No Wings

“Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic. A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is a spiritual distress but by no means a mental disease. It may well be that interpreting the first in terms of the latter motivates a doctor to bury his patient’s existential despair under a heap of tranquilizing drugs. It is his task, rather, to pilot the patient through his existential crises of growth and development.” ~Viktor Frankl

The quote above is an important statement for someone to consider before diving into this blog post. And the following is a philosophical vent intended to get my thoughts out in a coherent manner so that I can see them and think about them further. They are not what I hope will rule my life going forward. I am looking for a way to be propelled forward. Don’t call an ambulance, I am not suicidal. But I am in need of help.

Because, you see, I can’t move. How many times have I said this as if speaking it to the wind? And what will the wind do? It is a helpless statement, though others don’t see it as one. They see it as an excuse. As a mindset. As a poor attitude.

Well, I can tell you that I don’t like excuses. But I like explanations. I have always been one to push myself. How is it that people who have known me practically my whole life can look back on my life and see a determined person in the past, bent on self-improvement, and they think my problem currently is laziness and a poor attitude? Do they not know me? Do they not know me well enough to think that maybe I need help? To those who wish to help me but don’t know what to do, I am sorry that I don’t have a clear answer. It’s not an easy thing for me to understand or express my needs. So how can you help me? But then again, how can I help myself either since that is the case? Either way, I appreciate your efforts! Please don’t give up on me.

I can’t move for many reasons, some of which I have tried to express, many of which I have yet to discover, though I am trying to express them very desperately right now. There is one reason that has occurred to me right now that I am trying to put into words for myself so that I can understand in a practical sense why it makes me paralyzed. I can’t move because I don’t see a purpose to my life. I just googled “prove to me that my life is worth living” just to see what would turn up seeing as I know I’m not the only one to have had an existential crisis. (Though it really felt weird googling it.) A stupid song came up from that search that was annoying as crap. Don’t listen to it. I won’t even post a link to it. After that, I googled, “prove that we are better off than if we had never existed”. From that, I came across a Yahoo post here. 

Someone asked the question, “I know a similar question has been asked asking, "What would earth be without humans?" The answer that was given that was labeled “Best Answer” was...

You've got some kind of Walt Disney disease in how you think about nature. How could the earth be better off? Its a big ball of rock, dirt and water. It has no feelings. It is only better or worse because humans attach those values to it. 

Animals would eat each other as often as they could. Forest fires would kill them off by the millions. Ice ages would come and go. Who would care if aliens landed, Bambi and Thumper?

Blunt. Straightforward. It made me think. True. Oh, Yahoo answers. So then, is my purpose to find meaning in the world and tell it that it is worth it? But if without us, it didn’t matter if the earth was “good” or not, wouldn’t that mean that we are just doomed creatures? Forced to either lie to be happy or accept reality and hurt? Aren’t our feelings irrelevant then? If I can really just choose to be happy or sad, don’t those emotions lose their validity? So what’s the point of feeling either at all? Or caring about what I feel? Suddenly I understand the lack of self-awareness and empathy in some other deep thinkers that I know. I don’t wish to be that way, so my thoughts can’t end here.

I feel pushed to move forward and embrace life. I am told I have to keep going. I can’t die. I am told that would be a loss. A loss of what, may I ask? I fill no place that another can’t fill. There is not a single thing I can do that another cannot do. There is no purpose for me. There is no need. There is no place. Why should I continue living? Why should I care? If I am not needed, why should I care?

What others want from me is really nothing. They want me out of their hair. They want me on my own. They want me enjoying life. They are telling me to enjoy something on my own, that they say is worth it. I kinda feel that those are just words sometimes. That people feel some sort of obligation toward life, though they can't say why life is worth living. I feel this obligation too, and it pisses me off; it just makes me angry, so I try and ignore it.

People tell me to create or find joy on my own depending on where they think this joy comes from. They are not showing me the world, and showing me what there is to love about life. They are not grabbing me by the hand and sharing it with me. People aren't willing to do that. I’m sick of our culture claiming that no one should “need” another person to be happy. I need community. I need a companion. For me, there is nothing in this world that is good enough. Nothing. I am not materialistic. I am not driven to money or worldly success, but my value in this culture is judged by my worldly “harvest” or lack thereof.

