LogFAQs > #942205787

One of the most difficult things for me was opening myself up to the concept of living as an activity or an experience, rather than simply the given state of being. I closed myself off because I was a coward who was afraid of pain.

Whenever bad or emotionally painful things happened to me, it poured into my brittle heart as overwhelming waves of anger and sadness, fear and doubt, anxiety, depression. I didn't know how to let it go, so I held onto it, resentful and violent thoughts started to form, and I made myself sick with how I started to view other humans, I would see monsters everywhere I looked. I hated going into public, I couldn't bear to see people or the thought of anyone seeing me.

I just shut down, I told myself that if life refused to make me happy, I would refuse to participate. I called this self reliance, but I wasn't effective as a reliable person to begin with; I was capricious, self obsessed, and lazy. In that isolation, the pain only multiplied until the only thing I was certain of about myself was that I was alone, truly, unfathomably alone, it became the only feature of my identity. I worked, and I had a friend there, but I often treated him poorly, lashing out and raising my voice at him, because he had everything I thought I needed to feel complete, things like a house, a beautiful wife, a family that didn't abuse him. I didn't realize until later, I wasn't angry at him for being able to achieve those things, I was angry at myself for failing to become the person I wanted to be. Those things didn't matter and even if I had them at that point I wouldn't have respected them because I didn't respect myself. I wanted it, but I never believed that I actually deserved anything good until I learned to respect who I was.

The most painful lesson was that I would never become that person if I continued to be passive about how I lived my life. I had to participate, I had to put forth effort, and I had to risk failing again and again. I was so afraid at first, I didn't want to try only to end up quitting.

I was maybe two weeks into going to the gym, trying to be regular about it, and this is before I had added any other forms of self care. I had the most frightening thought I've ever had. I hated working out, it was difficult, it hurt, I hated the people seeing me, and I didn't see any changes so I was sure it wasn't working and that I was wasting my time and money. I realized that if I didn't quit, I would have to go do this thing I hated for the rest of my life, and I was so afraid of committing to something like that, I left immediately and just cried all day until my face was wracked with horrible pain. I didn't go the next day, or the next, or even the day after that. I was quitting. I had already quit before I had started, but I thought I could justify quitting if it appeared that I gave it a try. I tried to tell myself that I didn't want to be transformed, I wanted to stay ugly and be alone until I died. I did that a lot, told myself lies about me to validate my passivity.

I had already changed a little bit mentally tho. I had started to find profound inspiration in seemingly banal platitudes and lyrics about self reliance and the nature of life's struggles. I was listening to a Grimes song, and she sang this line like, "every morning there are mountains to climb, taking all my time, but when I get up this is what I see, welcome to reality" and even though I'd heard this song hundreds of times before, it just fell on me that I couldn't give up.

There's always going to be struggles, and how fiercely I struggle is what defines my self worth, if I fight hard enough against that fear and doubt by doing things that exalt and give reverence to myself, when I wake up, I see something that is beautiful beyond imagining. I see someone that I love and who loves me every single time I look in the mirror.

When I started to take responsibility for validating myself, the pain of living was dulled to imperceptibility, and the judgment of empty people who have no self respect just flows around me. I still feel it, I can acknowledge and understand what it is, I might feel sad or upset, but it doesn't cling to me and I don't feel that obligation to hold onto it either.

I'm just kinda journaling here, idk, I see so many people on this board who act just like I used to, and maybe if this story moves one person to try and change their mind about themselves and try to build up a life worth living, that's gotta be a good thing.

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I never be, I never see, I never know