MUSINGS
Hey, friend. This is an excerpt from waaayyy back, like over a year ago. I was doing pretty bad then, and I wrote this whole spiel about it. It ended up getting absorbed into my musing from last year, which I'm not really happy with at all. I wouldn't have thought to do second drafts for blogposts, but I might just have to now that I find that post in particular to be really poor and embarrassing. I refuse to delete it, since part of the point of this website now is the embarrassment. I'm much happier with the piece below and honestly, I should have just posted it back when I had it written instead of stressing out about being cringe or whatever. Especially since that's gone out the window now. Another one for the Void, everybody.
My Confession: Recollections of a Bitchless Zoomer
I have no respect for myself. I don't shower nearly often enough, I rarely exercise, and this time I had forgotten to do laundry over the weekend, so I shrugged and wore my dirty clothes to work. For a month now, I've had a hole in my only pair of work pants the size of my fist, on my right thigh. It's wide enough that the pocket spills out incessantly and I just shove it back in and ignore it. I don't know what's wrong with me. Anhedonia, depression, simple directionlessness, beats me. But don't think it's because I don't care. No, I'm in a constant struggle session with myself. Everyday, every hour, sometimes every few minutes, I stop to remind myself why I'm such a piece of shit, that I deserve to go to hell, or my recent favorite, calling myself a f****t over and over, like a middle school bully is living in my head. Why do I talk to myself this way? Maybe it's a survival tactic I picked up during my awkward adolescent phase. Maybe I have some undiagnosed neurosis. Whatever the case, the result is the same. I'll be doing some mundane task and in my drifting thoughts I'll recall something awkward or thoughtless I said, maybe it was something truly abhorrent that I should naturally feel shame for, though it almost never is. And I feel this actual physical pain in my chest, like a spike is being driven through me, and to cope I mentally flog myself for the mistake I'm recalling, as if that somehow absolves me of it. The ritual doesn't help at all, but I do it, basically automatically, and by the time I realize what I'm doing, the moment has passed and I'm left feeling miserable.
Lately I've been trying to do better, break my bad habits. I'll have a conversation with a stranger or with someone from work, just small talk, and it goes fine, but as soon as I walk away the pain comes stabbing back for no discernable reason. Every encounter with an unfamiliar human being is like walking into a firing range. Even if nothing happens, my brain tears me away screaming you idiot, are you trying to get shot?!
I used to think I hated myself. I think maybe I do to a degree, in the same way you'd hate anybody who's made it their sole mission in life to insult and belittle you every time you encounter them, but I think I was mostly looking for an explanation. I go about my life constantly looking for evidence that I'm a bad person. That I carry some terrible evil within me that is only biding its time for when it comes clawing out, gnashing and gnawing. I don't really believe that's true. I have my sins of course, but I've never really hurt anyone but myself. My siblings have been caught in the crossfire of my teenage angst bullshit growing up, but so have I in theirs. The flaw I despise the most might be my refusal to live up to my own potential, but the response to that should be understanding, encouragement, and taking steps towards change. There's nothing noble or admirable in endless self-flagellation. It's pathetic and narcissistic. Exercise. Read a book. Fucking buy some new pants. Are you thirteen? Get over yourself.