Fading light, dying out, waiting for the end to come. The only sound the echoes of your own feet, the only voice is you admonishing yourself for some fuckup or other. What kind of existence is this? It is one, of a sort, but not much of one. An old loner locked away in a prison of his own making.

I am really tired of this, being completely isolated, though I’m not actually. But the feeling, after the session last week, the shakiness, the need for a two-day carb blackout. The impulse to keep to myself, the desire to turn away from others, not to get sucked in, even into banal friendlinesses that are of no consequence and want nothing of me but a smile and a how are you?

I know there is no point in asking why, but it is still frustrating to have physiological responses to things that are utterly innocuous.

The one is a fear response, that I have too long been under the microscope, the strain of being observed.

The Fallacy

So, here is the fallacy that I have been fucntioning (so to speak) under for the whole of my life: that criticism is absolute, that rejection is absolute, that there is an absolute correct sttate for the world to be in, and if I fail to live up to that, I will have my license to existence revoked.

I realise that relativity is real, that indeterminacy is real, that free will is real. I know even that all kinds of people react to the same situation in all kinds of ways, some better, some worse, very few absolutely perfect. This I know consciously and intellectually, but this is not the absolute I am struggling with. What I am struggling with is other people’s claims that there is an absolute interpretation. This is not about the veracity of the claim, but locus-of-control, the feeling that truth is determined by a force outside of yourself.

To a great extent this is true. A heavy enough object dropped from a high enough height will stave your skull in, no matter your opinion on the matter. But there is also a non-zero possibility that some idiotic oaf will stave your head in for disagreeing with him, no matter that you’re right and he’s wrong.

And that’s not really what I worry about, though it is definitely in the same realm of paranoia. Human society is not based on truth or justice, but the attempt to establish truth and justice, these attempts being made by people with very particular ideas about what is true and what is fair, and a very strong entitlement to enforce those ideas, whether or not they actually correct. I am terrified of these people; because they are generally unreasonable, vindictive, and punitive. Their sense of entitlement means that they assume power for themselves by either creating or infiltrating systems over which they desire to have control. They then persecute/ostracise those people who disagree with them.

Not the point

I’m wandering off the point, as usual. The point is not systemic. The point is internal. I have internalised a framework of existence in which my view of things is relative, weak, and uninformed, and that the power to decide over truth is external to me.

The real problem is that I hear someone speaking with a tone of knowledge and authority, and I believe them, or feel like I should believe them, or feel like I shouldn’t disagree with them, or fear that openly disagreeing with them will have some kind of consequences beyond the conversation at hand.

I genuinely can’t find a satisfying way of expressing this.

Inviting people to pay attention to me feels bad, because people think about the things they pay attention to, and so they might think bad things about me or the things I make. The fact that it is possible for them to think those bad things means that I have made a mistake or missed some important thing that I should have seen or known, and so I feel embarassed for being dumb and having missed it. Having missed it means that I am inferior, and being inferior, I whould know better than trying to take a seat at the grown ups table.

But honestly, it’s much more paranoid that this. It’s simply that I don’t like being an object of thougth for other people. I don’t want people to think about me, to feel anything about me, or expect anything of me. Their feeling connected to me creates an obligation to them, whether I want anything to do with them or not. My mother’s image comes to mind when I think about this.

There is no character in literature whom I have resonated with more than Grenouille. Not because of the serial murder of pubescent teen girls, but because of his being ticklike, existing in the world only to attain sustenance, and then curling up in a ball and hiding away until the next time I need to feed. And more recently, his realisation that the retreat into fantasy and memory is only superficially satisfying, it is enough to keep you occupied but not enough to be sustaining in any meaningful way.

Depression

My depression is not depression in the sense that I am being depressed by some external force. My depression is me suppressing myself as a means of preventing me from doing something which might lead to emotional pain.

The Only Point

I don’t want to be afraid anymore.