Once the afflicted has spend enough time in less than ideal circumstances (from a young enough age). It can occur that one preferes to stay in that semi-miserable state. Over time one can find a certain (imaginary) comfort in it. You convinced yourself that it is the one thing you can actually do right. There one can feel at rest. One can feel at home. An otherwhise unknown comfort one can become addicted to. What lies beyond is scary. It is an escape from an easily achievable comfort that is just one thought away.
Even though what lies beyond is not good or bad in of itself. It just opens up more of the human experience than one has currently access to. It is frightening to take the step into the unknown. In that very moment one loses everything that has been build up. The default settings stop working. One starts again with nothing. Like an infant one has to learn anew, with the fundamental differece of having to be their own grown-ups. Judging what is good and healthy behavior, while still appearing like a somewhat put together human adult. – being unable to make that step leads to a state of emotional masochism as a form of taking control as well as not leaving ones carefully consturcted imaginary comfort. As a result one stays in a perpetual state between feeling neutral at best and horrible at worst.
That is Goldilocks zone of being miserable.
“[Time] to get balls deep into the fucking politics”
What I am doing now is definetly not what I want to continue doing. Because if I do and do not undergo a fundamental change of my values I should probably prepare my last will and testament. Which I certainly do not want to do, atleast not with those implications. I will do my best to finish what I started. Partly out of fear what happens if I dont.
- The fear of being the most ordinary person that tried to convince themselves otherwise
- The sudden tingeling of accumulating awareness that sets in before piling up into the uncomfotable onslaught of upcoming panic. Suffocating every action with thought for a moment.
- The correct way and order to answer multiple messages in one chat: Answer the last message first, potentially following up the topic to keep the conversation going. Next answer the first of the unanswered messages. Depending on the other messages, they can be answered briefly to narrow down the conversation to less topics or expanded upon if it is desired. With the first and last messages answered the messages inbetween should be answered from second most recent to second oldest.
- I noticed a behavioral pattern of a difficulty of adjusting to new enviorments. New people, especially if they can see me work cause a lot of stress, wanting to double check everything, if needed asking for second opinions or just shutting down and being incredibly unproductive.
- You look so stunning even if you were to wear nothing, I’d still think ‘how did you pull that off.’ – The cotton fabric didn’t put up much of a fight.
- Living without having access to most of one’s memories feels like using the brain’s equivalent of RAM. You get along just fine enough to not notice. And then I will stumble upon something loosely related to a memory just to notice that it is simply not there anymore. The book mark exists but the pages are empty. Almost every memory that has somehow managed to crawl it’s way out of the repressed memory hole has had the same bitter flavour.
- Currently:
- loosing the enjoyment of listening to music, the last bastion of auditive enjoyment has been the Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack as well as GOT Abridged, thanks for keeping me sane
- watched Netflix’s “Inside Job”, an overall very passable animated series, that had an interesting premise, season 2 was a great improvement and didnt rely on references as much as season 1.
- watched Amazon’s “Undone”; season 1 was a very interesting experience. Concepts, characters and the style were quite appealing to me, although rotoscoping might not be the most pleasing visual style for an animated series. Season 2 loses the stakes and personal drama that we could witness in the frist season and swaps it for a more family focussed slightly boring plot that at least manages to finish the series in a coherent way. Also having Saul Goodman as a work obsessed professor with schizophrenia and as a deceased father to the protagonist was great. (I never watched a single episode of Breaking Bad.)
- almost finished watching HBO Max’s “Close Enough” an animated sitcom, relativly light hearted entertainment that regularly spirals into the absurd and surreal consequences of the cast’s actions
- almost finished watching the anime “Cowboy Bebop”, after enjoying the soundtrack a lot. Besides all the praise, only the soundtrack, some of the imagery and the absurd extend of the things happening resonated with me personally.
Great writeup! Especially enjoyed the part about emotional masochism. Looking forward to your further descent! 🙂
That was an incredible read – and again a bit too relatable. I think i wouldn’t have been able to put it that concise and beautiful into words and it is nice to have some slowed down content at a somewhat regular basis.
And as always: I am looking forward to the next post!
PS: I hope things will get better eventually