tetra
supernova
- Jun 13, 2022
- 26
This is some of the stuff swirling around in my head for the last few days, I decided to challenge myself to formulate my thoughts into something readable.
While growing up I got pressured a lot to figure out what I want. "What do you want?" started feeling like a trick question considering i've openly wanted to stop existing since early middle school. When it came to knowing who I am, who I wanted to be, and what I wanted to do for a living, I just couldn't care less about that stuff. But I still felt pressure to do those things, I was warned a lot about how the world is an unempathetic place that swallows up the vulnerable and the unprepared. I live in a lower-class family, so the idea of the world waiting to swallow me up at the first sign of failure felt very real to me. I was not very concerned with or prideful in myself, so when it came to finding purposes in life I looked to doing what others wanted. I liked to think that I was helping others, but I was just people pleasing.
Come high school, I started getting in more serious relationships, but I still hadn't formed a lot of my likes and dislikes yet. I think a lot of people have heard the phrase "you can't love something else if you don't first love yourself" and i'm still not really sure what to make of it after all of this time. My strategy with relationships was to become what the other person wanted because I had no idea what I wanted to be other than useful. But I could never avoid being asked what I wanted. Parents, extended family, friends, partners, doctors, teachers. It seems like they all wanted me to go out of my way to instill wants into myself just so I can have drive and motivation that I never cared for. The act of instilling that want that I didn't have before feels like a sort of self-harm, a care and emotional pain for something that I didn't care about before. A want that didn't have to exist.
I graduated high school a few years ago, and more than ever there's pressure on me to figure out what I want. The answer everyone wants to hear is that I want to get a job, go to college, get my driver's license, marry, settle down, have kids. I don't want that. I don't think I ever wanted that. I've never been upset with the prospect that I am not special, that I will be forgotten, and that i'm a statistic from birth till death. Because I don't want to be special, I don't want to be remembered, and I don't care how others view me. But it feels like everything desperately wants me to care about those exact things. I find great comfort in how temporary everything is.
TL;DR I want to stop wanting. That's all.
While growing up I got pressured a lot to figure out what I want. "What do you want?" started feeling like a trick question considering i've openly wanted to stop existing since early middle school. When it came to knowing who I am, who I wanted to be, and what I wanted to do for a living, I just couldn't care less about that stuff. But I still felt pressure to do those things, I was warned a lot about how the world is an unempathetic place that swallows up the vulnerable and the unprepared. I live in a lower-class family, so the idea of the world waiting to swallow me up at the first sign of failure felt very real to me. I was not very concerned with or prideful in myself, so when it came to finding purposes in life I looked to doing what others wanted. I liked to think that I was helping others, but I was just people pleasing.
Come high school, I started getting in more serious relationships, but I still hadn't formed a lot of my likes and dislikes yet. I think a lot of people have heard the phrase "you can't love something else if you don't first love yourself" and i'm still not really sure what to make of it after all of this time. My strategy with relationships was to become what the other person wanted because I had no idea what I wanted to be other than useful. But I could never avoid being asked what I wanted. Parents, extended family, friends, partners, doctors, teachers. It seems like they all wanted me to go out of my way to instill wants into myself just so I can have drive and motivation that I never cared for. The act of instilling that want that I didn't have before feels like a sort of self-harm, a care and emotional pain for something that I didn't care about before. A want that didn't have to exist.
I graduated high school a few years ago, and more than ever there's pressure on me to figure out what I want. The answer everyone wants to hear is that I want to get a job, go to college, get my driver's license, marry, settle down, have kids. I don't want that. I don't think I ever wanted that. I've never been upset with the prospect that I am not special, that I will be forgotten, and that i'm a statistic from birth till death. Because I don't want to be special, I don't want to be remembered, and I don't care how others view me. But it feels like everything desperately wants me to care about those exact things. I find great comfort in how temporary everything is.
TL;DR I want to stop wanting. That's all.
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