I was divided before going to college. One part of me was filled with an energetic anticipation of college, thinking that this was where I would go to finally resolve my personal problems. I would be in classes that engaged me, have friendships that would be fulfilling, become romantically active (sometimes I dreamed of myself as a veritable Don Juan). I knew, on a conceptual level, that there would be problems and issues, but generally speaking, I would be happy. Happier than I ever was before.
Then there was the other part of me. The frightened part. The part that feared leaving the comfort of my home, being in a world I had no experience with. The part that feared that I wouldn't know what to do, that I would be more isolated than ever, and that my hopes of friends and relationships would only ever be hopes, never fulfilled. But what I feared most of all was that this entry into college would mark another crossing point that was bringing me ever closer to what I feared was my ultimate destination--failure. Failure in job, relationships, life.
Ultimately, neither my greatest dreams nor my worst anxieties happened. No major shift occurred in either direction. I did not become a new person.
I became only myself, in a new place.
The same things I struggled with in High School I continued to struggle with in college. My anxiety and my depression did not change, though the things I worried and despaired about might have. More significantly, I did not cease to have Asperger's syndrome. I still struggled to interact with others as others could interact with others. I still was not interested in parties and other high-intensity "social" activities that my peers enjoyed, such as concerts or going to bars. I still struggled to relate to my peers and continually felt a disconnect from them.
At the same time, I began to develop further my personal skills and better learn the career I wanted to take, and begin taking the steps towards that career. I had my first relationship, and have made new friends. My grades have been generally improving. I'm away from the stifling aspects of the home life, and am in a position that has enabled me to better foster my own personal development.
Yet those were not the things I focused on. I ignored that I had not fulfilled my negative expectations, and instead focused on how short I had fallen of my positive expectations, which of course left me feeling more depressed. I still felt isolated like I did in high school. I still broke down like I did in high school. I still felt the urge to hurt myself like I did in high school. Like in High School, this was never a constant state, and it moved in and out with more positive feelings. But those feelings were still there.
I think one root for the development of mental illness in college, and my own unhappiness in college, is the failure to meet expectations.
Our culture expends a great deal of energy convincing us that college is worthwhile--more than worthwhile, that we must go to it. It does this by affecting us with wide-ranging fantasies, of career success, of finding "who we are", of achieving our career goals, finding good love and good friendships. Perhaps for some people that is true, in exactly the ways which they conceive of it. But I think for a great deal of us, those high expectations fail to be met, and we feel the frustration of having not met them. I think a lot of unhappiness arises from lack of acceptance--from our expectations being in conflict with reality. We desire to reach a point, but we do not actually reach that point, and we become sad and unhealthy at the gap between desire and reality.
Of course, this only applies to causes which are more, shall we say, psychic in nature, which is to say they have to do with our thoughts and feelings as thoughts and feelings.. Some mental illnesses develop out of neurochemical or otherwise biological causes (forms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for example), and all I can suggest with regards to why those occur more often in young adults is that perhaps those psychic causes become triggers leading to the development of those disorders, or that an unhealthy psychological disposition leads then to the development of psychobiological illnesses. Perhaps the neurobiological qualities of the developmental stage itself is a breeding ground for mental disorders. Ultimately, though, I don't know shit about those things, so I couldn't really say.
Regardless, I know personally at least that a great deal of my distress arises from seeing the world which I live in now, and being frustrated that it was not what I desired it to be. I look at friendships and wonder why they are not more fulfilling. I look at my classes and wonder why I do not get better grades. I look at my depression and wonder why I am not feeling happier. And all of those feelings, that constant contrast, leaves me miserable.
=====
Yet things have been changing.
Not suddenly, not dramatically, as I had envisioned they might be. But gradually, subtly. I was in a new environment. I had to learn new ways to manage my problems, to deal with classes, and a greater workload. My old means of coping were insufficient, and I needed to learn new ways. My mom saw my struggles, and found a therapist dealing especially with people with Asperger's, and with him I began to learn how to better manage not only the current issues I was struggling with, but issues that had been plaguing me for years before. We dealt with class stresses, with old regrets, with pretty much everything. What had initially been gotten just to help me deal with old stresses was creeping into far more deeply rooted problems. I began not merely to sustain, but to recover.
And it has been far from a straight road. It has been bumpy, going up and down. I've still broken down, and old issues still creep up. That is what makes recovery so challenging--that there is no clear pattern, and the future is uncertain. But as I have argued prior, I maintain that hope is not only valuable to recovery, but invaluable.
There is no final stop. There is no moment of total euphoric triumph, there is no happy ending, at least not in the sense that there won't be problems afterward. Rather, it is a dogged, constant effort, moving forward one step at a time, up a hill, in the pouring rain. Sometimes you slip and fall, and gravity pulls you down. But there's nothing else to do but to get up, wipe off the mud, and keep going. The top is so far away, and sometimes it just feels easier to lay your head against the mud and rest, but goddammit, you might just get there. And someday the rain will stop, and the ground will dry. You will get strong, and climbing the hill won't seem as hard.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Saturday, April 12, 2014
4/12/14: Cynicism
In class, I saw one of my fellow students exhibiting a great deal of cynicism about her ability to change the world. I found myself getting annoyed by her, perhaps only because her opinion differed so strongly from mine, then I reflected that I've felt a lot of the same things a lot of times, sometimes confident enough to say them out loud. I wonder if people looked on what I said the same way I looked on what she said.
Cynicism is an understandable reaction. It hardens us against pain. It hardens us against disappointment, and frustration, and hurt. The onus is reduced on us to defend our beliefs, or to alter them as need be, because there is always room for thinking the worst case scenario. We can always take comfort in certainty, and the same applies for worst-case scenarios. And if we should be proven wrong in some single case, well, we are pleasantly surprised, but under no need to rethink our cynicism, for there's no guarantee the same outcome will happen again later.
