The last shadow puppet show

[dreamingwithfairies]

 Every day I get notifications from Substack like it's my morning newspaper. It's not often that I actually sit down and read them, not all articles pique my interest. But whoever runs the Nietzsche Wisdoms account is an exception, and this morning, I read something that seemed to be written specifically for me:

"The will to change is not something you decide one afternoon. 

It is not a resolution, not a project, not an identity you adopt. It is a pressure that accumulates until remaining the same becomes more painful than destruction. Those who truly change do not announce it. They arrive altered, often unrecognizable, and are accused of betrayal by those who stayed behind.

Most people never experience this pressure.

They confuse restlessness with depth, boredom with destiny, dissatisfaction with strength. They speak of wanting more while clinging to the habits, beliefs, and resentments that keep them intact.

They do not want to change. They want life to justify them.

But change begins where justification ends."

 

Then I read a borderline woman's unfiltered honest article that's literally just her thoughts on an average day, meant to demistify women with the diagnosis. It was genuinely interesting. 

 

I don't think about what I do, that's the problem. Every time I try, it's like running at full speed while being waist-deep in a pool of water. I can think about the future but not about the present. The two are different worlds in my head. The past is the only thing I trust, but it is also the very thing I'm actively trying to let go of. The future is full of possibility while the present is more often than not a miserable prison on many accounts.

They keep telling me to write to-do lists but that never works. Is that what life is? Completing to-do lists? 

I tried writing in a diary a few times, literally describing my day and what I did, but that became boring eventually, and I didn't experience any benefit, never reread what I wrote, didn't want to remember everything. So how is this different? I believe it's what's unsaid that creates my life.

Because my conscious thoughts almost never result in taking action. I don't think - I do. That's how my anxiety was like. Not thoughts - raw feelings. Sometimes feelings with visuals, with no narrator explaining or commanding anything. It was hard to describe it to psychologists and even my therapist. It sounds like they've never heard of such a phenomenon, they had no idea what advice to give me, the usual methods didn't help. I have a friend who does not have an inner monologue, which is fascinating. I have one but it's not constant, more importantly it doesn't affect my emotions or actions. If I do have an inner monologue it's mostly about philosophical questions, my creative projects, or maybe opinions about some media. Harmless stuff. So when I am overthinking, for example, I'm literally imagining and feeling things as being imminent. They're not arguments or ideas presented by an inner voice, so they're not things I can debate or calm down the regular way. They're not logical and thus they are not silenced by reason. Yet somehow, I can overcome them. Seemingly by just deciding to. I grapple in the dark for a few days before I find the right switch, and that's it. 

 

I remember how terrible my anxiety about driving a car was. I've always wanted to do it but when it came down to it, I was going through a panic attack almost every time. I dreaded driving, hated even sitting in the driver's seat. Sleepless nights, gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles were white, holding my breath. On the first day I even burst into tears, I couldn't control my emotions. I imagined losing control all the time - intrusive thoughts like driving into oncoming traffic, into a wall, damaging the car, speeding until I crash, turning the wrong way, killing someone's pet etc.

Now, over a year later, driving is my greatest joy in life. Genuinely the one time I feel truly happy. How?

Driving is an example, and in this example, what helped the most was asserting control, understanding I can choose differently to make myself more comfortable. From manual car I moved onto automatic. Instead of practicing in my instructor's car or my mother's, I worked my ass off and bought my very own vehicle. Mine. A daily reminder of what I'm willing to do, that hard work does pay off and it's not all useless grinding. Then I finished my lessons with a different instructor and realised how terrible the other one was. This one I clicked with immediately. Choices matter. Irish Road Safety ads are also some of the most brutal, graphic in the world and they'd insert those even between children's shows, so yeah they traumatised me too. They're all based on true events as well (except the one where a car violently crushes like ten little kids, I'm pretty sure that was just for statistic purposes but still - it's considered the most extreme ad in the industry).

 

There are times, however, when your choices are not only yours. It's not about only what you want. People aren't like cars, even if relationships fit the analogy, there's not one person driving unless it's dysfunctional. Which is actually disturbing that I need to say this, it's quite obvious, but I lost touch with my heart a long time ago. 

I don't empathise with people anymore, it's all intellectual now. People act like empathy is a personality trait or an inborn human instinct when that's not at all what makes it valuable. Pity, sympathy, kindness - those are easy, performative, not disagreeable to the ego, if it wants to be perceived as good. Even Hitler felt great pity for animals in abattoirs, though not for human beings in gas chambers. Now pigs are killed the same. It's easy to feel sorry for animals because they don't ask for it. You can infer a lot by recognising a living being in pain or poverty or whatever else. I remember the moment it clicked, when I was a child who thought animals were things with no souls (because of the way society treated them) something I saw in the media made me realise with horror "what if I was born as one of those animals? What would I feel?" And ever since then I empathised not only with animals, but people too, and nature as a whole. How can I hurt those I claim to love and cherish? It even gave me a reason to speak up, to get involved, to fight for something I believed in. Empathy connects you in a way where their joy is yours, as is their pain - and everything. You're not projecting your own ideas, you're feeling with them, because the ego has stepped down.

Somewhere along the way, as these things usually go, I lost my heart. 

Oh, but I remained kind. Generous, warm, understanding, respectful and generally a good friend to have. But the creepy thing is there's no heart. It's mostly transactional, mostly because I'm bored and need stimulation and validation of some kind. Where is my heart? Where did it go? It's like my mind is filling in the blanks, playing the role of heart, tricking the audience that there's a soul in there.

But one audience member noticed something scummy. The lighting was off, as if to purposely obscure something. The dialogue was more like a mimickry, the way AI sounds so human these days but if you're keen, you can tell the difference. Only someone who knows you better than yourself can dare to expose the truth in your face like that...

 

There is a disfigurement in my psyche. I'm not sure if it was done to me or if I did it to myself, but at some point I stopped empathising. I think there was a number of reasons. One that comes to mind is a misunderstanding of what empathy is, and how I felt it unconditionally during my most depressive period. I tried to see my exhausting compassion as beautiful, poetic and Christ-like, not personally harmful. But it was indeed personally harmful - vampires flock to that kind of stupidity, they bathe in it knowing there's absolutely nothing they need to do but exist in my life. I think that did it, my lack of discernment and boundaries. I didn't realise that empathy is valuable precisely because to see through another's experience is a choice, one that takes effort because 1) you're not prioritising yourself 2) you're exposing yourself to feeling someone else's experience, which may then require a conscious shift in behaviour. That kind of work shouldn't be given away universally, it should be exclusive. Because now you've made that connection, you see yourself reflected in another's eyes, and the last thing you want is to be a cause of unhappiness, to become a monster of some kind. 

Shifting perspective can be hard sometimes but I believe it's a cumulative skill. If it can be lost, it can be regained, but there can be no such thing a selfish love. There must be something better, purer, higher than this.