Merriam

What Do I Do After I Figure Out What’s Wrong With Me?

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I have been thinking about this question for several months now. I’m at a point where I may still be crazy, but I understand it better than ever. I’ve even figured out how it originated too, except for a few bits that can only be attributed to the generosity of God. But I don’t know what to do with this information.

I’ve always been good at sitting and analyzing my problems. Throughout childhood and adolescence, I made numerous lists of traits I wanted to correct about myself. My sister called this feeling sorry for myself, so I made sure to add that to the list. But these lists did not produce long-lasting results. They did, however, produce more lists.

The internet likes to suggest therapy as a catch-all solution for personal issues, and while I am not disagreeing with that, I’ve often wished that people would go further and explain a bit of the magic that is supposed to happen behind the closed doors of a therapist’s office. It’s like telling someone to go to the gym but no one wanting to explain what you’ll do when you get there. Then, when you finally go, you realize you could have done a lot of it in your own home and no one is blaming your parents nearly as much as you were hoping they would.

Anyway. My point is, a lot of self-improvement/healing is either about forcing yourself to be more productive or simply realizing why you have the issues you do. I have a few problems with this. First of all, I have realized many things in my life and failed to act on these realizations in any meaningful way. Second, if forcing yourself worked, people would keep their New Year’s resolutions.

Here is an example I have been thinking about recently. I procrastinate a lot and although it’s not a huge issue, I’d like to fix it. I have read that procrastination is often motivated by perfectionism, which is great, because I always thought it was because I was lazy. PSA to my high school chemistry teacher, former boss, and entire family: I’m not lazy. I’m seeking perfection. Apparently it’s a very thin line.

Anyway, the in-depth explanation for this did resonate with me. But it didn’t make a difference. I just understand why I procrastinate as I continue to do it. So I discussed this with someone recently, hoping for advice, but she did not offer any solution. She just said, “It’s not about fixing every little thing you don’t like about yourself.”

Strangely, I had never thought of it like that before. I didn’t realize that the purpose of gaining insight might just be to have more sympathy for myself and make slightly better decisions, and that that is enough. Insight is not a stepping stone to overhauling my personality.

Maybe healing and improving are not about fighting your nature to become a well-oiled machine. Maybe emotional health doesn’t manifest as effortlessly getting up at 5 AM each day, liking the taste of green smoothies, and becoming a CEO in your free time. Maybe it’s recognizing you hate that and shouldn’t try to bully yourself into becoming a different person.

It’s terrifying to accept that you will always more or less be the way you have always been, that no big change is coming. But I’ve tried to stay in this mindset the past few days, and I’ve found when you free yourself from constant self-shaming, it’s easier to do more of the small things each day that make your life better. Maybe a transformation is more likely to happen when you stop feeling like one is necessary for you to be worthy of self-acceptance.

I will never be the type-A overachiever I see as the embodiment of success (despite never actually liking these people in real life). I may be a bit of a perfectionist but I’m also lazy, and I can’t keep denying that when I check “Contactless Delivery” while ordering food, not because I fear corona but because I don’t want to change out of my pajamas to answer the door. I’m really bad at anything that pays well or involves sports, I’m scared to call people on the phone, and it’s remarkable how long I can stay in one place without moving. But that doesn’t mean someone else with different flaws would have a better life. (On a positive note, I can out-knit your grandma, and I’m really easygoing as long as you don’t get to know me well.)

Somehow, I’ve been thinking all this time that I could not be okay yet if I still have this many faults.

We cling to the idea of some people having perfect lives even though it’s illogical. We know we’re comparing our behind the scenes to their highlight reel, but we do it because we want to believe it can be a reality, and one day maybe our reality. Deep down, the voice inside of us is saying,

Perhaps, if I just do something differently, I will not have to be myself anymore.

I didn’t just write lists of my flaws as a child. I also wrote letters to my future self, as well as dramatic diary entries about various book characters and famous people I wished I were more like. Ironically, I actually did become many of the things I hoped for in these letters (except for popular and married at 17). And I was far more like the people I admired than I knew at the time. But even if I had seen these similarities back then, I wouldn’t have believed in them. And I think that takes us back to the original question. What do I do after I figure out what’s wrong with me?

I think the answer is, put down the scalpel, take a leap of faith, and believe in everything that’s right.

Let’s Be Marginally More Positive

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Anton on Unsplash

Only marginally, because excessive positivity is annoying and anxiety-inducing. Either things aren’t actually that good (annoying), or they are and God knows that can’t last (anxiety-inducing).