The alternative to cynicism, that which requires us to have faith in others to do what we believe is right, and faith in the world or in our own abilities to enact change, is very, very difficult, especially for people who have been hurt before. It's hard to believe we can get good outcomes when so often we do not. And every time we hope for a better outcome only to receive the opposite, we open ourselves up for hurt, often quite deeply. It is hard to have hope, because the world seems determined to undermine it at every turn.
Yet the world is not a ball of sheer human misery. Sometimes good things do happen. Sometimes the world changes for the better. Consider the causes of civil rights, gay rights, and women's rights. An astounding amount of progress has been made on all of those fronts in the past hundred years alone. Does that mean it is destined to stay here forever, and that we are to continually improve? No. But it does testify that, no matter what the situation, things can improve.
Of course, the cynics may be right, and there is not much we can change about the world we live in. Certainly sometimes the cynics are right are in various matters. Yet while cynicism may be a good personal defense mechanism, and even if most of the time the cynical belief is proven right (which is a big if), it is not quite so useful for affecting change. Cynicism implies, to one degree or another, a resignation. Of course one may be cynical and still work their utmost to obtain something, but I do wonder whether, if one believes their efforts to be ultimately futile, they do not hold back, consciously or unconsciously the degree to which they will try to affect change. If we believe that we have the ability to affect change, then do we not alter our behavior to try and accommodate that, and work all the harder to our desired ends?
One may see similar arguments used here to that in my previous post where I justified my belief system, which is quite intentional. In both cases, I invest myself in the possibility of a positive outcome, not because I know it to be true, for I don't, but because it carries the capability for me to change myself and how I interact with the world. Now in the prior case with my belief system, that affects change primarily in the here and now, as I don't follow the Pascal's Wager logic that my beliefs--or anyone'--will change my ultimate destination after life. In the case of society, however, that belief carries the potential to affect quite strongly not only how I feel and act, but also possible outcomes. By believing I can enact change, I raise the possibility that I will, for I gear myself towards actions intended to produce that change.
And I believe such a belief is more than warranted. In my other blog, I made the argument that hope is necessary for recovery in mental illness. I believe the same is true here. Hope--the belief that we can make things better in some way--is instrumental, for it gives us a goal to strive towards, and the belief that we can actually reach that goal, if we should strive hard enough. And we may fail, we may fall short. But how much farther will we have gone with that hope, than we would have gone without?
We can choose to be cynical. It is undeniably the safer option, at least for ourselves. But for the world to improve, I believe we need to have a disposition of hope, and believe that we don't know if we'll succeed, but dammit, we might.
Cynicism is an understandable reaction. It hardens us against pain. It hardens us against disappointment, and frustration, and hurt. The onus is reduced on us to defend our beliefs, or to alter them as need be, because there is always room for thinking the worst case scenario. We can always take comfort in certainty, and the same applies for worst-case scenarios. And if we should be proven wrong in some single case, well, we are pleasantly surprised, but under no need to rethink our cynicism, for there's no guarantee the same outcome will happen again later.
The alternative to cynicism, that which requires us to have faith in others to do what we believe is right, and faith in the world or in our own abilities to enact change, is very, very difficult, especially for people who have been hurt before. It's hard to believe we can get good outcomes when so often we do not. And every time we hope for a better outcome only to receive the opposite, we open ourselves up for hurt, often quite deeply. It is hard to have hope, because the world seems determined to undermine it at every turn.
Yet the world is not a ball of sheer human misery. Sometimes good things do happen. Sometimes the world changes for the better. Consider the causes of civil rights, gay rights, and women's rights. An astounding amount of progress has been made on all of those fronts in the past hundred years alone. Does that mean it is destined to stay here forever, and that we are to continually improve? No. But it does testify that, no matter what the situation, things can improve.
Of course, the cynics may be right, and there is not much we can change about the world we live in. Certainly sometimes the cynics are right are in various matters. Yet while cynicism may be a good personal defense mechanism, and even if most of the time the cynical belief is proven right (which is a big if), it is not quite so useful for affecting change. Cynicism implies, to one degree or another, a resignation. Of course one may be cynical and still work their utmost to obtain something, but I do wonder whether, if one believes their efforts to be ultimately futile, they do not hold back, consciously or unconsciously the degree to which they will try to affect change. If we believe that we have the ability to affect change, then do we not alter our behavior to try and accommodate that, and work all the harder to our desired ends?
One may see similar arguments used here to that in my previous post where I justified my belief system, which is quite intentional. In both cases, I invest myself in the possibility of a positive outcome, not because I know it to be true, for I don't, but because it carries the capability for me to change myself and how I interact with the world. Now in the prior case with my belief system, that affects change primarily in the here and now, as I don't follow the Pascal's Wager logic that my beliefs--or anyone'--will change my ultimate destination after life. In the case of society, however, that belief carries the potential to affect quite strongly not only how I feel and act, but also possible outcomes. By believing I can enact change, I raise the possibility that I will, for I gear myself towards actions intended to produce that change.
And I believe such a belief is more than warranted. In my other blog, I made the argument that hope is necessary for recovery in mental illness. I believe the same is true here. Hope--the belief that we can make things better in some way--is instrumental, for it gives us a goal to strive towards, and the belief that we can actually reach that goal, if we should strive hard enough. And we may fail, we may fall short. But how much farther will we have gone with that hope, than we would have gone without?
We can choose to be cynical. It is undeniably the safer option, at least for ourselves. But for the world to improve, I believe we need to have a disposition of hope, and believe that we don't know if we'll succeed, but dammit, we might.
Friday, April 4, 2014
4/3/14: My Beliefs
Ooh boy. This is a big one, ain't it? The fate of the universe is in my hands, in a way.
I consider myself somewhere between an agnostic and a spiritual agnostic. Agnostic being "I don't know what", and spiritual agnostic being "I believe something's out there, but I don't know what."
