Soap won't wash away...
Jan. 5th, 2013 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vostoklakeI have, for my entire life "as myself" (i.e. as long as I was aware of myself as an individual), been motivated by great feelings of shame.
Shame of my cognitive abnormalities which make it difficult for me to read others' emotions, or empathize, or engage in conversation on subjects not in my narrow sphere of interest. Shame at my own biology - my desires for food and sex repressed, guiltily indulged in, self-punished for. Shame at not being able to behave properly in the way that family and teachers expected and needed - of being embarrassing and annoying all the time, of never bringing pride or joy to those around me, only anger. Shame at not being like others, not having the same desires and goals as others... internalising the description of "snob" or "elitist" because I didn't enjoy other people's social games.
Shame at the ways I learnt to survive in the face of all of this - hiding, learning to give off the impression of complete Spock-like uninterest in human beings and their shenanigans, accepting the attendant fate of a deep, bone-chilling loneliness... occasionally, in the face of unmanageable stress, descending into manipulation, verbal abuse, violence, just in order to be able to punish just one person for everyone else who'd ever kicked a hole in my boundaries, who'd used me, who'd treated me as unqualified for the dignity of "fellow human being", who'd told me that I could only ever be loved or accepted if I gave up that tiny, internal place of individuality I'd carved for myself - carved with my music, with the haunting words, with the belief that the world could and should be different.
Shame at the extent that I did become a hater, a snob, and an elitist, as a reaction to the voices screaming that I was a failure as a human being. Shame for desperately desiring the money and fame that come with success in this world, to make up for being broken, unvalued and held in contempt by my peers... And shame for never having succeeded in it.
Shame for all the times I sold my own integrity out in order to try to make other people like me.
It's not that I don't like people. It's that it's my experience that I am judged and found wanting not only by the "masses", but by all the little self-appointed intellectual, ideological or political vanguards in which I believed I might be able to find a place where I could be useful. I hide from you because for me, being social means "pretending to be normal", and that takes so much very very hard work.
I have been blessed that just recently I think I have found a small area where I can be myself as an individual without (so much) fear. But what I feel that I need to make my life worthwhile is to find a place where my work - my music, my storytelling, my attempt to marry non-dualist spirituality and revolutionary socialism to inform the first two - will be considered valuable. I feel most pain at the idea that nothing I do is worth anything to the world.
Shame of my cognitive abnormalities which make it difficult for me to read others' emotions, or empathize, or engage in conversation on subjects not in my narrow sphere of interest. Shame at my own biology - my desires for food and sex repressed, guiltily indulged in, self-punished for. Shame at not being able to behave properly in the way that family and teachers expected and needed - of being embarrassing and annoying all the time, of never bringing pride or joy to those around me, only anger. Shame at not being like others, not having the same desires and goals as others... internalising the description of "snob" or "elitist" because I didn't enjoy other people's social games.
Shame at the ways I learnt to survive in the face of all of this - hiding, learning to give off the impression of complete Spock-like uninterest in human beings and their shenanigans, accepting the attendant fate of a deep, bone-chilling loneliness... occasionally, in the face of unmanageable stress, descending into manipulation, verbal abuse, violence, just in order to be able to punish just one person for everyone else who'd ever kicked a hole in my boundaries, who'd used me, who'd treated me as unqualified for the dignity of "fellow human being", who'd told me that I could only ever be loved or accepted if I gave up that tiny, internal place of individuality I'd carved for myself - carved with my music, with the haunting words, with the belief that the world could and should be different.
Shame at the extent that I did become a hater, a snob, and an elitist, as a reaction to the voices screaming that I was a failure as a human being. Shame for desperately desiring the money and fame that come with success in this world, to make up for being broken, unvalued and held in contempt by my peers... And shame for never having succeeded in it.
Shame for all the times I sold my own integrity out in order to try to make other people like me.
It's not that I don't like people. It's that it's my experience that I am judged and found wanting not only by the "masses", but by all the little self-appointed intellectual, ideological or political vanguards in which I believed I might be able to find a place where I could be useful. I hide from you because for me, being social means "pretending to be normal", and that takes so much very very hard work.
I have been blessed that just recently I think I have found a small area where I can be myself as an individual without (so much) fear. But what I feel that I need to make my life worthwhile is to find a place where my work - my music, my storytelling, my attempt to marry non-dualist spirituality and revolutionary socialism to inform the first two - will be considered valuable. I feel most pain at the idea that nothing I do is worth anything to the world.