Earth-shattering Insight into Me. Yeeeeeeees.
People have asked at different points why I'm as I am, and most importantly why I seek to harm or destroy myself in various ways on a semi-regular basis despite the fact that a lot of the time I don't actually want to be dead; it just ends up a lesser of two evils or something to do because I'm off my head for some reason, which isn't great as satisfactory explanations go.
I'm moderately clever and moderately talented.
And because of this I'm smart enough to know two things: I'm not brilliant, and I'm too proud to settle or pretend. In other words I prefer my own independent misery to being owned and happy... I'd rather starve than do a 9-5 job that held no rhyme or reason for me... That sort of thing. I also know that taking this route in life is a difficult path. A mad genius may be lauded, may be forgiven their strangeness because of their genius. But I'm no genius; I'm just odd enough to get ignored or kicked for being odd.
(Having two elder brothers taught me this in a minor manner. Secondary school taught me this in fekking spades. And no, I don't imagine for a single second that was really what anyone intended, none the less that was the lesson I walked away with.)
Bloody mindedness, perversity - being me was the only thing I felt I had - the only thing that couldn't be taken or broken without my consent. And so I refused to ever give it up. I couldn't even pretend. My father told me how at school in the 1950s he'd 'played the game' to an extent, doing just enough to fit in so his life wasn't utter hell. And I realised if I did the same my life would be easier. And also that I could no more do it than pull out my own eyes.
So. Since I'd be kicked for being different-but-not-brilliant, I sought somehow to bring that under my own control. If the world upset me, I'd carve a hole in my wrist to mark the hurt and to show that I wasn't weak because no matter how much I cried or felt small, no one else I knew had the courage to take a blade to their own flesh, digging deeper and deeper despite the pain and watching the skin smile open and the blood run down.
You want to spit on me? Fine; well done, you're very powerful. But do you have the will, the nerve, the strength to pare open your own arm in casual violence? I think not. However I do - can do it with barely a blink, right down to all the inner workings. You're not stronger than me - you have no mastery over me.
Predictably, as with all dodgy coping mechanisms employed under pressure, at some point the lines blurred. Things slipped from 'you're pathetic and so are your games' to 'I'm pathetic, but you and your games are worse, so if anyone is gonna stab me it'll be me.' That's not a very neat way of explaining what happened over seven years. Perhaps more elegant to say by the age of eighteen I had pride like a glacial ice-sheet but the self esteem of an over-fried egg. And that's a disastrous combination - too scared to move, too proud to bow - it's not gonna end well.
Getting out of school helped. Going to University I managed to fix myself quite a bit, but a lot of the fault-lines ran too deep for me or anyone else to mend, so when under stress I shattered again. By that point, me cutting holes in myself and being depressed had gone on for far too long to actually require much of a reason; it was more like something that happened - like rain. Do you ask why it rains? No, you don't. You just hurry and either get home before you're soaked, or you don't.
A couple of months back my father asked me why I constantly tried to destroy myself. He said what's more I sabotaged myself at every turn - choosing to draw gothic things or to write weird semi-horror stories because I knew there was no danger of anyone ever wanting them. (He really didn't seem to get that since I like weird fantasy scifi horror gothic stuff that might be why I tried to produce it - because it entertained me - not as some weird artistic form of terrorism against myself.) However, I discovered I didn't really have any satisfactory arguments for why I tried to destroy myself other than 'I don't like me' and no arguments for that other than 'I know me and I'm not impressed' which, since it reveals self-prejudice to the Nth degree, isn't worth much...
Last night, for no good reason, I suddenly understood, why I am still self-destructive no matter the change in circumstances or what time and distance have smoothed over. It all comes back to having pride but no confidence, of being just self-aware and clever enough to know all of my limitations and be disappointed by them. I see me, and I calculate that in life I'm not good enough and the world's not obliging enough for me to get what I want. And I know what the trying will cost me.... I still try - I can't not - but when things get bad, if anyone is going to prove my downfall it'll be myself, because that's the only victory I have left.
===
I make no claims the above is sane, makes sense, or applies to anyone else in a similar situation. It's just what my brain suddenly threw up in my lap last night. Also, there's a chance that if anyone presents this argument to me at a later date I'll bristle and tell them it's rubbish; but that's only because I have no love of anyone but me making grand pronouncements about how they understand me and can see to the heart of me. (It pisses me off. There are bits of me you don't know. There are bits of me even I don't get. And I've lived with me every second of my life, a claim nothing else living can make. This being the case, what the hell makes you think you know me better than I? Shush.)
===
Then there was tarot, which was highly appropriate.
I know what I think it means, but anyone else is welcome to offer their interpretation. (And yes, 'The Mourner' isn't a standard tarot card, it's one of mine. Stands for wasted energy, grief, self harm. Cards are named and numbered in bigger pic in scrapbook if you are interested - clicky!)