This isn't one I came to overnight. I thought about it for many years, and even now I go back and forth. I do not have proof for my beliefs. There is nothing I can point to where I can say "This is unassailable proof." I have things that seem suggestive to me of a greater spiritual life. I am disinclined, for example, to dismiss all near-death experiences as mere biological events, or that all religious experiences were simply the result of personal delusions or primitive superstition. Others may be inclined to do so, and that is their prerogative, but it is not mine.
My life has been filled with a great deal of existential distress. It is not a pleasant experience. A lot of this I can attribute to my own issues with anxiety, where I worry about things simply because they might happen, or they might be true. I worry that my family doesn't love me because I don't know that they do. I worry I might get brain damage tomorrow because I have no way of knowing I might not. Life may be meaningless, because I have no way of knowing that it is.
These all may seem like very different issues, but they are all rooted in the same thing, and that is the fear of uncertainty. With uncertainty, my imagination takes flight, in the most unpleasant way possible. All my greatest fears and worries become equally viable, for I have no convincing reason to believe they are not.
Recently, I have begun reading a book about dealing with such anxiety. The book does not seek to allay my fears of these various uncertainties happening, for it knows it cannot do that. Rather, it asks me to accept the uncertainty, and live my life in the best way I can, right here, and right now. I suppose I have taken that as the basis for my spiritual beliefs as well.
I have no proof for my belief. I would argue that no one does. The Atheist and the Christian both have their arguments, and both can be perfectly compelling, but in the end all they are is words on a paper. Words which can carry great meaning, but even then that meaning is limited by the restrictions of our human minds. Existence being the widely complex thing that it is, I am skeptical that any of us can look at issues of metaphysics and somehow come at something that is true. Plato uses the argument of the men trapped in a cave, making their pronouncements about the world based solely on the shadows they see on the cave wall. I would argue we are in a similar situation.
Our everyday beliefs are all, at their core, uncertain. We cannot be sure that anything we feel or experience is true. We cannot be certain that we have loved ones. For all we know we may be living in a matrix-type environment where all of our relationships are artificially constructed. Perhaps our loved ones don't really love us, but merely convince us that they are. We can argue and provide reasons to argue that our loved ones love us, but in the end there is never any way to be certain. When faced with that we have two options: we can either choose to live in a fearful uncertainty, forever wondering if they love us or not. Or we can make a leap of faith and believe that they love us, though we may not be certain. We believe this not because we have compelling evidence that it is true--we will never have such evidence. Rather, we believe it because, by believing it, we inform our actions, and make our interactions with those we love all the more meaningful.
The same applies for any belief system, be it nihilism, or Christianity, or anything else. We truly don't know. We are faced with a vast, expansive universe, and our own ability to understand it is at most a pinprick to the whole of existence, if it is even that. Philosophers may debate as they have done for hundreds of years, each believing themselves to be correct. Am I to assume that all philosophers but one are deficient in some way? Or shall I assume that many different philosophers have different beliefs not because some are smarter than others, but because they all are, by virtue of their different selves, taken to believing some things are true, and other things not?
I don't know. That is the point. Life is vast and uncertain.
Life may very well be meaningless. There may be no self, no soul, and no afterlife. Love may be simply a convenient construct, and compassion a cruel illusion. None of us may have any inherent worth. We might not. But we don't know.
Similarly, life may be full of meaning. Love and beauty may not be merely concepts, but true and real things. We may all have dignity and be worthy of compassion and love, not simply because we are told that, but because it is inherent to our being. We may have purpose, and our actions in this world may mean something beyond the cruel intransience of our physical existence. We don't know. But it might.
I choose to believe that it might. Not because it is true, because as I have said, I do not know it to be true. But because it gives me life. It fills me with a sense of meaning and purpose. It makes my interactions with other human beings meaningful, and enjoyable. It makes love and compassion feel like something transcendent, and invaluable, rather than incidental. It changes myself into a better human being.
We can argue this and that for as long as we can stay awake. We have done so for the last 2000 years, and if we manage to survive another 2000, I daresay we will continue to argue these things further. But at some point, we need to stop arguing. At some point, we need to be willing to step into the world and carry a belief with us, even if the belief is simply that we cannot be certain. Not because we're necessarily right, but because at some point we need to go outside and live.
So here is what I think. If I am right, if what I believe is true, then I will live a happy and fulfilling life and move on to the next as best prepared as I can be. If I am wrong, then at the end of my life I die having lived a life as happy and fulfilling as it could be. Either way, it can provide for me happiness in this life, which nihilistic sentiments routinely fail to do.
As I write this, it is a beautiful day outside. The sky is blue, birds fly above me, and the world is set into its various rhythms. If believing what I believe makes the day that much more beautiful, and if believing otherwise makes the day less, and if I have no compelling evidence to believe one or the other, then why not believe what makes the day more beautiful?
I consider myself somewhere between an agnostic and a spiritual agnostic. Agnostic being "I don't know what", and spiritual agnostic being "I believe something's out there, but I don't know what."
This isn't one I came to overnight. I thought about it for many years, and even now I go back and forth. I do not have proof for my beliefs. There is nothing I can point to where I can say "This is unassailable proof." I have things that seem suggestive to me of a greater spiritual life. I am disinclined, for example, to dismiss all near-death experiences as mere biological events, or that all religious experiences were simply the result of personal delusions or primitive superstition. Others may be inclined to do so, and that is their prerogative, but it is not mine.
My life has been filled with a great deal of existential distress. It is not a pleasant experience. A lot of this I can attribute to my own issues with anxiety, where I worry about things simply because they might happen, or they might be true. I worry that my family doesn't love me because I don't know that they do. I worry I might get brain damage tomorrow because I have no way of knowing I might not. Life may be meaningless, because I have no way of knowing that it is.
