Look What You’ve Done to Yourself

“I can tell it’s winter from the
size of the lump in my throat
got a lump in my throat”
-Silversun Pickups

Sometimes I step outside of myself and look at the person I’ve become and it terrifies me.  Sometimes I don’t want to step back in.

Have you ever had an out of body experience?  And I don’t mean a literal out of body experience.  I don’t mean the kind where your soul seeps out of your shell and you hover above yourself.  I don’t know how to describe it but sometimes I feel like I can disconnect from myself, like I’m seeing myself from the outside.   Sometimes when I’m in bed and all the lights are turned off and all the noise is gone and I’m just lying there with myself and my thoughts, they drift off and away from me and what I see makes me unhappy. 

I realize that I’m stuck in this body.  I’m stuck in this mind, this personality.  This is me, this was the person I’ve been assigned to and I cannot escape it.  This will be me for the rest of my life and until my heart stops beating, I can’t get away from who I am.

I look at the mess I’ve made of my body.  I look at my acne scars and chipped teeth and stretch marks that extend from my shoulders to my thighs.  I think of the internal damage that I’ve probably caused from all the greasy foods and the multitude of diet pills I’ve consumed to counteract the greasy foods and how I’ll probably have to wear a diaper when I’m older because of all the times I’ve had to pee but held it in until I was literally aching all because I don’t like to use public bathrooms.  I think of my continuously thinning hair and wonder if I caused it from all of the stress I’ve placed upon myself.  I think of my sallow complexion because I don’t go out into the sun.  I think about my clogged arteries and lack of muscle because of my poor diet and sedentary lifestyle.  I think of the mystery lump in my throat that, while not as huge as usual, is still quite visible and I wonder if people stare at it when I am not noticing them.  I think of the thinning hair I have on my crown and it terrifies me that I’m going to be nearly bald at 30.  I think about how my ears are failing me for all the years of listening to music too loud or for being around others that listened to their music too loud but I was too scared to ask them to turn it down.  I think about how I have to always ask everyone to turn the volume up because I can barely hear anything.  I think about how nothing sounds clear to me anymore.  I am terrified I’ll be deaf at 40.  I think about how my eyes are failing me because of the horrendous way I’ve treated them over the years, not wearing glasses when I was supposed to, opting instead to squint until the back of my skull feels like it’s been crushed in.  I think of all the endless hours I spend in front of a computer screen or in front of the television and how tired my eyes always feel and how they always look tired with the dark circles and puffiness.  I am terrified I’ll be blind by 50.

I look at the mess I’ve made of my mind.  I think about how scared I’ve always been to talk to people, how insecure I’ve been because of my body and how, as a result, my social skills are a joke.  I think of how I’ve never been told I was good enough so I never felt like I was good enough.  I think about how my mother always said everything I did was bad and how my dad never said anything at all.  I think about how my sister is too old to find me interesting.  I think about how I never felt like I fit in with my family and was too insecure to make a family out of friends.  I think about how I was taught to hold in my emotions and now my stomach churns with fermented feelings that have nowhere to go and now I don’t know how to get them out in a healthy way.  I think about all the times I have felted wronged by someone but I never said anything because I was too scared or never felt worthy enough to defend myself.  I think about how I’ve abused myself and called myself fat and stupid.  I think of how I’ve put myself down before I gave anyone else to the chance to do so.  I think that I am a crappy person because I don’t have quality friends.  I think I am a crappy person because not many girls have thought I was good enough to be with exclusively.  I think that I am a crappy person because, of the few girls that were interested in me, I never took action because I felt I wasn’t good enough for them.  I am scared of intimacy because of my self-consciousness.  I want so desperately to be touched and hugged and caressed but at the same time I fear it because I don’t want to disgust those who touch me. 

