Self-Loathing and Not Sleeping
Mar. 19th, 2002 02:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lawnrrdWell, I must be getting over this cold, because I have insomnia again. Instead of sleeping, I just lie on my back feeling angry, frustrated, inadequate, afraid, and unhappy, and hating myself.
I try to focus on something useful or interesting--like how I can break this chain, or the Javascript I have to figure out for work, or the math I'm trying to study--and I can keep that focus for all of fifteen seconds before lapsing back into the same old thoughts.
Anything that anyone else can do, I have to be able to do, too. If I can't, I feel worthless.
When I start thinking like this, I usually start thinking of a guy I knew. He and I went to the same high school, but he graduated a few years before I did. I ran into him again after college, when I was trading at the Stock Exchange. He had been there about sixteen months, and had made a million dollars. He had also lived in Japan, spoke fluent Japanese, and was an expert go player. (Go is a game. It's big in Asia.)
I just remember one summer afternoon, after the end of the trading day, I saw this guy at a bar in Philadelphia. The bar was outdoors on a pier made up to be a fake beach. He was lying on a chair, having a drink and talking with this stunning woman in a bikini, totally at ease. And at that moment, I just thought that I could no more do what he was doing than I could flap my arms and fly to the moon.
I couldn't talk to a girl like that because I'd be afraid of rejection. And because I knew for a fact I had nothing to say that she'd be interested in, whether that was true or not. I didn't make that kind of money because I was afraid to learn how. Afraid to ask questions, afraid to think for myself, afraid to try to figure things out. Instead, I just tried to do what I saw everyone else doing, and I hoped I'd pick up what they already seemed to know.
This was more than ten years ago. I still feel it as though it were yesterday.
I've lived my life dominated by fear, but I'm not really afraid of anything in particular. It's like something that surrounds me, and that fear associates itself with everything. The effect is that I become afraid of everything.
I'm afraid of everything, so I can't focus on anything. I have to know everything, I have to be able to do everything, so I can control everything, so there won't be anything to be afraid of. I think that's why I've always loved computers: because here is this deterministic, knowable little world that I can make do whatever I want. In that world, there's nothing to fear.
I also put myself in a box, and I'm afraid to step outside of it. I'm bitter, angry, and sad about everything I've cheated myself out of to this point and about the life I'm still afraid to live. I'm frustrated, I'm tired of feeling trapped, yet I can't find a way out, and that fills me with rage, the sort of impotent fury I expect Satan feels in the depths of the pit. I feel no less trapped because I built the box myself.
Sometimes I wonder how I got so fucked up. Sometimes I realize that' not the important question. The important question is, how do I undo it?
There's really nothing to be afraid of. It's not as though, if I do things perfectly, I can live forever, or not know pain or loss. I'm smart, I'm well-educated, I'm healthy (except for this !@#$% cast on my hand), and I'm good looking, so I'm at least as well equipped to deal with the world as anyone else is. There's no reason be afraid the way I am.
The sick joke is that reason has nothing to do with it. This is something primal, something deep, pre-rational about the way I see the world. When I think about stepping out of the box, the fear is there before I can act. Fear precedes thought and aborts it. And even when it doesn't, and I act, I don't learn the lesson, which is that I can step out of the box.
I try to focus on something useful or interesting--like how I can break this chain, or the Javascript I have to figure out for work, or the math I'm trying to study--and I can keep that focus for all of fifteen seconds before lapsing back into the same old thoughts.
Anything that anyone else can do, I have to be able to do, too. If I can't, I feel worthless.
When I start thinking like this, I usually start thinking of a guy I knew. He and I went to the same high school, but he graduated a few years before I did. I ran into him again after college, when I was trading at the Stock Exchange. He had been there about sixteen months, and had made a million dollars. He had also lived in Japan, spoke fluent Japanese, and was an expert go player. (Go is a game. It's big in Asia.)
I just remember one summer afternoon, after the end of the trading day, I saw this guy at a bar in Philadelphia. The bar was outdoors on a pier made up to be a fake beach. He was lying on a chair, having a drink and talking with this stunning woman in a bikini, totally at ease. And at that moment, I just thought that I could no more do what he was doing than I could flap my arms and fly to the moon.
I couldn't talk to a girl like that because I'd be afraid of rejection. And because I knew for a fact I had nothing to say that she'd be interested in, whether that was true or not. I didn't make that kind of money because I was afraid to learn how. Afraid to ask questions, afraid to think for myself, afraid to try to figure things out. Instead, I just tried to do what I saw everyone else doing, and I hoped I'd pick up what they already seemed to know.
This was more than ten years ago. I still feel it as though it were yesterday.
I've lived my life dominated by fear, but I'm not really afraid of anything in particular. It's like something that surrounds me, and that fear associates itself with everything. The effect is that I become afraid of everything.
I'm afraid of everything, so I can't focus on anything. I have to know everything, I have to be able to do everything, so I can control everything, so there won't be anything to be afraid of. I think that's why I've always loved computers: because here is this deterministic, knowable little world that I can make do whatever I want. In that world, there's nothing to fear.
I also put myself in a box, and I'm afraid to step outside of it. I'm bitter, angry, and sad about everything I've cheated myself out of to this point and about the life I'm still afraid to live. I'm frustrated, I'm tired of feeling trapped, yet I can't find a way out, and that fills me with rage, the sort of impotent fury I expect Satan feels in the depths of the pit. I feel no less trapped because I built the box myself.
Sometimes I wonder how I got so fucked up. Sometimes I realize that' not the important question. The important question is, how do I undo it?
There's really nothing to be afraid of. It's not as though, if I do things perfectly, I can live forever, or not know pain or loss. I'm smart, I'm well-educated, I'm healthy (except for this !@#$% cast on my hand), and I'm good looking, so I'm at least as well equipped to deal with the world as anyone else is. There's no reason be afraid the way I am.
The sick joke is that reason has nothing to do with it. This is something primal, something deep, pre-rational about the way I see the world. When I think about stepping out of the box, the fear is there before I can act. Fear precedes thought and aborts it. And even when it doesn't, and I act, I don't learn the lesson, which is that I can step out of the box.