It feels selfish to talk about any personal benefits I’ve experienced from the corona pandemic when it has caused harm to so many others, but I need to be grateful, and I thought it might be a nice change from the usual stuff I write. I am lucky. Very lucky. Isolation may have eroded parts of my mind that I was once quite attached to, but that isn’t important. Today I’m going to count my blessings. Here is a non-exhaustive list of ways quarantine has benefitted me.

I have learned to appreciate the little things, like staying out past 6, not fearing the outdoors, and how good food tastes when it is prepared by literally anyone else besides me. On really dark days, I miss going to work.

I have an airtight excuse not to kiss my relatives for at least two years. Maybe the whole custom of cheek-kissing will die completely. I have never understood what pleasure I am supposed to derive from it, and if I started actively enjoying it, people would get very uncomfortable. So really, what is the point?

I have been forced to confront mental health problems I might have otherwise ignored. This is definitely 100% a positive thing! No drawbacks whatsoever! Without corona, I could have gone years without realizing I was crazy. That would have been dreadful. Truly, this was the biggest benefit of all.

My parents finally have a good reason to be glad I didn’t make it in medical school. Instead of risking my health and theirs working in a hospital, I’m at home, binge-watching TV shows made by people who have actually done something with their lives, and therefore come in contact with more germs. Corona has lowered the bar for underachieving children everywhere. I may not be rich, successful, or particularly well-educated, but I’m alive. At a time like this, what more could you ask for?

Face masks are cheaper than the nose job I occasionally consider.

I’ve learned new and exciting ways to bond with my family members. The most effective method I’ve found so far is to encourage them to complain about each other to me. Quarantine has given us lots to work with there, and annoyance with others is the common thread uniting humanity. I read in a book that the term for this is “triangulation,” and it is not healthy. Perhaps not. But it works and it’s not going to permanently damage my lungs, so I don’t see the problem.

I’ve gotten much more comfortable with how I look without makeup. I used to hide my face behind glasses if I wasn’t wearing eyeliner, and now I think putting on clothes is the most the world should ask of me. Plus, my makeup is now the wrong color. Corona has taught me to be grateful for the tan I never knew I used to have.

My relationship with my cat has flourished in direct proportion to the degree my connection with the outside world has crumbled. In other words, we have become very close. She’s one of the few beings I know that is needier than I am. I used to think her erratic behavior was due to my not spending more time with her, but now I realize she’s just crazy. It’s comforting to not be the only one.

The Lockdown Is Over and So Am I

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Molly Belle on Unsplash

It is interesting to me that so little is technically going on right now, but everything is happening.

Relationships are ending, lives have been turned upside down, and people are seeking therapy at alarming rates. Putting aside the legitimate tragedies some people are experiencing, why is isolation so disastrous? I guess we don’t notice that our minds are not a nice place to live normally because we avoid living there. We go out into the world and try to experience something other than ourselves. Now we cannot do that.

We distract ourselves and then claim we are too busy to go after the lives we want. “I just don’t have the time,” we said. “Here you go,” said God. “No,” we say, “not like this.” The truth is, the busier you are the more you end up doing. When you get used to constantly having a task, it feels odd to not have one. Now we have nothing and struggle to do anything. It’s inertia or something like that.

What have I used this time for? For one thing, I have combed through my behavior and mistakes over the last 10 years in depth, and I have decided to cancel myself. Unfortunately, just like most cancelled people, I am still very much here.

I have tried to convince myself that wasting 70% of my time is not that bad because 30% of my free time is a lot more than it used to be. So I should be getting more done. I have also tried to convince myself that I only waste 70% of my time.

I have concocted an elaborate theory about how autocorrect starts acting up around the full moon. I have also come up with something called The Ben and Jerry’s Diet, where you live on one carton per day. Each pint is roughly 1200 calories, so logically, you would lose weight. It’s like the Subway diet, except more fun and with better long-term marketing prospects because I’m not a pedophile.

It’s not that I haven’t done anything useful. It’s just with all this time it is painfully clear what could be and how much what is falls short. We have been given the gift of time and we don’t know what to do with gifts. We are better at surviving in the face of hardship than enjoying blessings. Studies show that humans create their own problems when they don’t have any, and I am expecting these scientists to show up at my door any day now and request to examine my brain when I die. Would that make my suicide worth it for the greater good? Haha. Anyway.

