Ich Bin Untermensch
To My Invisible Audience,
For me, writing is a cathartic experience for me - if my private journal is my confessional in which I speak of my shames and my pains, this is the scattered manuscripts where I organize my thoughts, making them intelligible. And, if only for this reason, I have my rabid focus on protecting my identity in this public journal - because my public journal is the explication of the thoughts that are in my head. In my private journal, it is a detailing of what had happened in my life - a defense against the horrible amnesia of forgetfulness - I have no need for an explication, the very act of reading my entries is an mnemonic exercise. It is these public journals that I place some care into my writing - to create an order out of the chaos within my mind.
There is a reason for this tangent, for this is part of the ordering of my mental madness - there are other things I wish to talk of, but they are meaningless, unintelligible without this prelude. Because any person is able to read and reason another's thoughts on suicide, but it remains incomprehensible without the correct context - it is my fault as the storyteller, the poet if someone does not understand what I write. Because I write what I think, and another cannot even attempt to understand me when they do not know how I think and what I think. The distance between individual human beings, the distance that impedes our desire to be understood and talked to - this is the abject loneliness. The knowledge, the realization that we cannot know what another thinks.
Why this blithering rambling that has nothing to do with what I shall write about? I do not know - it somehow feels right at the time. After all, this is the balm for the aching heart - I intend to make the utmost use of this psychologist's chair that I am sitting upon. There is this horrible sadness that has descended upon me, a haze upon my mind and a millstone around my chest - a depressive burden that I can understand and cannot understand at the same time. I strongly suspect that this has much to do with my past - I guess I can be considered a weakling, a person who clutches to his past, despite the complete absurdity of doing so. Because no one can understand how much the past means to me - even if they have walked the same path as I, they cannot understand, for they are not me. People react differently to situations.
There is this horrid feeling of amnesia - the quiet desperation of a person who finds the past important but is silently forgetting it. The past that has made me is being forgotten slowly, day by day - and in the process, I am being destroyed. Who can understand the pain of my inferiority complex? I can only assume that there are some among the members of my invisible audience that suffer from this madness as well. I do not know if what I say is true for them - I can only attest to the truth of my own story. The bizarre humor of the gods - that the madness of inferiority complex results in the individual being torn between the sense of utter uselessness and the heights of utter arrogance!
Yes. In my case, the inferiority complex is externalized by the most crushing weakness - the absolute conviction of my own lack of self-worth; as well as the most arrogant superiority - that those around me are insects, not worthy of even a second glance! The irony of the contradiction, the pain of the oscillation! I can barely remember the past, even as I feverishly try to commit my past onto something tangible - I just remember the comparisons, the infernal comparisons that pit me against those smarter, stronger, better. The oh-so-subtle attempt at child psychology that tries to push the child to greatest, the painful jab that tells the child - "Look at him! Look at the one that is your friend! Look at how much smarter he is, how much handsome he is, how much more hardworking he is! Look at him, and then look at yourself. Look at the gulf between the two of you. Look in the mirror and see what I mean." It can spur a person to storm the heavens, but it can also destroy a person - in a sense, both happened.
Where is my confidence now? Every time I try to do something, I cannot believe that I will do it well - yet amidst that lack of security is the drive to perfection, the desire to create the perfect essay, the perfect idea. The quixotic quest for perfection. Yet there is no self-worth. One of my acquaintances once told me, jokingly - "You're not in China anymore, walk beside me, not behind me" - it is the force of a habit, a habit that must have subconsciously asserted itself over the course of many years. The sense that the life of a friend is worth more than mine - that I walk behind so that I may react by sacrifice, that if I see a car bearing upon a person I love, I will have the time to jump in front. Because their life is worth more than mine. This does not go for everybody, only friends - but I nevertheless still continue to walk behind everyone else. The demon at the back of my mind whispering - "Yes, always be ready - give up your life for the life of another. In doing so, you give yourself meaning, you, the lesser, sacrificing yourself for someone greater. In death, you would have done more than you ever would in life!"