These all may seem like very different issues, but they are all rooted in the same thing, and that is the fear of uncertainty. With uncertainty, my imagination takes flight, in the most unpleasant way possible. All my greatest fears and worries become equally viable, for I have no convincing reason to believe they are not.
Recently, I have begun reading a book about dealing with such anxiety. The book does not seek to allay my fears of these various uncertainties happening, for it knows it cannot do that. Rather, it asks me to accept the uncertainty, and live my life in the best way I can, right here, and right now. I suppose I have taken that as the basis for my spiritual beliefs as well.
I have no proof for my belief. I would argue that no one does. The Atheist and the Christian both have their arguments, and both can be perfectly compelling, but in the end all they are is words on a paper. Words which can carry great meaning, but even then that meaning is limited by the restrictions of our human minds. Existence being the widely complex thing that it is, I am skeptical that any of us can look at issues of metaphysics and somehow come at something that is true. Plato uses the argument of the men trapped in a cave, making their pronouncements about the world based solely on the shadows they see on the cave wall. I would argue we are in a similar situation.
Our everyday beliefs are all, at their core, uncertain. We cannot be sure that anything we feel or experience is true. We cannot be certain that we have loved ones. For all we know we may be living in a matrix-type environment where all of our relationships are artificially constructed. Perhaps our loved ones don't really love us, but merely convince us that they are. We can argue and provide reasons to argue that our loved ones love us, but in the end there is never any way to be certain. When faced with that we have two options: we can either choose to live in a fearful uncertainty, forever wondering if they love us or not. Or we can make a leap of faith and believe that they love us, though we may not be certain. We believe this not because we have compelling evidence that it is true--we will never have such evidence. Rather, we believe it because, by believing it, we inform our actions, and make our interactions with those we love all the more meaningful.
The same applies for any belief system, be it nihilism, or Christianity, or anything else. We truly don't know. We are faced with a vast, expansive universe, and our own ability to understand it is at most a pinprick to the whole of existence, if it is even that. Philosophers may debate as they have done for hundreds of years, each believing themselves to be correct. Am I to assume that all philosophers but one are deficient in some way? Or shall I assume that many different philosophers have different beliefs not because some are smarter than others, but because they all are, by virtue of their different selves, taken to believing some things are true, and other things not?
I don't know. That is the point. Life is vast and uncertain.
Life may very well be meaningless. There may be no self, no soul, and no afterlife. Love may be simply a convenient construct, and compassion a cruel illusion. None of us may have any inherent worth. We might not. But we don't know.
Similarly, life may be full of meaning. Love and beauty may not be merely concepts, but true and real things. We may all have dignity and be worthy of compassion and love, not simply because we are told that, but because it is inherent to our being. We may have purpose, and our actions in this world may mean something beyond the cruel intransience of our physical existence. We don't know. But it might.
I choose to believe that it might. Not because it is true, because as I have said, I do not know it to be true. But because it gives me life. It fills me with a sense of meaning and purpose. It makes my interactions with other human beings meaningful, and enjoyable. It makes love and compassion feel like something transcendent, and invaluable, rather than incidental. It changes myself into a better human being.
We can argue this and that for as long as we can stay awake. We have done so for the last 2000 years, and if we manage to survive another 2000, I daresay we will continue to argue these things further. But at some point, we need to stop arguing. At some point, we need to be willing to step into the world and carry a belief with us, even if the belief is simply that we cannot be certain. Not because we're necessarily right, but because at some point we need to go outside and live.
So here is what I think. If I am right, if what I believe is true, then I will live a happy and fulfilling life and move on to the next as best prepared as I can be. If I am wrong, then at the end of my life I die having lived a life as happy and fulfilling as it could be. Either way, it can provide for me happiness in this life, which nihilistic sentiments routinely fail to do.
As I write this, it is a beautiful day outside. The sky is blue, birds fly above me, and the world is set into its various rhythms. If believing what I believe makes the day that much more beautiful, and if believing otherwise makes the day less, and if I have no compelling evidence to believe one or the other, then why not believe what makes the day more beautiful?
Sunday, March 30, 2014
3/30/2014: The Relationship, Infatuation, and "True Love"
Well, I got a girl's number. I'm going on a date with her Tuesday.
I'm sure for a lot of people, this doesn't mean much. For a lot of people, they get numbers all the time. They seem to do these things effortlessly. They have the benefit of social instincts which I was unfortunately underdeveloped in. Obviously they're on relationships were not made effortlessly, but they certainly seem a hell of a lot easier than how I approached them.
So when I get something like this, I'm quite ecstatic.
There's a nervousness there as well. A fear of failure, of losing what might be a wonderful relationship, as has occurred in the past. It doesn't help how much I've invested myself prior in the idea of relationships. I'm working on it, always working on it, but it's still there. In lesser degrees, perhaps, but it's still there.
To some extent I think I'm influenced by the same culture that influences so many relationships, as well their unpleasant endings. We live in a culture that prizes relationships above many other things. Single individuals, or individuals who are not active sexually, are often looked on with pity, women moreso for the former, men for the latter.
For an extended of time, I and my best friend struggled with the idea of relationships together, questioning whether we were ready for relationships, whether we would be happy in them, all of those things. Then she discovered that she wanted to be in relationships, got into one, and I was left feeling a little alone. Didn't help that I had lingering attraction to her, heretofore unexpressed, that made me feel all the more uncomfortable hearing about her own relationship adventures.
When she told me about her relationship, she was giddy and ecstatic. She talked about some difficulties she was having in the relationship, but in the manner of considering them quirks, rather than problems that might develop into something greater later. Again, I run the risk of being too influenced by my own feelings, but it seems to me that a lot of the giddiness and sheer joy which she is experiencing is the result of that wonderful pain in my ass that is infatuation, that outburst of chemical reactions that make us so entranced with someone's every move an action, and which is so often short lived. I've experienced that quite a few times, raising the person to a pedestal and viewing their every action as unutterably beautiful. Unfortunately, having difficulties in other areas, that infatuation developed into anxiety and obsession, which would typically mean the end of any possible relationship. Perhaps that's why I'm so cynical about it now.
