Dissection

-- of the mind.

Last night reminded me why I'm so weary of who I can/can't trust. Suddenly the belief in stoicism and caution I raised myself with is at the forefront of my mind, again, and I'm left to wonder whether the world will ever change, or whether it already has, and I'm the thing left stagnant in an ever-evolving landscape without common regard.

Throughout the years, people have told me time and time again that my disposition towards connection and friendship is a defence mechanism. That it's something unnatural not to let people in by default. As much as I'd love to believe that, I'm not naive enough to think the world is this wonderful place everyone loves to think it is. Maybe if you're the ideal picture of normalcy and fortune, for wherever you live, it can be. But my experience is so starkly opposed to that, I'm not even sure how people get it in their heads to tell me so.

It's just easier to think it's all fucked, isn't it? It's much more comfortable to lose faith in the entire world, when all it's proven to you is that faith is a hopeless endeavour, and desire for connection is a chemical dependency on chance. There's nothing more stable than self-perpetuating misery. Nothing feels more like home than depression, because at least it keeps you in one place, uninjured. There is no risk.

Still, I refuse to let that define my view of everything. I've learnt that it's not really true. My brain may be wired to think selective memory is superior, that I've got to index and internalise the bad parts of life more vividly just to keep myself safe, but I don't want that to be my entire life. I don't want to be both the shadows and the torch in my own Plato's cave. I've got no life at all, that way.

But just as misery can be the greatest comfort, so too can this habit of putting up walls. It's been such a standard of living for me that I still struggle to see any reason not to, especially when my philosophy is proven again, somehow, in times like these. There's this inherent humiliation to trying to change that pattern, because it feels like weakening, adapting, diluting something I've spent so long building and convincing myself is an infallible strength of mine, that other people just don't have.

But then I stop to think -- why don't other people see things this way? -- and the answer is always the same; they simply do not need to. A majority of the population frankly couldn't hold a candle to the things I've seen and been subjected to throughout my life, which isn't a good thing. Not at all. I wish more than anything to have had a normal childhood, normal life experiences, and a normal mentality about it to top everything off. I wish I didn't have to fight so hard to believe in the world the same way some people have never learnt not to. I may consider myself strong this way, but how strong should I really have to be? Is this even really strength if I only come back to it when I'm way off kilter?

Knowing my own psychology so well is a blessing and a curse. I never feel lost within myself until I am, at which point it all starts to break down. I can ask every question, and give myself a million answers, until I hit the one nerve that has no ending, and it turns out to be the rawest possible one.

Maybe I should keep trying. Maybe I shouldn't. I spend all my life trying to heal while I'm still bruising and end up surprised when it doesn't always work.

I reckon it's a good thing I think too highly of myself to tip back half a bottle of gin about the situation, because, again, I know myself well enough to understand that it'd just be an aimless venture and I could never physically drink enough to actually forget anything. That's the one thing I'll keep cursing my genetics for, haha. Oh well.

I'll just try to find something else to do, or think about. Sundays are dull enough without the looming weight of my own melodrama. I shouldn't be making something even worse of this one.

~ Spiral out ~