“Man plans, and God laughs.”
In my particular case, most suffering comes from expectation. Having them for yourself, others having them for you, measuring up to them, others not measuring up to them, you know, all that. If I really deeply analyze the times I’m most upset or the things that make me angriest, it’s usually when something outside of my expectations happens.
Let’s start with an easy example. The thing that makes me irate more than anything else in the entire world is when technology doesn’t work. Like, that’s your function. You’re a lucky object that was divined and forged for one specific purpose and you can’t even do that? What the fuck. This is a great peeve to have, especially when you use potentially the worst Bluetooth car audio thing of all time. Another one is a personal peeve, but it’s when I act contrary to the standards I hold for myself and others. Hypocrisy, inconsistency, all that jazz.
I expect a lot from people. Or maybe not enough. I’m really not sure. I think I expect the worst, generally, which could be looked at either way. Not to say I think everyone is a bad person, quite the opposite, but I think, regarding myself, I assume people are siding towards the negative. I suppose you could look at it from like an imposter’s syndrome angle, but externalize that feeling. I think my expectation for others is to figure out that I’m not all that I intend to be and dip out. That’s a pretty common fear of mine, though I know it’s mostly paranoia. Another one is for people to compare me and opt for better options, which I think falls in the same category. At the root is a self-esteem issue I’ve had for I don’t know how long- I wasn’t like this as a child, but who is outside of the grossly misfortunate? I was like this as a teen, so it must have happened somewhere around puberty age and now, closing in on fifteen years later, I should probably reconcile with my insecurity.
Like I said, this paranoia about abandonment has to come from my general self-esteem issues, which can mostly be summed up as “fraudulent” and “non-deserving”. At my core, I do have this aching feeling that any attention or affection I get, I’m fundamentally undeserving of. The person receiving it isn’t me, you’re giving it to a persona under a persona under a persona and I feel guilty for tricking you, guilty for siphoning away your focus from someone who is definitely more qualified to be adored/admired/whatever. It’s pathetic and it’s gross, but whatever, you have to voice things for them to be real.
Well, about all I can do is identify this root feeling. I don’t entirely know how to overcome it nor make peace with it nor improve it. I mean, I’m trying different things, all the activities you’ve heard about before, in hopes that maybe I just need to become more confident about who I am. But if I think about it, I’m not improving my self-esteem and figuring out this whole issue, I’m changing myself into a person who I think would be deserving of all of the above. Which doesn’t really solve the root issue, health can be taken away in a second, so can friends, fiancées, etc. If I were to build up my confidence on these general externalities, the second they disappear, I’ll be left at square one with no progress. And I think this is an issue I’ve had for the past long while. In my relationship, I placed a lot of value on being in it. Yes, I was in love and yes, I thought that was going to be my future, but additionally, I had built up a lot of myself around the whole thing. I was someone who was loved by someone I thought was incredible, it was serious, etc. I couldn’t find my self-worth, so I outsourced the worthiness to the perceptions of another. Unconsciously, or perhaps I knew and didn’t want to acknowledge, I had transformed the other person from an individual to an object that made me feel like I was worth something. And of course, the thing with this external value, is that you’re very scared to lose it, not just by losing the other person, but losing what the other person signifies within you. I mean, it’s fucked up honestly, it’s codependent, it’s dehumanizing, it’s etc. And thinking about it now, it wasn’t just my relationship, but my whole life that takes this form of, I don’t know, worthiness fetishism. I see myself in the eyes of everyone and their lips turning up in laughter and their eyes pregnant with attentiveness are the panacea to my problems. It’s narcissistic, it’s self-indulgent, it’s insecure, it’s everything and nothing and it’s me. But this takes us back to the issue of “can identify, don’t know how to solve.”
I can think of a couple options, none of which are great. Option number one, the most promising. Take a heroic dose of shrooms, like a quarter, and induce ego death. Potential side effects are life-long mental illness and irreparable fracturing of the self. Option number two, therapy, but intentional this time. Sounds boring. Option number three, daily affirmations or some shit, I don’t know. It’s all grasping at straws.
Well, I can think of one other way. See, this was supposed to be about expectation and panacea. I don’t really set expectations for myself, never have. The anxious grief of potentially failing to meet them would be fatal to whatever is left of my ego. If I set a goal, if I make a plan, if I try to be something, and I come up short, I only have myself to blame. I don’t think I can handle that. But as we have learned, the things I think are generally very, very wrong. I’ve set a few goals for myself for the coming months, which are to run a 5k, surrender my problem cat, stop smoking, etc. All of these are quite attainable, which poses a problem for me. If I succeed in doing them, I will probably not be able to relish in the fact due to the simplicity. If I fail at them, well, you get it. But I do have the hope that in actually creating expectations for myself and meeting them, I will start to view myself as a little more capable. I have a great fear that I am incapable. Also, there’s the thing where now I’ve been able to enumerate my problems and maybe ruminating on them for the next few years of my life will also show some improvement. I am good at that, I’ll give myself credit here.
Last thing, in writing this, I was curious what people have generally written about the panacea for low self-esteem. Below is an essay by Joan Didion about self-respect, which I liked, but I don’t know if I can put it into practice. But now that I’ve spoken all of this into the world, I’m going to have to try. Much work to do, no rest for the pity party.
jeez, louise 