eos_nyxia

HAPPY HAND WASHING BEHAVIOUR: Yesterday, I woke up and felt a deep sense of peace to have finally written the words above and fully meant it. Today, I feel equally at peace. I've also felt surprisingly excited and optimistic at the possibility of the total absence of such of thing in my life, to never be bothered or to concern myself with these type of questions again -- what would be done for me in my time of need? Who would be there for me? What would be done in my relative absence? What do people do when I hold back? How do they live their lives, what do they value, and what choices do they make for themselves? What things do people correctly attribute to you and which things are false or at least highly twisted? What are these people hiding about themselves that they expect you... or someone... to see? To fix or heal? The same type of concerns have been circulating its influence since early childhood near incessantly, though at first I knew the feeling without having the ability to put it into words. And even when I never thought about it consciously, the imprint was marked so deeply on me that it affected everything I did and who I was to become. The choices I actually got to make as well as the large variety of things I had absolutely no control over, the situation I was born into. And all the things where accountability and responsibility has been shunted onto me and I simply expect it to take it and EAT IT (so that I might have the immense and high privilege of transmuting people's undigested psychological rubbish across time and space lol), when all I ever needed was to remain fully dedicated to serving ""The Highest Good"" as fully as I possible can, without pretense. And this looks however it looks, I need not concern myself with how I'm perceived or what people take from it. I need not continue to latently concern myself with all this heaviness than I have worn my whole life like a mantle, but instead I do need to be strong again, to be a person willing to wholly live this life and make the best of it without overly concerning myself with what people will or won't do, as if I am waiting for them still. The lingering self consciousness and the shame and embarrassment where the rage has quieted. I am not waiting to meet anyone as if life will start, and I wish I had stopped fixating on this at least 5-7 years ago, once it was obvious that my "test" or "leap of faith" was a failure. But it is what it is. Everything always takes far too long to get rid of all traces of so it's not negatively impacting my psyche in some way that is seriously holding me back. When I was in 25-30, I was able to figure out that the minimum amount of time to make a major psychological change, not at the level of habit, but on the level of deeper emotionality/ the worldly presentation of the "soul", about 3 years. Absolutely never less than 2. This took 7 years. SEVEN FUCKING YEARS of my life. I took the wager with myself, I somehow survived that bet (it was not at all a given to me that I would), and ultimately it only really hit me the worst, it seems. The inhuman amount of rage at watching people live their best life while I sunk, with the original pretense and belief that I mattered and that I was needed. Bitterness. The sort of thing that poisons you first and most deeply, and often no one else, or else those who are closest to you that actually WILL be there for you. From my perspective: I paid off my debt fully; it's over, like it would be inevitably. The question has been answered, and the book has been shut. It was always waiting for me to shut it, and I've had to be the one to make that decision. To be able to put that final brick in place. And there is no way with how much continuous effort and time its taken these past years, as with every major decision I have to reinforce within myself which runs directly against the emotional grain, that I would ever consider changing my mind. Again, who will pay for my future years? The law of balanced exchange still applies even if one person has agreed, in their soul, to take on a lion's share of the work/ sacrifice. My blood and time and energy? No one. Not worth it. Extremely poor risk-to-reward ratio. After all, I have to look after myself and look out for myself like everyone first before I can be operational to serve ""The Highest Good"", or whatever form this life's version of it will take, whatever it is that I both desire and can feasibly sustain. As they all have. I'm not much good if I'm dead or incapacitated am I? And if I have nothing left that I would willingly offer, then I'm completely off the hook in terms of what I do with my conscious energy, who I spend time with, and if I chose in the future to be completely absence and out of reach for an indefinite period of time (which means the rest of this life). This has at times been something that has been hard to wrap my head around, but it's my issue to make it work. No one else's problem, and I guess it never was. Anyway, every time I have felt that sense of definitive calm no one and nothing has ever been able to get in my way or to stop me. It is very literal when I say nothing will stop me. So of course I feel at peace. I have finally received the rest of my power that I had given away. I lack a lot of the social skills and have many hard edges as a result of the life I have lived, particularly the things which I have had no conscious input into or choice about, about the years of enforced isolation and the things I was kept in the dark about -- what you would call "soul contract" stuff. I could have learned (at least I told myself this, as I both believed and would have been willing to put in whatever time and energy that was necessary), but I could not make things line up and they did not. I tried my best; so I am at peace. I rescind my own judgement onto myself for the things I actually did consciously choose that failed, my own anger and piss poor attitudes at times (from my perspective), despite my own lack of knowledge of certain things (or else there would have been nothing to test for near absolute certainty). I still think that we all collectively chose the HARDER OPTION and it does link into how I was treated and received. Take whatever you want from that. But you if you picked THE WORLD AS IT IS and the values it holds and expect me to hocus pocus things for you or do things through THE POWER OF LOVE AND SELF SACRIFICE, well, that's your business now. Was I ever actually loved by anyone other than my husband? Honestly I do not give a fuck anymore.

