LJIdol - 9.25 - Rapture of the Deep
Just being a person is hard and filled with all kinds of weird signals blinking around inside your head and filling you with obligations or decisions or what-the-fuck-ever.
And some days I just don't want to.
There are days I wake up and all I want is for someone to tell me what to do and not make a single decision because having to deal with the consequences of any decision is, some days, just too much for my little brain to handle. I just want to reach in, turn off all the "me" that's in there and just coast on by as an automaton for a while, just following my programming, doing whatever is expected while inside I just rest.
I realize that a lot of this is coming up because the seasons are changing and I get the Seasonal Affective Disorder and that I'm starting to make decisions which have actual life-scale, real-world consequences for the first time in, gosh, a decade or so. I'm back in school and having to actually do work. I'm talking with some medical professionals about getting some drugs to act as a prosthetic forebrain to counteract my recently-diagnosed ADHD and...
And for the first time I got something to work toward.
For the longest time, I was just trying to get to Sweden to be with rattsu but then I got here and there wasn't any other plan and then there's The Future, sitting on the counter and picking its teeth with a toothpick, giving me a condescending look as if to say "You didn't think you'd got away, did you?"
Yes, I know. "Oh, poor you, you moved from a rich Western democracy to a different one to be with your significant other, poor baby."
And yet in the face of that, there are days (sometimes whole months) where that shitty little fearful part of me just wants to pack it in. Head back to the States, beg to get my casino job and shitty little apartment back because while there were a lot of choices and actions that happened every day, there wasn't any real meaning to them in a macro sense.
What I mean to say is that one of my bosses there sometimes joked that he'd worked at a blood testing facility that tested people for STDs. If they messed up anything there, they could ruin someone's life.
Messing up a count at the casino? Some time gets wasted, some paperwork gets done, some bills get recounted and then everything's square again.
I know that this could sound as if I'm bagging on the job, making some snooty statement about how "fnar fnar, my current course has me destined for better things over and above the sheeple, fnar fnar" but I am much desirous that I am not misunderstood upon this point: it was a great job and I knew a lot of great people there but what I, personally, liked about it was that it was an eternal present. Nothing ever changed, really. If I fucked up? Unless I fucked up to the point of giving someone an extra few hundred dollar bills on their way out, it wasn't going to be a big thing. Nothing was a big thing. At all.
And it was glorious.
I could just do the job, go home and it was done. Just leave me with an internet connection and the ability to tell myself the same things I kept telling myself "If I had a chance..." "If only I'd've..." "I'm so great even without college but nobody will give me a chance..." and so on and so on.
Because the truth of the matter is that I'm a coward.
No "was" here. No past tense. Present tense. I am a coward.
I'm trying to work against that nowadays. I take my tests, I read my textbooks, I fret over things some days and put them off others and it all has this unfamiliar and frankly uncomfortable feeling of importance.
Like, I did some student teaching last month. They let me be in charge of instruction. I no tgreat at it. I was not bad, mind, but the knowledge that I was not great at it has a much greater import than does the knowledge that I am not great at Street Fighter II.
I am much more comfortable getting my ass beat at Street Fighter II by a ten year-old who's screaming obscenities at me than I am at being pulled aside by the teacher who's watching my methods basically having re-explain the most basic principles of the art/science of pedagogy because I froze up and forgot about 'em in the moment. Honestly, it was just a couple minor notes but they display that I have not fully internalized the task which lays before me and, well, that matters.
And I don't want it to.
So often, I don't want anything I do to matter in the slightest. I want to just drown out my sapience and just drift through life and not have to matter to anything or anyone because mattering carries with it so much weight sometimes that I can't bloody stand it.
But, thankfully, that's only sometimes.
I know it's a stress reaction and I know it's a symptom of the things that are happening in my brain. I've got professionals backing me up on that and that's actually really nice because there's actually a predictable pattern to it. I know it's also a fear of the unknown, the kind of fear that creates a necessity in some folks to tell jokes about how terrible immigrants are (not you, Aleph, never you--it's those other ones!) or about the strange practices involved in this or that religion or sexual orientation or youth-oriented subculture or what-have-you.
More, I know it's just me being full of shit because being full of shit is easy. When you're full of shit, everything you do is important and everything you do matters because you insist that it is so and that mattering? It's easy and fun and makes you more attractive and important and that's the place I want to get to because you can never underestimate the power of self-deception to make a wild-eyed rebel out of a lump of nothing.
I'm Working Toward Something now, though. Mattering is no longer optional. I don't know what that Something is or what it looks like or what it means beyond that sarcastic figure I conjure in my head who mocks me for trying to get away from it just giving me one of those "Well, if that's what you wanna do..." shrugs.
And it's always there. It's always there and it never goes away.
And it means that I want to do things that matter. In spite of myself, I want to be a part of the world. I want to repay the millionfold kindnesses done to me by people who could just as easily done me harm. I want to be the kindness to others that others were to me because there's a too-naïve part of me that insists that we're all just a few more instances of kindness away from a better world.
I want to move past the fear of leaving any mark at all, even a good one, on the people I meet.
I want to finish my stories and start new ones. I want to have meaning in and for myself and I don't want to be afraid of that.
At the same time, I want desperately to just close my eyes and let all these words and feelings just sink down into the deep where they'll never affect anything and just STOP for another couple years because it's just plain easier for me. Easier and maybe even more fun and a lot less stressful.
But I'm not going to. I'm going to be here tomorrow and I'm going to work. And then I'm going to be there the next day and I'm going to work and I'm going to keep being there and finding some way to work because I'm afraid of what'll happen if I do because then I'll have actually succeeded or failed and I'll have to take time away from any outside force to determine which I've done and how much that does or doesn't matter.
