witchcraft
it's too painful to live but I'm too afraid to die
- Nov 27, 2024
- 132
I want to get out of the way that clearly everyone's reason for wanting CTB, being depressed, anxious, etc etc, are unique in many ways. So don't take this the wrong way, I can only speak best from my own perspective and experience.
-
I have wondered how much of this feeling is a psychological projection upon the self.
The way that projection has been described to me, is attributing the things we don't like about ourselves, or something simpler like the pain we currently feel, onto others. It is a defense mechanism. Hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes.
And so I wonder.
I was taught as early as elementary school to not defend myself. If I was being bullied, the only authority-approved options were to tattle (which makes a child feel weak and pathetic and often leads to more bullying), or to grit your teeth. If somebody said something to you, you could not respond in kind. We carry on this same stupid mindset into the adult world by turning every single customer support position into a punching bag for the public. In school, bullying often goes unpunished, and in the adult world it is rewarded under capitalism.
Bullying often goes unseen wherever there is no response from the bullied. To be clear, I was not often bullied. I have been ill-tempered my entire life, especially so when I was young, and I will freely admit to having been a bully at times. Unlike some bullies who shy away from another bully, I would always respond to bullying in kind, for I knew the territory well. My sensitivity led to a penchant for calling out passive aggressiveness and otherwise snide two-faced back-handed remarks, to which I'd respond quite nastily and without patience. It is a miracle I had any friends at all; I think sports and a tough father kept me out of serious trouble, only barely. Thankfully I was able to transmute this behavior into something relatively positive by reserving it for bullies as I got older, acquiring a fairly smart mouth, instead of taking it out on people who didn't deserve it. This of course became a problem as I started waiting and looking for chances to act this way, and only leads to me getting in trouble alongside the bully.
Eventually this temperament was broken down over many years. It wasn't sustainable, not that a kid would have this kind of vocabulary or level of awareness to describe it in this manner.
I did not learn many good emotional coping skills from my parents. At times they were unempathetic, and other times they unquestioningly took my side when perhaps they shouldn't have. While I don't think my parents were bad parents by comparison (far from it), they were certainly imperfect, and I see a bit more clearly now how these imperfections may have impacted my own development as an only child.
I did not know how to resolve conflict. I did not learn it from my parents, and I did not learn it from public school. The best I could hope for would be to avoid conflict completely. Tattling is not an empowering resolution to conflict, even if it happens to get you what you want. It doesn't really teach one anything except how to project your malcontent onto an authority figure. The moment that an authority figure fails you, this too falls apart and you are left with nothing, no recourse or appeal.
All that being said, I was raised with Christian values. That does not mean my family were good Christians, nor even churchgoing.
One character who I relate to would be Benjamin Martin, played by Mel Gibson in the movie The Patriot. Specifically: being hot-blooded. And then at a certain point over-correcting on this and becoming weak, timid, helpless when your past viciousness may have actually been needed. I suppose Kratos might be similar but I've never played the GoW games.
In sum, I have learned that there isn't much justice in this world. Most people do not seem to treat others on the basis of any highfalutin idea of a Golden Rule ("treat others how you want to be treated") or holding oneself to a higher personal standard—it boils down to simple primitive retribution. In other words, individual people do not control themselves individually; that responsibility has been absconded to a higher authority or a group. The longer I live, and admittedly the more I learn about myself, the more I take a Hobbes view of humanity rather than Rousseau. The internet and online competitive games are the perfect example: this, I think, is closer to true human nature and says more about a person than their public persona ever would. If they can cheat, if they can be mean and outright evil to other people without significant consequence to themself, they will. And they evidently feel little to no guilt or shame, or else I would think that their own heart would eventually lead them to correct their behavior. The catch is that linking the anonymous user to the correct public persona is not easy, and I will go no further because that would lead to a debate about online privacy which is all besides the point.
To try and make my point of this ramble as concise as possible... I hurt myself because at some point, for a multitude of reasons, I refused to hurt other people. There is no third option where nobody hurts, because in my mind there must be justice. When I feel the victim of some injustice, no matter how arbitrary, or forgotten if not outright ignored by the world, there is the immediate feeling that something or someone must pay. The wrong must be made right. Yet I have put myself at an inherent disadvantage in that I have basically taken a mixed stance of self-flagellating pacifism, for I have left myself with no other option. Others continue abusing others rather than themselves because there is nothing tangibly gained from self-flagellating pacifism, particularly if they do not buy into religion and concepts of heaven and / or karma.
By the time I was a child, I was already burned out from letting things go and turning the other cheek at every slight, at each of the 10,000 cuts. Too many things are let go. All of these let-go things settle and metastasize in the depths of the collective unconscious into which they were repressed. But even the very deep dark waters of this oceanic unconsciousness are not infinite. It has an ecosystem, and it can only support so much filth. We see these things boil over in everyday life. A husband and wife who find themselves in an argument and suddenly bring forth every single wrong, every little thing that was ever uttered or not uttered, done or not done, for the past 10 years of marriage. If it is true of a single married couple, I do not see why the married couple is not also a perfect microcosm of the group, of a community, of an entire society.
