I’ve built the most sophisticated prison possible to imprison specifically myself; it’s not a room though - it’s a constant, chasing, fleeing Android that yells at me, sets up traps, and knows all my weaknesses.
When I was under like 14 years old I just didn’t care, in general. Then, sometime during my early high school years, I over-corrected and became a self-hating, self-doubting, overthinking life optimiser.
I think it came from a mixture of boredom and shame. The adults in my life always told me to stop playing games and stop playing. I was never encouraged to play until I didn’t care for doing it as much as obtaining money or something to be proud of. Everyone in my family was too busy to entertain me, and so I played games. And when I played games, they told me to stop because it was hurting me. They were right, but they didn’t give me an alternative. What was I to do? Well, I did what I could. I had associated distracting myself with videogames with immorality, and so instead of distracting myself with something people could see and therefore shame, I brought it inside. I started building logic systems, auditing myself, running diagnostic checks on life itself, simulating social dynamics. I did it not because it was healthy, but because it was a way to stay occupied without anyone catching me being “lazy” (AKA bored out of my fucking mind).
My mindset shifted. I stopped living to have fun and started working to have fun.
The self-doubt became the Android’s guard, keeping me in check and making sure I was always doubting myself enough that no one else could do it first. The self-hatred became the Android’s weapon, the whip to punish me when I couldn’t live up to some standard I had setup for myself, whatever that be. The overthinking became the Android’s computer-brain, the control panel that let it direct me perfectly to what would make me the most optimal human being, whatever I thought that was.
And that “collaboration” under the Android’s management—while working pretty well for a while—left me drained. It left me perpetually stuck on a treadmill. Or in this case, being chased by an evil Android of my own making.
You see, people notice the misery that a life like this generates. For the most part, I think that people who have liked me in the past have liked the me that was confident, unapologetically weird, and the most “myself”. But the me right now doesn’t like that old version of me. I admire his joy and outward contentment, but I see the turmoil of unresolved potential in his heart, and the simplicity of his mind. I see the current me as an upgrade in most ways, and a downgrade only in peace of mind, relatively speaking.
And sure, the people who still like the me now—the me saturated in that air of sadness—are not any less “right” for doing so. It just makes sense that they like a guy who tries his best to be a good person, even if he hates himself for not doing well enough at it. It’s just that I feel like I experience life a little backward because of this Android. When someone leans on me, I feel happier and more content than if someone had supported me. Their belief in me as stable enough, strong enough, useful enough, to hold them up? That belief actually manifests those things inside me. I realised this, and came to the conclusion that I’m too controlled by other people’s thoughts of me.
But that’s not all. My brain, still being run by the Android, turned to my recent “failures”. My search for love (in general, not of the romantic kind specifically) being twisted by it into a “subconscious manifestation of my desire for someone to give me a direction.” Ah yes, an excellent, complex reframing of loneliness as a problem with my fundamental personality. Give me something to do, to work toward. Make them happy, continuously. Put the fuel in the engine. I even found myself recovering a fear of the terrifying idea that I’m fundamentally unable to do that (make people happy) too, because of my family and friends. If I can’t even do that for them, then how could I possibly ever be “useful”, and therefore “good”? It’s not that I only feel worth it when I am useful to someone else—now I know that being “useful” leads to me acting “better”, which in turn makes me be good.
And the point of all that above wasn’t to say that that was all the truth of my character or something I really believed, but the opposite, actually. It was a desperate grasp at an answer to my misery using my (and the Android’s) favourite tool: logic.
It positioned my subconscious psychology and framing of life revolving around utility as something that felt impossible to shed. Why? Because it literally is, as long as I kept using logic to try and break away from it. I felt like there was no leve of logic-ing I could do to reframe my value from my output, because there wasn’t, whether my output was something someone else made me do or something I did for myself (then promptly failed because no one is there to make sure I finished it).
It was some division between swallowing something and letting it stir in my stomach (what I call endurance), and true acceptance, which is not to swallow a feeling, but to drop it entirely. There are levels to this: insecurity is to try and fix what isn’t broken, then it’s to swallow the desire to fix, then it’s to rid yourself of the desire to swallow the desire to fix.
What other brilliant conclusions did I arrive to in this Android-induced spiral?
- “modern society is fundamentally poisonous to human minds”
- “people think i’m so smart, but i’m so stupid”
- “i dont see how anyone could possibly solve this. i dont see how they could get out of this. i make rest a job! productivity is the goal here, right? as in, my goal in resting is to later be productive” (literally what I wrote)
- is “self-improvement” this? am i improving? i mean, HEALING. am i just, getting better? feeling better? it feels backwards, though, doesnt it?
4a. i want to feel better.
4b. i have now defined a goal.
4c. i now have steps i can take to reach that goal.
4d. when i am not taking action towards that goal, i am not improving.
4e. when i am not improving, i am not feeling better.
4f. the goal involves not trying to “produce” or “take action”.
4g. simply, an error.
The key comes thusly: Optimisation involves doing; healing involves being. Whether you’re adding things into your life, or cutting things out, you’re optimising. You’re adding fuel to the engine or taking parts of the car to reduce the weight. Healing means letting everything cool down, sit in the sunlight, or just roll around in neutral. Odd how much of humanity we can explain using cars.
So what now? What do I do when I’m spiralling?
It’s simple. Remember you are human. You are not made for work; you are an animal with a highly advanced brain. Remember the physical body you inhabit. The things you must do to be alive—eat, drink, sleep, heal. And when you rest? Don’t confuse it for a requirement to be content. Healing isn’t always painless. It’s slow, sometimes tense, anxious, terrifying. The Android will yell, it will scream, it will gnaw at you and gnash its teeth. But you must ignore it. You must allow yourself to be, not in a way that’s somehow “correct”, but simply being.
You’re allowed to think about whatever you want, except for the things that you think are logical.