I don’t have a solution. All I can say is forgive yourself, maybe. Whatever you’re going through right now, I feel like that is relevant. Forgive yourself for not living up to the standard they tell you it’s unforgiveable not to meet. Forgive yourself for having messier problems than other people seem to have, because they struggle with the same thing or worse but they’re too ashamed to talk about it. Forgive yourself for not being born smarter or prettier. Forgive yourself for wanting what “emotionally healthy” people are supposed to be too self-sufficient and self-loving to want. Forgive yourself for not living up to the terrible burden of “potential.”

We do not live in forgiving times. Sometimes it seems like people are praised for how much they condemn. I think women especially struggle with this because for so long they were told to put up with everything for the sake of having a husband or keeping their family together, and now the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, where tolerating anything is a sign of weakness. But you can’t genuinely accept yourself without accepting others. And if your goal is to accept another person, you can’t do that without accepting yourself either.

At the end of the day, we are all we have. And, for better or for worse, that is clearer now than ever before. Maybe that’s why everyone is so upset.

In Defense of Binge-Watching Television

black flat screen tv turned on displaying 11

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Ever since childhood, I’ve had a wide variety of interests. Skimming through the books in my old room takes me back to some of the phases I went through: Origami Magic, HTML in a Week, How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ballroom Dancing, Ballet for Dummies. On an unrelated note, I may have also had low self-esteem.

Most of these interests did not go anywhere. I revisited Origami Magic recently, thinking it might be easier for me now than it was in first grade, only to find I had actually regressed. I still haven’t learned to spin wool even though I bought a spindle in 2016, and as you might have guessed, very few people learn how to dance from books. My career as a pianist lost steam around the time I saw a four-year-old Chinese boy play the hardest song I knew better than me. I thought recently about what I had actually stuck with long-term, and a common theme emerged. I have become really good at hobbies that can be done while watching TV.

The TV, our most devoted quarantine friend, has been the subject of considerable criticism. It’s been accused of wasting our time, ruining our morals, and turning our children into idiots. I once had a parent claim it was why her son hit me and chased me with a pair of scissors. “Too much television,” she sighed. (I had a slightly different theory.)

Maybe we are just looking at it too negatively. The TV is a valuable tool–if we just understand how to use it properly. It actually benefits us in many ways.

It immobilizes people, for one thing. Especially children. Anything that keeps a child still, in one place, without warranting a call to Child Services, can’t be all bad. But even adults benefit from sitting. I Love Lucy was so popular in the 1950s that the crime rate in New York went down when it was on the air. Mobile adults go to war, take advantage of the working class, and accidentally impregnate each other. If more time were spent Netflixing than chilling, the world would be a considerably less sinful place. Studies show that couples with TVs in their bedrooms get less action. And less action is exactly what God wants you to have.

On a serious note, you actually will amp up your productivity if you can combine repetitive activities with television. If you want to learn something new, consider knitting or crocheting just because of how TV-friendly they are. Know thyself, and therefore aim low. Use TV to motivate you to exercise, attempt a tedious recipe (like stuffed grape leaves), or do housework. Get creative with finding ways to do your usual activities from the sofa. Watching TV from exciting new positions is a great way to start doing yoga. Is your favorite show just as good upside down? Let’s find out!

It may be sad that we find it so difficult to focus on one thing at a time these days, but does feeling bad about that somehow improve your attention span? No. So accept it and use it to your advantage. Sometimes the way to accomplish more is to numb out your brain.

TV quiets your mind, or kills it, as my mother would say. But that’s not all bad. There is an old joke that says the only reason you believe your brain is the most important organ in your body is because your brain is telling you that. The truth is, your brain is overrated. Even my brain is overrated. How many problems do we create for ourselves by worrying, ruminating, or coming up with excuses? All of these things are functions of the brain. Sometimes the answer is to think less.

Television gives you that. It gives you temporary reprieve from the agonies of your mind. And it isn’t simply a distraction, a way to deny reality until you finally turn it off. Stories help us cope with the hardships in our lives, no matter what form they come in. They give our struggles meaning and teach us to believe in happy endings. When times are really bad, we need the most easily accessible types of stories to comfort us. You might not feel like reading Dickens or Tolstoy when you get divorced or find out your parents never wanted you to be born. But you will turn on the TV.

Most sitcoms deal with topics that are very serious, but we laugh about them. This is their magic. If the characters we love can laugh through a tragedy, it tells us that maybe we can too.

