"There's a light at each end of this tunnel, you shout, 'cause you're just as far in as you'll ever be out."
Shall we discuss the elephant in the room?
I'm deeply uncomfortable being vulnerable.
I'm so deeply uncomfortable being vulnerable that I have felt plagued by it since I was four years old.
I refuse to sing karaoke in front of everyone, including my partner of five years. Well, at least I refuse to sing with my true voice, undistorted by some funny twang that I think will fit the occasion.
I don't tell anyone my favorite anything. Usually not even a favorite color. Sure this is partially because decision paralysis also plagues me, but does this paralysis come from a similar rationale? I believe so.
You see, everyone tells you to be yourself and to not care what anyone else thinks; however, I view the truth of the situation to be that "what anyone else thinks of us" is all we really have.
Who would we be if we were stranded on a deserted island alone for a year?
Perhaps you may consider who you were during the COVID pandemic.
There's an argument to be made that if you wouldn't make the decision on a deserted island (granted your basic necessities are procured), that you shouldn't make it at all.
I disagree with that notion. I am not on a deserted island. I live in a society. A large one. A huge one, actually. The largest one ever known to mankind. We have the more people here than we've ever had before, and we are (almost) all connected to each other through the magic of technology.
Everyone may have an opinion. They may have an opinion on what I wore the day that I saw them. They may have an opinion on how I spent my weekend. Hell, they could have an opinion on what I ate for breakfast this morning. We hear it everywhere.
"That's not healthy enough."
"This is too woke, you're acting like a sheep."
"Your breakfast makes me feel bad about myself, therefore you're being judgmental."
And those opinions don't matter, right?
I am an insignificant being living in an insignificant time, caring about insignificant things. I believe this to be true. At the same time, these things are all that I have.
I wouldn't be able to make a living if my boss didn't think at least somewhat highly of me.
I wouldn't have a safe place to go, should I lose said job, if I didn't care about the opinions of my family and friends.
My anxiety is regularly criticized while at the same time regularly rewarded for my attentiveness to the opinions of others.
Nothing matters, I tell myself. I truly believe it. Nothing matters. We exist as part of this time that we are granted. It is insignificant time. Who knows how long living creatures have existed? Life on other planets is so heavily discussed, but there is a strong possibility that it has existed or will exist long after humans are gone. It's even possible that there was once a society far more sophisticated than ours that eventually died out. I do not believe in heaven or hell, nor nirvana, nor any other answer that has been granted by religion. I believe that religion is a widespread coping mechanism for the sheer bleakness of it all: nothing matters.
But because nothing matters, the opposite must also be true: everything matters. Everything matters a lot. To me, at least, it does.
This life is all I have ever known, and it is all I will ever know. How I am treated by society. I see it in the little, everyday things.
The girls directly in front of me at an hour-long line to the bar are escorted to the front immediately. They are objectively attractive. Their experience of this life is kinder than mine.
By that same token, my experience of this life is kinder than it is for others.
Who or what is rock bottom? It can't be answered, for everyone's ideal is different. This is also why heaven and hell cannot exist.
I've learned that this rhetoric is not something anyone wants to hear about. So I can't be myself, truly, around anyone. My mind is too filled with philosophical questions and logic and complex theories that leave everyone feeling depressed.
This is supposed to be considered a mentally ill thought pattern. I guess I do feel sick. No one around me thinks about things in such a way, and I haven't found a quiet, content calmness ever in my life.
But, to my brain at least, it feels so based in logic and truth. I think "maybe I should have been a philosopher." That seems cocky. I don't think I'm extraordinarily intelligent.
Maybe some of us are just cursed to understand the truth of it all, to an uncomfortable extreme: it just doesn't matter. And so it all matters.
germansingergirl
turnnoffyourmind
yousharknotpass
dededos
jacobvanloon
baratheonpilled
areudirty