I've never seen myself as important. No, quite the opposite. But I had hoped that by the time I reached a certain age I would begin to matter to people. I never mattered at school; I got good grades, but never praise. I played by all the rules, was nice to people, but making friends still didn't come easily. I've told myself all my life that this is due to ugliness, perhaps in conjunction with some other, imperceptible defect of character.
My first year at university was amazing, but I was always kind of cognizant of a growing patterning, a homogenizing of the masses. Soon, the group united under the banner of "Freshers" split, mutated and came apart, contracting and wincing into tiny little bubbles. As always, I am a loose particle, not attached to any particular bubble for too long, petrified of getting blown into the dirt. As always, I am excluded. People might not even realise it's happening.
I'm fairly confident I could commit a quiet little suicide in my room and go unnoticed for some time. I'd put the bin out so the scout would know not to open the door. It needn't even be locked from the inside. I disappear readily all the time. Done it since I was about 13. At 13 at school I would slip out at breaktimes and lunchtimes. I couldn't face people and what's more, it didn't seem like people could face me. Eventually a teacher in his infinite concern threatened me with suspension for my deliberate flouting of school rules; I called his bluff and dared him to knowing I was the smartest kid in that shithole, and the next day I was presented with a laminated card that would permit me to leave the building at my discretion.
I think things are getting worse. I'm slipping further and further under. I'm perfectly lucid at the moment; I am getting very good at faking lucidity, though; sometimes I believe myself. Every little rejection is a shove. Every impromptu picnic for which I am overlooked, every dinner party in my own kitchen where there isn't room to seat me, every well-organised trip to some little island with my entire flat + six acquaintances that I'm not invited to either. In my last relationship I was perpetually overlooked. Plans were cancelled all the time, around me, no matter whether I'd cleared days out of my schedule to attend them. For example, I was asked not to come to a trip I'd been invited to so it could be spent with one friend he hadn't seen in ages. Then, later, in term time such an event repeated itself all over again, this time for a friend he sees every goddamn day. Then eventually we broke up. And he went again, afterwards. Later, some girl breaks my camera. I can scarcely afford food, but it's an accident; her right to break my camera, to my ex, is more significant than my right to having one.
Everyone matters more than me. This is the message life screams at me. I can be on the verge of killing myself but whether someone has 'a good time' at the bop matters more than whether I make it through the night in one piece. I can't remember the last time I had fun at a bop, or a house party, or a club night; the fun, if experienced to any degree, is almost always overshadowed by a crippling self-hatred come 1 in the morning. I think I have anhedonia: the inability to experience pleasure from those life events normally considered pleasurable. Pleasure, to me, is more like intellectual appreciation. I can take in that a film or a book or a song is 'good', but it must be good on purely artistic terms. My tolerance for guilty pleasures is waning.
Of course, why should I matter? I realise that I'm talentless. I haven't cultivated any useful trade skills and at the only level at which I could be happy to exist (the top) I am assuredly not good enough. I won't win any poetry prizes no doubt because I am simply not as good as the competition. I probably will never get anything published because I am probably more rubbish than I realise. I thought a job application lately was successful, but now the Personnel person is taking their time in getting back to me and it becomes apparent that my defect of character has shown through. Oh, but I fake being real so well! Don't I? I smile at the right cues, I am polite and courteous, I can even convince people that I find their jokes funny, that my words haven't been processed by some faculty short of the soul, that we have some sort of human connection. Perhaps this makes me a psychopath. But no! Psychopaths get away with it better. I am just humanfail.
I do have feelings. (This, I can vouch, is probably the strongest evidence that I am not a psychopath.) They are just very, very minimal. To others, at least.
No future,
No hope,
No love,
No joy,
No reason.
2 comments:
Sometimes the act of venting the pain is enough to alleviate it. You can post something on the blogosphere and discover to your surprise that somebody has actually read it and appreciated it. That one, anonymous interaction may be the reassurance you need that none of us is ever really alone unless we choose to be. True individuals often feel alone in a crowd, though, and sometimes even two people makes a crowd. Eventually you get OK with yourself and then all the other things drop into place - when, perversely, they don't really matter any more. You have reminded me that I used to feel like that a lot of the time and now I don't - thank you for that, and keep the faith.
Been there, done that. You're hardly alone. Lot of people are inherently selfish. I find it strange that 'reasonable' people always end up with the opinion 'from a rational basis' which always just happens to be in favour of their better friends. But I guess there must be nice people out there (like me, if I say so myself). But then the question is do I or you treat others the same way? Ultimately we can only control what we can control.
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