TO THE ONES WHO WILL NEVER, EVER ENTER MY LIFE: The biggest mistake you made, if you ever expected me to DO anything for you, to be anything for you, to bring you to your potential or somehow free your soul or bring you some great revelation or sublime pleasure or whatever... ...is to treat me like a person. Because the truth is, you don't anyway. There is the pretense of such, but why? I took you very very seriously at one point to the point I literally bet my life on my it, but why? You can't treat me like a person if you don't really know me on a personal level, if I don't let you. And you can't "know me" with whatever crude effigies you made of me in your own head, on your own time, with your own fantasies with little figments of whatever it is that is there which actually might be "real" for me as well. You literally only see what you want to see, that you are capable of seeing, which dictates whatever is within the range of your Sight. (keep in mind I'm using the word "want" in a way that doesn't correspond to the common notion, but rather the "soul's desire".) Why do you waste time with the pretense of serving me in some fashion as a personal entity? Seriously, what good is it doing you right now? Are you getting what you want? If it's because you get pleasure from it and you're an animal apparently that can't help themselves, fine. Whatever. No need to barf it out in public and make it like some secret religion. Here, I'll say it more clearly. If you want me to "save" you, don't bother dealing with me as the pretense of a person at all. Don't treat me like one, don't address me as one, don't bother trying to humanize me, don't make this about any kind of "love" or attraction (either abstract or not), don't waste your time trying to understand me or my story. I'm not saying this for my sake or because this issue has made me emotional and very angry in the past, as if I had somehow been betrayed. I'm saying it for yours, if you want me to fast track whatever ongoing process that is already happening, so let me do whatever I can do from here and stop wasting everyone's time, especially your own. I'm saying this to get you from point A to B in the most efficient, least damaging way possible. Walk through the valley, but don't touch anything, and fix your gaze on the proper things. And honestly.... the end game is that there is no more personal connection (or pretense of it) between us, ever. It IS actually for the best. Not sure if you got the memo. Not sure that you realized that I've spent far more energy and time watching you to see what you would do in response to what I do before I made up my mind. Literally, if I know where to find you and I accurately typed what your deal is, I have probably been watching you for years. The fact that you could be receptive to me and NOT NOTICE that I am watching you, this is baffling, Which means that this whole time, while I was looking for a type of person who had the raw potential to become a certain something... reminding me that they don't exist, and can't exist in this world for some time, some lifetimes away. I know that I asked and expected far too much. You didn't see my dream, and you missed what I valued the most. Oh well. Not your problem. ...in retrospect, it was always heading in this direction. And maybe we could start over, but why bother? What does that even mean?? From my perspective, it never actually started in the first place. You never showed up because you waited for me to do the showing up for you first, and while you went on doing whatever it is that you do. There is no point anymore talking about how I myself did not get what I personally wanted within the appropriate window of time where I felt like there was no choice but to "test" people. I promise you that I would not pick that particular strategy unless there was a damned good reason for it. Anyway, it's a new world and a new era (though it might not look like it yet). Might as well scrap it all and do something new, yeah? Bon Voyage. Have a good life, truly. And for everyone's sake, including my own sake (as a specific person with my own issues), my will is that you never find me again. Truly, even if you were to somehow see these words, may you see nothing, feel nothing, identify with nothing of me. May you forget I ever existed. After all, I am not a person, and you deserve to be free. Maybe you don't understand the value of this yet, but in time and coming into yourself, you will.

