I generally avoid philosophy readings. They confuse me and upset the paradigm through which I view the self and the world around me. This week, though, I remembered that I’m always actively participating in philosophical interrogation, despite my belief that I had fully detached from the subject.
I'm often overwhelmed and scared about the world around me. Things get better eventually but the low periods beget longterm negative impact. I try to protect myself from triggers, but they happen anyway. And they seem to happen more frequently as I get older. They just calm down over time.
This feeling gets exacerbated when I have physical limitations, like the ongoing complications I have with my knees, which seem like they are going to worsen over time. I used to move around very freely, and maintained a positive neutral for my mental health, but as I've gotten older, my legs are less and less operative. I often fear how my life will be when they finally give out, and what will happen if there is nobody around to keep life worth living.
When I’m feeling negatively, my mind goes to the worst case scenario. I try to predict the worst possible outcome and prepare for that with the methods I have access to. Sometimes things work in my favor after that, but sadly, even a halfway competent thinker like me can’t control the whole world.
Absolutism is a privilege of the comfortable, and I have been rested for a very long time now.
As of very, very recently, my comfortability has been disrupted by the reintroduction of productive alone time back into my life. Typically when I’m home, I’m either asleep or imaging ways to numb my racing thoughts. There’s too much noise, constantly.
When I first moved to New York, I had a cable subscription and a stationary bike to helped me with my mood. But the constant bad-news on TV led me to want to escape to the internet, where we’re all being inundated with the “redpill manosphere.”
The trendiest thing in content right now (maybe always) is making women feel like absolute shit for being humans. If someone can’t attack your mind, they’ll go for the body, if not that they’ll go for the spiritual grounding, your sense of morality, your curated exceptionalism, your hair, your teeth, your repression. It’s all so easy, I don’t blame anyone — there are so many easy options to choose from.
I have enough visual distractions to keep me stimulated for a lifetime, but I think I miscalculated the benefit of a maximalist home set-up. I have space – enough for my first queen bed and all the other signifiers I’d collected over the years to signal to myself how different, well-traveled and special I am. Coffee table books, postcards, commemorative coins from various rest stops, family trips, and antique shops. I frame beautiful pictures that made me feel validated and cultured.
All these beautiful things, no person or noise to distract me from them. 25 years worth of trinkets. Before this, I was back in my childhood bedroom, defeated and ashamed of the contrast between my ideated life and the one I was living. I passed the time in both places by honing my gifts for avoidance and accumulation, saving boxes of bubble-wrapped mementos in anticipation for my now-current set of circumstances. Suddenly, last year, I was finally completely alone in what resembled a proper home, and it was all happened much sooner than expected. Peace and Quiet. Finally.
“Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue” - a french moralist
Self satisfaction is a short high, though, and it eventually resets back to an insecure neutral. That’s the first stage on a sliding scale towards decided destitution. I have grand ideas about my future, but also have no delusions about my present abilities. The comparison between what I want to do and what I am capable of both pale against what I actually produce. This deviation devastates me — and I internalize to fuel my next move.
In relationships, this can make me a demanding person to love. The people who care for me the most seem to be exhausted with me most of the time. The rest of the time, I question which friend to prioritize based on whether they would prioritize me. This is why mothers demand we learn how to write good thank you notes. I would never want anyone in my life to know they’re in a hierarchy, but I’m finally making peace with the fact that they already know. Nobody cares, do what you want, see who’s still there after the fact. That’s what everyone else is doing.
Then come the affirmations
Do something cheeky enough though, and somebody will show up and clap. That little spark of serotonin, it turns out, is bottled in a lot of experienced, people, programs, movies, shows, etc. Some men are very aware of this and have a special talent to promising it to you in exchange for the right price. More noise. But that’s where all the good stuff is, so I follow it and just wait for the shoe to drop.
I indulge ego-driven activities that keep my mind alert, but my spirit low. I am social outside of school, but struggle to make meaningful connections. I am often lonely. The noise gets louder.
Our bonds with people disrupt it. The love of others is the greatest quieter, I see why people protect it so fiercely. Other beings hold infinite geographies. Seeing it in them makes me want to replicate it in myself. Of course, this can make me prone to a competitiveness with others. I have to remind myself that it is not for me to regulate the space where all of these energies meet just because I am looking for my place in it.
Understanding who I am, forgiving that person, has led me to understand that my spirit and my compulsions (for attention, for love, for passion) are connected. It is up to me to regulate them and align them for the purpose of my purpose. Know who I am, know whose I am. I don’t know who that is, but I’m told I just have to keep looking over and over until my knees give out.
Now What?
The over-apologizing has to stop. Things have to be left where they belong in the past. I should be giving myself and others the space to grow, and the grace to view them with fresh eyes.
So I learn how to sit still I am learning how not to do anything and sit still. After that, I just want to put my head down and produce. I want to make something and help people, at least as long as it makes me feel helpful.
More self-assured people say that everything I need is already inside of me. I would like to see it with my own eyes. I don’t care for blind belief. You see why general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language, just aren’t my jam.
This existence is deeply uncomfortable and ego-driven. The last year was the longest I have laid my body down maybe in my entire life. I didn’t move unless absolutely necessary. I read hurtful books and starting enjoying horror for the first time. The genre taught me a few things, like how universal some of our worst proclivities are.
It’s comforting to remember that I’m not different than other people. I owe it to myself and the world around me to be more patient with everything. I keep trying, I’m just tired. I’m so tired.