mitigated, to whatever extent.
Now, considering that, let me say that anyone expecting you to turn back time is quite frankly not an adult. That’s quite delusional in fact even disregarding how they cannot do the same for themselves. Anyone would know from, quite frankly being a living organism in general, that we live and are governed under these sorts of guidelines which we can only work with, not against. We fuck up the climate, we make repairs to it, war atrocities quite obviously and brutally, unnecessarily happen and sure, we don’t move on from such a thing THAT quickly, but we still know that what happened exists. The very nature of how we deal with such things lies in the iteration, otherwise we would be far more advanced as a society by now, but you know, time is the way it is. Not in terms of “making excuses” but in terms of deciding the appropriate and proportional course of action after the fact.
With that alone, yeah, I would say that our existence, intrinsically, is not very comfy or pleasant. We had a lot of shit which isn’t beneficial happen anyways, some mistakes so “obvious” (what’s not obvious is what happens in the first place, history’s quite all over the place) it’s hard to say if we learned from them when we knew the stuff in the first place apparently, but then we should also take into consideration that knowledge has never been a resource that is universal, and while technological advancements have obviously gotten us closer to that sort of ideal, that is certainly still so far from being an actual thing. So the people learning the lessons in the past aren’t even the same ones around today, and most definitely not everything is recorded in the history books, which essentially has people encountering the “new” situations all over again. We are objectively at more of a disadvantage than people would admit in general conversation with the nature of our existence (the lack of understanding for other groups in this society even though these specific constraints cannot simply be mitigated by “privilege” surprises me), and of course with the understanding of where the fundamentals fall short for us that’s how we therefore “act as we are supposed to” and get the most things done, sort of.
Either way though, it’s of course forcing you into a set of constraints that are not ideal. Certainly not everyone agrees with this, which is why at least some people opt out of existing or at least go about doing whatever, but I’d think that the constraints are far fewer in comparison to the amount of choices made under them. One of those constraints, of course, being that you cannot fully reverse whatever you choose, and another one being that in terms of decisions, you can make only estimates as an actor that is at the very least SLIGHTLY failible. You can get back from 1% to 99%, but never necessarily back at 100%. Most people would say though that even if that’s not a blank slate, it’s “good enough”. Otherwise, should one apply the same logic to all of life, I mean, it’s not even a difficult situation one makes for themselves in that case. You just can’t.
Do tell me if I’m getting any of that correct though, it at least seems more about the action and the nature of it itself that has stuck with you rather than the people, but it could still be the other way around.
It’s kind of in between. It’s very much about what other people think, in that if I was living in a past society that had less objection to what I’ve done, I’d probably feel much better about it. But I also can’t say that society is wrong for taking the view that it does. I think it’s probably objectively better in some sense that society has such standards than if the opposite was the case. It’s certainly understandable.
I don’t feel I have any real moral grounds for arguing that it’s wrong for having those standards, and what I did was actually fine. I just don’t have the same emotional response to it as everyone else. Which is probably why I did it all in the first place. Parts of me want to defend what I’ve done, or even do it again. But I can’t imagine anyone I considered “morally good” being ok with it. Which forces me to the conclusion that my moral sense is defective on this specific issue, and society is mainly right.
Yes, the “imagined life” part of me wants to live in a reality where I don’t have to face the dissonance between what I’ve done and social perceptions of it, rather than one where I simply act differently in future. I don’t want to deal with the reality. I want to live in a fantasy. Which is obviously futile. But that desire is part of what keeps me clinging to life. I can sometimes imagine what life might be like if I didn’t have this buried in my mind.