I was planning, instead of a New Years Resolution, to do a New Years Revelation... To encourage anyone, instead of declaring what we would change about ourselves, to share something about ourselves that we wish could be understood -- something from the inner world that no one else can penetrate. To shed light on the dark place within that we, as self-preserving humans, protect in swathes of social custom and etiquette, a painted face of accomplishment and self worth.
It's not extraordinary to confess that we are depressed sometimes or anxious sometimes. These are the given facts of being alive, of being born into a game that everyone is expected to be a champion of. It's not enough to feel this way; I suspect you'd rather hear how I've overcome these feelings. But I haven't. Of course I haven't, being a No One who takes comfort in being no one.
Recently I've been studying (and identifying with) the symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder. I can see how this condition has been handed down through my family in its own way. There is a particular type of filial isolation attached to being in an immigrant family. Your only real nation is an island of bloodlines, hand-me-down customs, survivalistic modes of thought, and what have you.
Borderline Personality Disorder can be produced out of such isolation -- an inner world so big it gets reflected onto the broader reality. What is outside becomes mis-taken for what is inside, becomes obscured by what is inside, becomes unseen and shadowed by inner-fantasy and myths and horrors. You stop seeing what is out there and instead retrace old patterns painted all over the interior of that shrinking eggshell we call the mind.
The reason why I've run away from everyone I've ever known, why I've discouraged closeness and discouraged camaraderie, is out of a fear of miscommunication, of being driven to bang upon the cell walls, of never getting through to the outside, being stuck here in a lonely inner-world which to those in reality likely makes no sense at all, or worse, has no value. I've run away from the threat of falling in love with every face, of losing my own identity by loving too many all at once -- and having no resources to express that love other than time. In true love we empty ourselves for the other, we prep to lose who we are for the validation of the other, to sacrifice -- but to sacrifice what? What, if convinced the life and the self has no value? What will the contribution be worth?
I know this is selfish thinking, that this line of thinking is impractical and absurd. At worst it's self-absorbed, like an over-woven charade to mask a history of petty, perceived slights. And underneath is a brewing rage at pointlessness, a childish desire to be ultimately validated, an intense phobia of speaking out into the void and not being heard.
The process will be what it will be, and the biggest thing is that labeling it #BPD feels like the healthiest option. Of course I'll be looking for therapeutic help -- but I'm also Asian, our therapy is in the stars, in the phases of the moon, in turning bad luck on its head and giving it a new label. Our therapy is in acknowledging the intercessional power of our ancestors.
Yet, my best guess is that we're here for no reason. That all these comforts we've invented will ultimately destroy this planet. But to say that life is pointless feels like a grave sin. The generations before us survived so much, how can we turn our back on the survivor's imperative?
And the truth is that I am no one. I verify this whenever I reach into my mind, to give you something, and find only the mind as it really is -- an empty bag. But you are no one, too. We are all born from nothing. The universe, if not nothing, is mostly composed of nothing. Before today there was no today nor will there be tomorrow until tomorrow. The root cause of all of it is a nothingness -- an anti-game, an anti-illusion. How do we break free?