It is perhaps a little ironic that infatuation itself has been raised on such a pedestal in our society. Romantic comedies are so often built around the manic joy of infatuation, that initial ecstatic attraction that makes every moment with the other person a joy. It's interesting to note that so many romantic comedies end when the relationship has been initiated proper, both players still filled with that infatuation.
Of course, infatuation is short lived. Some estimates I've read place it at, on average, lasting between six months and a year. Infatuation leaves, and the two players (or more, I don't mean to judge) are left looking at one another in their entirety, without rose-colored glasses. That's where things get complicated. Lacking the pure euphoria of before to tide them through their relationship troubles, they're left to actually rely on one another to solve their problems, and some relationships struggle with that, and ultimately fail. With my friend and her supposed infatuation, it's up to her and her boyfriend whether it will fail after the infatuation wears off, or if it will evolve into a deeper love.
Society doesn't talk as much about that deeper love, that love forged through time and effort. Society seems a lot more content to focus on the bubbly, effortless infatuation, and then has the gall to refer to that as "true love". So many of us are unfortunately negatively impacted by that perspective. When the initial high of a relationship ends, many of us are left confused, and hurt, not knowing that such a high always ends. What happened? I thought I loved this person. What when wrong?
We see this "true love", and we come to believe that it is that "true love" which will ultimately make us happy. For a long time I (and to some extent still do) viewed relationships as being able to solve many of my problems. I've had to work, with much support from others, to disabuse myself of that notion, and to learn to solve my problems by myself, rather than looking for a relationship itself to solve them. My best friend, interestingly, said that people are attracted to other people who are self-confident, and that impacted me in more ways than I think she realized. It helped me to realize that good, healthy relationships do not develop spontaneously, but rather arise from the union of two good, healthy people, mutually building one another up.
I'm sure for a lot of people, this doesn't mean much. For a lot of people, they get numbers all the time. They seem to do these things effortlessly. They have the benefit of social instincts which I was unfortunately underdeveloped in. Obviously they're on relationships were not made effortlessly, but they certainly seem a hell of a lot easier than how I approached them.
So when I get something like this, I'm quite ecstatic.
There's a nervousness there as well. A fear of failure, of losing what might be a wonderful relationship, as has occurred in the past. It doesn't help how much I've invested myself prior in the idea of relationships. I'm working on it, always working on it, but it's still there. In lesser degrees, perhaps, but it's still there.
To some extent I think I'm influenced by the same culture that influences so many relationships, as well their unpleasant endings. We live in a culture that prizes relationships above many other things. Single individuals, or individuals who are not active sexually, are often looked on with pity, women moreso for the former, men for the latter.
For an extended of time, I and my best friend struggled with the idea of relationships together, questioning whether we were ready for relationships, whether we would be happy in them, all of those things. Then she discovered that she wanted to be in relationships, got into one, and I was left feeling a little alone. Didn't help that I had lingering attraction to her, heretofore unexpressed, that made me feel all the more uncomfortable hearing about her own relationship adventures.
When she told me about her relationship, she was giddy and ecstatic. She talked about some difficulties she was having in the relationship, but in the manner of considering them quirks, rather than problems that might develop into something greater later. Again, I run the risk of being too influenced by my own feelings, but it seems to me that a lot of the giddiness and sheer joy which she is experiencing is the result of that wonderful pain in my ass that is infatuation, that outburst of chemical reactions that make us so entranced with someone's every move an action, and which is so often short lived. I've experienced that quite a few times, raising the person to a pedestal and viewing their every action as unutterably beautiful. Unfortunately, having difficulties in other areas, that infatuation developed into anxiety and obsession, which would typically mean the end of any possible relationship. Perhaps that's why I'm so cynical about it now.
It is perhaps a little ironic that infatuation itself has been raised on such a pedestal in our society. Romantic comedies are so often built around the manic joy of infatuation, that initial ecstatic attraction that makes every moment with the other person a joy. It's interesting to note that so many romantic comedies end when the relationship has been initiated proper, both players still filled with that infatuation.
Of course, infatuation is short lived. Some estimates I've read place it at, on average, lasting between six months and a year. Infatuation leaves, and the two players (or more, I don't mean to judge) are left looking at one another in their entirety, without rose-colored glasses. That's where things get complicated. Lacking the pure euphoria of before to tide them through their relationship troubles, they're left to actually rely on one another to solve their problems, and some relationships struggle with that, and ultimately fail. With my friend and her supposed infatuation, it's up to her and her boyfriend whether it will fail after the infatuation wears off, or if it will evolve into a deeper love.
Society doesn't talk as much about that deeper love, that love forged through time and effort. Society seems a lot more content to focus on the bubbly, effortless infatuation, and then has the gall to refer to that as "true love". So many of us are unfortunately negatively impacted by that perspective. When the initial high of a relationship ends, many of us are left confused, and hurt, not knowing that such a high always ends. What happened? I thought I loved this person. What when wrong?
We see this "true love", and we come to believe that it is that "true love" which will ultimately make us happy. For a long time I (and to some extent still do) viewed relationships as being able to solve many of my problems. I've had to work, with much support from others, to disabuse myself of that notion, and to learn to solve my problems by myself, rather than looking for a relationship itself to solve them. My best friend, interestingly, said that people are attracted to other people who are self-confident, and that impacted me in more ways than I think she realized. It helped me to realize that good, healthy relationships do not develop spontaneously, but rather arise from the union of two good, healthy people, mutually building one another up.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
3/23/14: Where Do I Go?
