[880] Victim Eyes

Honestly, for what has felt like a building and building for months, my brain is on fire. I feel as though were I ever able to re-learn how to cry, maybe I could be persuaded to shut off the endless conversations with myself and inability to stop digging. Digging, that is, unaware if I’m trying to reach bottom, some treasure, or just to back fill a hole I’ve previously dug.

I get a lot of ideas about what I’m going to do when I’m on the road driving home. I get home, blow them all off, and then do things like start writing this, or eat when I’m not that hungry, or settle in for a sped up show I’m half-paying attention to. I have hours of my weekly work to record. I have a calendar to establish. I have details as it pertains to home maintenance to finish. I have to keep talking. The obsessive button is stuck on, and I can’t help myself.

I can’t help myself. I think this is the point of no return for people. You either reach that point and break down, or you humble yourself and look for the right kinds of help. I can’t help myself. I don’t have enough information. I don’t have the resources. I don’t have the language. I don’t have the time. I might not even have the best or most appreciable grasp of my own problem. No louder does the point of swallowing, “I can’t help myself” sound as it hits your stomach than when other people are helping you.

I panic when I need help. I don’t want to waste your time or money driving to help me only to discover I forgot it was Saturday and our plan is foiled because the shop my truck sits at is closed. I don’t want to think about you moving things around in your garage where you said I could put mine while we work on it. I don’t want to think about driving your friend-of-a-friend’s car in shitty weather or the potential accidents. I don’t want to feel this burden to pay you to bother with me at all.

The whole concept of “help” or “equal exchange” throws me. It nags the sense I’ve developed for getting taken advantage of or taken for granted. I can know full-well how eager I am to please and wish to contribute meaningfully to what someone else is doing, but I can barely cope with the idea that my neighbor would offer to let me use his tools or tow the truck for me. I have to fight to believe that anyone would just lend me their knowledge in helping get the truck repaired. It’s unfair to them and my best impulses. It’s an irrational fear that my worst most selfish instincts are getting something for nothing.

There’s very few people I think I have a grasp on what I mean to them. I’ve also invested in people who my presumed understanding in no way matched how little I in fact did. I get this wave of appreciative emotion if someone is willing to pick me up when my car dies. I expect to be left to shiver if it’s cold, pay a shit ton to be towed, and it’s probably going to be raining, so when good will or friendship enters into that disaster-construct I bring, I’m overwhelmed. I want to believe it’s not anymore of a “burden” or “problem” for someone to “deal with me” than I would if any of you genuinely needed something from me. Unfortunately, the vast majority of my relationships and experiences are based in lies.

It’s probably why I’m so moved to constantly write. I can’t trust my perspective, so I have to keep investigating it against the good and bad things that happen. I have to keep my decisions and expectations in some kind of check, or my mind is otherwise begging for an excuse to spiral. Nothing ever feels particularly balanced, which is why I lend myself to taking on too much or being hopelessly optimistic that with a banal but persistent focus and work ethic, it’ll all manifest eventually. I’m dodging people’s chance to help me as I view them as attempts to emotionally leverage or manipulate. I’m waiting for the problem to compound, and be left worse than if I just had to fix things alone. Like, imagine your friend’s tire popping in coming to pick you up.

I guess this also speaks to how little trust I have for anyone. I’m probably going to replace my tire, come pick you up, and go buy another tire. I feel at the butt of, “Well it popped while I was coming to get you!” kind of arguments all the time. Someone else not terribly well-off in a position to afford a new tire uses their dire and dramatic life to assign blame; repeat ad nauseum. Why run the risk of provoking that response? Why attack your already feeble understanding of the ways in which anybody might be allowed to help you? You can completely avoid a food fight if you never invite them to dinner.

Whether you wish to regard it as a kind of super power or extreme liability, I’m positive I’m shaped by some series of chemical flourishes and imbalances that send my spider senses into a frenzy. Most people tip me off the wrong way. The ones who haven’t then have to surmount my “intellectualizing” of their presumed living-failure state. If they’re either suffering the same kind of symptoms, dispositionally aberrant in their niceness, or prove themselves in some kind of fairytale fashion, then I might take a chance in asking for anything or “more.”

I’m tired of losing or failing for bad reasons. I make the distinction between my clients where there are those who are poor and trying, or poor and cunts blaming everything but themselves. If I broke my car joyriding or off-roading instead of side-hustling, I’d feel less inclined to argue my job should find the language or responsibility to collaborate and shoulder some of the burden. Not even my friend, my fucking job that profits 10-to-1 off the work I do for it. My job that doesn’t pay me enough to not find side-hustling necessary. People shouldn’t be made to suffer because of judgment or indignation unless it’s their own.

None of us ask for the myriad things that seek to shit on or influence us every day. We cope by detaching. We cope by downplaying and parroting. We drink or get way into our hobbies. We overburden sentimentality. We work ourselves until we’re too exhausted to think. We don’t feel helpful, and at least for me, therefore can’t trust help offered by others. We recognize the problems as bigger than our daily buckets of water against the forest fire. We know we haven’t run enough to even escape the boulder’s shadow, let alone had time or energy to ponder the size and origin of that boulder.