Yet there is the maddening superiority complex through which I view the world around me - the utter contempt I have to so many of those that are around me. I am already barely human, and they are worse than me? I am stupid, and they are more foolish than I? I create the imperfect, but their products are more flawed than mine? I am already at the bottom of the chain, and they are below me? I hate them with a fiery passion - a hatred that would be incomprehensible to anyone else. I hate them for their weakness - no one can be worse than I! - there is nothing more despicable than a person who acts less than what he is! The utterly pathetic wretch that I am faced with, they are pathetic because they should not be! But the hatred stems from fear as well - the hatred stemming not only from the patheticness of the creature before me, but also the fear of the creature's blossoming, it's awakening! The day in which the hidden capabilities I see in him assert themselves like a rising sun and I am forced to concede defeat. To concede defeat to that which I had once considered the lowest of the low. Because I am not the genius other see me as, I am in no way brilliant - I started the race crippled and it is only by sheer effort that I am where I am now. But effort and determination are inferior to genius - that the blood and tears of the determined are easily replicated by the brilliant should they desire to exert it. It is the hatred that the flawed feel towards the perfect, coupled with the hatred a determined person would feel towards the slothful.
Where does my determination come from? Where else but from hatred? Hatred is the fuel to the fire - the combination of hatred and pride creating a flawed creature that refuses to lose to those undeserving. High school was hell, both at school and at home - at school, a complete outcaste, at home, being completely at odds with my uncle. Loneliness, loneliness, loneliness - it is everywhere! The horrible darkness that surrounds me, engulfs me! I was even an outcaste in school - I was never in a group before I was excluded and thus never an outcast, I was excluded from the start! A few friendships, but fleetingly transient - the friendships that are completely meaningless, the friendships that I have come to define as acquaintanceship. And at home, the inevitable struggle between the rebellious nature of a teenager and the dominating nature of a petty guardian - I cannot even remember the incidents, I just remember the pain. The tears, the anger, the abject hatred. And most clearly, the pain - the pain of being rejected by the rest of my extended family on the basis of the lies that were told by my guardians. I was blood! She was not! She was an outsider, and yet they believed her word over mine! I was an outcaste as home as well. This is the hatred that I felt then, the hatred that is still festering within the heart.
But that is not enough, no. The torment does not end here - that hatred is hatred for an individual, but it is a passive hatred. It is the fact that I was looked down on, sneered upon - how dare they? How dare those cretins sneer at me? How dare they laugh at me when they were educated at a complete shithole of a university? How dare they preach to me of God after what they have done to me? I reject them, I reject their claims, I reject their god! This is the hatred I speak of, the hatred that burns, the hatred that drives me to succeed at all costs - the hatred to prove them wrong! And it is only because of weakness and my flaws that I have to exert myself to do so. Because, deep inside, I am horrified - horrified and terrified at the thought of them being proved right.
Hatred, the hatred that has lighted the fire of determination that has fueled me for five years. Five bloody years of my life, spent chasing perfection. But all things fade in time, and the fire burns with less vigor than before, I start moving off - I start being passionate again. I start to love something other than that which lies before me. And herein lies the problem - the person who has deprived himself of love, loves too much. For five years, I had battened down the hatches, devoted myself completely to studies - I had no real existence outside of work, but that did not matter. It is only recently that it has begun to matter. It is only recently that I have begun to care again. And that can only spell disaster. It can only spell disaster because I shall love and lose - it might've been lonely to not care, but at least it was comfortable. I have died once, and the path before me leads to a second death. The first death might've been transient, but the second may destroy me. And yet, I cannot stop. I cannot stop because I am human, all too human - I hope, the stupid, meaningless human delusion of hope. Hoping that I am wrong, even though I not I will not be. Knowing that I will not have gain what I desire most, because I know myself:
Ich bin untermensch. I am sub-human.
