Admissions in Search of Truth…
My outlook on life has changed greatly in the years since I decided I needed to become my true self at all costs. I no longer look to the future with dread, I no longer accept the present with a feeling of despondency, I no longer look at the past with disdain. I have grown mentally and emotionally, to the point where I truly do feel some amount of peace in my life.
This is not to say I no longer feel unsettled and confused… On the contrary: I can honestly say that every day of my life holds at least a bit of trepidation. What I mean by “peace” is that I can now look at my inner turmoil in a productive way. Instead of becoming upset – lashing out at other people or constantly irritable – I am able to reflect in introspection. I can look at my feelings and recognize them for the emotions they are.
In earlier versions of myself, I had a particularly difficult time discerning my own emotional state. It all felt like one big tangle of negativity that caught in my throat and weighed down my chest and caused me to feel unstable. I didn’t understand the feelings or how to handle them, so I just suppressed them and went through life acting like I felt I should act. I made sure not to “rock the boat”, I made sure to respect other people’s wishes, and I made sure to quash my wishes and needs before they ever even formed into coherent thoughts.
Admittedly, this is still my default coping mechanism. It takes me time to recognize when I am upset, and it is not easy for me to check my thoughts and pick out their fallacies. Everyone wants to believe they are “right”, myself included. The problem is that I think I’m “right” in believing that I’m a piece of crap excuse for a human being… any contrary suggestion from others is immediately looked upon with suspicion and some huffy sense that “they don’t know what they’re talking about “.
The weird part is… I know that I’m NOT a terrible person. I know in my heart that I feel love for and care about all humans, even the ones I simultaneously despise or am wary of. Many people have thanked me because they felt touched that I wanted to help them. To me, their thanks were unnecessary and excessive, because it’s very easy to help other people get stuff done.
So, I know intelligently that I am not horrible and that people are capable of liking me (or some aspect of my character), but I still believe emotionally that I am horrible and unlikable. This is because for every person in my life who has been kind or appreciative toward me, there have been 10-15 persons who were hateful and derisive. Naturally, the majority vote “wins” out when I imagine my sense of self. Hundreds of people have intoned their distaste… who am I to disagree with them?
In earlier versions of myself, I was nobody. I had no right to disagree, because they were right – I was a useless, worthless, stupid, ugly, dog-faced, fat, cow-like, annoying, narcissistic, arrogant, self-important, brooding, retarded, waste of air, piece of shit freak of an uppity nigger. Realistically, that’s all I’ll ever be to any number of humans. Realistically, that’s all I ever was to myself.
Reading the aforementioned paragraph, I still nod in agreement, “Yup, that’s me.” Not because I have ever defined myself by any of those terms in my soul, but because that’s how I know the world defines me. There’s never been a point in denying it. As far as I can tell, my identity in the world was and is whatever other people come up with. Generally speaking, my identity in the world is entirely based upon my phenotype – despite the fact that my actual genetic makeup is quite complex and diverse, all that matters is how I physically look. People assume my identity based on a profile they’ve made up or been taught, I don’t matter as an individual at all. Most people don’t give a shit about one’s self-identity; their opinion of you is your identity. And so, I trotted through life as an obedient milk cow would – only useful when I could do something for people, otherwise just a waste of resources and should just be killed off.
I still feel like that’s true. I don’t think I deserve a good life, and certainly don’t deserve love or happiness. When I remember the faces and words of people who have intentionally hurt me, I feel like I want to die. I remember every detail – their eyes, the flush of their cheeks, the spittle flying from their lips, the way their mouths contorted in disgust and hate, the cruel smiles and cold laughter, the satisfaction at my physical pain, the anger at my lack of emotional reaction…
For much of my life, I longed for death because it hurt my soul so much to live every moment of every day with the knowledge that I wasn’t worth anything at all. I felt guilty that my presence caused other people to have to take time out of their lives to hurt me. I was just such a piece of trash that I caused trouble for everyone else. I deserved to be punished. I deserved to be brutalized. I deserved any negative word that came my way – it was my fault for being present and making them say those things. That’s all there was to it.
I learned to show whatever emotion they wanted me to show, to encourage them in their anger and allow them to tire themselves. When I do not show any emotion, it just further flames their fires.
It’s still like that for me, online anyway. I go about my business, interjecting information or opinion where I feel the necessity. I don’t have any close friends or buddies, and I don’t pretend to agree with people or try to convince them to “like me”. Every so often, people will turn on me and voice their disgust while trying to cause me emotional pain. When I do not react in the ways they want me to, they persist – escalating their attacks to spew the most vile things they can think of while feeling quite justified in doing so.
I’ve always thought it was strange that people feel justified in hating or degrading other people. In my head, there is no excuse to try to hurt other people. They can hurt me all they want to, because that’s all I’m good for… but for me to intentionally TRY to hurt someone else? Why would I do something like that? I feel like most people (I say most people because one classification of people I cannot respect are child molesters and pedophiles. While I was a mental health nurse, I had to maintain a cordial exterior around these people. As a layperson, I do not.) deserve some modicum of respect.
I learned this lesson at age four when, as a kindergarten bully, I knew a girl who said she had a secret but wouldn’t tell me. I became enraged: how dare she taunt me like that?! I snapped my fingers at a crony and demanded that she hurt the secret-keeper. I told my crony to pinch the girl, even specified that she was to do this with her fingernails, until the secret came out. The secret was that the girl’s 15-year-old sister was going to run away with a 40-year-old man. Needless to say, the girl was crying by the time my crony extracted this secret. Being exceptionally devious, I innocently told the inquisitive teacher that I hadn’t touched her at all and she was crying because she was a baby.
It was later that day, after I’d reflected upon this event, that I decided that I had done something wrong. I recognized that I am innately cold and calculating, with the capacity for great cruelty when I feel justified. There is a hyper-vigilant predator in me that is ready to spring into action at any moment. Mostly, it makes me aware of my surroundings and hones my ability to perceive unknown variables… but it is there, and it is always ready. Rarely have I let this part of myself be seen to any extent, but when it comes out in anger, I literally see red (maybe the capillaries in my eyes become engorged?) and go into a rage where it becomes kill or be killed. And, that is not any exaggeration. I actually have the thought, “Kill.” and go ahead with destruction. Thankfully, this has never resulted in real murder.
This scares me greatly.
And so, I keep a tight rein on my emotion. I am aware of other people and their intent, I see that a lack of response is unnerving, and so I automatically formulate “correct” responses without actually feeling them. The only vulnerability I have is that when I feel like there is an injustice: I feel I must intervene on the behalf of others. If the injustice is toward me, I feel hopelessly misunderstood; I become overwhelmed with despair and begin to weep bitter and angry tears while staring helplessly at the person who has accused me.
Otherwise, though, it takes a lot for me to lose my cool, and I generally just run on logic and humor. Honestly, this is probably where people get the idea that I think I’m “better than” them – I rarely show anger or surprise or any kind of emotional response to stimuli, and yet I do often point out the faults in their logic so that they may learn from this. I laugh sometimes or smile silently, or walk away… but that’s about it.
I think it was sometime in my teenage years that I became completely immune to insults. I hear them, I see the people doing the insulting… but I don’t feel anything about it. It’s just a fact of life. I’ve been called every name in the book and some invented ones, and it just doesn’t matter. Sometimes, I intentionally allow people to rant at me because I understand that sometimes people just need to rage – and it’s better if they take it out on me than on some innocent bystander whose life would actually be affected. I’m expendable.
Besides, it’s not like any insult could ever come close to the things I think about myself. So, insults aren’t insulting to me. If anything, I agree with them in the, “You’re probably right, and not the first person to say that.” kind of way. Interestingly, this makes it very easy to get out of confrontations. Agreeing with aggressors leaves them confused, lacking the ammunition and fuel for their attacks.
At any rate, while I do automatically think of myself in negative terms, I do see the alternative. I have always been able to see the alternative, and I’ve always known intelligently that I don’t deserve bad treatment because no human deserves bad treatment. The trouble I have, though, is that I’m not sure if I actually qualify as “human” in any way other than DNA sequencing, so I’m relatively unclear on whether I deserve to be treated humanely.
By default, my life is the neutral point. I see it in the worst possible light because that protects me from being hurt or disappointed. Once in a while, there is a pleasant event… but I am always prepared for life to become worse at any moment, and I always expect the worst. The phrase, “Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”, makes me laugh. It’s probably nice to have hope. I often wonder what it is like for those people who have had a relatively worry-free life: they are given many chances, their mistakes are forgotten, they never have to choose between ‘bad’ and ‘worse’ because they always have a ‘good’ option just because they were born in the right place at the right time. Nobody judges them harshly, and anything they do is understandable and acceptable, justifiable.
Most of the time, I don’t understand my place in the world. There’s just nowhere that I “fit”. Now that I have ceased mimicking ‘normal’ human behavior, it is glaringly obvious that I can’t and don’t fit in. I don’t feel comfortable with other people, especially women. I make other people uncomfortable by talking about what I feel are interesting things, and having no interest in superficial conversation. I have “strange” and unladylike interests. Gossip bothers me greatly, and I try to avoid even hearing it at any cost. I make people uneasy by bluntly stating my perspective. I make people uncomfortable by being present but silent. Really, I just make people uncomfortable.
And so, my solution is to take myself out of the equation.
I am searching for my truth, to understand who I am and why I exist. I know there are no other people in my life who can help me with this. A lot of the time, I wish that I had no interest in the, “Why?” part of existence. It seems like curiosity is a bad thing – I have noticed that most people are content with accepting what they hear from reliable sources and will continue repeating sound bites indefinitely. When asked to explain or defend their words, they cannot do so. It’s disturbing to me to see people’s “personal opinions” do not deviate from those presented in the media. It’s disturbing to recognize that some people are potentially incapable of forming an independent understanding of a topic or finding conclusions through deductive reasoning.
When I say I search for truth, I speak of my personal truth. I want to find the truth for myself. I am well aware that what I perceive as truth is most often what everyone else perceives as frightening. I am well aware that my understanding of reality further isolates and alienates me from other people. I am well aware that I will likely never find another human who is capable of accepting me entirely as I am. I am well aware that people who find me fascinating today will likely find me irritating tomorrow. I am well aware that some people tolerate me due to a sense of duty, not authentic care.
It’s almost unimaginable to me that there are people who could accept me as I am – accept my flaws and strange ways of thinking, or try to understand my intent instead of automatically assuming that I am “the enemy”. It’s difficult for me to imagine that I could ever have any type of informative discussion without being personally attacked by other participants. I mean, I can’t say that’s ever happened to me in my entire life. Bizarre. I can’t imagine finding people who would just accept the challenge to debate without becoming emotionally invested in the argument. Even people who have called me “friend” become highly agitated or offended when I pick at the holes in their arguments. Most people just start in with the, “you don’t know me” or “I don’t know you well enough.” cop-outs to escape anything that even seems like it might be complex conversation. They’re afraid to discuss anything deep. I get it.
Honestly, I can’t imagine knowing people who are capable of considering frightening possibilities and discussing unknown variables without being overcome with emotion and then projecting their upset feelings on me. I can’t imagine having real friends who would still be friendly despite our differences or be willing to laugh off an argument instead of holding a grudge for years. I truly can’t imagine not feeling alone and misunderstood. It’s some kind of fantasy to me. And, I’ve never believed fantasy was anything more than entertainment.
My fantasy life is rich and full of love and care and goodness and amazement. However, I am well aware that I have these imaginings only because I feel much pain when I think about reality. And, it’s an escape – “It would be lovely if…” – a reprieve from the harshness of my thoughts and from the fickle words of others.
I long to have genuine companionship with another human being.
That is the truth.