At the end of the day, I even believe TV can motivate people to succeed. At some point, after spending hours watching other people do stuff, you’re going to want to do something of your own. Project Runway makes me sew more, cooking shows make me cook and consequently eat more, which is precisely why I don’t watch them. You will want to do what you see. One of the reasons we watch TV is because it is aspirational. It shows us who we could be, in another life with good lighting and makeup men. If you are confused about who you are, look at what you like to watch. Look at the characters you love. What speaks to you and makes you keep watching long after your backside gets sore and your eyes burn? Don’t, however, take it too literally. Liking Breaking Bad does not mean your destiny lies in drugs. But it could mean you desire more adventure in your life. I’ve always gravitated towards heartwarming comedies because adventure and action are exactly what I don’t want. I want security and positive relationships. And, after I watch The X Factor, to be wildly famous.

In a nutshell, how can you discover your life purpose, finally start working out, and conquer the intrusive thoughts in your head about how you’re a stain on the reputation of your family? It’s easier than you think. Just watch more television.

Life Hacks for the Emotionally Stunted

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Work smart, not hard. This is what I tell myself as I do not work at all. The Age of Corona is upon us, and this means isolation, loneliness, and the absence of all routine except that which we impose upon ourselves. For most of us, that’s not good.

“I finally have the time to chase my dreams,” you might have said when it all started. Little did you know your deepest desire is not actually to succeed in life, but to have a really satisfying excuse for why you didn’t. Corona ravages our bodies, but free time ravages our veneers. I listen to my neighbor’s marriage disintegrate through the walls. I listen to my mother tell me that at least she cleaned the bathroom sink today. I listen to my cute friend ask me if she really resembles a turkey or if she just needs to stop looking in the mirror. We are all falling apart.

Deep down, nobody is really that evolved. The problem with most self-help is that it forgets that. It aims too high. I never have that problem. So here are some tips I have developed to help you cope with the emergence of your lower self.

Is that housework really necessary?

Did you know that housework, traditionally women’s work, was designed to be time-consuming and inefficient to keep your wife at home and away from other men who might impregnate her? (Source Unavailable.) Don’t fall for this. Fight the patriarchy. We inherit chores like traditions, not realizing there is a better way.

Take changing bedsheets, for example. Fitted sheets are difficult to change, and no one knows how to fold them. These two problems can be killed with one stone. To begin, collect all of your fitted sheets. Place them on your mattress, each one over the other. It is more work at one time, but it has bought you months of relaxation. Whenever you need clean sheets, remove one. The same method can be applied to pillowcases. To prepare your bed for 6-12 months of clean sheets, buy them in varying sizes since the outermost layers will need to be larger. This may also trick the cashier into thinking you have a spouse and children. Congratulations!

Pro Level: Buy a top-loading washing machine. Change your sheets without leaving your bed and toss them into the washer. Because of its resemblance to basketball, this counts as a workout.

Pit your demons against each other.

You will never be perfect. So why bother trying, or, more accurately, considering it without putting forth any effort? The outcome is more important than your intentions, and a better outcome is often achieved not by erasing flaws but by developing new ones. For example, are you fighting to keep your weight under control in quarantine? Don’t develop discipline! Instead, become too lazy to feed yourself. Create difficulties to decrease your motivation to eat fattening food. Buy fresh ingredients that require cooking, so you can watch them mold while you lose weight. Change your debit card number and place your wallet too far from the sofa for ordering food to be worth the journey. Sleep so much that you are only awake during curfew, when government forces can be relied on to keep you away from takeout. Worst case scenario, block your refrigerator door with dumbbells. If you give in to temptation, at least you will have done some strength-training.

This concept has a myriad of other applications. For example, are you a jealous, vindictive person? Do you struggle to wish others well and/or take great delight in revenge? Don’t waste time fighting these impulses. Instead, try to become too much of a coward to act on any of your desires, good or bad. Alternatively, work on being too dumb and incompetent to inflict any real harm even when you try your best.

Pro Level: Determine which deadly sins you possess and how they might interact with each other. Place bets on which ones will win each day. Try to involve younger siblings and siphon away their allowances.

Alleviate stress created by working from home.

Attempting to work from home can create all sorts of issues. Not only does it become harder to do your job, the increased scrutiny placed on you to prove you deserve to earn a salary in these conditions can be nerve-wracking. Probably you never did much under normal circumstances. How can you pretend to work when no one is around to watch?

