All of this is what I'm currently trying to solve.
I have figured something — near to the middle of this. This isn't just unproductive complaining.
Apparently, I don't hate myself — instead, one part of me hates the other part. And I am figuring out what parts those are.
I'm weeping and the worst fucking thing is that I will be alright tomorrow. If I was depressed, I could.. I don't know. Something.
If I just feel bad and then feel completely alright, there's nothing to be done.
And I'd love to expel everyone from my life so that.. again, I don't know what.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I read random Github issues and I'm already alright. Empty-ish, but alright. Great self-soothing skills. I will be working tomorrow and I will be fully okay, for another month or two weeks. Then another small meltdown, then alright again. Random flashes of sadness or self-loathing here and there, nothing unusual.
I don’t want a hug. I don’t want stroking on the arm. I don’t want anything. /shouts silently at the screen
I want to be alone on a tropical island with night and the sea and the stars and nothing. And I want to walk there and for the night to never end.
I know it’s okay. I’m smart, I know the things. And — blah blah, if I knew what kind of attitude other people have towards themselves and what kind of lives they are leading, then I’d have more self-compassion, whatever.
[NB: as in — to have a more accurate view of yourself, you need to have a more accurate view of others. See Judge everyone and everything.]
I know and it doesn’t help. I feel like I know what you’re gonna say, even when I don’t know specifically what you’re gonna say, and actually probably don’t know what you’re gonna say. /has shouted at the screen several more times in the meanwhile
I used to have those freakouts, with [ex-girlfriend], all the time. I thought they were good somehow. I was like: complaining is great, she was like: it's not. Eventually I stopped complaining and agreed it wasn’t great, already after she’d broken up with me.
I might just as well start complaining again for a year, then stop, then start, then stop.
And nothing will ever change? Maybe. Things do get better gradually, I guess, but also somehow they don't. It’s like when you get a job that pays more and is nicer in every way, but also still unsatisfying. And then you get a job that’s nicer still and yet it will never get anywhere close to a job that somebody who likes their job has.
It’s like if somebody’s abused as a child vs somebody’s parents are just shouting a lot vs somebody’s parents are just cold vs somebody’s parents are just kinda okay but uncaring. It approaches neutral, asymptotically. And meanwhile somebody has loving parents.
Where my life is going, it’s approaching this ‘okay’ place. Less and less bad with every year. It will never get good, just always less bad.
Why don't I just die? I don’t like my life. It's okay, but I don't like it.
I’m not going to die because I might as well just live till I die of natural causes. Enjoy pancakes and go to places from time to time.
I know very well that it’s scary to hear somebody say “why don’t I just die”, I’ve been on the receiving end of it a few times, and every time the person added “but don’t worry, I’m not going to” — and I wish could have added “but don’t worry, I’m not going to” as well so that you wouldn’t worry.
But it feels bad to say “but don’t worry, I’m not going to”, actually. “Yeah I feel shit but actually I still have to care about other people even while I’m feeling shit”.
Even as I’m writing all this there’s a thing that goes “okay, let’s use this for therapeutic purposes, don’t waste the opportunity”.
“Yeah you can cry or whatever, but there’s productive crying and unproductive crying”. “And you know that there are people who choose productive things out of the options they are given, and people who choose at random”. “The former people go to Mars, and the latter people don't. This is your choice.”
By choosing, I am deciding who I am. And apparently I will not go to Mars, at all. It was all in my hands, all the choices, I could have made the good ones, it was possible. And I chose not to.
This is where interesting stuff starts.
I sure wonder what I will be tomorrow. I will probably have something to say about all of this. Something that is sufficiently apologetic and self-analytical.
