(no subject)

[sathor]

I'm not sure I can live a life as I have. At some point, this will be too much to bear without significant change. And I'm running out of strength to produce that change. People in this world want me to be happy because my unhappiness is a virus...they want me to be better with people because my social awkwardness is a flaw everyone sees and has to deal with. I feel like I have no home. I feel like I have no safety zone.

I'm so tired of trying to please. I can't be anyone but myself, and that's not good enough. I'm not a bad person...but that's not good enough. I love with all of my heart, but that's not good enough.

Someday this will be the end of me. The compassion of this world exists only insofar as it serves the individuals, or the society's ideals.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Oh, hon. *hugs hug* I've been up all night already, and can't stay online to address this at much length, but might you want to go back and read through that link about the Dark Night of the Soul again?

"At some point, this will be too much to bear without significant change."

Yes. And that's the point - not before - at which you will significantly change. Sorry to sound so harsh, but this is the process you signed up for; this is what you said you wanted after having read all the warnings about it, and now there's nothing to be done but go through the process - kicking and screaming if need be.

"People in this world want me to be happy because my unhappiness is a virus."

Nope. Bad analogy. A virus is a disease someone catches inadvertently, and can inadvertently pass to others who come in contact. Your unhappiness is more like a drinking problem: it's not a sickness that 'happened to you', but rather, behavior that you choose to engage in. Other people can't catch it from you, but they may find you so tiresome when you're drunk with despair that they don't want to associate with you. Especially people struggling with their own 'drinking problem', who may find it hard to resist your invitations to come drink the bitter wine of misery.

"they want me to be better with people because my social awkwardness is a flaw everyone sees and has to deal with."

Nope. The cold truth is, the only people in this world who give a shit about your social awkwardness are the few who care about you. The rest don't even notice. Sheesh, turn it around: when was the last time you saw the 'social awkwardness' of someone else as a flaw you had to deal with? or saw it at all? Your social awkwardness is a disadvantage only to yourself. It doesn't actually affect others very much - they have their own social awkwardness to deal with.

"I'm so tired of trying to please. I can't be anyone but myself, and that's not good enough. I'm not a bad person...but that's not good enough. I love with all of my heart, but that's not good enough."

I'm sorry you're having such a hard time right now. Not going to address the 'stinkin' thinkin' of this paragraph, because I know you have the tools to do it for yourself. Where's your tool-box, laddie? When you're done repining, you can get it out and set to work.

What did you think the point of memorizing the Twelve Pathways was? If you can do NOTHING else, you can lay weeping in your lonely bed (or wander the dark forest all night) and recite the frickin' Twelve Pathways over and over and over and once more with feeling dammit, from the top. It will feel like the stupidest waste of time ever, and it will not make you 'feel better', but it IS something you can do. So do it.

I spent the winter of '97-'98 walking around and around a Circle in a meadow in the rain and snow, usually half-drunk, crying and keening and screaming Affirmations at the pissing sky, because that was all I could do. I trod such a deep rut in that field that it could still be seen three years later; I got bunions on both my little toes from my muck-boots; I wrote more bathetic, self-pitying poetry than you can shake a stick at, but eventually I found Grace in my Dark Night. And so will you.

"The compassion of this world exists only insofar as it serves the individuals, or the society's ideals."

That is such a sweeping generalization as to be impossible to either demonstrate or refute. But okay, suppose it's true: so what? What do you expect it to serve? As a species, we're doing well to have either compassion or ideals in any form at all - it's been a long hard road to get them, and we'll be doing very well if we can hold onto them through the fierce trials of the 21st century.

Someday this will be the end of all of us, young Jedi, but we are not dead yet. *hugs* Hang in there; I'll come back and answer previous comments this evening if I get a chance; haven't read them yet.