There is no where else to direct this pain now because I can no longer in good conscience bring myself to inflict it on others, and vigilante justice, even self-defense or standing up for yourself in a non-violent way, is condemned and punished. There is no satisfying way for the pain to be processed. I cannot accept anymore, there is no more room to bottle it up. The weight capacity for baggage has been reached. For the vindictive spirit, if taking it out on another (even if they deserve it) brings punishment, then there is no other target left except for the self. Even if I thought that the online "world" should be regulated and require government ID (I will not say whether I truly think this or not, this is a hypothetical), I cannot help but wonder if this would all spill out into the real world when there is no longer an anonymous space for radioactive, toxic psychological projection. For where else can it go? Similar to the scientific maxim, this matter can not be destroyed.
Just the other day I was sitting by myself at a bar when a stranger sitting next to me struck up conversation with me. I was pleasant with him. He seemed nice enough at first. We didn't talk a lot, and 90% of the time I was sitting quietly minding my own business and drinking my beer and watching a baseball game, so I don't see how I could have annoyed him. But after maybe another 20 or 30 minutes passed I tried to converse with him some more during a commercial break. Suddenly he became a real gruff asshole. He grew short with me.
"So, are you just a Bud Light guy?" I asked.
Paraphrasing, "Why the fuck do you care?" The "the fuck" portion being clearly conveyed through tone of voice and his facial expression.
It was an innocent question. I asked it friendly enough, without any intent of making fun of his drinking.
Taken aback, it took me a few seconds to respond. "I was just curious, that's all."
And I felt in me that same sensation that I felt when I was 10: a fight or flight response, and then a prideful anger that I should even consider fleeing from this douchebag, which was that I wanted to call this guy to his face. To not care about what the teacher (bartender) might think, to not care if they're going to tattle and send us to the principal's office (call the cops). I wanted to call him an asshole. But oh no, then suddenly for calling the kettle black *I* am the villain, *I* am the one escalating the situation. Suck my motherfucking balls.
Seemingly as a way of apology, he confided in me that he has a problem with liquor. I apologized and changed the topic to a different beer since I wasn't quite sure how to respond, but it didn't go very far, and that was the last time I tried to talk to him. I understand now that, even with the most innocently intended question, I'd managed to hit on a sore spot with him, an insecurity. To his credit not many people would have added anything apologetically. But if he had decided to let it go, there would have been no recourse for me except to take out my inner anger on myself. Just like always, to burn myself, over and over and over, inner self-immolation.
It nevertheless left a bad taste in my mouth. I sat there and ordered another beer to force myself to forget about it, just one of many forms of self-harm.
This, I think, gets at the meaning of Robin Williams' simple yet powerful words in Good Will Hunting: It's not your fault.
-
I have wondered how much of this feeling is a psychological projection upon the self.
The way that projection has been described to me, is attributing the things we don't like about ourselves, or something simpler like the pain we currently feel, onto others. It is a defense mechanism. Hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes.
And so I wonder.
I was taught as early as elementary school to not defend myself. If I was being bullied, the only authority-approved options were to tattle (which makes a child feel weak and pathetic and often leads to more bullying), or to grit your teeth. If somebody said something to you, you could not respond in kind. We carry on this same stupid mindset into the adult world by turning every single customer support position into a punching bag for the public. In school, bullying often goes unpunished, and in the adult world it is rewarded under capitalism.
Bullying often goes unseen wherever there is no response from the bullied. To be clear, I was not often bullied. I have been ill-tempered my entire life, especially so when I was young, and I will freely admit to having been a bully at times. Unlike some bullies who shy away from another bully, I would always respond to bullying in kind, for I knew the territory well. My sensitivity led to a penchant for calling out passive aggressiveness and otherwise snide two-faced back-handed remarks, to which I'd respond quite nastily and without patience. It is a miracle I had any friends at all; I think sports and a tough father kept me out of serious trouble, only barely. Thankfully I was able to transmute this behavior into something relatively positive by reserving it for bullies as I got older, acquiring a fairly smart mouth, instead of taking it out on people who didn't deserve it. This of course became a problem as I started waiting and looking for chances to act this way, and only leads to me getting in trouble alongside the bully.
Eventually this temperament was broken down over many years. It wasn't sustainable, not that a kid would have this kind of vocabulary or level of awareness to describe it in this manner.
I did not learn many good emotional coping skills from my parents. At times they were unempathetic, and other times they unquestioningly took my side when perhaps they shouldn't have. While I don't think my parents were bad parents by comparison (far from it), they were certainly imperfect, and I see a bit more clearly now how these imperfections may have impacted my own development as an only child.
I did not know how to resolve conflict. I did not learn it from my parents, and I did not learn it from public school. The best I could hope for would be to avoid conflict completely. Tattling is not an empowering resolution to conflict, even if it happens to get you what you want. It doesn't really teach one anything except how to project your malcontent onto an authority figure. The moment that an authority figure fails you, this too falls apart and you are left with nothing, no recourse or appeal.
All that being said, I was raised with Christian values. That does not mean my family were good Christians, nor even churchgoing.
