it gets better, but it also doesn't
Sep. 13th, 2024 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chebamauit makes me self conscious to admit my faults, because i feel far too aware of where they've originated from and how they could be interpreted. the twists and turns that words can take anyone down, the rise and fall of understanding feels like an endless road to be navigated. and, much like on the actual road, i am constantly gripping the steering wheel trying to keep things from going out of control.
even though, truthfully, i know that nothing is ever in control. admitting it is easy. fully embracing it is hard.
it might be obvious, but none of these blog posts are proofread by me. that's sort of the point of it. having a log of things to look back at has of course always interested me, but something about having my raw, unfiltered thoughts online appeases to that little bug in my brain that craves affection and approval so damn badly. i think i rehash a lot of the same things over and over again - my roots of blogging, subsequently roleplay, my naive childhood that sought to be as untethered to negative experiences without knowing i was the ball swinging mindlessly around. i think that yes, we are a bunch of molecules bouncing around in space at the end of it, but we also have so much more in our hands. so much potential to love, to hate, to fight, to hold. to shout, to whisper, to lose, to find. and all the things in between. to wade, to pedal, to rest, to run.
i once described my mental health journey as digging down in the caves, exploring the unknown. sometimes the cave fills in on itself just when you're about to make a huge discovery, and you have to start all over again. sometimes you lose things you thought you needed, only to find something better. you only have so much capability to carry items and proceed in the cave, but if you don't know what's worth what, you can end up overcompensating and running yourself ragged. if you don't make decisions about what will benefit you, how to advocate for your own needs, you'll end up buried in the end, too.
of course, the figurative "you" here is me. i am the reason for my own problems. i am the only one who can put myself back on my feet. messages i have heard time and time again but never truly tried to live by. my safety net was always there to fall back on, because as long as i kept quiet, i could slip through.
i often excluded myself from physical activities in school. not always, though. it really only started after one time i got caught in class for threatening violence on someone who had been annoying me.. and consequently let down a teacher whom i respected greatly. i was so ashamed. i cant even remember if she told my mom about it. it was the end of the year, and my teacher - who had been in the middle of signing my yearbook - caught me getting into a fight and after scolding me, went back to my yearbook and adjusted the sentence to read "you were one of my best students., (the period was turned into a comma) academically. being the proficient grammar studier (we used a different term at the time that i will not repeat here) i was, i knew there was no reason for her to put a comma before "academically". i also had a clear example of a comma she had used earlier in the message, which did not look like the bulbous comma she had included at the end. in all my paranoia, i have always been confident in this one case: mrs. kim was disappointed in me.
funnily enough, the boy i was threatening asked me out to homecoming three years later, after being pressured by the rest of the class since "nobody else is going to ask [them]." having held on to that one moment in fourth grade, i clammed up and said no. "yay! rejection!" he exclaimed, i assume to cope, and left. i ended up taking my transformers animated bumblebee figure to homecoming.
from then, the anxieties only grew. in P.E., i felt inadequate and was always picked last for sports teams. i didn't know how to try to be better, and could only think of letting everyone down. i have a clear memory of trying to make a basketball shot and being so awkward about it that someone tried to correct me, and i just started crying and apologizing for doing it wrong. how could i have known otherwise?
i cried in front of my classmates a lot more than i realized at the time. over tons of different things. i behaved inappropriately for attention, as any high schooler does. but i feel like i never grew out of it. my parents and frankly society at the time was really pushing the idea that my real friends were going to be the ones i knew in person. the ones i saw every day, and could come running to my side in the blink of an eye. i had to maintain those connections at any cost, lest i be alone forever. and yet, when i went home, i wanted to be on the computer all day talking to my friends online. making art together and hanging out for the sake of it.
i developed bad patterns in high school with people i didn't like, then brought those cliquey habits into my online friend circle, who i deemed as not important enough to maintain. the first boy who ever asked me out was heartbroken when i fled the scene, scared of messing things up once more. too scared to bring up that i was scared, because it was weak. i never saw him again. i always hope he's okay.
