"Sometimes I feel like all the walls are crashing in on me"
More like, all the time, at every waking moment I feel like every breath I take is weighing heavy on my need to not exist. Every day I try to see something good about the world, something good in me - some fire that can spark some desire to exist - and every day I am reminded of just how unworthy I am of this word & how unworthy this world is of me.
Life goes on. This is not a comeback story.
I am but one unit in this cosmic dance of our species, and we've barely hit the dance floor. I don't think my being happy or sad, angry or calm, sober or intoxicated matters to anyone, including me. All these emotions that I don't give importance to are mere symptoms which I need to fight through to work on things I don't want to work on. I don't learn from my mistakes because I'm so busy worrying whether I'll ever reach a point where I don't make a mistake, or where I don't repeat a mistake.
All my wrong steps are repeated because I am not living this life, I'm barely going through life the way a corpse floats downstream a river. Lifeless, anxious for a while - I'm sure that will change soon and I will learn to live, (sorry I mean) float through life without ever worrying about how it can affect me, make me happy or sad.
We've been taught from a very young age that selflessness is a high form of virtue. I guess, looking back, I would say it is a very good virtue for someone who once was very selfish. Because if you've only known selflessness, then you can never respect your needs, preferences or emotions the way you would of others (specific others, but definitely those few others). And in that case, it is not a virtue at all. It is a curse which cannot be lifted. It is almost identical to Medusa's gaze. Just that it turns your mind into stone, instead of your body.
Life goes on. This is not a comeback story.
The example of a duck looking calm at the surface but tirelessly flapping it's webbed feet or palmate is quite common. This example tries to motivate people into working hard and seeming calm while doing it.
What this example completely disregards is that no human being was ever built to run around in an office carrying printed sheets and staplers. What this example unwittingly confuses for hard work is the natural state of mind for a bird that knows no other way. For a being with as much consciousness as humans, we need a lot more than our primal instincts to guide us to a satisfactory existence. What we need... Is excel sheets.
A plan for the future - yours, your immediate circle, your clan, society and the world at large. Nothing can give you a greater sense of belongingness than sharing the pains of another person, another group, a society, an animal... An entire world? When you share their pain, you look for medication for that pain. But when will that pain affect you? When pain itself has an effect on you that tends to make you move, that makes you change your course of action. If you have always been selfless, your pain means nothing to you... Since you believe that pain is meant for enduring, and your sacrifices are the only thing giving you validation, you tend to lose faith in your existence. And when that happens... Well, that's when you stop caring about yourself completely.
The old adage if you can't love yourself, you can't love others, should be tweaked a little bit. My version would be - if you can't care about your pain, how can you empathize with the pain of the world. If you can't empathize with the pain of the world, how can you ever experience a sense of belongingness. If you can never experience a sense of belongingness, where will you find your purpose? And that's where humans are different from flapping birds -> we need purpose to take action.
Everything is connected to everything else. And once you lose faith in the link your existence offers to that "everything", then you lose "everything" in the process.
Life goes on. This is not a comeback story.
Over time people will get bored of your sorrow. More importantly, you will get bored of your sorrow, but because it's the only thing you see - sun rays or rainy days, starry skies or cloudy nights, committing sin or in repentance - the only constant, you will have to live with it. And with sorrow, comes shame. And with the combination of that, comes anger... Self-hatred, a lot of energy spent towards a pile of nothing (remember you lost everything just 1 Paragraph ago). You lose sight of your purpose. As I have lost sight of mine, with this article and with days... All days fly by in a daze
What did I start this article with? Are things supposed to be dark all the time, the way universe intended it to be - or the light that my phone's screen is piercing through my eyes is the natural order of things for the living? If my eyes can only see when there is light, my brain can only function when the neural network is firing electronic message within itself... If my entire existence is based on motion of atoms... Then why is it that the intangible part of me wants everything to stop. All motion to end, but for the downstream of the river... The river of..
Life?
Am I going blind? Is my brain unwilling to see what my body is forcing it to see with every emotional signal, with every bout of anxiety rage or ecstasy?
Am I plundering my own youth by not diving deep into the river of, not life, but time? Am I so drowsy by my yearning for the end, that I am unable to see the begining - as if I've trained my mind to believe that all things that happen to me, happen from the middle (exactly like how dreams work)? Is this the very reason why I am going insane?
Is my yearning for the end fueled by my constant fear of the beginning - forcing me to live and die in the middle?
The fact that I've written all this and I can still fall asleep, is it a comeback story afterall? Or is it another day of not getting what I want... The end? Maybe some day in the distant future, I will live with hope,
But till then
Life goes on. This is not a comeback story.