===
Sooooo. There you go. Wasn't that enlightening? =P
I'm moderately clever and moderately talented.
And because of this I'm smart enough to know two things: I'm not brilliant, and I'm too proud to settle or pretend. In other words I prefer my own independent misery to being owned and happy... I'd rather starve than do a 9-5 job that held no rhyme or reason for me... That sort of thing. I also know that taking this route in life is a difficult path. A mad genius may be lauded, may be forgiven their strangeness because of their genius. But I'm no genius; I'm just odd enough to get ignored or kicked for being odd.
(Having two elder brothers taught me this in a minor manner. Secondary school taught me this in fekking spades. And no, I don't imagine for a single second that was really what anyone intended, none the less that was the lesson I walked away with.)
Bloody mindedness, perversity - being me was the only thing I felt I had - the only thing that couldn't be taken or broken without my consent. And so I refused to ever give it up. I couldn't even pretend. My father told me how at school in the 1950s he'd 'played the game' to an extent, doing just enough to fit in so his life wasn't utter hell. And I realised if I did the same my life would be easier. And also that I could no more do it than pull out my own eyes.
So. Since I'd be kicked for being different-but-not-brilliant, I sought somehow to bring that under my own control. If the world upset me, I'd carve a hole in my wrist to mark the hurt and to show that I wasn't weak because no matter how much I cried or felt small, no one else I knew had the courage to take a blade to their own flesh, digging deeper and deeper despite the pain and watching the skin smile open and the blood run down.
You want to spit on me? Fine; well done, you're very powerful. But do you have the will, the nerve, the strength to pare open your own arm in casual violence? I think not. However I do - can do it with barely a blink, right down to all the inner workings. You're not stronger than me - you have no mastery over me.
Predictably, as with all dodgy coping mechanisms employed under pressure, at some point the lines blurred. Things slipped from 'you're pathetic and so are your games' to 'I'm pathetic, but you and your games are worse, so if anyone is gonna stab me it'll be me.' That's not a very neat way of explaining what happened over seven years. Perhaps more elegant to say by the age of eighteen I had pride like a glacial ice-sheet but the self esteem of an over-fried egg. And that's a disastrous combination - too scared to move, too proud to bow - it's not gonna end well.
Getting out of school helped. Going to University I managed to fix myself quite a bit, but a lot of the fault-lines ran too deep for me or anyone else to mend, so when under stress I shattered again. By that point, me cutting holes in myself and being depressed had gone on for far too long to actually require much of a reason; it was more like something that happened - like rain. Do you ask why it rains? No, you don't. You just hurry and either get home before you're soaked, or you don't.
A couple of months back my father asked me why I constantly tried to destroy myself. He said what's more I sabotaged myself at every turn - choosing to draw gothic things or to write weird semi-horror stories because I knew there was no danger of anyone ever wanting them. (He really didn't seem to get that since I like weird fantasy scifi horror gothic stuff that might be why I tried to produce it - because it entertained me - not as some weird artistic form of terrorism against myself.) However, I discovered I didn't really have any satisfactory arguments for why I tried to destroy myself other than 'I don't like me' and no arguments for that other than 'I know me and I'm not impressed' which, since it reveals self-prejudice to the Nth degree, isn't worth much...
Last night, for no good reason, I suddenly understood, why I am still self-destructive no matter the change in circumstances or what time and distance have smoothed over. It all comes back to having pride but no confidence, of being just self-aware and clever enough to know all of my limitations and be disappointed by them. I see me, and I calculate that in life I'm not good enough and the world's not obliging enough for me to get what I want. And I know what the trying will cost me.... I still try - I can't not - but when things get bad, if anyone is going to prove my downfall it'll be myself, because that's the only victory I have left.
===
I make no claims the above is sane, makes sense, or applies to anyone else in a similar situation. It's just what my brain suddenly threw up in my lap last night. Also, there's a chance that if anyone presents this argument to me at a later date I'll bristle and tell them it's rubbish; but that's only because I have no love of anyone but me making grand pronouncements about how they understand me and can see to the heart of me. (It pisses me off. There are bits of me you don't know. There are bits of me even I don't get. And I've lived with me every second of my life, a claim nothing else living can make. This being the case, what the hell makes you think you know me better than I? Shush.)
===
Then there was tarot, which was highly appropriate.
I know what I think it means, but anyone else is welcome to offer their interpretation. (And yes, 'The Mourner' isn't a standard tarot card, it's one of mine. Stands for wasted energy, grief, self harm. Cards are named and numbered in bigger pic in scrapbook if you are interested - clicky!)
===
Sooooo. There you go. Wasn't that enlightening? =P