from then, it was mostly relationships out of obligation. school and the church emphasized that my job as a vagina-haver was to go out, spread the gospel, and have babies that would continue to do the same. that was the path that life had for me. i even influenced my online friends to follow the blind faith, and bragged about it at school. at school, where before every class you shared "prayer requests" in front of everyone, and the teachers kept tally of every detail of your life. at the time, it felt like affection. it felt like someone cared about my struggles, and wanted to help me. now i don't know what it was. maybe part of it was genuine. i'd sure like to believe so.
i didn't understand. i rarely understand.
when i look back, i wish i had made more solid attachments in the places that i did receive the kind of love i hoped for so badly. i think often of people who reached out to me for help, who seemed to genuinely admire my abilities, and i struggled to maintain those connections out of blind self-interest. i let my fear of my mother guide me. i let my fear of failure (the imaginary line i drew in my head) tell me what was worth doing. i walk down the green paths, looking at the buildings that will inevitably be flooded and rushed down the hill when tree roots are eaten and no longer supporting the soil's infrastructure, and see my life. i see myself constantly sawing away at nature, pruning and plucking until it satisfies requirements, trimming them down until there is nothing left to survive off of.
i have an obsession with detritivores and the function they serve. i find lately that it seems parallel to my obsession with talking about my own misery. within the rot, the decay, the smells and sights that most would rather never witness, lies life, and i always wanted to believe in that. that even though i was miserable, that i couldn't seem to achieve anything, somewhere inside of me was something waiting to happen. the seed in a bug's life. but not the metaphorical one flik uses for dot.. the one a beat off of that, witnessed by the circus folk and later given to the queen ant, but without the metaphor. thus, even though it's still a rock, and can technically still be used to symbolize the might seed and its ability to grow and thrive into a grand tree, all anyone can perceive is a rock.
for a long time, i have known something is wrong with me. the seed inside of me felt like it was a rock that could not be watered, and would explode if kept too hot. i had to roll in the wind, experiencing whatever come by, waiting to find the right conditions to germinate. the seed, in its many many forms, has adapted to the optimal conditions for life. flowers are pretty to us, but exist for the plant to reproduce. to continue life. when its predecessor inevitably dies, detritivores comes to break down whats left and turn it into consumable nutrients for the new plant.
i find myself relating to them, in a way. (by the way, "detritivore" keeps being flagged as a typo, with all kinds of suggestions being thrown at me for different variants.) with exotic pets, and now detritivores, i have had to do an extensive amount of independent research on how to care for them and manage their conditions to have a successful life. what to provide, how to keep them happy, population control. much of it has to do with replicating what already exists in nature - the way that these creatures have developed to maintain their lives. also much of what i find is usually pseudo-science mumbo jumbo made up off of people's individual observations. many people scoff at these notions. maybe they're right. over the years, i find i have a tendency to give weight to these sorts of ideas. not too much, obviously.. but if something happens once, it's likely to happen again, won't it?
this is where my brain goes into spirals. wondering what could be right, what's the answer, how to do my best, impulsively jumping on advice that seems to make sense in the moment. because for me, it feels like nothing ever makes sense. because i never took the time to really craft my own reality.
this is getting long, but here's the meat of what i wanted to write about today. i think it's frustrating to have grown up not knowing about the suffering my parents went through, and living under their rules with no perspective on what affected them and why they're making these decisions. as an adult, having to look to other resources to try to make sense of their behavior feels like repeating old patterns, but in a new way. they refuse to be direct with me, so i always have to try looking for the answers myself. it's exhausting. i understand why they don't.. what they went through is more than i could ever handle, and i know it all too well. they only wanted to protect me in the way that they knew how. that doesn't make it right, though. and that doesn't make it the way i have to navigate this world, too.
i don't need to prop myself up to make others look less than. to gain rank with others who i don't even care for the opinion of. who throw a bone my way just to keep my tail wagging. it's so depressing to look at the root of my behaviors and realize how foolish i was... but we were all a fool once. we make bad choices, but we don't have to keep making them.
no matter how desperately i want someone to put me into a petri dish and analyze me, i'm the only one who can do that fully. no matter how much i pour my heart out or try to explain or justify myself, what will others do in the end? what does "power" truly mean, and can anyone claim it?