Relax. Working from home is really just crying in your own bathroom. Stop focusing on your employer and utilize your talent for pretending to be busy with your family instead. To balance out the excess of bonding going on because of quarantine, claim you have Zoom meetings during mealtimes or “game nights.” Rebrand your bedroom as your office. Refuse to let anyone in without an appointment. This is your chance to become the important executive your parents always hoped you would be.

Pro Level: Hire an attractive secretary for your new “office.” Because some people have lost their jobs due to the pandemic, convince yourself this is charity, not exploitation.

Embrace unexpected skills.

Were you going to write a book during quarantine? Learn to play an instrument? Don’t worry that this didn’t pan out. Instead be encouraged by this truth: You don’t resist all work. You resist important, meaningful work.

The next time you find yourself being unmotivated and unproductive, realize that the problem is not you (maybe). The problem is your goals. Consider trying one of the following instead:

Bake brownies. In mugs. In the microwave.
Plan your wedding in detail to someone you’ve never met.
Brush up on your karaoke skills. You may find yourself more inclined to do this in the middle of the night. Follow your muse.
Research what really tore apart Brangelina.
KonMari your underwear drawer. Do your boxers spark joy? This is a great exercise for getting in touch with your feelings.

Pro Level: Acceptance of ruined plans and shattered hopes is very zen. If you complete this step with enthusiasm, you are likely to become a spiritual person. This is also a good excuse if depression has driven you to stop washing your hair.

Happy Quarantine.

Reality, My Mortal Enemy

person standing in front of body of water

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

I’ve never been a particularly regretful person.

Not because I make good decisions. That is not the reason at all. No, it is due either to a sort of natural optimism I have or a diminished ability to understand consequences. 2020, I hope, will be an exciting year of figuring out which one it is.

But recently, I’ve realized a few things were a poor use of mental energy. It’s not that I regret what I did or, as they always say, what I didn’t do, but the way I thought.

The first regret hit me while I was performing a Marie Kondo on my closet a few weeks ago. It seems minor, but it made me think. As I sadly got rid of clothes I liked but never wore, I realized how often I had bought a size small, just because I could fit myself into it, when a medium or large would have been more comfortable. I wonder why I pursued not even being the smallest size possible but qualifying as the smallest size possible. Changing the label on your jacket does not make any difference to your body. It is not an effective diet. It just means that you won’t be able to move your arms freely for the entirety of winter.

I also regret the amount of time I spent wondering who was right and who was wrong in a variety of conflicts. I realized in 2019 that when two people hate each other, they are probably both right. They always are to some extent—just as they are also wrong. The quest for some kind of objective truth that justifies all your own feelings and actions is a jump down a rabbit hole at best. And it’s the wrong question to ask. Figuring out why you should have gotten something is much less helpful than figuring out why you didn’t and how you can change that.

At work I dealt with a minor complaint recently, and while my first impulse was to be offended, it’s not useful. It doesn’t really matter if the complaint was deserved. What matters is that it happened, and if I don’t want it to be made again, I should address it in the most effective way possible, regardless of my opinion of the complainer. Understanding their motives will help me figure out the best approach, but deciding they don’t deserve for me to listen to them overlooks the fact that I don’t want to be complained about.

On a related note, I regret all the energy I spent on moral outrage, fuming about how “they should know not to behave like that” when I could have just said, “Please don’t do that,” and it wouldn’t have been done. At the back of my mind I knew I could get the results I wanted if I handled the other person intelligently and maturely, but I would only do so if I felt they had behaved in a manner that made them worthy of such cooperation. And usually, for me to feel that they deserved this enlightened treatment, they could never have done anything wrong for me to discuss with them in the first place. Surprisingly, this approach does not have a high success rate.

I regret trying to change feelings I’ve had but didn’t like instead of using them as objective information about my self and my values. I used to really dislike the idea that “all feelings are valid” because many people react emotionally in ways that do not seem fair to me. But feelings themselves are very logical. People just don’t know where they really come from. If you are upset by something, you have a good reason for it. It may not be that someone wronged you. But there is something bothering you that makes sense, whether it’s an emotional issue of your own or a behavior of someone else’s that you can’t tolerate. It always has meaning. To ignore that is to give up the only reliable source of information you have on how to find your own happiness.

A common theme in all of these regrets of mine is a refusal to accept reality. But this is the heart of it:

It doesn’t matter what size I think I should be.

It doesn’t matter how I should feel.