Knowing you need help and being able to find it are two different things. I know I need help. I know I can access certain kinds of help for certain kinds of things. I’m not entirely sure if some things related to my thoughts and compulsions can really be helped, medication aside. I don’t know that I want to be numb or hazy when calm or worked-up, the threats are real. Whether they constitute threats to your life or reduce to daily negotiated realities, they’re shaping what you can see out of yourself and other people. They’re living and breathing the ongoing reality to navigate.

I try to “think” away my panic. I try to write my feelings into a corner where they certainly consider what that good cry might feel like, indefinitely, until I’ve ground my teeth down and conjured a new headache. This contributes to my desire to compulsively act. STOP THINKING I plead with myself, GO DO. And what is there to do? March and yell? My homework? My detailed little fixes rounding out my selfish little space I’m only entitled to provided the wrong people aren’t paying attention?

I only feel “at home” in those imperfect expressions of the consistent ideals. It’s only when I’m working in service to ideas and people I believe in that the insecure doubt and panic are erased. Yard work becomes a joy, because a better future accompanies each shovel-full. You can feel genuine enthusiasm for other people’s junk as it now represents a learning opportunity or larger commercial presence. Misunderstandings or open questions feel like they deserve your attention and are capable of being brought to a resolution. The next disagreement is a chance to refine an exacting appreciation for where you’re headed together. You’re encouraged by and to figuring out what needs helped and where. The reciprocity is built in, not baselessly expected nor poised for abuse.

I feel abused. I feel like I’m made to continually explain how I could get less black eyes if you’d stop installing so many pointless doorknobs, and right at eye-level. We both refrain from saying the quiet part out loud about how many you’re regularly throwing at me. I’ve learned that when you tell people that’s what happened, they’ll let you borrow a screwdriver. Or they’ll accuse you of dragging good doorknob installers through the mud. Or they’ll tell you to crank your head back so you take the blow at a point that bruises less easily. The victim in me panics, distrusts, over-analyzes, and wants to instantly burn things down. The vast majority of the time, the victim doesn’t make the rules or dictate my response.

[653] Blame Game

Jordan Peterson related a line I heard today about why you're motivated to do anything. Discerning what you actually care about instead of what you've been compelled to can be incredibly hard. He emphasizes how important it is to have a framework from which to see the world. Be it religious or personally constructed, you can't operate without a set of values and means from which to judge whether you're in line with something. He relates Carl Jung who said the present self is the future self trying to manifest. Somewhere deep inside you view yourself as less than or incomplete, so no matter your explicit effort to lay in bed all day, whether your motivation is simple like getting fed or a form of lofty ideal and recognition, a reason manifests.

The friend who was recently angry at me for relating the “blah” I've inhabited for too long asked me if I finally figured out that I should live for someone else yet. I took her to mean more in the form of becoming a Big Brother or earning to give sense than hand myself over to the whims of someone else. I don't know what to make of the idea. In one form or another, you could say it's a godlike conception of ourselves. Jesus died for you, after all. The source of clearly all of my inspiration over the last few years, again Peterson, cautions against doing someone else's work for them. Surely he doesn't mean don't be a mentor to a child, but the stress is on the idea that people need to come into their own and take responsibility.

I feel I'm a super fan of blaming myself for things. I dig myself into holes. I chase people away. I stick to my rhetorical guns. I bite off bigger chunks than I can handle. I own every schizophrenic voice. I take immediate pride and shame at once in whatever I've chosen to share. I'm responsible for my own little hamster wheel. Long period of despotic bitching, celebratory day or two when something productive or unexpected happens, maybe mild period of contented contemplation, back to bitching. I still maintain a level of respect for myself over what I might hold for most people. I at least admit I don't like myself or circumstances, and whether you believe me or not, I don't have any creative or motivated fixes.

The word I can't escape these last few weeks, or maybe it's days but it feels like weeks, is “victim.” The string of sexual assault accusations, the anger I drew from my friend, the pleas from legislators and late night hosts about guns, and the millions of people who will be hurt and killed from the violent disregard for health and the environment all make a swirl of numbed panic. We've managed to normalize the idea of roommates into retirement, never getting married, never owning annoying, massive debt, underpaid jobs, broken social scenes, and the fleeting memory of animals we saw as children at the zoo. The world has disregarded our president insofar as they cross their fingers he won't start another war.

I'm thinking that part of that U.S. “you're special” narrative has done a fair amount of work to dismantle the care and respect you should have for the victim. This seen no more obviously than the stories of women in the past who were blown off or fired no matter where they turned, and what's been instantiated across industries today. If you didn't grow up feeling like you owned and ran the world, you might have a predilection to make the circumstances better so that people don't get victimized. I frequently disavow any claims I might have to victimhood no matter the blows I take nor yet for my growing concern over my mental state.