why do i enjoy the things that i like? because it was convenient? it was there? because others liked it?
i received a message from my very first friend once, after we graduated high school separately. the typical "that person is the same ethnicity as you. go talk to them" experience, topped by me crying and clinging to my dad. she apologized for bullying me, and telling me that my interests were boring and not as good as hers. i couldn't even remember those exchanges and brushed it off, but i've thought about it ever since. what did she mean? what had happened back then that i pushed down so hard? then i remember begging my mom for sailor moon dolls at the toy store, even though i didn't really care about it. to my mom, it was an impulse to have the latest cool thing. to me, it was my ticket to friendship, acceptance, love, attention. i had to have things to get people to like me. i wasn't any good if i couldn't win, or i couldn't look cool. and my mom, none the wiser, would get me the things. even imposed her own ideas of fashion and behavior on me to match. i got a hand-me-down point and shoot camera from my sister, and suddenly i was the most popular kid in class. now i have photos of other peoples selfies and antics on my external harddrive that i rarely had a part in. videos of other people playing pranks or doing tricks that i was told to record.
sure, it was fun at the time.
but now i am empty. i look at them and mourn for the child that existed during that time. i mourn for the drawings and messages i didn't keep from friends that actually cared about me. i regret all the cruel things i said and never tried to understand why i said them. i try to change, i get up, then slip back into the mud. if i could avoid trouble, then surely i could succeed - was the lie i told myself. if i just kept pushing and pushing and pushing, eventually, something or someone would give, and i would win. blind, naive. lost. i didn't work hard. i was aimless and searching for answers in the wrong places. i let others dictate my values, out of fear of being alone. but in the end, that's all i am, isn't it?
in a sea of nice words, all i really am is alone. and that's my burden to bear.
maybe it's a bit too miserable. maybe i'm too comfortable in that misery, the failure. over these past few months, i keep thinking, 'is this rock bottom yet? have i suffered enough yet?' and it feels like the universe is telling me 'no.' but i get up again, and again. i try to make choices that don't paralyze me, and give me something to hold on to. i tell myself "i want to do things." i want to write this game, to make into existence this work of art that shares exactly how i feel and what i want to leave behind. in the vastness of the internet, i can throw out a line. a floater. anything that i want. but i'd better make it damn worth it.
even though, truthfully, i know that nothing is ever in control. admitting it is easy. fully embracing it is hard.
it might be obvious, but none of these blog posts are proofread by me. that's sort of the point of it. having a log of things to look back at has of course always interested me, but something about having my raw, unfiltered thoughts online appeases to that little bug in my brain that craves affection and approval so damn badly. i think i rehash a lot of the same things over and over again - my roots of blogging, subsequently roleplay, my naive childhood that sought to be as untethered to negative experiences without knowing i was the ball swinging mindlessly around. i think that yes, we are a bunch of molecules bouncing around in space at the end of it, but we also have so much more in our hands. so much potential to love, to hate, to fight, to hold. to shout, to whisper, to lose, to find. and all the things in between. to wade, to pedal, to rest, to run.
i once described my mental health journey as digging down in the caves, exploring the unknown. sometimes the cave fills in on itself just when you're about to make a huge discovery, and you have to start all over again. sometimes you lose things you thought you needed, only to find something better. you only have so much capability to carry items and proceed in the cave, but if you don't know what's worth what, you can end up overcompensating and running yourself ragged. if you don't make decisions about what will benefit you, how to advocate for your own needs, you'll end up buried in the end, too.
of course, the figurative "you" here is me. i am the reason for my own problems. i am the only one who can put myself back on my feet. messages i have heard time and time again but never truly tried to live by. my safety net was always there to fall back on, because as long as i kept quiet, i could slip through.
i often excluded myself from physical activities in school. not always, though. it really only started after one time i got caught in class for threatening violence on someone who had been annoying me.. and consequently let down a teacher whom i respected greatly. i was so ashamed. i cant even remember if she told my mom about it. it was the end of the year, and my teacher - who had been in the middle of signing my yearbook - caught me getting into a fight and after scolding me, went back to my yearbook and adjusted the sentence to read "you were one of my best students., (the period was turned into a comma) academically. being the proficient grammar studier (we used a different term at the time that i will not repeat here) i was, i knew there was no reason for her to put a comma before "academically". i also had a clear example of a comma she had used earlier in the message, which did not look like the bulbous comma she had included at the end. in all my paranoia, i have always been confident in this one case: mrs. kim was disappointed in me.
