That's Not Me
A cork on the ocean floating over the raging sea
- Sep 14, 2022
- 108
I just want to go back to when I was a child. This week I saw some videos that I recorded when I was about 5 years old at a family lunch. Everyone was very serious and trying to pretend that everything was fine, but I didn't even notice. I was just happy to be alive. Later in the video my mom is lying on the couch with a face like she just cried. She had just recovered from cancer and probably didn't know how she was going to pay the next rent, but you can still see her effort in trying to interact with her son who was playing with the camera. A few times last year I caught myself thinking that I was doing for others what they would never do for me, that I was hiding my suffering to avoid theirs, but I am thankful that these thoughts did not last long and that at no point did I do any emotional blackmail. I know that it was much harder for them than it was for me, and I owe them an unpayable debt. Back to the point, even with everything going wrong, I was a happy child. I have thought about ctb since I was very young, but the moments of joy were of the purest possible joy. I wanted to be 5 forever. There was no suffering. I didn't need to live for others as I do now. I didn't even know what hate and pain was. Today all that exists is pain.
Now I am finding it very difficult to break the cycle that I am in. Every day I find it more difficult to get out of bed, and the motivation to study is almost nil. Every day I feel more disgust when I look in the mirror, more shame and more regret for the past. Every week I think I get my glow back, but it always proves to be a lie. I am losing my strength. I can't go to the gym like I used to, I can't cook anymore, and I can't even go to the weekly lives of that kind old gentleman who plays old songs on Sundays. I am desperate to live and terrified of death, but maybe this is already a lost fight. Of course I will fight to the end anyway. All I want most is to get through this soon in the hope that it will get easier, but I don't want to get through it to find that in the end it only gets worse. I look at the older people in my family and they all seem to have had a miserable life that they regret. I try my best to isolate myself from reality so that I don't have these reality checks, but when this is not possible I get really bad. When my grandmother occasionally calls me and tells me how hard her week has been and how bad my grandfather is I hold on tight until the end of the call only to burst into tears. My grandmother has lived her whole life for others: she took care of her ailing mother-in-law, then her mother, and now she takes care of the husband she once promised to spend her life with, but now he can't even remember her name. I never saw my grandmother think or do anything for herself, always everything for others, and I have the impression that this is my fate. My grandfather lived his life working always in more than one job, and he worked until the company had to lay him off because of the Alzheimer's disease. That is the life that most people are destined to have. Living with the promise that the suffering will end, whether it is when they get a better job, a trip, or retire, but the truth is that it never ends. Mine has just begun and from what I see there is no prospect of improvement. I like the comparison that there is a coffin and two parts of me are struggling. The rational part that I try to hide is doing its best to close the lid of the coffin and burn me alive while the part of me that wants to live is desperate to get the lid off the coffin. The part that wants to die eventually knocks me down with these thoughts and the part that wants to live tries its best to make me imagine a bright future with lots of love. I am not sure if someone has won this fight yet (and I like to believe that they haven't and that I have time), but if someone has, it is definitely not the part inside the coffin. What's worse is that I the part of me that is inside the coffin, and that is using all the strength to live, has already screamed for help until the air in its lungs ran out.
An important part of my days, and a bigger variable than I would like to admit in breaking the cycle, has been that person I started talking to here on the forum that I have commented on in other shitty vents like this one. Right now she is going out to see a guy from her town. It is such a funny mix of feelings. I assured her several times that I would be very happy if she went out with someone and that makes a lot of sense, right? If I like someone I want what is best for that person, and if going out with someone and having new experiences will be good for them, then that's all I want, right? Yes, and I am truly happy about that. On the other hand, some parts of my heart are also sad. Yesterday she said some things to me that left me confused. I have never liked anything or anyone the way I like her, and I probably expressed myself in the wrong way because I have no experience. I think very stupid things because I have no idea what I am doing, and my rational side tells me that these things have to be done calmly. This is wise to do, since it may be the only way to make something endure, but perhaps in my desire not to be too hasty I end up saying too little as opposed to too much. One thing I feel grateful for is that I tried my best not to build too much foundation on this, at least after I hurt her. Of course it is great to meet for the first time someone who speaks the same language as you, but I kind of knew that giving in to this would be a mistake, not only because I always made it clear that I am not doing this for myself and that I would support her in anything regardless of whether it would hurt me or not, but also because I understood that even though we speak the same language, she has a much easier time talking to other people than I do and she can afford to just say goodbye and not even be hurt by it. It was a wise decision not to give myself away, even though it was a lonely one. I kind of gave in last month and saw how good it feels to be comfortable, but me hurting her reminded me that relationships are volatile and that as hard as it is for me to not be able to throw myself away for fear of not getting catch, and as much as I feel lonelier this way, the loneliness is to a much lesser degree than when I was truly alone because I know I can vent and still gain the bonus of feeling good about bearing someone else's weight. I want to do this for her. I want to hear about her life and know how amazing she is, even if it always reminds me of how shitty I am. I want to hear about her pains, even as much as it reminds me how my pains aren't real. I want to take things slowly, even as much as I know it might forever put me in a zone that I can't get out of. I want to hear every detail of her dates, as much as it makes me think about how I wish it was me. I guess at the end of the day I really am Jim from The Office. Hopefully things will turn out as well for me as they did for him hehe. I think this paragraph being the biggest just proves what I said at the beginning of it: this is a greater variable than I would like and that scares me.
