01S13

The hardest part about writing these posts is actually getting around to starting them. They usually arise out of hours or more of pacing back and forth through my kitchen, trying to get myself to put whatever nagging thoughts I'm having into words, but ultimately failing to even sit down at the computer and start writing in the first place. Ideas for these don't start at the beginning, they start in the middle of things, in an over-complicated and messy web of thoughts that overlap and interweave while my brain futively tries to piece them together into English words in an attempt to understand myself. Straightening things out and actually giving those thoughts form is when I usually just give up altogether. It takes me a long time to write anything because of the commitment it takes, something I have always been seriously terrible at.

I always feel as if I should make myself known in some way, that my practice of isolating myself from the world is only detrimental to myself, and to an extent I suppose that's true. My tendency for self-hatred is self-perpetuating in that the desire to quench it is equally as potent as, and also (in)directly furthers, the desire to fuel it. In many ways I strive to just be alone with myself and nature, not leaving a trace of myself anywhere, being distant and reserved and nowhere, constantly busy doing nothing. In other ways I desperately grasp at the possibility of making myself known in someway, that I'm not just no one in particular, and that I can appeal to people and make them appreciate me and I can appreciate them. Both of these are selfish desires and they act in direct opposition to each other, but for whatever reason they always have simultaneous significance, always fighting to win over the other and ultimately making me feel worse about myself.

I used to think I *had* it, but ever since that wave of puberty hit and I became disillusioned with the world, that sentiment has since waned. I don't think I have it. I don't think highly of myself anymore, because I feel like I'm trapped in the body of a sixteen-year-old, all my aspirations and capabilities limited by my small, juvenile mental capacity, forcing me to wait until I find the appropriate wisdom to actually get out and do something with my life and maybe reach someone with my actions. Reading back on these posts that I write, the onset of self-hatred just from reading what I have to say is just mental. It is almost absurd just how much I hate myself, and I can't think of a better way to get me to feel the agonizing amounts of self-loathing I have for myself than just making me look at what I've created. It all feels like a constant waste of time, like I'm not really destined to go anywhere, like the most I can do with myself is sit and wait and look inward until all that self-reflection gives way to some degree of success in the grand scheme of things, so that upon seeing how my actions have (hopefully) positively influenced others, I can get some sort of reassurance that possibly affirms that I'm a better person than I think I am.

But the absence of this causes the self-hatred to fester. I don't want to say I'm obsessed with success, but I am. Not the kind where everyone knows me, where I'm loved just as much as I'm fervently hated, with me manipulating my wealth and status into stroking my ego more. That is silly. I want to be known, but not to such an extent... I'm not wanting fame, I think I'm just wanting recognition, some kind of sign that the stuff I do is worth doing and that it has the capability to make people happy because of it. Loathing on the internet, is not something that fulfills this, so I don't even know why I do this in the first place.

I think I can confirm with reasonable suspicion that I have an inferiority complex. I knew my parents growing up, but I also sort of didn't. Most of my childhood was spent going back and forth between places and just being confused. I wasn't taught well and I misbehaved often. My brother was perfect, he never did anything wrong, and I just sort of sat there most of the time, I guess subconsciously wondering what the hell I'm doing wrong, if I really even have a future when this is all that I am. Obviously, most eight-year-olds don't really think about those things, but I give myself leeway to think on behalf of my younger self and act like that sort of thought was buried in my mind somewhere where it was just too complicated and upsetting for me to fully grasp it.

Looking at art, displays of talent, anything indicitive of someone being somehow successful in some way, and realizing the perfectly modest degree to which it's reached the masses (e.g. cult followings, to an extent), makes me incredibly envious. It ruins whatever potential I had to truly appreciate the art and replaces it with just jealousy and more self-hatred. I realize that this person "made it" by being themselves, and I can't help but just hate myself for failing to seize whatever hypothetical opportunity this person might have seized, that this person won the lottery of recognition, so to speak, that allowed the stars to align in such a way that made their work get out there to a degree that brought them recognition, a feat that is just fundamentally impossible for someone as broken and deficient as I am.

If you know what you're doing, you don't spend most of your time wandering aimlessly thinking of ways in which you could be successful but will never manage to accomplish, pretending like you're capable of putting yourself out there when the most you have to show for yourself is a messy, bland website in a secluded corner of the internet that no one will ever care enough to look through or to even bother with.

Recently I had a routine examination done for high school and thought I'd ask if I could get evaluated for ADHD. Eventually all of that got sorted out and I think it's in the cards now. And I keep thinking to myself, this is what will do it for me, that once I can maybe get some sort of validation of (and medication for) my major malfunction, I can be free from the single worst thing to ever disgrace me and my frail attention span, any aspect of creativity or productivity I pretend to have, any degree of success I should ever hope to attain. I won't name any names of the people I enviously aspire to be like, whose mere existence makes me feel worse about myself in a manner that feels simultaneously selfless and selfish; like I'm offloading some of my self-worth on this person as some form of adoration for them and their work, but also using it as cause to hate myself even more and complain about how much I feel stuck and unwanted and incapable of finding an audience. I'm not idolizing big people, I'm idolizing small-town acts, niche individuals who have, against all odds, found success. I act like I am just obsessed with them, that they are everything I could aspire to be, but I ultimately tend towards avoiding thinking about them or interacting with them altogether because merely thinking about them is enough for me to fall back into the chain of self-loathing that I desperately try to keep myself out of.

I don't really think I can do much about it. I don't have access to therapy so my only outlet for this is on this part of the website. And... wow, I HATE reading back on these things. It makes me wish I could view what I do from the more objective eyes of another person, so that I can actually seriously evaluate whatever merit I may have, without the layers of self-hatred that make it incredibly difficult to attribute any positive aspects to anything I create. Feeling stuck like this, just sort of waiting for when I can be just the perfectly half-adequate amounts of successful to where I can feel happy about myself, is genuinely maddening. And it's not even a valid concern to have!! The people I idolize who I think rock don't have any sort of insane hubris like I seem to be having. They didn't ask to, err, blow up? in the way that they did, and now that they have they don't really seem particularly BOTHERED by it, they're not letting it get to their head at all. It makes me believe that if I actually want to reach the point where I'm truly happy with myself to such an extent, I need to ditch the notion that me being successful is necessary, increase my self-esteem, and then keep making things I enjoy and am happy with until it really, truly reaches an audience. But... it seems far too easy for me to try that and end up slipping up and ruining whatever chance I have, not really noticing it because I'm not concerned about it anymore, ultimately dying forgotten like so many other people of the world, because I was just too ignorant of my capabilities. There's a whole other thing about age that similarly concerns me in relation to this but that is something else entirely.

I will end this here, maybe. It might be the case that I just need a break from writing. I'm happy that I was able to get myself to write this after everything, but it's just a vent. It's not art, it's just complaining, so what's the point.