It doesn’t matter what I should be happy with.

It doesn’t matter how other people should behave.

What matters is what actually happens.

It’s as if I’ve been going through life with green hair, and because I don’t like green hair, I go around hoping people will tell me it’s actually aquamarine or turquoise instead. Nothing people say or I tell myself changes the color of my hair in reality. And instead of this odd game of trying to change something without actually changing anything, I could just dye my hair. But first I have to admit there is a problem, but I guess we don’t want to do that because we’re scared we can’t fix it, and all we’ll have done by acknowledging it is ruin our ability to live in a deluded little bubble.

I hope that 2020 is a year of looking in the mirror, and, if I genuinely want to, dyeing my hair.

Happy New Year, Losers

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JANUPRASAD on Unsplash

2019 was one of the best years of my life. It may only qualify for that distinction due to lack of competition from the other years, but it is still true. And I’m proud of myself for genuinely feeling that it was a good year even though I gained a considerable amount of weight, something that would once have bothered me to no end. But the path to plumpness was paved with such good food that I cannot fully regret it, so I tell myself that of course I gained weight, because 2019 was the year I Gave Birth To Myself.

By that I mean that it was an exciting, transformative year and in no way intend to diminish my mother’s contribution to my actual birth.

I have already lost some of the weight because I start thinking about the next year in November and actually start on my resolutions then. So my sister felt freer to tell me her impression of me at my heaviest after it had passed. “You even gained weight on your lips,” she whispered with alarm. I don’t think this is true, but someone did give me an odd look and say, “Why do you look like you just made out with a vacuum cleaner?” and I guarantee the reason was not that I had just made out with a vacuum cleaner.

New Year’s Resolution #1: Never reach a point in this year or any other so low that I develop a romantic interest in household appliances. Do not make eyes at the pink mechanical sweeper I bought just because it was pretty.

2019 was illuminating because I lost several people, both literally and in the sense that I lost what I wanted them to mean to me. It’s a good way to learn about yourself. That’s not a recommendation you have to take, though, because life will probably force it down your throat regardless of what you do.

It hurts but I find a certain satisfaction in it, because once it happens a few times, you realize that you actually will be okay. That it can happen again, and it will be fine then too. I let people ruin my opinion of them now when once I thought that was a terrible tragedy. I mean why should I avoid the pain when my ability to allow joy into my life can never exceed my willingness to allow in sadness?

Pain is an incredible motivator. The worse you feel, the more unbearable your situation becomes, forcing you to change. This is what I call Realistic Optimism. Now when I meet new people, I don’t think, “What’s going to end up being the matter with you?” because that would be negative. Instead I say, “What delightful new hobby will I take up to cope with the grief and despair you have in store for me? Could you be the one who pushes me to spin wool like I’ve been planning for the past four years?”

New Year’s Resolution #2: Find someone who fills me with a heartache so agonizing that it can only be expressed through song, as I would love to get back to playing the piano.

My main hope for 2020 is to be surprised (in a good way), which is not something you can plan for yourself without ruining the surprise, so I don’t have a long list of resolutions. Also, setting the bar low for yourself is an act of revolt against capitalism. I do, however, want to write more, and I would like the courage to “decompartmentalize” this part of myself. I realized recently that it does not make sense to write a blog, want people to read it, and then deliberately hide it from everyone in my life. I have yet to act on this realization, but it’s in the works and expected to be implemented by 2050.

New Year’s Resolution #3: Try to reach a place in life where my mother can find my blog and neither of us will cry.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Lessons in Toxic Love, Learned From My Cat

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I like cats, in theory. They are independent enough to not bother you, but affectionate enough to make you feel loved. They’re aloof, which gives you unconsciously pleasant validation of your low self-image, but they aren’t human enough to vocalize their disdain in a manner reminiscent of your childhood caregivers. It’s the perfect balance.

But in reality, cats are narcissists, and like their human counterparts, they are manipulative, capable of smelling fear, and inexplicably attractive to me.

A few nights ago, I lay in bed asleep with my cat curled up on my chest. Not the most comfortable situation, but I thought it was sweet, until she reached out and clawed my face. Then I realized my favorite animal is far too much like my favorite type of human. They both present love as something that slowly cuts off your oxygen supply. I thought about this for a while, and the result of that profound introspection is the following: a list of signs that you may be in a toxic relationship, inspired by my experience with cats:

You travel for a month and return to find they didn’t miss you, barely remember you, and have started sleeping with your brother.