Anyway, that's it. If you've read everything up to this point, you probably have a life as miserable as mine, so I hope everything works out for you. Peace
Now I am finding it very difficult to break the cycle that I am in. Every day I find it more difficult to get out of bed, and the motivation to study is almost nil. Every day I feel more disgust when I look in the mirror, more shame and more regret for the past. Every week I think I get my glow back, but it always proves to be a lie. I am losing my strength. I can't go to the gym like I used to, I can't cook anymore, and I can't even go to the weekly lives of that kind old gentleman who plays old songs on Sundays. I am desperate to live and terrified of death, but maybe this is already a lost fight. Of course I will fight to the end anyway. All I want most is to get through this soon in the hope that it will get easier, but I don't want to get through it to find that in the end it only gets worse. I look at the older people in my family and they all seem to have had a miserable life that they regret. I try my best to isolate myself from reality so that I don't have these reality checks, but when this is not possible I get really bad. When my grandmother occasionally calls me and tells me how hard her week has been and how bad my grandfather is I hold on tight until the end of the call only to burst into tears. My grandmother has lived her whole life for others: she took care of her ailing mother-in-law, then her mother, and now she takes care of the husband she once promised to spend her life with, but now he can't even remember her name. I never saw my grandmother think or do anything for herself, always everything for others, and I have the impression that this is my fate. My grandfather lived his life working always in more than one job, and he worked until the company had to lay him off because of the Alzheimer's disease. That is the life that most people are destined to have. Living with the promise that the suffering will end, whether it is when they get a better job, a trip, or retire, but the truth is that it never ends. Mine has just begun and from what I see there is no prospect of improvement. I like the comparison that there is a coffin and two parts of me are struggling. The rational part that I try to hide is doing its best to close the lid of the coffin and burn me alive while the part of me that wants to live is desperate to get the lid off the coffin. The part that wants to die eventually knocks me down with these thoughts and the part that wants to live tries its best to make me imagine a bright future with lots of love. I am not sure if someone has won this fight yet (and I like to believe that they haven't and that I have time), but if someone has, it is definitely not the part inside the coffin. What's worse is that I the part of me that is inside the coffin, and that is using all the strength to live, has already screamed for help until the air in its lungs ran out.
An important part of my days, and a bigger variable than I would like to admit in breaking the cycle, has been that person I started talking to here on the forum that I have commented on in other shitty vents like this one. Right now she is going out to see a guy from her town. It is such a funny mix of feelings. I assured her several times that I would be very happy if she went out with someone and that makes a lot of sense, right? If I like someone I want what is best for that person, and if going out with someone and having new experiences will be good for them, then that's all I want, right? Yes, and I am truly happy about that. On the other hand, some parts of my heart are also sad. Yesterday she said some things to me that left me confused. I have never liked anything or anyone the way I like her, and I probably expressed myself in the wrong way because I have no experience. I think very stupid things because I have no idea what I am doing, and my rational side tells me that these things have to be done calmly. This is wise to do, since it may be the only way to make something endure, but perhaps in my desire not to be too hasty I end up saying too little as opposed to too much. One thing I feel grateful for is that I tried my best not to build too much foundation on this, at least after I hurt her. Of course it is great to meet for the first time someone who speaks the same language as you, but I kind of knew that giving in to this would be a mistake, not only because I always made it clear that I am not doing this for myself and that I would support her in anything regardless of whether it would hurt me or not, but also because I understood that even though we speak the same language, she has a much easier time talking to other people than I do and she can afford to just say goodbye and not even be hurt by it. It was a wise decision not to give myself away, even though it was a lonely one. I kind of gave in last month and saw how good it feels to be comfortable, but me hurting her reminded me that relationships are volatile and that as hard as it is for me to not be able to throw myself away for fear of not getting catch, and as much as I feel lonelier this way, the loneliness is to a much lesser degree than when I was truly alone because I know I can vent and still gain the bonus of feeling good about bearing someone else's weight. I want to do this for her. I want to hear about her life and know how amazing she is, even if it always reminds me of how shitty I am. I want to hear about her pains, even as much as it reminds me how my pains aren't real. I want to take things slowly, even as much as I know it might forever put me in a zone that I can't get out of. I want to hear every detail of her dates, as much as it makes me think about how I wish it was me. I guess at the end of the day I really am Jim from The Office. Hopefully things will turn out as well for me as they did for him hehe. I think this paragraph being the biggest just proves what I said at the beginning of it: this is a greater variable than I would like and that scares me.
Anyway, that's it. If you've read everything up to this point, you probably have a life as miserable as mine, so I hope everything works out for you. Peace