With Sorrow,
Kahlyban.
For me, writing is a cathartic experience for me - if my private journal is my confessional in which I speak of my shames and my pains, this is the scattered manuscripts where I organize my thoughts, making them intelligible. And, if only for this reason, I have my rabid focus on protecting my identity in this public journal - because my public journal is the explication of the thoughts that are in my head. In my private journal, it is a detailing of what had happened in my life - a defense against the horrible amnesia of forgetfulness - I have no need for an explication, the very act of reading my entries is an mnemonic exercise. It is these public journals that I place some care into my writing - to create an order out of the chaos within my mind.
There is a reason for this tangent, for this is part of the ordering of my mental madness - there are other things I wish to talk of, but they are meaningless, unintelligible without this prelude. Because any person is able to read and reason another's thoughts on suicide, but it remains incomprehensible without the correct context - it is my fault as the storyteller, the poet if someone does not understand what I write. Because I write what I think, and another cannot even attempt to understand me when they do not know how I think and what I think. The distance between individual human beings, the distance that impedes our desire to be understood and talked to - this is the abject loneliness. The knowledge, the realization that we cannot know what another thinks.
Why this blithering rambling that has nothing to do with what I shall write about? I do not know - it somehow feels right at the time. After all, this is the balm for the aching heart - I intend to make the utmost use of this psychologist's chair that I am sitting upon. There is this horrible sadness that has descended upon me, a haze upon my mind and a millstone around my chest - a depressive burden that I can understand and cannot understand at the same time. I strongly suspect that this has much to do with my past - I guess I can be considered a weakling, a person who clutches to his past, despite the complete absurdity of doing so. Because no one can understand how much the past means to me - even if they have walked the same path as I, they cannot understand, for they are not me. People react differently to situations.
There is this horrid feeling of amnesia - the quiet desperation of a person who finds the past important but is silently forgetting it. The past that has made me is being forgotten slowly, day by day - and in the process, I am being destroyed. Who can understand the pain of my inferiority complex? I can only assume that there are some among the members of my invisible audience that suffer from this madness as well. I do not know if what I say is true for them - I can only attest to the truth of my own story. The bizarre humor of the gods - that the madness of inferiority complex results in the individual being torn between the sense of utter uselessness and the heights of utter arrogance!
Yes. In my case, the inferiority complex is externalized by the most crushing weakness - the absolute conviction of my own lack of self-worth; as well as the most arrogant superiority - that those around me are insects, not worthy of even a second glance! The irony of the contradiction, the pain of the oscillation! I can barely remember the past, even as I feverishly try to commit my past onto something tangible - I just remember the comparisons, the infernal comparisons that pit me against those smarter, stronger, better. The oh-so-subtle attempt at child psychology that tries to push the child to greatest, the painful jab that tells the child - "Look at him! Look at the one that is your friend! Look at how much smarter he is, how much handsome he is, how much more hardworking he is! Look at him, and then look at yourself. Look at the gulf between the two of you. Look in the mirror and see what I mean." It can spur a person to storm the heavens, but it can also destroy a person - in a sense, both happened.
Where is my confidence now? Every time I try to do something, I cannot believe that I will do it well - yet amidst that lack of security is the drive to perfection, the desire to create the perfect essay, the perfect idea. The quixotic quest for perfection. Yet there is no self-worth. One of my acquaintances once told me, jokingly - "You're not in China anymore, walk beside me, not behind me" - it is the force of a habit, a habit that must have subconsciously asserted itself over the course of many years. The sense that the life of a friend is worth more than mine - that I walk behind so that I may react by sacrifice, that if I see a car bearing upon a person I love, I will have the time to jump in front. Because their life is worth more than mine. This does not go for everybody, only friends - but I nevertheless still continue to walk behind everyone else. The demon at the back of my mind whispering - "Yes, always be ready - give up your life for the life of another. In doing so, you give yourself meaning, you, the lesser, sacrificing yourself for someone greater. In death, you would have done more than you ever would in life!"
