compulsoryaliveness
Member
- Oct 6, 2024
- 63
It's weird. I just was a good person, not even on purpose. If anything, I struggled to prioritise anything that wasn't the morally correct thing to do. Not on purpose. Not because I even valued being "good." It was just what felt like the correct response to the world.
I was committed to seeing the best in others that I possibly could, and to understanding that about others, that everyone is trying to do the right thing. Or at least, if they're not, it's because enough horrific shit has lead them there. I'm not saying I always did the moral thong - just that I felt effortlessly committed to trying to. I didn't feel like I had to learn it, even if my own bullshit stopped it or fucked with it in moments.
I'm not just not like this anymore. The pain of living like this, and the social exclusion it's resulted in has lead me to be this essentially amoral version of myself. It's still like muscle memory to take the moral road, or to empathise, but I actively stop that choice now. I know it's not in my best interests to give a fuck about people like I used to.
For context, I was an unpaid carer for 6 years, so I think I have what they call "compassion fatigue," but it feels like only part of a much larger story.
The resentment has added up. And the truth is, I don't think other people care about each other as much as I thought we did. I think people are more damaged, and more selfish than I ever fully saw.
And now that I see it, especially as someone who is the most isolated they've ever been (at least in part of my own making), I dont want to go back.
But sometimes it really hits me. Those patterns of self sacrificing and essentially doing empathy on autopilot are gone. And now I have so little to offer to others, that honestly I hope they keep their distance.
I went from being a safe, empathetic haven to a cold, transactional person.
I wonder sometimes if there's some psychoanalytic perspective in here tbh. That changing myself like this is a way to make it easier to CTB. Becoming someone I respect so much less. Basically it's a person I used to hate.
Anyway, another vent. I'm a shittier person now. But at least less people will care when I finally do it.
I was committed to seeing the best in others that I possibly could, and to understanding that about others, that everyone is trying to do the right thing. Or at least, if they're not, it's because enough horrific shit has lead them there. I'm not saying I always did the moral thong - just that I felt effortlessly committed to trying to. I didn't feel like I had to learn it, even if my own bullshit stopped it or fucked with it in moments.
I'm not just not like this anymore. The pain of living like this, and the social exclusion it's resulted in has lead me to be this essentially amoral version of myself. It's still like muscle memory to take the moral road, or to empathise, but I actively stop that choice now. I know it's not in my best interests to give a fuck about people like I used to.
For context, I was an unpaid carer for 6 years, so I think I have what they call "compassion fatigue," but it feels like only part of a much larger story.
The resentment has added up. And the truth is, I don't think other people care about each other as much as I thought we did. I think people are more damaged, and more selfish than I ever fully saw.
And now that I see it, especially as someone who is the most isolated they've ever been (at least in part of my own making), I dont want to go back.
But sometimes it really hits me. Those patterns of self sacrificing and essentially doing empathy on autopilot are gone. And now I have so little to offer to others, that honestly I hope they keep their distance.
I went from being a safe, empathetic haven to a cold, transactional person.
I wonder sometimes if there's some psychoanalytic perspective in here tbh. That changing myself like this is a way to make it easier to CTB. Becoming someone I respect so much less. Basically it's a person I used to hate.
Anyway, another vent. I'm a shittier person now. But at least less people will care when I finally do it.
