I can’t imagine anyone really knowing me, understanding me, seeing me, and still wanting to be close to me. And that’s something I have this fundamental longing for. To be seen, to be loved, to be accepted, to be held. To be ok. In the eyes of others, through my own eyes. To be acceptable. And I can’t imagine ever getting to that point, no matter what I do.
Even if I spent the next 20 years successfully resisting my worst impulses, and pulled myself together enough to do some real good in the world. Even if I really tried to be someone I’m not ashamed of. I still can’t imagine ever getting to the point where I could let someone see the truth of who I am right now, or the things I’ve done in my past, without them turning away in disgust.
And that lack of hope hurts so badly. It feels unbearable. The despair of it. Of course I deny it. I bury it. I distract myself. Again and again.
To not just be utterly alone, but to have no hope of that isolation ever ending. Of ever being loved, or even liked, or accepted. Of ever being acceptable, or lovable, or truly likable. That’s a recipe for depression. For despair. So I lie to myself, over and over. I pretend I’m fine as I am. That the worst parts of me are fine as they are. When the reality is that the shame is so heavy that it’s impossible to even fully acknowledge. I continue to be a terrible person, because the shame of being such a terrible person is too huge to face, and there’s no hope of ever being acceptable. In for a penny, in for a pound. Why not just indulge in the depravity of it, if you can’t ever wipe away the stains?
So all I’m really left with is the question of how I want to respond to such endless despair. Do I want to end myself, and in so doing bring devastation to my family? Not really? Sometimes? Maybe?
Do I want to continue to endure such despair, putting on a brave face while it eats me from inside? No.
Do I want to continue to bury myself in denial & addiction, forever running from the reality that I will never be ok? Probably.
Do I want to try mind-expanding drugs, or anything else that might shake up my brain enough to free me from the despair, longing, shame & regret? Possibly.
9 comments
Ive spoken of one of my depravities, the least of them, here. I have worse ones. I don’t mean to make it about me, it’s just…you’re unfortunately not alone. I can’t seem to help myself either. I indulge in lesser ways because to allow myself to be consumed in it completely is…well…too much.
If you need to, you can talk to me. I will listen. I will not judge you, I will not tell.
If you leave an email, I can message you. But if you’d prefer, maybe I can leave mine instead.
My soul is filthy too. Believe me.
oh i thought the 2 of you already exchanged emails
@Plainwhite – I appreciate the offer dude, really. I’m just not sure talking about it would help. From past experience, having anyone else knowing just makes me want to avoid talking to them – because when I do, I have to face the reality myself instead of living in denial.
I think the only exception would be someone who has got through the same things as me and somehow come out the other side. Because maybe such a person could convince me there was hope. But if that person exists, they’re not public about it, for understandable reasons.
Well, the question is, what happens when you either no longer want to keep fighting it, or can no longer fight it? Do you then give in to your deprave desires and act on them? You have only 4 options-
1- end your life
2- keep fighting it and living in constant turmoil
3- eventually give in to your worst depravities
4- have a miracle where you’re “cured”
Option 4 seems rather unlikely, and options 1-3 are all pretty lousy
It’s probably unclear from what I said, but it’s not like I’m really fighting it now. I suppose fighting it would be preventing it from having any grip on my mind. Instead I tend to channel it into actions that I feel less bad about. I’m still “giving in” to it, in that I allow it to control my thinking and behaviour. For a certain amount of time each day, I allow it to possess me, in a semi-controlled manner. And then I feel shame, and spend the rest of the time in denial.
But it’s not like I ever actually fully act out the desires. I can’t imagine I ever would, unless I somehow lost all self-control and sense of self. It’s a part of me, but it’s only ever one part.
Option 3 isn’t in my mind, because I know, rationally, that it wouldn’t really make me happy. So there’s no sense in which it would be worth it. Unless my rationality entirely disappeared, and I was somehow reduced to an animal state, it wouldn’t apply.
Rationally, it’d be far better to kill myself than fully give in to that side of me. And I think I’d be less scared of that.
20 years is a long toss is all, ambitious. I don’t even know how I’m going to do this week. Who is paying as much attention as we are to our own story though? That’s something that has been coming up more and more, that we write our stories, not others. You seem determined to write yours as a tragedy.
I’m also stuck there though, because I’m pro empowerment; write your story as a horror story, or tragedy if you wish. I’m an anti hero in my own story, so it’s just as wacky around here.
It sure does seem like it’s turning into a horror story, but people need to appreciate horror more.
Possibly. Not really sure how to spin this story into a romantic comedy. The reality doesn’t fit. And I’m pretty good at denial, but sometimes the dissonance is just too great.