To be fair, I have never met a human who did this. But I credit my brother for that more than anything else.

They give you crap, and you clean it up, spritz the room with air freshener, and say, “This is great.”

We don’t own cats; we don’t have real authority over anything that successfully commands us to flush their toilet for them. But sometimes we give someone love, and they respond with a metaphorical litter box. Love is cleaning this up, we say. Maybe, but it’s delusional to think there won’t be poop in it again the next day.

You aren’t appreciated for the nice things you do, only punished if you stop doing them.

Spoiling someone is much easier than un-spoiling them. Have you ever put a cat on a diet? I was once responsible for my sister’s cat when she traveled, and he had been on a diet ever since she decided to bring him to Kuwait and discovered he exceeded the weight limit for hand luggage. I was supposed to enforce it.

She warned me that he could be very persuasive in his attempts to get food. Multiple times, if my hair was in a ponytail, he would bite it and attempt to drag me towards his food bowl. There was never a reward for feeding him. Slowly, he trained me to see the few moments of relief before his next attack as an expression of love.

He has a lot to answer for.

You unconsciously start congratulating yourself on how tolerant you are.

I know there are many reasons why people put up with mistreatment, and it’s not always because it feeds their self-image of being a nice, accepting person. But sometimes it’s a factor. I was very proud of the everything I endured while babysitting. At one point, the cat sunk his teeth into my arm, and I decided to record a video. I wanted evidence of what I was putting up with. How long would he keep biting me if I didn’t stop him? It turned out to be around 30 seconds. Now everyone will see what’s wrong with this animal, I thought.

No one said that. They said, “What’s wrong with you for letting him bite you like that?”

They jump into your lap within a few moments of meeting you.

How sweet, I thought. You must really love me. I should take you home immediately.

And I did. I adopted my cat a few days later for exactly that reason. And all she wanted was a warm place to sleep, which is only flattering for a limited amount of time, until you realize exactly what it means.

I have not slept in peace since. There is no part of my body she has not turned into a pillow. If I sleep on my side, she balances precariously on my hip bone, somehow convinced that if she just wills it strongly enough, I will not move a millimeter. Although that may be preferable to what a human would expect in the same situation, it’s not exactly easy.

They hurt you constantly even if they don’t mean to.

It’s not a cat’s fault they have claws. They don’t mean to scratch you when they walk across your arm or knead your leg. But it still happens. There’s no point in saying it doesn’t. You wouldn’t refuse to bandage a cut just because it was an accident, so why do we pretend an emotional wound isn’t there just because no one intended to give it to us? It’s not always that one person or the other is toxic; it’s the combination. Wish them peace, then give it to yourself.

Sometimes you just need to get a dog.

I Was There Too

silhouette of woman standing beside body of water — Brannon Naito on Unsplash

There are a few incidents in my life that confuse me because I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about them. I know that “supposed to feel” isn’t the best phrasing, and I should ask how I actually feel, but I don’t know the answer to that either. It’s just a blank space. This is why I say knowing the “correct” emotional response matters, because sometimes, we won’t allow ourselves to respond unless our reaction is supported by the script of what’s “proper” and “appropriate.”

Many times, I didn’t know how I should respond emotionally. And so I decided it was best not to at all. 3/10 would not recommend this approach to a friend.

One event keeps resurfacing in my mind. I had tried to put my feelings aside. I couldn’t, and I responded to the whole situation by crying. I didn’t say or do anything except cry. Much later, when I revisited the memory, I asked myself how the person in front of me could see so much evidence that I was upset and not react.

It’s a normal question, a healthy question, and it should be asked. But then I realized something else. It wasn’t one person alone in a room. I was there too. Two people saw me crying, and I was the one who cared the least.

I knew better than anyone the pain I was feeling, and I did not think it deserved any recognition. I did not speak about it, I did not act on it, I did not want to have any type of conversation about it. I later denied my tears came from anything except stress.

When I think of the whole situation now, I don’t have any feelings. It’s like I wasn’t there—but I was there. I didn’t want to be. But I was. So I separated from it mentally to such an extent that I don’t know where the part of me who was present and felt everything is. I don’t know where feelings go when we tell them to die. I just know that they don’t die.

Why do we believe we can devalue ourselves and someone will witness it and refuse to let it happen? We have picked the people who are present in our lives. If I do not love myself, I have not picked people based on whether they treat me with love. What we really want is to be agreed with. This is our comfort zone: people who see us as we see ourselves. This is what we surround ourselves with.