I am told to stand on my own two feet. People want me to “be an adult”, which to them means being able to survive on my own. The truth is, I don’t want to stand on my own two feet all alone. I mean, I don’t want to “mooch” off of people either. I hate that. It causes deep distress to me and anxiety attacks. But I do not have a reason to stand on my own two feet except to get out of peoples’ hair. I don’t have a reason for myself. I have never really wanted anything. My whole life, really. I’ve only wanted someone. I’ve only wanted companionship. For me, that is of the utmost importance. And I have been lonely.

I am alive out of duty, not because I want it. I don’t want to die, but I sure don’t like living. I’m living because others want me to live. And yet they don’t want me taking their money. Explain to me why I should continue on? I have nothing to offer them. What I have, they don’t want or they want something that I can’t offer them. When they say they see good things in me, I don’t think they are seeing me. They are seeing someone that they want me to be. It is not actually me.

I don’t know how to make someone enjoy life. I don’t know how to make someone happy. How can I try to help someone enjoy something that I don’t enjoy myself? Why choose one thing over another? Perhaps if I had feelings of like or dislike of something, I would know what to pursue. But those seem dead to me in my paralysis.

Do you know what I wish? I wish I were an engineer or a mathematician or a scientist or a politician. I wish I could invent. Because then I could change the world. But I am not an inventor. And I do not have the ability. And I do not have the brains of many I know. I want to change things. I want to be smart. My gifts do not match my values. But why should I want to make the world better? Why do I constantly seek to make the world better? That’s a good question. Why do I pick up garbage on the side of the road? Why do I care about the way that parents treat their children? Why do I fight for these things if I just don’t care?

Part of me ignores the tornado-like feelings I express right now. And I think that’s the part of me that picks up garbage on the side of the road (literally). It’s the part that has faith in nothing as if it were something. I think I pick up garbage because it makes me feel like I’m doing something that’s positive. Maybe I’m proving to myself that I’m worth something, anything at all. Though sometimes, when I pick up garbage, I feel like a terrible person. Like just a despicable person. I think part of it makes me feel like others will hate me for it because in the past, people have not liked it when I have picked up after them or corrected their errors. Part of me feels like I have no right to alter the world around me. But why shouldn’t I have a right? It’s my world as much as anyone else’s! But somewhere along the way, I was taught to feel that way.

I'm pretty sure another reason that I feel crappy sometimes when picking up garbage, is that it feels like I’m focusing on things that don’t matter (according to many others) because I’m not getting at the root of the issue, I’m just touching the surface of it. Like putting a band aid on an infected wound without cleaning it out first. Maybe I’m just a surface person sometimes. But I don’t want to be a surface person. I want to be a person that digs out the roots because that’s what others want.

Actually, correction: that’s what others want in certain areas. But not areas like relationships and community like I do.

I see roots. I just don’t know how to change them. I don’t have the knowledge, I don’t have the skills, and even if I did, I couldn’t change anything alone. And I can’t make people care.

Back to that care part. Why should I care? And how can I make other people care? And why do I care when I don’t really care? Or is the real question why I should continue existing in a world where I feel that others don’t care. And back to my thought on the roots. Maybe I’m not a root person. At least not in every aspect. I mean, you damn well won’t find me brushing crap within relationships under the rug! I like to get to the root of the problem, no matter how difficult and no matter how long it takes me contemplating. But maybe sometimes my role is just to do things like pick up trash. It’s okay to pick up trash. It’s frustrating that I have to keep telling myself that. I know people that would find that a waste of time and pointless because the trash just keeps reappearing. But unlike those people, it doesn’t frustrate me. I don’t know why, but I like picking up trash. There’s a small part of me that would be disappointed if it were gone. Which is ironic considering my purpose in picking it up.

I feel like there is something wrong with me for that reason. Or maybe, I just like doing simple things like that rather than going to school because I’m not smart or something, and people that know me just don’t want that to be true or believe that. But if I could get paid for picking up trash, I would do it. I like it. I freaking like it. Even when I don’t like it, I like it. Even when it makes me feel kinda crappy and anxious when someone drives by, I like it. If anyone was to ask me what my calling was and what makes me feel good, I’d say picking up trash. Does that make me money? No. And in our culture that values self-sufficiency, not making money just makes me look like a terrible person, doesn’t it? 

Funny how our culture could value self-sufficiency so much and then go and take advantage of less economically privileged people around the world; the hypocrisy is shameful. I’m supposed to be self-sufficient and contribute to a culture like that? And only do what I can to change things when and if I have the money and the power to do so? I’m telling you, I can’t work the system. And again, I can’t change people. I can’t work the system because I really feel that I don’t have the skills. And because I feel like I would be required to lie.

