Struck By Your Self-Criticism
“Struck by your self-criticism,” as if becoming so candid with a person as to reveal the painfully tight girdle he’s been wearing all this time. To really let loose with someone you feel comfortable with, only to learn how unwise of a decision that actually was. Talking and talking, let a person talk and they will tell you their every crime and disgusting impulse, one by one, to fill up the silence you’ve presented to them. The interrogation style which reliably leads to the most confessions (outside of the phonebook to the kidneys style, of course.) I often catch myself either feeling or being felt as an interrogator or judge in conversation. My self-criticism des define my every relationship before it even starts as it serves as the bedrock from which I encounter and speak to the world. The criticism I have for myself informs the gaze with which I see others, as well. And loved ones will, of course, be subject to the same standard I would typically reserve for myself. The conversations, perhaps, could or should be avoided to preserve the sanctity of peace in a long-term relationship. Honesty with a mate need not be so glaring as to hurt the other’s feelings or stir defensiveness around their most tender buttons, gradually learned, one by one, over years together. But some people are tender all over, as they have been beaten and developed and grown into a beaten body. The trauma of childhood is a core trait that cannot simply be changed. It is the archeological eras of identity and the most primary basis of the social self. More recent traumas can, in theory, are still malleable and able to heal; the sooner the better. But other wounds altered fundamental development, with the emotional state growing into and around an emotional injury in the same way that a severe physical injury as an infant or young child can alter the developmental trajectory of the body in significant ways. Bones must be set or they will fuse crooked, spinal deformities, the straightness of one’s skeletal column, our health most basically visible by our physical symmetry. Our most ancient reptile brain, in part, still carries these most rudimentary and instinctual impressions of a stranger, sight on scene. Symmetry is one visual cue of illness, but also, thereabouts, is the subtle perceptual cues signifying inflammation in another. Our evolutionary survival was dependent on sensing and “sniffing out” even the most faintly detectable sign of illness and distancing ourselves from that individual. The hypervigilant germaphobe of our prehistory would avoid the contagion that, in many instances, no doubt devastated and wiped out whole social groups. The stereotypical Hot Mess -- all red-faced, emphatic, and desperately too-close -- is repulsive to us for a reason.
I want to hide here from sight. I never want to leave this bedroom or be seen, cooking dinner or getting groceries, I don’t want to be seen as I’ve become by anyone; in that way, the depressive wallows in shame in a vicious downward cycle of further and further self-degradation. I don’t want to see the sun, I want it all to be dark here, where I am, because no one can see my face in the dark and I need never acknowledge another person’s gaze again. Explore my wounds in a safe place, feeling the edges of a scar, as if out of habit, long after it has hardened. How long can I get away with it, though? How long can this excuse possibly hold?
“All the reasons were just lies to buy myself some time.” -Ocean of Noise
I sang the song, Ocean of Noise, and surprised myself by the mournful crying that came through the notes, the crack of the voice as I broke down and again, feeling my power in that sound, introducing it as another aspect of expression I could control and utilize in the artifice, even though I have never heard it utilized in that way before. To sing as an actor, to sing as a medium, invoking levels of authentic emotion in a controlled way in service of the art. The emotion of anger is easy and common, but to actually hear someone cry, to wail deeply and mournfully, is a very unsettling thing - both to do and to hear. Lost years, lost decades, lost lives, one after another, until the lesson is learned and the work is completed (the work is never completed.) Steps are overcome, one by one, as a self-perpetuating inclination towards ascent we all seem to have, whether it is expres
I want to hide here from sight. I never want to leave this bedroom or be seen, cooking dinner or getting groceries, I don’t want to be seen as I’ve become by anyone; in that way, the depressive wallows in shame in a vicious downward cycle of further and further self-degradation. I don’t want to see the sun, I want it all to be dark here, where I am, because no one can see my face in the dark and I need never acknowledge another person’s gaze again. Explore my wounds in a safe place, feeling the edges of a scar, as if out of habit, long after it has hardened. How long can I get away with it, though? How long can this excuse possibly hold?
“All the reasons were just lies to buy myself some time.” -Ocean of Noise
I sang the song, Ocean of Noise, and surprised myself by the mournful crying that came through the notes, the crack of the voice as I broke down and again, feeling my power in that sound, introducing it as another aspect of expression I could control and utilize in the artifice, even though I have never heard it utilized in that way before. To sing as an actor, to sing as a medium, invoking levels of authentic emotion in a controlled way in service of the art. The emotion of anger is easy and common, but to actually hear someone cry, to wail deeply and mournfully, is a very unsettling thing - both to do and to hear. Lost years, lost decades, lost lives, one after another, until the lesson is learned and the work is completed (the work is never completed.) Steps are overcome, one by one, as a self-perpetuating inclination towards ascent we all seem to have, whether it is expres