funnily enough, the boy i was threatening asked me out to homecoming three years later, after being pressured by the rest of the class since "nobody else is going to ask [them]." having held on to that one moment in fourth grade, i clammed up and said no. "yay! rejection!" he exclaimed, i assume to cope, and left. i ended up taking my transformers animated bumblebee figure to homecoming.
from then, the anxieties only grew. in P.E., i felt inadequate and was always picked last for sports teams. i didn't know how to try to be better, and could only think of letting everyone down. i have a clear memory of trying to make a basketball shot and being so awkward about it that someone tried to correct me, and i just started crying and apologizing for doing it wrong. how could i have known otherwise?
i cried in front of my classmates a lot more than i realized at the time. over tons of different things. i behaved inappropriately for attention, as any high schooler does. but i feel like i never grew out of it. my parents and frankly society at the time was really pushing the idea that my real friends were going to be the ones i knew in person. the ones i saw every day, and could come running to my side in the blink of an eye. i had to maintain those connections at any cost, lest i be alone forever. and yet, when i went home, i wanted to be on the computer all day talking to my friends online. making art together and hanging out for the sake of it.
i developed bad patterns in high school with people i didn't like, then brought those cliquey habits into my online friend circle, who i deemed as not important enough to maintain. the first boy who ever asked me out was heartbroken when i fled the scene, scared of messing things up once more. too scared to bring up that i was scared, because it was weak. i never saw him again. i always hope he's okay.
from then, it was mostly relationships out of obligation. school and the church emphasized that my job as a vagina-haver was to go out, spread the gospel, and have babies that would continue to do the same. that was the path that life had for me. i even influenced my online friends to follow the blind faith, and bragged about it at school. at school, where before every class you shared "prayer requests" in front of everyone, and the teachers kept tally of every detail of your life. at the time, it felt like affection. it felt like someone cared about my struggles, and wanted to help me. now i don't know what it was. maybe part of it was genuine. i'd sure like to believe so.
i didn't understand. i rarely understand.
when i look back, i wish i had made more solid attachments in the places that i did receive the kind of love i hoped for so badly. i think often of people who reached out to me for help, who seemed to genuinely admire my abilities, and i struggled to maintain those connections out of blind self-interest. i let my fear of my mother guide me. i let my fear of failure (the imaginary line i drew in my head) tell me what was worth doing. i walk down the green paths, looking at the buildings that will inevitably be flooded and rushed down the hill when tree roots are eaten and no longer supporting the soil's infrastructure, and see my life. i see myself constantly sawing away at nature, pruning and plucking until it satisfies requirements, trimming them down until there is nothing left to survive off of.
i have an obsession with detritivores and the function they serve. i find lately that it seems parallel to my obsession with talking about my own misery. within the rot, the decay, the smells and sights that most would rather never witness, lies life, and i always wanted to believe in that. that even though i was miserable, that i couldn't seem to achieve anything, somewhere inside of me was something waiting to happen. the seed in a bug's life. but not the metaphorical one flik uses for dot.. the one a beat off of that, witnessed by the circus folk and later given to the queen ant, but without the metaphor. thus, even though it's still a rock, and can technically still be used to symbolize the might seed and its ability to grow and thrive into a grand tree, all anyone can perceive is a rock.
for a long time, i have known something is wrong with me. the seed inside of me felt like it was a rock that could not be watered, and would explode if kept too hot. i had to roll in the wind, experiencing whatever come by, waiting to find the right conditions to germinate. the seed, in its many many forms, has adapted to the optimal conditions for life. flowers are pretty to us, but exist for the plant to reproduce. to continue life. when its predecessor inevitably dies, detritivores comes to break down whats left and turn it into consumable nutrients for the new plant.