I try and think about my skills. What are my skills? My skills seem to be things like making things that are beautiful. This is in some ways okay with me. I also have always liked the idea of making something that was once beautiful, and is now ugly, beautiful again. That’s probably why I like picking up trash. That being said, I’m pretty naturally good at the things that a woman in the Victorian era was expected to do...besides shutting my mouth and allowing people to order me around. She should be able to paint, play piano, sing, etc in order to entertain. Well, I can do all those things, but entertaining scares the crap out of me. And I despise it.

Because for whatever reason, entertaining people, manipulating them to feeling of any kind by doing something that they request of me, embarrasses the poop out of me. And whenever someone tries to influence me in the same way, I’m embarrassed as well. You can see why I suck at relationships. This exchange of making each other happy is not comfortable for me. I never wish to “move someone to tears” at their request by a beautiful song or make them laugh upon their request. By my own ideas and free will I love to make people laugh. But the minute it is requested or expected, I can no longer perform.

To get anywhere in the business world, I have to be able to please people. When it comes to very straight forward tasks like algorithms (I was learning about algorithms at khanacademy.org today and then from my mathematician of a brother), I can do that for people. Without the subjectivity of personal preference I am much more comfortable and much more in my element. But very few things are strictly algorithm. Life is just too complex. And also very lonely and scary as a result when you are me.

I feel like I will never move forward until someone who understands me holds my hand and guides me. Throughout writing this, I’m realizing that I’m very scared. That the problem doesn’t seem to be the world itself for me, but the people within it. I’m stuck with this paradox that I am absolutely lonely and feel no purpose without people, but I cannot trust people and I cannot bring myself to make them happy. I feel that I cannot make them happy, and I’m not sure that I want to. I mean, I don’t want to make them sad, but I also don’t necessarily want to make them happy. This isn’t meanness, just…I don’t even know what it is. If I knew, I probably would have fixed it.

And when it comes to finding a purpose, where I must put my own meaning into the world as there doesn’t seem to be an objective purpose for me that no one else can fill, I am lost. Because I hate the subjective in this sense. I hate it. I hate it.

I.HATE.IT.  

It’s funny that I fight structure so damn much, because I want it so badly. But I don’t want us to have the same structure. Because we were not all built the same. We may all be purposeless, but we aren’t all built the same.

Right now I feel a sense of relief getting this off of my chest. A sense of power. Maybe even freedom. I feel sorry that I have let the world down. People look at me thinking I am rebellious, and lazy, and self-entitled, and immature, and out of touch with reality. Believe me that thinking those things about me only crushes my being and humiliates me and paralyzes me further. I am not out of touch with reality. I think the problem is that I am far too in touch with reality in some ways. A reality that others don’t want to see. So I am alone.

I feel scared asking for help from people, even when they have told me to. I have been trying to push myself out there as of late, even when I feel like I am imposing. I have a hard time believing that people want to be my friend and remain my friend after interactions with me. I believe that their opinion of me and their willingness to help is bound to change at any moment.

And addressed to many people, sorry that I’m almost 25 and a failure. I don’t wish to taint your reputation by walking into your life and reflecting badly on some image you’ve worked on creating and upholding. To be honest, I don’t have a lot of empathy for you in that regard, but it makes me feel real shitty to know your thoughts. If I could move forward, I would. I would! And maybe instead of a lot of people telling me that I can and that I have no excuse not to, perhaps if they got off of their damn high horse and legalistic trips and helped me out as an individual I’d get somewhere. Maybe.

It’s hard to help move someone toward a path that may be what is beneficial for them when it wasn’t what you hoped for them. It’s hard to guide someone toward a life that is different from yours. Why help someone toward their own aims? I feel that it is me against many in that way. I am required to find a way, though I don’t feel capable, on my own toward the things that I and a few others value and are willing to sacrifice for. Or I am required, somehow, though I don’t feel capable, to work toward a specific way of living that the majority of others want. And I just don’t know how to go about my day feeling anything but just plain shitty, which doesn’t exactly help me move forward.

I’m not blaming anyone. I think blame is something that is hard for people to let go of. I have a hard time not blaming myself. And others seem to find it very easy to blame me. Life is complex. And as far as finding me a proper algorithm to move me forward…that hasn’t proven to be a very easy task. What do you do when you feel as if you were surrounded by a crowd of people, some with fire pokers and others with their backs to you, telling you that if you’d just get out on your own you’d be acceptable, but you can’t get through the crowds of people, and you haven’t grown the wings to fly away?