not sure
when obviously, I really *am* sure. But this certainty is an ugliness I don't like feeling. It's not quite as morose or tepid as feeling like you want to cry all the time; but it is rather like this unnameable ache in your viscera. There's a sweet sickness to the empty feeling that keeps deepening with each attempt to comprehend it.
Now, officially - and unconnected to one another - four different sources have opined "keep this up, and you will die".
I shuddered the first time, but snorted it away as well-intentioned hyperbole. The second time I flinched and looked away, thinking "yea, yea..." But after that it was like needing to catch your breath because you'd just heard about your diagnosis: it's terminal.
As the great genius and insightful man known as the Professor has said for years, "if three people tell you you're drunk, sit down."
Maybe I'm finally ready to sit.
One my six axioms of life is The Pawn Shop Axiom; a psychological truism that is the basis for the marketplace of the same name. Roughly, it states that the more you've invested in something, the less likely you are to let it go - even after the point where you've eclipsed the value. Logic would say that if you've been paying five bucks in interest payments every month to keep a $25 TV in hock [with hopes of coming in at some point with $30 and taking it back], you shouldn't make more than six of those payments. Because if you opted to place that same five bucks a month in a sock drawer, after six months you could just purchase a new TV. This is the brilliance of the scheme -- because if you keep paying out, you'll have eclipsed the value- and rather than cut bait and walk, the psychology is "well, I can't let it go now... I'm into that crappy TV for $75!! The more you invest, the more ludicrous it seems to let go - because you're so steeped in it - it represents the value you've ascribed to it as opposed to its actual worth.
Doomed projects work the same way. Dead-end jobs, ditto. The most difficult to extricate oneself from, however, is the Toxic Relationship. Why? Aside from the addictive nature - there's a gnawing sensation that all of your efforts, your boatload of sacrifices, your ceaseless energies, your selfless giving, your undying emotions and expressions of same are some convenient fiction you've created. They go unrecognized, unappreciated, unreciprocated -- and all you can think is "if I just do more, or better, or different - the result will make sense. It has to." Because as the type of misguided human who extends these efforts, you have been socialized in some measure to imagine that they will be returned; particularly by someone who claims to care about you.
It just ain't so. And no amount of trying to wrap your mind around it will change anything. No second- or third- or fiftieth-chances will end up making a difference. But after all you've put in - even after getting nothing; or less than nothing in return - you'll be damned if you walk away now. How can you? You've poured years and thousands of dollars and countless words and amazing deeds into this fucking thing and by God, it's going to start paying off.
It isn't. Accepting that is essentially admitting that everything's been a waste in one sense. You've given things you'll never get back. You might even sustain some sort of quasi-permanent emotional damage, physical injury, and/or financial strife. But none of it means that you're getting it. You're entitled, you've earned it, and it sure as hell isn't remotely what anyone could categorize as 'fair'. It just is.
It's an empty feeling; a horrible sensation. To be dismissed, ignored, belittled, shrugged off, forgotten, misrepresented in memory, conveniently villainized, reviled, expunged, erased. To know that if you had put another decade or another fifty grand or another sweeping gesture of dedication or anything else - your very fucking life - into it you'd still be where you are right now.
And I am. It's sad and ugly and empty. No two ways about it.
Then, I suppose, you detox. Get centered on something with measurable results that isn't going to confuse or harm you. You accept that being detached from sickness is preferable to being attached to the hope of wellness.
Must make the effort. My only other choice is death, it would seem.
Now, officially - and unconnected to one another - four different sources have opined "keep this up, and you will die".
I shuddered the first time, but snorted it away as well-intentioned hyperbole. The second time I flinched and looked away, thinking "yea, yea..." But after that it was like needing to catch your breath because you'd just heard about your diagnosis: it's terminal.
As the great genius and insightful man known as the Professor has said for years, "if three people tell you you're drunk, sit down."
Maybe I'm finally ready to sit.
One my six axioms of life is The Pawn Shop Axiom; a psychological truism that is the basis for the marketplace of the same name. Roughly, it states that the more you've invested in something, the less likely you are to let it go - even after the point where you've eclipsed the value. Logic would say that if you've been paying five bucks in interest payments every month to keep a $25 TV in hock [with hopes of coming in at some point with $30 and taking it back], you shouldn't make more than six of those payments. Because if you opted to place that same five bucks a month in a sock drawer, after six months you could just purchase a new TV. This is the brilliance of the scheme -- because if you keep paying out, you'll have eclipsed the value- and rather than cut bait and walk, the psychology is "well, I can't let it go now... I'm into that crappy TV for $75!! The more you invest, the more ludicrous it seems to let go - because you're so steeped in it - it represents the value you've ascribed to it as opposed to its actual worth.
Doomed projects work the same way. Dead-end jobs, ditto. The most difficult to extricate oneself from, however, is the Toxic Relationship. Why? Aside from the addictive nature - there's a gnawing sensation that all of your efforts, your boatload of sacrifices, your ceaseless energies, your selfless giving, your undying emotions and expressions of same are some convenient fiction you've created. They go unrecognized, unappreciated, unreciprocated -- and all you can think is "if I just do more, or better, or different - the result will make sense. It has to." Because as the type of misguided human who extends these efforts, you have been socialized in some measure to imagine that they will be returned; particularly by someone who claims to care about you.
It just ain't so. And no amount of trying to wrap your mind around it will change anything. No second- or third- or fiftieth-chances will end up making a difference. But after all you've put in - even after getting nothing; or less than nothing in return - you'll be damned if you walk away now. How can you? You've poured years and thousands of dollars and countless words and amazing deeds into this fucking thing and by God, it's going to start paying off.
It isn't. Accepting that is essentially admitting that everything's been a waste in one sense. You've given things you'll never get back. You might even sustain some sort of quasi-permanent emotional damage, physical injury, and/or financial strife. But none of it means that you're getting it. You're entitled, you've earned it, and it sure as hell isn't remotely what anyone could categorize as 'fair'. It just is.
It's an empty feeling; a horrible sensation. To be dismissed, ignored, belittled, shrugged off, forgotten, misrepresented in memory, conveniently villainized, reviled, expunged, erased. To know that if you had put another decade or another fifty grand or another sweeping gesture of dedication or anything else - your very fucking life - into it you'd still be where you are right now.
And I am. It's sad and ugly and empty. No two ways about it.
Then, I suppose, you detox. Get centered on something with measurable results that isn't going to confuse or harm you. You accept that being detached from sickness is preferable to being attached to the hope of wellness.
Must make the effort. My only other choice is death, it would seem.