'Cause, honestly? I already know what'll happen and how I'll feel if I don't.
And some days I just don't want to.
There are days I wake up and all I want is for someone to tell me what to do and not make a single decision because having to deal with the consequences of any decision is, some days, just too much for my little brain to handle. I just want to reach in, turn off all the "me" that's in there and just coast on by as an automaton for a while, just following my programming, doing whatever is expected while inside I just rest.
I realize that a lot of this is coming up because the seasons are changing and I get the Seasonal Affective Disorder and that I'm starting to make decisions which have actual life-scale, real-world consequences for the first time in, gosh, a decade or so. I'm back in school and having to actually do work. I'm talking with some medical professionals about getting some drugs to act as a prosthetic forebrain to counteract my recently-diagnosed ADHD and...
And for the first time I got something to work toward.
For the longest time, I was just trying to get to Sweden to be with rattsu but then I got here and there wasn't any other plan and then there's The Future, sitting on the counter and picking its teeth with a toothpick, giving me a condescending look as if to say "You didn't think you'd got away, did you?"
Yes, I know. "Oh, poor you, you moved from a rich Western democracy to a different one to be with your significant other, poor baby."
And yet in the face of that, there are days (sometimes whole months) where that shitty little fearful part of me just wants to pack it in. Head back to the States, beg to get my casino job and shitty little apartment back because while there were a lot of choices and actions that happened every day, there wasn't any real meaning to them in a macro sense.
What I mean to say is that one of my bosses there sometimes joked that he'd worked at a blood testing facility that tested people for STDs. If they messed up anything there, they could ruin someone's life.
Messing up a count at the casino? Some time gets wasted, some paperwork gets done, some bills get recounted and then everything's square again.
I know that this could sound as if I'm bagging on the job, making some snooty statement about how "fnar fnar, my current course has me destined for better things over and above the sheeple, fnar fnar" but I am much desirous that I am not misunderstood upon this point: it was a great job and I knew a lot of great people there but what I, personally, liked about it was that it was an eternal present. Nothing ever changed, really. If I fucked up? Unless I fucked up to the point of giving someone an extra few hundred dollar bills on their way out, it wasn't going to be a big thing. Nothing was a big thing. At all.
And it was glorious.
I could just do the job, go home and it was done. Just leave me with an internet connection and the ability to tell myself the same things I kept telling myself "If I had a chance..." "If only I'd've..." "I'm so great even without college but nobody will give me a chance..." and so on and so on.
Because the truth of the matter is that I'm a coward.
No "was" here. No past tense. Present tense. I am a coward.
I'm trying to work against that nowadays. I take my tests, I read my textbooks, I fret over things some days and put them off others and it all has this unfamiliar and frankly uncomfortable feeling of importance.
Like, I did some student teaching last month. They let me be in charge of instruction. I no tgreat at it. I was not bad, mind, but the knowledge that I was not great at it has a much greater import than does the knowledge that I am not great at Street Fighter II.
I am much more comfortable getting my ass beat at Street Fighter II by a ten year-old who's screaming obscenities at me than I am at being pulled aside by the teacher who's watching my methods basically having re-explain the most basic principles of the art/science of pedagogy because I froze up and forgot about 'em in the moment. Honestly, it was just a couple minor notes but they display that I have not fully internalized the task which lays before me and, well, that matters.
And I don't want it to.
So often, I don't want anything I do to matter in the slightest. I want to just drown out my sapience and just drift through life and not have to matter to anything or anyone because mattering carries with it so much weight sometimes that I can't bloody stand it.
But, thankfully, that's only sometimes.
I know it's a stress reaction and I know it's a symptom of the things that are happening in my brain. I've got professionals backing me up on that and that's actually really nice because there's actually a predictable pattern to it. I know it's also a fear of the unknown, the kind of fear that creates a necessity in some folks to tell jokes about how terrible immigrants are (not you, Aleph, never you--it's those other ones!) or about the strange practices involved in this or that religion or sexual orientation or youth-oriented subculture or what-have-you.
More, I know it's just me being full of shit because being full of shit is easy. When you're full of shit, everything you do is important and everything you do matters because you insist that it is so and that mattering? It's easy and fun and makes you more attractive and important and that's the place I want to get to because you can never underestimate the power of self-deception to make a wild-eyed rebel out of a lump of nothing.
I'm Working Toward Something now, though. Mattering is no longer optional. I don't know what that Something is or what it looks like or what it means beyond that sarcastic figure I conjure in my head who mocks me for trying to get away from it just giving me one of those "Well, if that's what you wanna do..." shrugs.
And it's always there. It's always there and it never goes away.
And it means that I want to do things that matter. In spite of myself, I want to be a part of the world. I want to repay the millionfold kindnesses done to me by people who could just as easily done me harm. I want to be the kindness to others that others were to me because there's a too-naïve part of me that insists that we're all just a few more instances of kindness away from a better world.
I want to move past the fear of leaving any mark at all, even a good one, on the people I meet.
I want to finish my stories and start new ones. I want to have meaning in and for myself and I don't want to be afraid of that.
At the same time, I want desperately to just close my eyes and let all these words and feelings just sink down into the deep where they'll never affect anything and just STOP for another couple years because it's just plain easier for me. Easier and maybe even more fun and a lot less stressful.
But I'm not going to. I'm going to be here tomorrow and I'm going to work. And then I'm going to be there the next day and I'm going to work and I'm going to keep being there and finding some way to work because I'm afraid of what'll happen if I do because then I'll have actually succeeded or failed and I'll have to take time away from any outside force to determine which I've done and how much that does or doesn't matter.
'Cause, honestly? I already know what'll happen and how I'll feel if I don't.