Yet there is the maddening superiority complex through which I view the world around me - the utter contempt I have to so many of those that are around me. I am already barely human, and they are worse than me? I am stupid, and they are more foolish than I? I create the imperfect, but their products are more flawed than mine? I am already at the bottom of the chain, and they are below me? I hate them with a fiery passion - a hatred that would be incomprehensible to anyone else. I hate them for their weakness - no one can be worse than I! - there is nothing more despicable than a person who acts less than what he is! The utterly pathetic wretch that I am faced with, they are pathetic because they should not be! But the hatred stems from fear as well - the hatred stemming not only from the patheticness of the creature before me, but also the fear of the creature's blossoming, it's awakening! The day in which the hidden capabilities I see in him assert themselves like a rising sun and I am forced to concede defeat. To concede defeat to that which I had once considered the lowest of the low. Because I am not the genius other see me as, I am in no way brilliant - I started the race crippled and it is only by sheer effort that I am where I am now. But effort and determination are inferior to genius - that the blood and tears of the determined are easily replicated by the brilliant should they desire to exert it. It is the hatred that the flawed feel towards the perfect, coupled with the hatred a determined person would feel towards the slothful.
Where does my determination come from? Where else but from hatred? Hatred is the fuel to the fire - the combination of hatred and pride creating a flawed creature that refuses to lose to those undeserving. High school was hell, both at school and at home - at school, a complete outcaste, at home, being completely at odds with my uncle. Loneliness, loneliness, loneliness - it is everywhere! The horrible darkness that surrounds me, engulfs me! I was even an outcaste in school - I was never in a group before I was excluded and thus never an outcast, I was excluded from the start! A few friendships, but fleetingly transient - the friendships that are completely meaningless, the friendships that I have come to define as acquaintanceship. And at home, the inevitable struggle between the rebellious nature of a teenager and the dominating nature of a petty guardian - I cannot even remember the incidents, I just remember the pain. The tears, the anger, the abject hatred. And most clearly, the pain - the pain of being rejected by the rest of my extended family on the basis of the lies that were told by my guardians. I was blood! She was not! She was an outsider, and yet they believed her word over mine! I was an outcaste as home as well. This is the hatred that I felt then, the hatred that is still festering within the heart.
But that is not enough, no. The torment does not end here - that hatred is hatred for an individual, but it is a passive hatred. It is the fact that I was looked down on, sneered upon - how dare they? How dare those cretins sneer at me? How dare they laugh at me when they were educated at a complete shithole of a university? How dare they preach to me of God after what they have done to me? I reject them, I reject their claims, I reject their god! This is the hatred I speak of, the hatred that burns, the hatred that drives me to succeed at all costs - the hatred to prove them wrong! And it is only because of weakness and my flaws that I have to exert myself to do so. Because, deep inside, I am horrified - horrified and terrified at the thought of them being proved right.
Hatred, the hatred that has lighted the fire of determination that has fueled me for five years. Five bloody years of my life, spent chasing perfection. But all things fade in time, and the fire burns with less vigor than before, I start moving off - I start being passionate again. I start to love something other than that which lies before me. And herein lies the problem - the person who has deprived himself of love, loves too much. For five years, I had battened down the hatches, devoted myself completely to studies - I had no real existence outside of work, but that did not matter. It is only recently that it has begun to matter. It is only recently that I have begun to care again. And that can only spell disaster. It can only spell disaster because I shall love and lose - it might've been lonely to not care, but at least it was comfortable. I have died once, and the path before me leads to a second death. The first death might've been transient, but the second may destroy me. And yet, I cannot stop. I cannot stop because I am human, all too human - I hope, the stupid, meaningless human delusion of hope. Hoping that I am wrong, even though I not I will not be. Knowing that I will not have gain what I desire most, because I know myself:
Ich bin untermensch. I am sub-human.
With Sorrow,
Kahlyban.