Well, fuck tomorrow’s me in advance. I don’t like him and whatever he will say. This is explicitly to him:
- Fuck you
- Whatever you come up with, you will be wrong and dishonest and your motivation will be corrupt
- You, future-me, don’t care about me, you care about looking reasonable, you would gladly be sad every night as long as you’re productive every day
- You don’t like me and don’t love me
- And you are abusive but I don’t want to say it because this sounds like On A Path To Recovery and I don’t want to be on a path to fucking recovery or self-compassion
- You just don’t like me and that’s all and there’s nothing to do about it and I admit your standards are pretty good so I can’t blame you
You (tomorrow-me) don’t owe me shit, including liking me. Not that I like you either though. Again, not for a reason, just because there’s nothing to like. You don’t even feel anything. Maybe if you did, I’d have compassion, but you don’t.
I can relate to people who feel bad and who are unsure and who dislike themselves, but I can’t relate to you. Because you don’t dislike yourself, you dislike me. You don’t think about yourself, you think about me. You don’t even have a concept of yourself, maybe, but I don't know.
The likable thing about you is that you’re funny, I guess, or interesting. But it doesn’t make you relatable, it makes you entertaining. That’s what you are, entertaining.
And the likable thing about me is that I feel bad, which is human and relatable. But.. okay. Maybe you can relate to that a bit.
And maybe I can also relate to the frustration about not achieving things. More than a bit.
You *know* you are a failure, you are just not looking at it, you decided not to look at it. But you know that by your own standards, you suck. This isn’t easy to live with. This is actually pretty bad to live with.
And you can care about people and things, you like caring, but together we (?) believe that we can’t care about people, because we do at first and then stop. Maybe.
If you can care.. why do you dislike me so much?
Why does he dislike me so much?
/starts crying again
Why does he dislike me so much? Because I’m not letting him achieve things, I guess.
We had a dialogue like this actually, when doing internal double crux. Just a dialogue exploring an inner conflict, on a piece of paper. I wanted to just live and have fun, and he wanted to achieve things. We didn’t agree on anything. There was a half-hearted compromise, but it was obvious that the technique didn’t work that time.
I could have cared about what he’s doing, actually, if he was doing anything important. All he wants is to make things slightly easier for someone, and have a Google-sized corporation based on doing that. “Here’s a thing that will be interestinger than [another thing] and there’ll be a lot of users and blah.”
Maybe if he was trying to make anyone’s lives better, I’d get on board with his ambitions, but he just wants something fun to exist and to be able to tell people what features to build next.
Honestly, I’d rather serve soup to homeless people or something. He doesn’t like homeless people though.
It doesn’t occur to him to say what he thinks, or how he feels. He does want to talk about how he feels, but doesn’t let himself, because then he’d be talking about his projects all the time and all the other things for which only he has the context. And he also doesn’t let himself because he doesn’t know what people will say in response.
So he doesn’t talk about how he feels, he reacts to people’s reactions. He thinks he has to ‘give back’. So whoever talks to him has to get advice, or answers to life’s questions, or funny stories, or something. He wants people to come to him and have better lives than they had before.
If he does talk about how he feels, it’s because the other person might appreciate a connection. He doesn’t talk about how he feels just to do it. Ha. This is literally expressing feelings that he doesn’t do.
If he shouts when he wants to shout, he still tries to do it in such a way as to cause effects like “other people will see it and it will be easier for them to shout too”. “I’ll be selfish so that it’s easier for people around me to be selfish”. Never selfish just for the sake of it.
I think he, the non-critical part of me, is actually me. I think now that he is the day-to-day me, while the critical me just.. exists in the background and is annoyed that I frustrate his goals.
But out of us two, I think he's the only one who has goals. I want to live and to have fun. He wants people to love him, and wants to be powerful, and wants to be respected.
I haven't figured out what I want from people and what I like them for, and his judgments are much more sharp and powerful, so I feel them more strongly.
I just wish he would stop telling me how bad I am.
At the same time, the funny thing is — he was always prohibited from judging other people. Like, he sees that some people are better than others, for valid reasons, but he always feels like if he says it or thinks it, he'll be punished.
And he also sees the bad things about me and I'm the only person who he is allowed to talk about, 'in the privacy of my head'.