Pity Party, aka The Mystery
So when it turns out I've stayed up too late, what do I do?
Honestly, I'd just like to rage about it, to express my anger and sadness and feelings of helplessness. The trouble with raging is it either just breaks things, or else it wakes people up so they're tired the next day, or it tears out my throat from the force of the sound, or ...
Raging is as stupid as it is pointless. Raging is out of the question.
There's crying, but that's almost worse than rage. I feel torn up inside, and I never get to a point where I feel cleansed. No, crying is out too.
When I was in my teens I'd just run until I was tired, and then I'd sit in one place, well away from people, until I felt better. The waiting could take hours, and I'd come home well after dark, or at the very edge of dark.
The trouble is, none of these options is very useful to me when I've stayed up too late and screwed up my sleep schedule. I do feel angry at myself, and I also feel helpless and powerless, and there doesn't seem to be any way of getting back my power or control over myself. Even the drugs don't seem to help me find peace or purpose. I just don't feel like I have a direction of my own, and I never have. I have other people's directions, things they want me to do in order for them to feel happy with me. A lot of what other people ask of me is so simple, too. I don't know why I don't do it. It's almost as if I can't do it. Something inside of me keeps me from doing what other people want.
Of course, other days I can do what other people want. Thanks to the drugs, I have more days where I can than days where I can't, but I was hoping I wouldn't ever have another day where I couldn't get myself to go and do things. Perhaps that was childish of me, but I really hoped for it. I mean, if I can't have a purpose of my own, then I thought I could at least stop having problems with doing what other people wanted of me.
I don't feel like I have any dreams left.
Not having my own dreams was one of the most basic reasons I considered suicide. I mean, screw morality, screw honor, if I can't do anything from myself and I can't be obedient, then what's the point of being alive? I'd convinced myself if I wasn't here, the world could go on without me and it might even be stronger for my absence. I wouldn't be here to slow it down, and I wouldn't be a drag on other people's resources. But I can't do that now because there are people in my life I know for a fact I'd hurt if I even tried to hurt myself, and so that option passed. I still feel like that if I stop and really think about it, but the circumstances just don't allow for it anymore.
When I was a kid, I drew, and that was what I did to express myself. I just sort of invented the rules myself and went ahead and did it, produced the story, the characters, the comic books. I got pretty good at it, but I didn't know how to turn it from my own personal project into a business. There was nobody who believed in me that could teach me, either.
So I turned to writing, and I got a little closer to the business of it, but there were things about that I couldn't figure out, either. For one thing, I could never work out an elegant way of ending a story, of resolving the conflict. I can study how other people do it, but their solutions seem much more elegant than my own solutions. The moment I start thinking about the nuts and bolts of the story, I find the inspiration goes out of me and I can't write anything.
I tried to figure out roleplaying, and I actually can generate a game if I work really hard at it, but there's no business to that at all. I can't make a living at that. What's left?
I keep not being able to make a bridge between what I like doing and The Money. I can't seem to get there from here.
Yeah, okay, I once was good at programming, and working through the logic of making programs was fun, but it's not me. I can't seem to go from knowing command and program structure to actually doing things with it to make something that works. I've tried studying other people's code to try and understand how it works, but I can't even do that. I can't seem to connect the dots of other people's code so I can see what the compiler thinks it's supposed to do. The only language even like that is Machine Language, and you know I don't have the patience for that.
Well, bottom line, I guess I have to make the calls and write the notes that let people know I'm not going into town tomorrow.
Honestly, I'd just like to rage about it, to express my anger and sadness and feelings of helplessness. The trouble with raging is it either just breaks things, or else it wakes people up so they're tired the next day, or it tears out my throat from the force of the sound, or ...
Raging is as stupid as it is pointless. Raging is out of the question.
There's crying, but that's almost worse than rage. I feel torn up inside, and I never get to a point where I feel cleansed. No, crying is out too.
When I was in my teens I'd just run until I was tired, and then I'd sit in one place, well away from people, until I felt better. The waiting could take hours, and I'd come home well after dark, or at the very edge of dark.
The trouble is, none of these options is very useful to me when I've stayed up too late and screwed up my sleep schedule. I do feel angry at myself, and I also feel helpless and powerless, and there doesn't seem to be any way of getting back my power or control over myself. Even the drugs don't seem to help me find peace or purpose. I just don't feel like I have a direction of my own, and I never have. I have other people's directions, things they want me to do in order for them to feel happy with me. A lot of what other people ask of me is so simple, too. I don't know why I don't do it. It's almost as if I can't do it. Something inside of me keeps me from doing what other people want.
Of course, other days I can do what other people want. Thanks to the drugs, I have more days where I can than days where I can't, but I was hoping I wouldn't ever have another day where I couldn't get myself to go and do things. Perhaps that was childish of me, but I really hoped for it. I mean, if I can't have a purpose of my own, then I thought I could at least stop having problems with doing what other people wanted of me.
I don't feel like I have any dreams left.
Not having my own dreams was one of the most basic reasons I considered suicide. I mean, screw morality, screw honor, if I can't do anything from myself and I can't be obedient, then what's the point of being alive? I'd convinced myself if I wasn't here, the world could go on without me and it might even be stronger for my absence. I wouldn't be here to slow it down, and I wouldn't be a drag on other people's resources. But I can't do that now because there are people in my life I know for a fact I'd hurt if I even tried to hurt myself, and so that option passed. I still feel like that if I stop and really think about it, but the circumstances just don't allow for it anymore.
When I was a kid, I drew, and that was what I did to express myself. I just sort of invented the rules myself and went ahead and did it, produced the story, the characters, the comic books. I got pretty good at it, but I didn't know how to turn it from my own personal project into a business. There was nobody who believed in me that could teach me, either.
So I turned to writing, and I got a little closer to the business of it, but there were things about that I couldn't figure out, either. For one thing, I could never work out an elegant way of ending a story, of resolving the conflict. I can study how other people do it, but their solutions seem much more elegant than my own solutions. The moment I start thinking about the nuts and bolts of the story, I find the inspiration goes out of me and I can't write anything.
I tried to figure out roleplaying, and I actually can generate a game if I work really hard at it, but there's no business to that at all. I can't make a living at that. What's left?
I keep not being able to make a bridge between what I like doing and The Money. I can't seem to get there from here.
Yeah, okay, I once was good at programming, and working through the logic of making programs was fun, but it's not me. I can't seem to go from knowing command and program structure to actually doing things with it to make something that works. I've tried studying other people's code to try and understand how it works, but I can't even do that. I can't seem to connect the dots of other people's code so I can see what the compiler thinks it's supposed to do. The only language even like that is Machine Language, and you know I don't have the patience for that.
Well, bottom line, I guess I have to make the calls and write the notes that let people know I'm not going into town tomorrow.