[Note: I wrote two posts over the course of spring break. The other has been posted prior to this one]
My friend and I are in very different settings right now. I go to NYU and she's going to community college. I'm pursuing a degree in Film and Television, she's pursuing a degree in Communications. Yet we're both feeling...uncertain, I suppose is the word.
My friend and I are in very different settings right now. I go to NYU and she's going to community college. I'm pursuing a degree in Film and Television, she's pursuing a degree in Communications. Yet we're both feeling...uncertain, I suppose is the word.
There are so many career options laid out in front of us. She wants to be a teacher, but she's not sure. I'm looking into screenwriting, but I'm not sure. "Too many options" is the phrase. So many different courses to take in life, and how do we know if the one we're taking is wrong, or won't pan out?
We're both looking for something, some magical answer that will tell us exactly what we should do. This will make us happy. This will make us secure. This will be the best outcome for us.
But we're not going to find it.
That's the nature of the beast, I suppose. Uncertainty abounds. There are too many variables, too many possible ways things could go. Hell, a meteorite could come down and crush me tomorrow, and after that these career contemplations won't matter much.
The future's one big blob of "OH SHIT WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN NEXT", and I'm moving towards it at a snail's pace. Everything feels like an in-transit, between where I am and where I want to be. Maybe that's where it will always be. I'll never get to where I want to go, I'll always be going. From one point to another.
Part of me thinks I can just wait for it to come. That I don't need to change myself too much, and the changes I want will be made for me. Perhaps that's what it's like as young adults. We're standing in front of the future, and we want the future to make the first move.
But who says the move it makes will be the one we want?
There's no cure-all, whatever happens. Whatever I choose, it won't solve my problems. It won't put me in some utopic situation where I'm feeling like I'm exactly where I want to be. I'd probably be concerned for my mental health if that were the case! Any choice I take will have its share of problems, mistakes, paths rather taken. And the internal struggles I deal with now won't go away on their own
Maybe the solution isn't in what path I take. Maybe it's in how I approach the path I take. So often I've looked to external solutions to my problems, and every time I've come up short. The high school transition, the college transition, future career transitions. With each one I've looked for things to change radically, and they never have. They've changed in small, incremental ways, but never as fast as I want them to. And not always in the way I want.
Maybe I should work on changing myself first.
Maybe I should learn to accept the uncertainties of whatever path I take. Embrace that I don't know what will happen. Acknowledge that there'll be bad parts, but there will be good parts as well. My future will have its share of joys, discoveries, new parts of myself I'll be surprised to find out I have. And someday I'll get to those points, but there's also things I can do now. Little things, but they can all stack up. I can learn to make myself better, happier, more fulfilled, more ready for the future.
Earlier, I described the future as "OH SHIT WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN NEXT". My friend had a different way of looking at it. For her, it's all one big blog of "I COULD DO ANYTHING." Maybe that can be the same for me. Maybe I really could do anything. Maybe I could be a screenwriter, or a psychologist.
Maybe I could be a person happy with his life, no matter what happens.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
3/16/2014: My Mother and Anxious Attachment
It began with my mother.
What began with my mother? I don't know, a lot of things. A lot of the problems I deal with now. This post is one that deals with the past, with emotions and bad memories. Apologies if it comes out a little disconnected.
Relationships seems like a good place to start.
Perhaps I was taking a cue from my father, who would call my mother over and over again if she was gone late at night, and be angry at her when she returned. When my mom was gone for extended periods of time, I would become frightened. My mind would come up with the worst-case scenarios for what had happened--that she had died, or was kidnapped, or whatever else I could come up with. Then she would come home and, relieved, I would go back to living normally.
I've had problems with relationships. When I get infatuated, I become obsessed. Further than other people. I worry endlessly. When I'm not with them, my mind conjures up the worst-case scenarios--they hate me, I'm pushing them away, I can't have a relationship with them--and I feel the urge to check, to ask them if I did something wrong, if I've been bothering them. They'll say no, you haven't--and then I'll do it again, and they'll say no, you haven't--and then I'll do it again. In the uncertainty, my mind conjures up horrible possibilities, and the more I fear them, the more real they become.
Maybe that's just OCD, related to autism. I don't know.
My mother had a primary role in my upbringing. My father has Asperger's syndrome, and spent his younger years away from his family for long periods of time, a wound that continues to hurt him to this day. He has never been a social butterfly, and often struggles to communicate with me in ways beyond reciting pithy lectures, or repeating well-worn stories about his own upbringing. These conversations were often one-way, and after a time I became to realize I viewed him as more of a record-player than a father.
So the onus was on my mother to raise me.
I was not the most well-adjusted of children. I, like my father, had Asperger's Syndrome. From an early age I had little interest in interacting with other children; during recess, I was more content playing on my Game Boy or reading a book than playing with the other children. When I did interact with them, it was often as an outsider, and I frequently got in trouble for my behavior with them. In second grade I was suspended from school for half a day because I was frightening other students. In third grade I was given detention for a week because I choked a student I thought had called me an alien. I recall other children often drawing away from me because I was weird, and how I felt like a virus because of this.
Because I did not involve myself in any social situations, my mother took the opportunities to involve me in various extracurricular. She had me play soccer and join the Boy Scouts of America. I never wanted to do either, and often was quite bored or unhappy at the meetings, but I did it anyway, because I didn't think I had a choice in the matter. I won't say the things I obtained from them weren't helpful, but they seemed to set a precedent for my interactions with my mother for years in the future.
I'm in college now. My mom still sends me suggestions on what I should do. In Freshman year, she constantly pressured me to get a job, to join various clubs, go out to this-or-that event. When I tell her of friendships or relationships, she'll sometimes send me suggestions on things I can do with them, as though I can't come up with them myself. Sometimes if I don't do something she wants me to do, she'll continue hounding me to do it, or else send passive-aggressive comments, though she may send them either immediately, or at a later time, such as in the middle of the night, or in the next morning. Whenever she gets bothered about it, I guess.
