"I didn't learn to be this way", I whispered to myself. "My brain chemistry was wrong, and I was flawed from the start." I had concrete proof in documentation— in medication to reaffirm this was so. The comfort of an answer, even one that would scar. We often rush towards a conclusion for fear of deaf in the silence.
The darkness had grown so deep, that the only light I could see would be in the stories I told myself of a world that couldn't be... but only one as dreamed.
Returning back to my daily life, I took a break from writing.
I attended therapy and followed the instructions given by strangers, trained and professional strangers to figure out what note, tuned out of key, destroyed the song of will for me. As the days pressed forth, it was slowly learned that not a single event, but a cumulation had built into an unshakable belief that I held about myself. No matter how false, would grow to shape and to eventually warp my perception of reality and everything around me.
I had first thought that my issues were individual, but a fundamental theme lay across the board. No matter what the situation was or would be,
I was not good enough.
I was not smart enough.
I was not skilled enough.
I as a human,was not enough.
Even when having self-worthlessness at a core belief, some part of me would not believe that. So I would try harder than I thought I could, longing to be wrong. No matter what I did, it would never be "enough".
I don't know about anyone else in the room, but I believe that when we die, our deeds in our lifetimes aren't rewarded in heaven or judged in hell. Heaven is here right now as you read this, but hell is as well. You don't have to die to go to hell. What I would see in the world around me and the therapy I had gone through led me to discover that illusions are not discernable as we were made to believe by society, media, family, and friends. My illusion, my hell, was crawling with demons.
The demons and hell however, were all imaginary.
It didn't make it any less real.
Every friend in a relationship appeared to me as a reminder that I was not good enough to be loved by another. Every piece of good news in someone else's life carved a wound that I wouldn't be as talented, as skilled, as thoughtful as another. My world laughed at me, and but remembered to show me how bad my life was, all that I lacked, and that I could see joy but never grasp it myself.
Mushy phonecalls with my roommate and his gf made me feel alone. Everyone's highlight reel on social media made me feel like I failed. As though it was a punishment for not being better at life, I would be constantly reminded in every possible way that I was worthless.
They can have it but I cannot.
I would begin to see flaws in others, imagined to fruition that would justify to me that my own life was not fair. I deserve it just as much...
If not more.
Why does everyone smile together selfishly, while I cry alone? Am I not a friend? Do I not matter as well? "Look, I'm better than you," I'd hear in every interaction, an inaudible voice. Everywhere I turned, everyone was shamelessly enjoying their lives and cheating their souls to fill their desires, with disregard to others. A world overturned by demons that got everything they wanted.
I be damned—quite literally.
I wasn't strong enough to slay others for what I wanted I would think. Looked down upon, included to be civil, spoken to and reasoned with as a child. Perception can slay any intention no matter how pure. Worst of all to be complimented, and praised endlessly through pity I was mocked;
"You failed but you tried, so let me make you feel better." Not that I really meant it. You're not worthy, but I don't want you to cry and make a scene. Most of us are adults here. I would be complimented and praised so often that I felt that there was no merit, everyone felt bad for me, and would be the only emotion I could feel.
My therapist upon our first few visits determined that there was no external abuse or interpersonal baggage at the root of my issues despite what I had been experiencing. As I spoke about various people, and things in my life, he had laughed and told me that;
"Everyone can't be wrong. All of the people in your life telling you all of these good things about yourself, you should believe them." All of my therapy assignments since then have been geared toward loving and caring for myself more, and being kind to myself. None of my therapy involves other people.
I had managed to doubt myself hard enough that I didn't believe in nor trust myself anymore. Over time It got strong enough that I stopped trusting anyone else that believed in me too. For everyone that cared, I saw only a demon in their place. The real demon was only my reflection of what I told myself was true. None of it ever happened, and if anything I was blessed in many ways.
Instead I failed to see that I was living in a heaven all along believing it was hell.
My medication was increasing with each doctor visit based on my progress or rather, lack thereof. I had gone so far that I couldn't go without them, and even when I had taken them for the day, they would wear off faster and earlier, or stop working at all.
I lived behind the label of mental illness that something beyond my control was wrong, trying not to face a life that I no longer understood. If there was an answer, I could finally rest at the cost of accepting that I was not capable of transforming the hand I was dealt and live every day with this answer as my core. It was no longer in my head, it became my reality that I really wasn't "good enough" and there would be no need to fight it any longer.
My days blended together and lost meaning. I had done everything my doctors wanted but for some reason, I didn't improve, I wasn't getting better. I wondered if I would be like this forever, even after reaching out for help... I would be worse off than I had started? I didn't know that something like this could even happen.
The part of me that wanted to be wrong. I thought my life, my sanity, had long ended, but some part of me refused to believe the entire reality I was living in... even at this point. There was no evidence strong enough that could shake my false belief system fortress I had built myself and made my home.
I was living a life where my problems were official, and I could see and experience them. It would be like holding my hand up to my face and just deciding it wasn't real. If I was wrong about what I had thought of myself, I would still have no answers... but a better answer could be found. I've gone there before but maybe not as literally, into a despair so dark that nothing should be able to thrive. But while the worst is actualized I feel that the fear has vanished, what you were afraid of the most came to pass through being experienced, something else is born.
Hope knows I tried everything. She asks me why I'm sad, and she knows that this isn't what I wanted but I'm in the abyss and I'm already living it out. I'm sad because it was important to me. Let me ask you, would you ever do something knowing that by everything you know in the present—would make zero difference? Because I was already falling behind in school, having a depressing or unfeeling day every day, lost all direction, and my life experience deteriorated. Why try now when it would change nothing?
Because it would amazing if it did.
I spent a while thinking about how I could show myself with 100% certainty that I create my own reality, and that my doubt, and negative outlook was unfounded no matter how real it seemed to me I could move beyond it. I needed something to prove to me that I was wrong, so my world was also wrong. I set two impossible goals for myself, and since then achieved them both.
I was behind in school, enough that I thought I would fail. Many days I couldn't get out of bed, yet I ended up acing that programming class I had. I was required to take my medication every day to prevent severe withdrawals and my condition worsening. I stopped taking them 3 weeks ago. If I was as weak as I thought I was neither would be possible.
I'm always up to something weird, but even this experience I wouldn't trade away. In the past year I've learned many things that transformed the way I live. Through this adventure, I had lost the fear of being too weird or never understood by others. I was already crazy, I didn't have to be scared of looking more sane. I didn't have to worry not knowing if something was wrong, I learned what was wrong. I feel that we spend the majority of our lives in fear of things that will never happen, although sometimes they do. What I find strange is that when they do happen, it was never as scary as what we pictured, or what we told ourselves.
When we are already living our fear out, there's no more questions and only answers. We can only be scared when we have questions that we want to know the answers to but have yet to reach. I think back to the time I was 100% certain we were getting wiped out by a missle. I wasn't afraid of anything, and there was no reason to be. Everything I could ever be scared of was no longer going to happen. No flashbacks of my life, nothing at all.
I wonder if when we are on our deathbeds if fear vanishes leaving all it touched behind as regret. When everything came to pass, and you can only look back. A person realizes that their fears are behind them, and never actually happened, and think about all of the actions made in life because of those fears. Do they wish they weren't afraid that whole time?
Does hope exist here too? Death sounds like an abyss, and even if it wouldn't make a difference to be hopeful,
it would be amazing if it did.