i find myself relating to them, in a way. (by the way, "detritivore" keeps being flagged as a typo, with all kinds of suggestions being thrown at me for different variants.) with exotic pets, and now detritivores, i have had to do an extensive amount of independent research on how to care for them and manage their conditions to have a successful life. what to provide, how to keep them happy, population control. much of it has to do with replicating what already exists in nature - the way that these creatures have developed to maintain their lives. also much of what i find is usually pseudo-science mumbo jumbo made up off of people's individual observations. many people scoff at these notions. maybe they're right. over the years, i find i have a tendency to give weight to these sorts of ideas. not too much, obviously.. but if something happens once, it's likely to happen again, won't it?
this is where my brain goes into spirals. wondering what could be right, what's the answer, how to do my best, impulsively jumping on advice that seems to make sense in the moment. because for me, it feels like nothing ever makes sense. because i never took the time to really craft my own reality.
this is getting long, but here's the meat of what i wanted to write about today. i think it's frustrating to have grown up not knowing about the suffering my parents went through, and living under their rules with no perspective on what affected them and why they're making these decisions. as an adult, having to look to other resources to try to make sense of their behavior feels like repeating old patterns, but in a new way. they refuse to be direct with me, so i always have to try looking for the answers myself. it's exhausting. i understand why they don't.. what they went through is more than i could ever handle, and i know it all too well. they only wanted to protect me in the way that they knew how. that doesn't make it right, though. and that doesn't make it the way i have to navigate this world, too.
i don't need to prop myself up to make others look less than. to gain rank with others who i don't even care for the opinion of. who throw a bone my way just to keep my tail wagging. it's so depressing to look at the root of my behaviors and realize how foolish i was... but we were all a fool once. we make bad choices, but we don't have to keep making them.
no matter how desperately i want someone to put me into a petri dish and analyze me, i'm the only one who can do that fully. no matter how much i pour my heart out or try to explain or justify myself, what will others do in the end? what does "power" truly mean, and can anyone claim it?
why do i enjoy the things that i like? because it was convenient? it was there? because others liked it?
i received a message from my very first friend once, after we graduated high school separately. the typical "that person is the same ethnicity as you. go talk to them" experience, topped by me crying and clinging to my dad. she apologized for bullying me, and telling me that my interests were boring and not as good as hers. i couldn't even remember those exchanges and brushed it off, but i've thought about it ever since. what did she mean? what had happened back then that i pushed down so hard? then i remember begging my mom for sailor moon dolls at the toy store, even though i didn't really care about it. to my mom, it was an impulse to have the latest cool thing. to me, it was my ticket to friendship, acceptance, love, attention. i had to have things to get people to like me. i wasn't any good if i couldn't win, or i couldn't look cool. and my mom, none the wiser, would get me the things. even imposed her own ideas of fashion and behavior on me to match. i got a hand-me-down point and shoot camera from my sister, and suddenly i was the most popular kid in class. now i have photos of other peoples selfies and antics on my external harddrive that i rarely had a part in. videos of other people playing pranks or doing tricks that i was told to record.
sure, it was fun at the time.
but now i am empty. i look at them and mourn for the child that existed during that time. i mourn for the drawings and messages i didn't keep from friends that actually cared about me. i regret all the cruel things i said and never tried to understand why i said them. i try to change, i get up, then slip back into the mud. if i could avoid trouble, then surely i could succeed - was the lie i told myself. if i just kept pushing and pushing and pushing, eventually, something or someone would give, and i would win. blind, naive. lost. i didn't work hard. i was aimless and searching for answers in the wrong places. i let others dictate my values, out of fear of being alone. but in the end, that's all i am, isn't it?
in a sea of nice words, all i really am is alone. and that's my burden to bear.
maybe it's a bit too miserable. maybe i'm too comfortable in that misery, the failure. over these past few months, i keep thinking, 'is this rock bottom yet? have i suffered enough yet?' and it feels like the universe is telling me 'no.' but i get up again, and again. i try to make choices that don't paralyze me, and give me something to hold on to. i tell myself "i want to do things." i want to write this game, to make into existence this work of art that shares exactly how i feel and what i want to leave behind. in the vastness of the internet, i can throw out a line. a floater. anything that i want. but i'd better make it damn worth it.