She goes through self-help books and countless books on nutrition. She's tossed vitamins, nutritional supplements, and said self-help books at me. She's advocated high fat diets, low fat diets, mainly protein, gluten-free, soy, pescetarian, vegetarian, whatever-the-fuck-etarian. She's talked about adrenal deficiencies, thyroid diet, chi-whatever, I can't even keep track anymore, here's a picture of a fraction of the books she's bought over the years.
Whenever she suggests to me some new lifestyle thing, I do my own research to see if it's any true.
I often feel weak. I often feel like I can't do things. Whenever I go into a new direction, I ask as many people as I can for help. To some extent that's a good thing, but there are times where I feel like I can't do things unless other people say it's ok, where I can't believe things unless other people believe them, where if I feel emotions that other people feel, I'm wrong.
I've had friends and therapists alike caution me to separate my own goals from that of my mothers's. My therapist asks me sometimes if the critical thoughts I have in my head are my own or my mother's. One of my friends, who I seem to talk to more about my own problems than my own mother, has a similarly low opinion of her, such that sometimes I feel the need to defend her. Perhaps I shouldn't.
Christ.
From Ainsworth's patterns of attachment, Anxious Attachment stems from being "excessively protect towards the child, unwilling to allow independence", and results in being "clingy, unable to cope with absence of the caregiver. Seeks constant reassurances."
From Wikipedia:
What began with my mother? I don't know, a lot of things. A lot of the problems I deal with now. This post is one that deals with the past, with emotions and bad memories. Apologies if it comes out a little disconnected.
Relationships seems like a good place to start.
Perhaps I was taking a cue from my father, who would call my mother over and over again if she was gone late at night, and be angry at her when she returned. When my mom was gone for extended periods of time, I would become frightened. My mind would come up with the worst-case scenarios for what had happened--that she had died, or was kidnapped, or whatever else I could come up with. Then she would come home and, relieved, I would go back to living normally.
I've had problems with relationships. When I get infatuated, I become obsessed. Further than other people. I worry endlessly. When I'm not with them, my mind conjures up the worst-case scenarios--they hate me, I'm pushing them away, I can't have a relationship with them--and I feel the urge to check, to ask them if I did something wrong, if I've been bothering them. They'll say no, you haven't--and then I'll do it again, and they'll say no, you haven't--and then I'll do it again. In the uncertainty, my mind conjures up horrible possibilities, and the more I fear them, the more real they become.
Maybe that's just OCD, related to autism. I don't know.
My mother had a primary role in my upbringing. My father has Asperger's syndrome, and spent his younger years away from his family for long periods of time, a wound that continues to hurt him to this day. He has never been a social butterfly, and often struggles to communicate with me in ways beyond reciting pithy lectures, or repeating well-worn stories about his own upbringing. These conversations were often one-way, and after a time I became to realize I viewed him as more of a record-player than a father.
So the onus was on my mother to raise me.
I was not the most well-adjusted of children. I, like my father, had Asperger's Syndrome. From an early age I had little interest in interacting with other children; during recess, I was more content playing on my Game Boy or reading a book than playing with the other children. When I did interact with them, it was often as an outsider, and I frequently got in trouble for my behavior with them. In second grade I was suspended from school for half a day because I was frightening other students. In third grade I was given detention for a week because I choked a student I thought had called me an alien. I recall other children often drawing away from me because I was weird, and how I felt like a virus because of this.
Because I did not involve myself in any social situations, my mother took the opportunities to involve me in various extracurricular. She had me play soccer and join the Boy Scouts of America. I never wanted to do either, and often was quite bored or unhappy at the meetings, but I did it anyway, because I didn't think I had a choice in the matter. I won't say the things I obtained from them weren't helpful, but they seemed to set a precedent for my interactions with my mother for years in the future.
I'm in college now. My mom still sends me suggestions on what I should do. In Freshman year, she constantly pressured me to get a job, to join various clubs, go out to this-or-that event. When I tell her of friendships or relationships, she'll sometimes send me suggestions on things I can do with them, as though I can't come up with them myself. Sometimes if I don't do something she wants me to do, she'll continue hounding me to do it, or else send passive-aggressive comments, though she may send them either immediately, or at a later time, such as in the middle of the night, or in the next morning. Whenever she gets bothered about it, I guess.
She goes through self-help books and countless books on nutrition. She's tossed vitamins, nutritional supplements, and said self-help books at me. She's advocated high fat diets, low fat diets, mainly protein, gluten-free, soy, pescetarian, vegetarian, whatever-the-fuck-etarian. She's talked about adrenal deficiencies, thyroid diet, chi-whatever, I can't even keep track anymore, here's a picture of a fraction of the books she's bought over the years.
Whenever she suggests to me some new lifestyle thing, I do my own research to see if it's any true.
I often feel weak. I often feel like I can't do things. Whenever I go into a new direction, I ask as many people as I can for help. To some extent that's a good thing, but there are times where I feel like I can't do things unless other people say it's ok, where I can't believe things unless other people believe them, where if I feel emotions that other people feel, I'm wrong.
I've had friends and therapists alike caution me to separate my own goals from that of my mothers's. My therapist asks me sometimes if the critical thoughts I have in my head are my own or my mother's. One of my friends, who I seem to talk to more about my own problems than my own mother, has a similarly low opinion of her, such that sometimes I feel the need to defend her. Perhaps I shouldn't.
Christ.
From Ainsworth's patterns of attachment, Anxious Attachment stems from being "excessively protect towards the child, unwilling to allow independence", and results in being "clingy, unable to cope with absence of the caregiver. Seeks constant reassurances."
