Failing at Life
[ sycobuny on Mon Apr 28 at 12:00 AM // category: life // comments: 1 ]
There are some people who are shining examples of humanity, of what we can achieve and what we’re truly made of. They lift us up when we’re at our darkest hour, to bang on an old cliché, and they make the hopeless situation of our existence seem bearable.
And then there’s me.
I’d like to say I’m very noble and all that; I mean, I certainly have the aspirations of a noble human being. I’d like to get into politics or something, not for the power but for the true possibility that if you position yourself right, you can make the world a better place. I try to help people out when I can, I talk to people that I just plain don’t like for hours when they’re feeling down in the dumps in hope that I can brighten their day.
But it’s not enough to just try. Aside from actually achieving something, there’s got to be some effusive love for the entirety of humanity driving the system that I just don’t have. At least, right now I’m having trouble locating it. I think sometimes I do, and then other times I just hate everything. Right now I mostly just hate myself.
If all this seems random and out-of-context, I’m not surprised. Suffice it to say I was quite viciously rude to a friend of mine the other night, and to my boyfriend. I can’t even say it was witty, because I was too stupid from drinking and other impairments to make much sense. I talked to Larry about it tonight, and he told me he thought I would have run back to a corner if I could have, and he hit it closer than he probably thought.
I wasn’t just running to a corner for feeling bad about being mean. I was getting scared, because I was trying to make myself seem impressive in the face of overwhelming evidence that I was just being an idiot, but doing it while beating a hasty retreat. All of this lack of love for humanity, traces back I think to massive and conflicting feelings of superiority and inferiority that I’ve got. On the one hand, people have told me since I was young that I was smart, and my sister even once said “scary smart,” as though I were genuinely intimidating. I think it seeped through into my psyche like some water damage from hell, because now I constantly think of how much better I am than everyone. But then, I see people do things I can’t. They succeed at jobs while I fail miserably. They find great fun in activities that I just can’t get at. They set goals, and then they achieve them, while I merely talk or blog or just bitch about everything. Obviously I’m doing something, or quite probably everything, wrong.
How am I so smart if I can’t do the basic parts of my life right?
In any case, it all boils down to feeling better and smarter while, simultaneously, feeling far more inept and stupid than everyone else. How can you like people if you think you’re above them? How can you like people if they represent everything you want but are too moronic to get? Good shit has fallen in my lap since day one of my life, and I squander and flounder while people around me are struggling uphill with their boulders only to have them tumble down to the bottom again.
So what’s the solution? Well, step one is that I blog/bitch about it. I haven’t figured out step two. Some day maybe I’ll happen upon it but until then I guess I’ll just hate myself for being stupid, while continuing to, somehow, believe I’m the smartest shit hitting the fan of life.
-- sycobuny // 2008.04.28 @ 12:00 AM
1 Comments
Comment #57
[ rakaur on Mon Apr 28 at 11:10 AM ]
You’re a good guy. I think you tend to overanalyze things sometimes. I’ve always just been laid-back for the most part, and I try to explain to people that they just need to calm down and not let small things get to them (I even try to not let big things get to me, I’m failing). I realize it’s easier said than done for most people. Most people need benzodiazepines.
If it makes you feel any better, and it won’t: you’re pretty much the best friend I’ve ever had, and we’ve never met. You’d probably do almost anything I asked of you, even if it was somewhat unreasonable. You’ve also been in my life longer than any real-life friend, probably due to the moving a lot. I don’t know.
Having said all of that, perhaps not as eloquently as you, I believe it really boils down to the fact that we really need to go to a bar.
-- rakaur // 2008.04.28 @ 11:10 AM