I look at the mess I’ve made of friendships.  I wonder if I have any true friends.  Most of the people I knew from high school don’t talk to me anymore but I am fine with that.  I never planned on talking to them after high school anyway.  Most of the people that I was friends with I grew up with and so there wasn’t much choice in the matter.  These are the people that I am surrounded by so I might as well try to make friends with them.  In a different setting, would I seek these people out?  No.  But they are there and they aren’t going away, at least until graduation, so I might as well make the most of it.  And I think of the people from high school that I still talk to and how I don’t want to anymore.  I realize how different we are and I don’t care to be friends with them any longer.  I felt like I’ve given them so much of myself, been there for them, listened to their problems, and they’ve never done the same for me.  I don’t blame them because it’s hard to deal with others when you can barely deal with yourself but I guess I’m just tired because I’ve helped them so much that I’ve neglected my own issues.  I think of all the amazing friends I was going to make once I got to college, how I would be free from these friends that were given to me by location and how I’d be able to make my own friends, friends that I had stuff in common with, friends that would care about me for a change.  And then I think of how that didn’t work out and how I’m just as lonely as I ever was.  And its all because of my body and my mind and my increasing awareness that I really don’t have that great of a personality.  I see all of these people making these connections and how it seems so effortless but I just can’t seem to follow their lead. 

I think about my future and how it terrified me.  I’m scared I won’t find a job in animation and I’ll just prove my mother right.  Once again, she disapproved of a decision of mine, the decision to go to an art school.  Instead of worrying about what would make me happy, she worried about money.

“Are you going to be able to find a

job with this?”

“Do you realize how much it’s going to cost to go to this school?”

“You won’t be able to pay all of this money back so your dad and I will have to help you out.”  

And at first I was angry with her but now I’m realizing she was probably right.  It’s not that she wasn’t thinking about my dream but she was just trying to be practical.  And although I don’t regret going to SCAD, I do wish I had been more practical.  I’m so scared that I won’t be able to afford a house or an apartment plus all of the student loans.  I’m scared that I’m going to have to take a low paying job because it’s all I can get and I’ll have to work night and day just to scrape by and I’ll never catch up with bills. 

And what if that’s the case?  What if I do end up going half blind and totally bald and I never lose this weight and I end up having a crappy job and stay in considerable debt and never find love or even a good friend?  What if I end up hungry and alone and unable to pay my bills?  What if I die a lonely, old, overweight man?

What if I do?

There’s nothing I can do about it because this is me and I can’t turn myself off.  This isn’t a game simulation where I can just restart myself or switch to a different character when I’ve made a big enough mess.  I am stuck.  I am stuck with these eyes and these stretch marks and this brain that doesn’t function like it should.  I can try to fix myself but I have a long road ahead of me.  All the while I try to better myself I continue to make decisions that just put me deeper in the hole.  And when I’m in bed at night, lying alone and when everything is quiet, I let go of myself and I can see who I am and how I am and I think about my future and I shudder.  When I’m alone, I think about these things.  I see myself from the outside and I’m a mess.  My body, my brain, it’s damaged and it’s mostly my own fault and sometimes I wonder if I know how to be a person, how to be human.  How can people be given these lives and these bodies and proceed to royally jack it all up?  What good does it do for anyone?  How am I who I am?  How did it ever get this bad and how could I have been allowed to let this happen?

I guess this is where I realize that life doesn’t have parents.  It’s all open ended and I am the sole controller of everything I do and life isn’t going to step in and fix things when I mess them up.  And that terrifies me even more because what if I continue to make the wrong choices and just dig myself deeper into a whole?  No one is going to step in and help me do the right thing.  I just have to do what I think is best and obviously I don’t’ know what best is anymore.  I know next to nothing.  I know how to eat and complain but so as of right now, that hasn’t gotten me very far in life.  The only good thing about myself is that I feel I have potential to be great but all of these problems just get in my way and bog me down and when I feel I’ve gotten one thing under control, something else comes along and sets me back and I wonder if I’ll ever just be able to rise above it all and make a difference because more than anything, I’m scared I’ll never make a difference, never change people, never make them think or understand, never bring enlightenment.  I’m scared my life won’t mean anything to anyone and I’ll die alone and no one will ever even know how I struggled and all the fighting and crying and scratching and clawing that I’ve done to try to be a decent person will go unrecognized, rendering my life pointless.  

Please don’t tell me how great you think I am because it won’t make a difference.