Another night spent fantasizing about a reality in which I’m not utterly alone, trying to somehow will it into existence (that’s how it works, right?) It’s much more difficult than it used to be. There’s no reason anyone would want to be with me, even if I did everything possible to improve my situation. My character is so fundamentally compromised that any sane person would be repulsed.
And yet my mind won’t give up on the idea. So I’m left trying to come up with fanciful scenarios in which the fact that I’m an utterly terrible person is somehow not a deal breaker.
I wish I could just sleep, just let go. ‘Quiet brain. We’re on our own, so we may as well feel at peace with that.’
4 comments
I’m not sure why you believe yourself to be so terrible, husk. Is it a core belief handed down to you from a volatile perspective? Someone else’s hatred spewed at you from a young age?
You have always been polite and kindhearted here. Surely, you aren’t terrible, which is why I theorize that it was someone else’s influence that lead you to believe such a thing.
Could I be onto something or am I talking out my ass again?
I wish it were that. Put simply, it’s an accurate reflection of the things that I’ve done, and the motivations behind them. My actions may have changed somewhat over time, but the parts of me that drove them are strong as ever. My interactions here aren’t an accurate reflection of my true self – they’re the parts of me that are filtered through a social lens – the truly unacceptable stuff all gets stripped out. I couldn’t handle the shame, fear, and self-hatred that would come from other’s knowing the truth (though I have tried confiding in a few understanding people in the past – it didn’t help.) Unfortunately, that leaves the impression that I’m just another person with low self-esteem, possibly bought on by bullying etc. In fact, I am the rare case where the self-hatred is richly deserved.
I guess I’m being deceitful by posting here without that truth, but it’s a coping mechanism and I figure no one would really care too much. I could say that if you knew the truth then you wouldn’t have any interest in trying to be sympathetic, and might feel the need to throw some well-deserved insults my way. But even if you took my word for it that would kind of defeat the purpose of my posting. So I’ll simply apologize for misleading you into thinking that I’m not really terrible.
I think it would be fair to say we have all done terrible things that warrant self-loathing. Keeping in mind that you have the sense to know that what you have done wasn’t necessarily the greatest action/reaction/response in the real world proves to me that there is a functioning heart in you.
I’m sure if everyone knew of some choices I have made, surely, I would be greeted by hatred. Terrible people dont feel shame, or any remorse for past experiences. Seems to me that you do.
Well, there’s ‘terrible’, and then there’s ‘way over the line, no coming back from this irredeemable’. Yes, everyone does bad things, everyone makes mistakes, but few are motivated to actively seek out evil.
I wouldn’t say I was a psychopath. I do have a conscience. It just gets tuned out very easily. Although I can rationally recognize that what I’ve done in the past was wrong from a certain perspective, I don’t always feel that wrongness. In fact a significant part of me consistently feels that it was the best thing ever. My sense of morality does exist, but it’s fundamentally broken, prone to glitching out at a moments notice.
Do you really believe that if the whole of society knew of your choices and the motivations behind them they would hate you? And would they be right to? Because that’s where I am.
I would say that someone can do terrible things for terrible reasons, and still feel shame. As I said, I’m not a psychopath, so I’m not immune to the judgement of others. But that could also be said of some of the worst people in history. Shame is present in many awful people, though they may find ways to push it down and repress it.
I would say that remorse is more focused on the effects of your actions on others, and that’s something that’s very hard for me to quantify. It could be that what I’ve done has had zero actual real world impact on others, and yet because of the nature of it it was still unforgivably wrong (for good reason.) So any sense of remorse I do feel is very abstract. It’s a fairly unique set of actions and prohibitions that don’t really apply to most other areas of morality, but there it is.