009A.
Why? Why do I hate myself just for not knowing everything? Nobody knows everything. Nobody can know everything. Does my inability to joke about popular television shows really make me a bad person? No, it does not. Does my inability to speak Russian make me a stupid person? No, it makes me a person who hasn't learned to speak Russian-- and I am a quite-young lifelong citizen of the USA; this is hardly a remarkable deficiency in my general skillset. My occasional convictions to the contrary, I have never caused a natural disaster or major war by skipping class, eating Oreos, loading the dishwasher incorrectly, losing my temper, singing off-key, having an ugly face, or putting cigarettes out in a manner that does not adhere to one of several idiosyncratic, unnecessary rituals I've made up. (Other things I am not the cause of include illnesses and injury befalling members of my family, strip mining, boys and men deciding to sexually harrass or attempt to date-rape me-- EVEN IF I WAS SMILING, DANCING, DRUNK, TALKING TO THEM IN A FRIENDLY MANNER, AND/OR WEARING EYESHADOW AT THE TIME, animals getting hit by cars, and inconvenient rainstorms.) I didn't drop out of college because I was stupid or lazy; I dropped out because I was becoming more and more severely depressed and anxious, with fewer and fewer periods of emotional stability to break it up. (Whether we consider this some kind of existential problem or a mental illness, a normal part of many people's lives or a notable aberration, I think we can agree that it is not stupidity, is not laziness, and is not something anyone would make a conscious choice to start or could easily make an effective conscious choice to stop.) I even tried to kill myself, and most of the world agrees that trying to kill oneself is a big, blaring warning sign that one's current situation isn't working out very well. And it isn't like my boss-slash-writing professor didn't a.) almost beg me to stay in or return to school and b.) tell me I was one of the most brilliant people he'd ever met (not "students," but "people," and I am kind of embarrassed to write it down here because I think it was excessive and untrue, but it's too easy to pretend that I am so objectively sucky as a human being that no one ever, ever thinks or says anything remotely like that about me if I don't, and that sort of pretending is just as excessive and untrue, in its way). And it isn't like I don't have friends. Even if there are people in the world who don't like me that much (HEAVEN FORFEND IT, I mean, clearly I am the only person in the world who has ever been targeted by bullies, and clearly that's all my fault, like everything else), I have friends! I do! A lot of people care about me, respect me, like me, trust me, and support me, even though they aren't my relatives or psychologists and aren't under any exterior obligation to put up with me at all, ever! It's disrespectful to those people to act as though I don't think I have any friends. That may be the only thing on this list that I rightfully should be embarrassed about having done. So why, why, why can't I quit feeling ashamed? Why am I ashamed of anything other than treating other people worse than they deserve (in cases where I haven't made an honest mistake and do understand right from wrong)? I know it's silly, and I wish to God I could conquer my feelings with that knowledge alone.
I remember one of several New York Times articles on the general theme of Why Does Generation Y Suck So Much? (sequel to the popular, several-decade-spanning What is Wrong With Generation X? and These Goddamned Twentysomething Baby Boomers Will Be the Ruin of Us All! article sequences) that explored the idea of early experiences of failure being crucial to the development of a mature, non-neurotic worldview. The gist of it was that many privileged, bright young people nowadays have never had to experience academic, social, etc. disappointment or failure, so they don't know how to cope with it and don't know how to conceptualize it as anything other than an utter catastrophe. There's some truth to that, I'm sure, but I think my problem is almost the reverse. I have had it drilled into me that I have Things Wrong With Me to a degree that other people do not, and instead of coming to believe that my failures and mistakes mean I'm human and sometimes humans screw up, I tend to think that my failures and mistakes mean I'm subhuman and risk blowing my cover. Screwing up doesn't signify that I'm human or imperfect or young; screwing up signifies that I'm Disabled Forever and I have yet to really be able to embrace that as something neutral instead of rejecting it as terrifying, humiliating, and awful. I end up screwing up often, being hyperaware of how often I screw up, feeling as though screwing up is something only I do, is catastrophic, and proves something about my core nature. I also end up with a defeatist attitude that I can't possibly ever have good qualities, succeed at anything I try, be a likable person, not deserve to be hurt, or ever, ever cause, make, or do that isn't completely terrible. If I happen to manage a success, or if someone compliments me, or if someone likes me, I invent reasons to make it not count. I cheated, somehow, or I only tricked that person into liking me, or no one cares what I did and it isn't like it took any skill or creativity or intelligence to do, anyway.
Also I set myself pretty ridiculous goals sometimes. I am not going to bear witness to all the wonders of the universe and perceive all the secret connections that undergird this world and Know All the Answers to Everything Ever. If I could stick with goals like Have Satisfying Sex With Someone I Like and Eat a Delicious Sandwich I'd be much, much better off. Anyway, I wouldn't like Knowing All the Answers to Everything Ever. I like finding things out too much. I like having things to find out. I like wondering, having a sense of wonder. I like the possibilities that exist in ignorance, and the collapse of those possibilities into truth. I like the hope that lingers, still, in all the spaces between facts, in the dark, where a person can imagine anything at all.