From Wikipedia:
People who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment tend to agree with the following statements: "I want to be completely emotionally intimate with others, but I often find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like", and "I am uncomfortable being without close relationships, but I sometimes worry that others don't value me as much as I value them." People with this style of attachment seek high levels of intimacy, approval, and responsiveness from their partners. They sometimes value intimacy to such an extent that they become overly dependent on their partners. Compared to securely attached people, people who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment tend to have less positive views about themselves. They often doubt their worth as a partner and blame themselves for their partners' lack of responsiveness. People who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment may exhibit high levels of emotional expressiveness, worry, and impulsiveness in their relationships.Hello, me.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
3/9/2014: "Youth Is Wasted On The Young"
So many people view their younger years with a reverent nostalgia. When I hear about such people, my first thought is wondering what the hell they've confused their youth for.
I don't know about you guys, but my younger years were shit.
Not entirely, not all the time, but there was a lot of shit in there. Depression, suicidal ideation, self harm. I lost multiple relationships as a result of my tendency to, ironically, obsess over losing them. I routinely struggled to keep up with work at school and often broke down as a result, leaving school in the middle of the day and some days simply not showing up. I was not in a good place then.
Where am I now? Better. Not perfect, but I'm doing better, and that's all I can really ask for. I see a therapist, I take medication. Slowly I've begun taking more work on myself, and developing systems to keep track of things.
Yet many people view their young years as the apex of their lives. "Live fast, die young" seems to be a recurring motto: live your life while you still can, because it's all downhill from here.
I'm not going to say I don't have fear of growing old--I'm sure everyone does, in some degree, as there is a fear of most any uncertainty in our lives. There just doesn't seem to be much of an optimistic view of age in our society. As medical science improves, we're learning more about the plethora of illnesses and physical maladies that will occur in ever-greater amounts as we age, from weakening bones and muscles to more frightening neurocognitive degeneration leading to things such as strokes and Alzheimer's disease. The media takes those articles and sees fit to publish them every chance it gets, perhaps to satisfy our transgressive curiosity about our own mortality.
Add to that the fact that our media seems to avoid portraying the elderly in any form. The majority of commercials, films, and television shows rely on youthful models of an idealized society. Rarely if ever do you see 65+ people in staring roles. If you do, they normally have something to do with coming to terms with death and aging, such as in David Lynch's "The Straight Story" or Michael Haneke's "Amour". Age is often viewed as a negative, and if there are happy endings to be gotten out of it, they seem to occur despite age, and with that spectre always on the horizon.
Of course we don't want to get old when our society tells us how much it sucks.
But does it have to? Certainly our modern view of age is a far cry from more traditional views of the elderly. In olden times, elderly people were viewed as peoples experienced and hardened by the world, filled with advice to dispense to the younger peoples. They took an active, and in some cases central role in the community. Their aging was not hidden from the world, as is the case with many of our elderly shuffled off to nursing homes, but was exposed and, more importantly, embraced by the community.
Why can't we do the same thing now? Why can't we view age not as a gradual degeneration, but as an opportunity to garner ever more experiences and better ourselves? Why can't we view aging as an opportunity for us to do ever more things for the state of the world, and not simply to be a drain on worldwide resources?
As I've grown older, I've become better. I've become healthier. And I don't intend for that to stop anytime soon. My body may weaken, and so may my mind, but that doesn't mean I ever have to stop growing, stop getting better, stop being there for others and for myself.
Why can't age be a good thing?
I don't know about you guys, but my younger years were shit.
Not entirely, not all the time, but there was a lot of shit in there. Depression, suicidal ideation, self harm. I lost multiple relationships as a result of my tendency to, ironically, obsess over losing them. I routinely struggled to keep up with work at school and often broke down as a result, leaving school in the middle of the day and some days simply not showing up. I was not in a good place then.
Where am I now? Better. Not perfect, but I'm doing better, and that's all I can really ask for. I see a therapist, I take medication. Slowly I've begun taking more work on myself, and developing systems to keep track of things.
Yet many people view their young years as the apex of their lives. "Live fast, die young" seems to be a recurring motto: live your life while you still can, because it's all downhill from here.
I'm not going to say I don't have fear of growing old--I'm sure everyone does, in some degree, as there is a fear of most any uncertainty in our lives. There just doesn't seem to be much of an optimistic view of age in our society. As medical science improves, we're learning more about the plethora of illnesses and physical maladies that will occur in ever-greater amounts as we age, from weakening bones and muscles to more frightening neurocognitive degeneration leading to things such as strokes and Alzheimer's disease. The media takes those articles and sees fit to publish them every chance it gets, perhaps to satisfy our transgressive curiosity about our own mortality.
Add to that the fact that our media seems to avoid portraying the elderly in any form. The majority of commercials, films, and television shows rely on youthful models of an idealized society. Rarely if ever do you see 65+ people in staring roles. If you do, they normally have something to do with coming to terms with death and aging, such as in David Lynch's "The Straight Story" or Michael Haneke's "Amour". Age is often viewed as a negative, and if there are happy endings to be gotten out of it, they seem to occur despite age, and with that spectre always on the horizon.
Of course we don't want to get old when our society tells us how much it sucks.
But does it have to? Certainly our modern view of age is a far cry from more traditional views of the elderly. In olden times, elderly people were viewed as peoples experienced and hardened by the world, filled with advice to dispense to the younger peoples. They took an active, and in some cases central role in the community. Their aging was not hidden from the world, as is the case with many of our elderly shuffled off to nursing homes, but was exposed and, more importantly, embraced by the community.
Why can't we do the same thing now? Why can't we view age not as a gradual degeneration, but as an opportunity to garner ever more experiences and better ourselves? Why can't we view aging as an opportunity for us to do ever more things for the state of the world, and not simply to be a drain on worldwide resources?
As I've grown older, I've become better. I've become healthier. And I don't intend for that to stop anytime soon. My body may weaken, and so may my mind, but that doesn't mean I ever have to stop growing, stop getting better, stop being there for others and for myself.
Why can't age be a good thing?
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