I wonder if victimization could be reduced to a numbers a game. So many points for having what are currently considered “privileges” weighted against instances or institutions designed to keep you stuck. This a game so delightfully perverse I'm sure I just made an ardent post-modernist cum in their pants. I don't want to play it, but I think the relative nature to oppression and means to fix it would be loud and present immediately. Don't just march, women, 90% of you go on strike like they did in Iceland. Peaceful protests are one thing Black Lives Matter, but the Panthers were a nice touch.

It wasn't so long ago we emboldened the Nazis to start marching again. Think they're screaming and chanting because they feel empowered and capable and worthwhile? No no, they're victims of the immigrant hoards and other incoherent babble. Purely at the level of using the word “victim” though, no one would want to be compared to an insecure Nazi. If that Nazi were human, then his actions might make more sense and there'd be some common ground. If he wasn't so filled with hate for his environment and how it makes him feel, we might be able to shuffle him into a reeducation camp until he's gung-ho about officiating lesbian Jewish weddings one day.

Victim seems to stem from an inability to go tit for tat. A girl is a victim because she can't fight back without risking further harm. A minority is a victim because they're outnumbered or denied access. Children are victims because they don't know any better. Animals are victims of the forces of nature to begin with before tinting that nature human hues. This could speak to why a word like “equality” has such a poignant ring for many people. This seems to speak towards the gun-lover's fever dream of fighting off a tyrannous government. This is the resentment the rich feel for “moochers” and “entitlement.”

Each case is slightly different, but they all require a certain blindness. Whether that blindness is imposed or faithfully adhered to is going to depend on each person's level of personal responsibility. The idea of being like water just popped into my head. Does the girl really want to take on the greater risk of fighting back, or can she flow into another form of exercising power and resistance? If you're black in the U.S. is your community destined to fall into disrepair and violence without the tax base, or did efforts to stay organized and informed leave with the money? I feel perfectly blind to how I'm going to achieve my goals in a manner that doesn't keep me glued to my car delivering food or some otherwise demoralizing and uninspired labor, and the stress of how to flow around that hurdle is constant.

This is the only way I know how to try and understand why people don't get anywhere. This is rough. This is sad. This is lonely. I hate it. I hate myself. I'm not a victim, but that's a statement bread from hopeful denial of the list of things I'd lose my breath trying to say all at once. I'm forced by my own conception of personal responsibility to always acknowledge, but downplay, the negatives happening to me. I have to keep inventing new options, exploring the smallest chances, and shaming every moment I can't get it together. I've fashioned my life around something like, “Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable.” Me doing everything I know how to the degree I'm capable needs to put me in the parking lot before the building opens, if you want to discuss my idea of “early.”

So now, I might try to claim I'm a victim of my own mind. I've habituated a delusion. I've condensed every conclusion into some flawed metric by which to judge my value or place. And I can't shut it off. Everything I do that isn't in service to “what matters” is by default on a scale from boring to harmful. Worse than resenting other people's happiness, you don't even recognize it. What does a kiss on a mountain top have to do with me? Why do I get the impression your nightly prayers are for your cats or dogs to speak English? How fondly will you regard your vacation when you're 70 and still working without a pension or 401(k)? I don't care to be bothered by matching someone else's happiness, I want them to match my concern. I want an acknowledgment of our collective victimhood with regard to our avoiding minds and get-used-to-it biases.

My future self isn't trying to get everyone to quit their jobs and just get drunk in a field with me indefinitely. My future self is one who never has to bitch because he's gotten to the ground floor of problems that can actually be fixed. He wants to give a shit about happiness. He wants to think it's worth bringing kids into the world. He wants to spend as much time tripping balls or on morphine as it takes to forget he's on his way out, and when it's over, no one will have to use his death greedily and fearfully. My future self is creating and exploring not out of desperation, but because new details and new technologies will require pioneers. Does anyone reading this feel like that? Can you remember when or if you ever have?

I don't seek to make it sound so dramatic, but we get absolutely nowhere alone. You don't get a title or a dollar amount and then finally time to start on your dreams. I didn't do the coffee shop alone, the party house, picnics, acid trips, or ice skating by myself. I didn't get all fucked in the head about relationships and friends or get to be better than average at Super Smash Brothers from steeping my nose in preteen novels and watching Twitch. I didn't even get a single task done correctly on the land over 3 months and 4 thousand dollars until my dad drove the 3 hours to knock out a 2 day task in 2 days. Whatever you think about the path you're on, if you have some specific conception of yourself that you've hung over the fence surrounding your job or convenient social structure, it's dead in the water. That's why you grieve for your lost loved ones whether they've physically died or not.

Why not? I'll ring it again. I want help. I need help. I need presence and the smallest enthusiasm with which to run with. I'd settle for someone to talk to while I'm digging a hole big enough to burn 80 yards of carpet in. Do I deserve it? I'm not a lonely kid or hungry veteran. You probably only want to help the real victims, piecemeal, in ways that make you feel like you're contributing. You're not a victim in lieu of them, right? The battle you can win? You're right on time.