Though it might be kind of funny as a parody. Imagine a romcom where one of the protagonists is a horror villain.
Potentiality (whatever that is) deems it to be otherwise, I would assume. A bit lousy in terms of reasoning but yeah, generally the odds exist and in a variety of situations/circumstances there’s been people who’ve won with lesser odds, whatever those odds may be. But besides that, I find it to be likely that regardless of where you stand, you’ll still have many people who are neutral or positive about your current predicament, especially because people usually take into account the whole of a person rather than singular events (singular things really do not say much of anything, akin to buying a car focusing only on mileage, but I know that’s also simplifying it far too much), and even then morals are not universal at least when it comes to the “degrees” of wrong, should they consider your circumstances to be wrong or improperly thought through.
Besides that general start though, I mean, I think about it and…
Really, convicts on the regular can end up doing a lot of good, even if that’s an especially large category to make one statement about and nothing specific. Murderers (in my eyes, probably the most egregious offense whether directly or indirectly) also, even if we are talking on a large scale and that becomes a habit of theirs, or they end up taking out many people at once, whatever the case is. A lot of these acts are ultimately, to some degree, by each and every person, quantifiable in terms of “badness” or “evil” (if they even immediately deem it to be so, in the rare case that such things could even be “justified”), and with that naturally comes debate upon the specifics of whatever you’ve done over an extended period of time and however you are as a person throughout your entire history. Not set in stone, will never be for anybody truly, at least should we assume that the morality and takes are relative or subjective, in which they are to some degree since no court of law determines public opinion and vice versa. We have well developed frameworks in terms of thinking about said things, but then again, due to individualized experiences as well, no one necessarily adheres to them. As a result we get a mixing pot of all this…
Doesn’t excuse any action though primarily because even then said actions fall under your own framework and therefore can influence them the most at any period in time, not just in terms of a moral one but everything that generally has to do with your thinking. You do answer to yourself in a sense, yes. And, of course, going in line with what I said in a previous post of yours, there are objective effects for your actions. Just that, ultimately, the “character” of them is kind of something that we made up I would argue. And then there are DEFINITELY some who would say that morality as a whole is innate for all things in terms of an objective reality outside the human cognition, in which I’d admit that I haven’t even gotten to seeing the points of that view yet, so that could be the case as well. But then again, how exactly are we going to follow that kind of rulebook which is not legible by the senses? Odds are, we’d make our own regardless, or at least before we have any understanding of what the actual rulebook is, but I’m probably getting off topic at that rate.
Going back to another thing you previously said, there may be a correlation between people accepting what you’ve done and not being “morally good”, but it’s certainly no causation, and considering the wide variety out there (in which, we can only come up with so many examples of people, and even then our examples of people are caricatures sort of because in order to make up an entire person with accuracy you would essentially need another separate lifetime since that’s what they live through, you get the point, we deal in gists and estimations I would assume) I’d lean on the side of saying we’d underestimate how people could respond to such a situation, for better and worse, but mostly for the better considering what you imagine, it’s a scenario (and/or set of them) that leans more towards the “worst side” than anything.
All of that in mind I’m no expert. Not one bit, and this isn’t taking into account those who are “professionally trained” and yet can’t really get things done. This is probably not the best thinking that could be had for your situation, only one viewpoint, you get the idea.
I will also say though, big and quite far fetched assumption here since such a statement would also have to be in consideration of your history but that’s to a very small extent here, your despair is not as attached to you as you think it is. Or at least, it is not you, and therefore always sort of “distinct” in a sense. It is made and present, for certain, although alike super glue (if you’ve ever unfortunately gotten that on your hands for instance) and even prosthetics, you work with them but there’s a level of disconnect that ultimately shows you aren’t consisting of them. That difference is somewhat important in my eyes, but then you could say the same about your limbs and also inquire about what “you” are and consist of, and then all of a sudden it’s a slippery slope and I don’t think this is working as intended…
Alike plenty of comments I also made a few mistakes here in terms of clarity, the “people are not equal to caricatures” for one in that, more specifically I would say that any and all “characters” fail to be sentient beings as they would actually be to a large extent, due to how the occurrence of sentience is fundamentally tied to experience. So obviously even if one person were to say this or that, their real thoughts could be off by a bunch, communication gets what’s necessary or chosen through I’d think but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee any quantity of information, right? Even seeing a lie in terms of information, you could only get 70% of the planned message back for example. But that’s just kind of going into further territory.
Do let me know if there are explanations for anything wanted, it’s quite messy.