I do not become more compassionate when I refuse to be compassionate towards the person I see most often. And I would not call myself compassionate towards others if I saw their pain and “felt bad” for them but didn’t take any measures to help. When you practice detaching from yourself, you practice detaching from everyone. You are a person as well. How you treat yourself is included in the definition of how you treat people, and it is more than a technicality. What we think of as two separate attitudes are connected; they are a reflection of each other.

One of my favorite quotes is from Maya Angelou: “I don’t trust people who don’t love themselves and tell me, ‘I love you.’ There is an African saying, which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.”

Culturally, we glorify self-sacrifice. But this type of “love” is like stealing from the poor to give to the rich. The poor are so used to being poor they’d rather stay that way than change (but they’ll tell you it’s really about you), and the rich don’t really want money, they just think it’s sweet that you’re suffering for them. And none of it is real money, it’s all chocolate coins and suddenly everyone is diabetic.

I don’t know if that makes any sense and I think I should stop now because I’m not ready to examine the metaphorical significance of my eating habits. All I’m saying is maybe, most of the time, we really do have what we want most. We just don’t have what we say we want.

The Way It Is

shallow focus photography of white feather dropping in person's hand — Javardh on Unsplash

I live in my head more than I live any place real. I prefer songs about mountains to actual mountains, the future or past to the present. I mean, I’m in North Carolina right now, and I would rather listen to the song “Carolina in My Mind” and think about being here, than be here.

The goal of spirituality or any other form of self-improvement is, to me, to be able to sit in the now with no distractions and to feel at peace. To be happy with myself without thinking of who I should turn into in the future, to be happy with my present experience without dreaming of what my life needs to become later. I’ve heard that life is what happens while you’re making other plans, but what makes me sad is that life seems to be what happens while you’re trying to think of something else.

It has taken me a long time to realize that ignoring reality does not change it. It sounds obvious, but I don’t think I’m the only person who has tried to overcome problems by pretending they don’t exist or don’t bother me. Shakespeare wrote, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” And there’s nothing the unhealthy part of me likes more than a famous person backing up my denial and other toxic coping mechanisms, but it’s not that simple. A lot of stuff is not in our control. We are given our personalities for better or for worse, and we can think about how we should be one way or another, feel one way or another, and it’s not going to change the truth at all.

You can insist the floor is clean because it should be clean, or you can admit it’s not and get rid of the dirt. What hurts will still hurt even if you tell yourself it doesn’t; what you want deep down you will continue to want even if you think you shouldn’t need it.

I think it requires a lot of self-love to be honest about who you are. We all have reasons to be ashamed of or even to despise ourselves, and you won’t let yourself see the extent of that (to make the best of it) if you don’t believe in your other redeeming qualities. You can’t develop real confidence without self-awareness. The ego is fragile when it’s running from the truth.

There’s no point in running from anything. You won’t end up somewhere better, or anywhere different at all. Why can’t we be happy with what we have? Why is it so hard to admit we have enough? And if we have enough, why are we unhappy?

I like the constancy of reality, though. I can hate someone or love them, and it has nothing to do with whether they deserve either. My feelings are one thing, the other person is probably many different things, and both exist separately from each other. I could be convinced their karma is coming, and they will instead live a happy life. It doesn’t matter what I think.

I hate what I write sometimes because it shows where I’m pretentious or trying too hard or feeling sorry for myself. But I would be all those things whether I wrote about it or not, and it would probably be obvious to everyone else anyway. It just doesn’t matter.

It is what it is. It will continue to be. There’s no point in pretending we aren’t fucked up because we are, everyone is, so what? That’s nothing new to the world. The ocean has watched us have the same problems for thousands of years.

I could go outside and breathe in the fresh air and smile, or sit inside myself and worry about my weight and if I was right about x, y, and z—and forget that I’m not that important. Or remember it and be free. We want to be something and important and special and why? It doesn’t change that we still are nothing more than what we are. We tell stories about our lives but it doesn’t change that story or no story, it all exists just as it is.

I could worry about whether I ought to publish this and what someone reading it would think (and I will a little bit), but not putting it out there doesn’t change my thoughts, who I am, or how many people might find both me and my thoughts obnoxious. I think we are unhappy because we hide from the truth. We think keeping ourselves from being exposed to it somehow changes it. But the truth is our friend. It’s us, when we put the blinders on and hide from life, who are not.