One character who I relate to would be Benjamin Martin, played by Mel Gibson in the movie The Patriot. Specifically: being hot-blooded. And then at a certain point over-correcting on this and becoming weak, timid, helpless when your past viciousness may have actually been needed. I suppose Kratos might be similar but I've never played the GoW games.
In sum, I have learned that there isn't much justice in this world. Most people do not seem to treat others on the basis of any highfalutin idea of a Golden Rule ("treat others how you want to be treated") or holding oneself to a higher personal standard—it boils down to simple primitive retribution. In other words, individual people do not control themselves individually; that responsibility has been absconded to a higher authority or a group. The longer I live, and admittedly the more I learn about myself, the more I take a Hobbes view of humanity rather than Rousseau. The internet and online competitive games are the perfect example: this, I think, is closer to true human nature and says more about a person than their public persona ever would. If they can cheat, if they can be mean and outright evil to other people without significant consequence to themself, they will. And they evidently feel little to no guilt or shame, or else I would think that their own heart would eventually lead them to correct their behavior. The catch is that linking the anonymous user to the correct public persona is not easy, and I will go no further because that would lead to a debate about online privacy which is all besides the point.
To try and make my point of this ramble as concise as possible... I hurt myself because at some point, for a multitude of reasons, I refused to hurt other people. There is no third option where nobody hurts, because in my mind there must be justice. When I feel the victim of some injustice, no matter how arbitrary, or forgotten if not outright ignored by the world, there is the immediate feeling that something or someone must pay. The wrong must be made right. Yet I have put myself at an inherent disadvantage in that I have basically taken a mixed stance of self-flagellating pacifism, for I have left myself with no other option. Others continue abusing others rather than themselves because there is nothing tangibly gained from self-flagellating pacifism, particularly if they do not buy into religion and concepts of heaven and / or karma.
By the time I was a child, I was already burned out from letting things go and turning the other cheek at every slight, at each of the 10,000 cuts. Too many things are let go. All of these let-go things settle and metastasize in the depths of the collective unconscious into which they were repressed. But even the very deep dark waters of this oceanic unconsciousness are not infinite. It has an ecosystem, and it can only support so much filth. We see these things boil over in everyday life. A husband and wife who find themselves in an argument and suddenly bring forth every single wrong, every little thing that was ever uttered or not uttered, done or not done, for the past 10 years of marriage. If it is true of a single married couple, I do not see why the married couple is not also a perfect microcosm of the group, of a community, of an entire society.
There is no where else to direct this pain now because I can no longer in good conscience bring myself to inflict it on others, and vigilante justice, even self-defense or standing up for yourself in a non-violent way, is condemned and punished. There is no satisfying way for the pain to be processed. I cannot accept anymore, there is no more room to bottle it up. The weight capacity for baggage has been reached. For the vindictive spirit, if taking it out on another (even if they deserve it) brings punishment, then there is no other target left except for the self. Even if I thought that the online "world" should be regulated and require government ID (I will not say whether I truly think this or not, this is a hypothetical), I cannot help but wonder if this would all spill out into the real world when there is no longer an anonymous space for radioactive, toxic psychological projection. For where else can it go? Similar to the scientific maxim, this matter can not be destroyed.
Just the other day I was sitting by myself at a bar when a stranger sitting next to me struck up conversation with me. I was pleasant with him. He seemed nice enough at first. We didn't talk a lot, and 90% of the time I was sitting quietly minding my own business and drinking my beer and watching a baseball game, so I don't see how I could have annoyed him. But after maybe another 20 or 30 minutes passed I tried to converse with him some more during a commercial break. Suddenly he became a real gruff asshole. He grew short with me.
"So, are you just a Bud Light guy?" I asked.
Paraphrasing, "Why the fuck do you care?" The "the fuck" portion being clearly conveyed through tone of voice and his facial expression.
It was an innocent question. I asked it friendly enough, without any intent of making fun of his drinking.
Taken aback, it took me a few seconds to respond. "I was just curious, that's all."
And I felt in me that same sensation that I felt when I was 10: a fight or flight response, and then a prideful anger that I should even consider fleeing from this douchebag, which was that I wanted to call this guy to his face. To not care about what the teacher (bartender) might think, to not care if they're going to tattle and send us to the principal's office (call the cops). I wanted to call him an asshole. But oh no, then suddenly for calling the kettle black *I* am the villain, *I* am the one escalating the situation. Suck my motherfucking balls.
Seemingly as a way of apology, he confided in me that he has a problem with liquor. I apologized and changed the topic to a different beer since I wasn't quite sure how to respond, but it didn't go very far, and that was the last time I tried to talk to him. I understand now that, even with the most innocently intended question, I'd managed to hit on a sore spot with him, an insecurity. To his credit not many people would have added anything apologetically. But if he had decided to let it go, there would have been no recourse for me except to take out my inner anger on myself. Just like always, to burn myself, over and over and over, inner self-immolation.
It nevertheless left a bad taste in my mouth. I sat there and ordered another beer to force myself to forget about it, just one of many forms of self-harm.
This, I think, gets at the meaning of Robin Williams' simple yet powerful words in Good Will Hunting: It's not your fault.
Last edited:
