I'm having a little bit of an existential crisis. It's not because of my birthday, per se, though I know the timing is a bit coincidental. There's just been a lot of shit going on over the last few months that's come to a head and made me look a little closer at myself, my motives, and my own nature.
I suppose everyone goes through it from time to time, and it's certainly not the first time I've had to reevaluate. There's been so much of that self-examination during the last year, driven by internal and external forces. What's bugging me is the extent to which I let those outside things drive the inside things, and I'm not really sure I'm equipped to deal with it.
Absolem told me this week that I'm the dumbest smart person he knows. He went on to say that I don't think, then do think, then overthink about any given situation, and that I invariably make the wrong choice. I suppose the idea that a choice is right or wrong is completely relative, depending upon the side of the choice that happens to be affecting you. I'm always mindful of the fact that my choices impact other people. I often choose not to let that unduly influence my decision to move forward or backward or to just stay in one place, spinning myself dizzy until it's time to move on.
But there is always the issue of how I react to others' opinions, of how I struggle to maintain a sense of self within the bounds of other people's viewpoints. Without question, I want to be seen, to be acknowledged and regarded, and I'd prefer to be bathed in a positive-if-enigmatic light. The problem arises when I work too hard for that attention and the regarding turns to disregard, if only because I'm sometimes just too damn much.
Ultimately, I'm horribly insecure. It seems I've spent my entire life begging for reassurance and reinforcement after a multitude of trauma. Historically, it's been things inflicted upon me, though I try my best not to be a victim. Shit's been done to me that could've killed me, literally and figuratively, but that I survived. I've done my best to come to terms with my history and find a way to learn some lesson from it when I could.
What I'm having a hard time reconciling is the shit I do to myself. And, believe me: I can fuck myself up more than the average bear. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with how I learned to cope and heal, how I learned to handle my scars—as something hideous to be hidden from the light or as a badge of honor, as a war wound to be paraded proudly as a kind of fucked up memento of the battles I've endured.
Either way, it's hard to find a point to it right now. It's difficult to reconcile what amounts to unraveling the last year of my life, the last year of a thousand lessons learned, and to make it fit with my own deeply personal views of the journey, of my journey—of how it should be and what it should mean.
Sometimes I feel like there is no point, that we're all just fucked and passing time until we die. Certainly I feel like I have very little to show for the last thirty-nine years, though I know I can counter that logically if I take the time to think about it. What worries me is that there's potentially another thirty-nine years, give or take, to pass. And is that what I'll do, just pass that time until it's up? Is my journey from Point A to Point Me just some farcical bullshit I worked up in my all-too-spare time? That's certainly been the allegation as of late, and it's hard for me not to let my own deep-seeded insecurities let that be true.
For the first time in a very long time, someone made me feel worthless this week, made their opinion very clear as to how little value they find in me. I know I shouldn't let that determine how I see myself, but they put their finger in every little crack in my facade and ripped them wide open. In some ways, I feel eviscerated.
When I look back on what led me to this point, I can't help but see my own culpability, my own responsibility in my own drama and trauma, and it makes me question again how much I was to blame for everything else that happened to me in my life. Was there something inherently bad and inconsequential about me that made it okay to hurt me, that made it acceptable to disregard me in the most violent and violating ways? Is there something inside me that's so dysfunctional that it makes it okay to be careless, whether it's me or someone else who's being so thoughtless?
I suppose Absolem is right, that I am overthinking the whole thing, but it's really hard not to be full of self-recrimination right now. It's hard to find the meaning and the lesson when I absolutely can't see around the approaching bend. What I hope is that Alice can slow down just enough to peer around the corner and see what's coming next, and that she can really see the things lining the walls of the rabbit hole and judge them pragmatically, that she can really see if it's jam or poison in the pretty little jar.
What I do know is that I won't cocoon myself up like Absolem. I'd rather take my chances at being me, fully, and at feeling everything, no matter how deeply or overwhelming it may seem at times. In the end, I'd rather be overwhelming than overwhelmed, and I'd rather carry on with this journey, however jagged or steep the rocks may be, than to struggle my way out of my cramped comfort and look for the first breeze to carry me away.
Comments