I have, I think, indulged myself in enough narcissistic self-pity for any one lifetime.
I’ve always struggled with absolutes. And it has come time for me to openly confess to an obsessive personality, which is ideal for something like studying or picking up a new skill, but grating when you have to feel anything.
I’ll never see her again. Concepts like never are why I haven’t gotten a tattoo yet. But I’ve played out every conceivable scenario in my head, as is due with obsession (especially if your mind is inexplicably both strategic and melodramatic), and I’ve realized that there is no way that I can interact with her and still like myself. Pain or no, what kind of simpering bodhisattva coward would I have to be to just smile beatifically and murmur “It’s cool.” How could I look at myself in the mirror? How could I call myself a man?
No offense intended, Buddhists. But like, what’re you gonna do? Kick my ass? Bring your whole crew, I’ll sit you down faster than the sixth Patriarch.
Right now any suffering that I’m experiencing comes of deep-worn neuropathways. Synapses that have become accustomed to responding to her scent, her voice, her mannerisms, activating the reward circuit in the limbic system to trigger dopamine release. It’s like any other addiction, and it breaks like any other habit.
Such is the quandary of the existentialist reductionist. I believe it was the philosopher Shaggy 2 Dope who said “I don’t wanna listen to a scientist; motherfuckers lyin’, and gettin’ me pissed.” He was paraphrasing Nietzsche.
No, for real. Look up anything Freddie Neetch said about psychologists. It reads like Sum 41 lyrics.
I don’t smoke unless I hang around smoking friends. It’s simple extinction of the conditioned stimulus until such a point as the response fades and the stupid dog doesn’t even remember why the bell made him drool in the first place.
My pursuit of authenticity demands that I face pain head-on rather then ignoring it or trying to distract myself, but there’s a difference between the bite of applied antiseptic and the perpetual, scarring ache of a wound you won’t stop picking at. She is gone. It is what’s best for her. It is also what’s best for me.
This is a big, chaotic world, rife with opportunity. I will deal with my neurochemical treachery the way I deal with all other.