GoodPersonEffed
Brevity is my middle name, but my name was TL
- Jan 11, 2020
- 6,727
It's the awareness of things I can't control, fix, or have any real impact on. It's cultures where manipulation and abuse are endemic, really every culture to some degree, and all the social systems within them. It's seeing how the world is being fucked with, and how people blindly fuck with each other. It's knowing that the more knowledge I gain reveals so much, including that I have little to no agency about anything. It's learning that in order to be accepted and get along in close relationships, I have to give up my boundaries -- my self respect, my self; it hurts so much sometimes to be lonely and disconnected, and yet, if I give in, then I return to connecting in ways that don't recognize or respect my boundaries or autonomy, and I can play along and laugh it off for a while, try to see it from compassionate perspectives, detached perspectives, etc., but at some point I return to needing to rise above that or utterly lose my shit. Like if I wanted my parents back. Like the man who runs the convenience store -- the only way to get along is to accept his disrespect because it's more fun for him to call me señorita multiple times every visit, even though I've said I don't like it, said to call me señora. He's just utterly deaf, and if I dare to speak loud enough to get through that, the façade drops and the entitled jerk makes an appearance. I know it's petty, and yet it's not, because it's me who he sees as petty, not the person I am who has worked so hard to rise above what he sees. Whether it's my family, dating, social groups or cultures, if I don't agree with status quo and to go along to get along, there's going to be a fight. So I can continue to rise in the personal development I've been doing for over a decade that helps me separate from what I cannot accept, such as my family's abuse or a culture's abuse or a government's abuse, or I can stop respecting myself, and lose some of myself to be embraced, but there's always pain in the embrace because I am being squeezed out.
I've been at this crisis point for a while. I keep coming at it from different angles. And it comes to this:
I can get the fuck out of this life. It's not going to improve. My situation (that I don't talk about, but has all of these elements) just gets worse. I can (hopefully) end my life and get out of it.
I can take on the challenge of continuing on the path of self-awareness and self-mastery. In Shaolin and other schools of Buddhism, it is climbing the mountain to reach the peak and get a clear view. In Stoicism, it is the rough path that leads to something elevated. It's lonely. I don't know that it's worth it. I suppose if I can't die, then such a path is my goal, but it's lonely, and enlightenment doesn't seem to make things better, just clearer. Whoop-de-do. Then one comes back down the mountain on the same path, with new insight, clearer understanding of the mountain and the vista, maybe of what's beyond it if anything; I don't think there's anything beyond, and is self-mastery/some kind of enlightenment that fantastic? I think what's being revealed is that I've been on this path I'm writing about in this post my whole life, and the awareness of that is the clarity, like a place on the way up the mountain to see the view, see where I've come from, where I'm going. I'm heading, I think, toward a more complete understanding of shit.
But really, as strong and capable as I am, I'm just goddamn sad, tired, sickened and alone. As Montaigne and other Stoics (I think Plutarch) pointed out, there is a point where the virtue of valor becomes a vice when faced with overwhelming, unbeatable odds, and it turns to things like obstinacy and madness. I'm walking that line. I cannot settle for less and lose what I've built up because it is necessary, not a luxury, and, I cannot have more, maybe can't have it at all, not without a constant fight. Both are maddening. It is rational to exit the party, and so defeating and sad.
I can't save myself, and the world doesn't want to be saved or it would have done it long before I came along.
I've been at this crisis point for a while. I keep coming at it from different angles. And it comes to this:
I can get the fuck out of this life. It's not going to improve. My situation (that I don't talk about, but has all of these elements) just gets worse. I can (hopefully) end my life and get out of it.
I can take on the challenge of continuing on the path of self-awareness and self-mastery. In Shaolin and other schools of Buddhism, it is climbing the mountain to reach the peak and get a clear view. In Stoicism, it is the rough path that leads to something elevated. It's lonely. I don't know that it's worth it. I suppose if I can't die, then such a path is my goal, but it's lonely, and enlightenment doesn't seem to make things better, just clearer. Whoop-de-do. Then one comes back down the mountain on the same path, with new insight, clearer understanding of the mountain and the vista, maybe of what's beyond it if anything; I don't think there's anything beyond, and is self-mastery/some kind of enlightenment that fantastic? I think what's being revealed is that I've been on this path I'm writing about in this post my whole life, and the awareness of that is the clarity, like a place on the way up the mountain to see the view, see where I've come from, where I'm going. I'm heading, I think, toward a more complete understanding of shit.
But really, as strong and capable as I am, I'm just goddamn sad, tired, sickened and alone. As Montaigne and other Stoics (I think Plutarch) pointed out, there is a point where the virtue of valor becomes a vice when faced with overwhelming, unbeatable odds, and it turns to things like obstinacy and madness. I'm walking that line. I cannot settle for less and lose what I've built up because it is necessary, not a luxury, and, I cannot have more, maybe can't have it at all, not without a constant fight. Both are maddening. It is rational to exit the party, and so defeating and sad.
I can't save myself, and the world doesn't want to be saved or it would have done it long before I came along.
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