THE GOLDEN CHILD?: By most definitions, I am the golden child and my brother is the black sheep. My brother has gotten way more shit from my mom especially, but he never went out of his way to not step on her toes. I strongly suspect that he has not been able to be anything other than what he was (which is most often cognitively appropriate for a child, if not children in general, then that specific child). He completely lacked my early capacity for survival masking. Not that either of my parents would ever say it out loud because it goes against their parenting philosophy, but it's obvious enough even though they tried to treat us equally according to a variety of objective standards (usually involving money gifts, access to higher education, access to material things). They feel more relaxed and comfortable around me; they feel safer. I almost never challenge them in ways which they don't want to be challenged especially at times which are bad for them, and when I do it's in the most calculated way to both protect myself and to protect them. My brother has mostly has done it whenever he has felt like it (from my perspective looking on). Though I've often asked myself: could I really have been the golden child with the absence of praise? If I never felt like anything I did was perfect enough for them and was easily enough subjected to criticism? If I was held to a much higher standard of behaviour and performance than my brother was? ...Is a golden children supposed to be like a martyr and a saint, to save or transform the world, all while not needing love or positive attention? Of course, they never explicitly said that while I was growing up. Not until I was an adult. My whole life, I had put that pressure on myself, though it was never just about their idea of "perfect" either.They've been watching, waiting to see what I'd do with my life, and I tell them very little, because I do not trust them. Why would I? A lot of things in our family has always remained unsaid. My parents expect me to forgive their lying, or they hope that I will. Like many things with them, I count on a mixture of dead-accurate intuition and logical guesswork, the same thing I have relied on since early childhood, the same calculated asking, guessing, and scrutinizing that I have always done in a state of permanent hypervigilance around them, as if watching myself from the outside to monitor my own behaviour and any sign of vulnerability or weakness, because I have honestly never felt safe around them, and I always knew something was seriously off in my family despite how it appeared from the outside. Honestly, I don't feel love for anyone in my immediate family. (Even my brother who has gone to a great effort to make amends, but even he did not start that process by himself, his ex-wife (at the time girlfriend) did. He didn't have the courage for it and was also listening to my parents.) What I feel, and what remains from my earlier life, is a tired sense of duty. I look out for these people as if they were my own children. Again, the way I always have, especially with my mom and trying to regulate her emotions, especially her anger. It actually took me many years to wrap my head around being parentified, since I'm not the usual model of parentified daughter at all, like I was not an eldest daughter who was expected to raise her siblings and also manage both the emotions and physical responsibilities of her parent(s), as my parents were very responsible with material things. ---- A wound added on top of this is the way in which others have sometimes done the same thing (observed me and spoken FOR ME while I have never agreed or consented to such) and expected the same thing of me (martyrdom, self-sacrifice, that I should fix this world, or god forbid fix THEM). And as much as I really, really don't care to see this behaviour within myself especially in a sober state of mind, this is why I act "UGLY", because I definitely do not have the energy, time, or patience to be this for anyone else. --- Anyway, when I see a child who appears a little too mature and put together as, where people say, wow, he/she is just like a little adult! -- I don't think, oh, how sweet! What a well behaved child. I assume that they're probably being emotionally neglected, or maybe they're expected to act perfect and not be a burden. I see someone who has likely been parentified. I see someone who is self-conscious and hypervigilant. When I've worked with kids like this in the past, I give them just as much positive attention and engagement as anyone else, even if they act embarrassed and uncomfortable at first or it doesn't quite land (I would just back off appropriately and keep trying to reapproach them in ways that makes them feel safe and seen), because I know the kind of damage this can cause. Generally speaking, the rule is this: You pay for that kind of maturity (for where you feel you have no choice as a child) as an adult. You pay with your future self. (So you get to feel messy and small like a child as an adult so long as you're not managing to run away from yourself -- great, right?) But always, with anything and everyone, try not to project to much of yourself and your own issues, preoccupations, and burdens onto other people, especially to younger people who are more of a fresh slate than us adults, ok?

SELF EXPRESSION - THE IMPORTANCE OF STARTING WITH THROWAWAY THOUGHTS: I lost the ability to write because I wanted to shut myself up from incessantly writing about things which have not gone as intended and things which I can't change. For some years now, if I asked my heart what it wanted to say, it was more of the same, and I annoy myself quickly when I start repeating myself too much like a broken record. I still kept it up writing here even when it became little more than a habit, as if there was one last thing I could purge emotionally in that way. Or if I screamed or spoke loudly enough, even if it was just here, then I would not be giving people permission to speak over me, to tell themselves and everyone else who I am, what matters to me, and especially what it is like to be me subjectively. Not here, not IRL, not anywhere. But one way or another, no matter how I frame it or how I negotiate with it internally, and no matter how I curate my past: my life has been defined by absence, by the absence of expressed love toward me, by the absence of people showing up when I needed them to be there, and as a minor, literally being withheld from places where I could get close enough to people feel seen or nurtured, whether by a mentor or a peer. (Though, I did occasionally find my way through the cracks.) My whole life has been defined by my immediate family lying to me by omission, leaving me to wonder what was wrong with me growing up. I always knew that opening myself up to find a family that was never there for me, coming from this space of profound lack, was something that could backfire horribly. And it did. What else is there to say about it though that I haven't already barfed out verbally? I'm not sure, but I need to start somewhere again. Even if it's with more throwaway thoughts that I don't really value.

That certainly does not help.

I read that as wilting, lol. Testosterone? I read that somewhere too. I'm wondering why he looks more feminine in the face compared to when he was younger though.

I've juiced fresh cranberries myself, but I don't own a juicer (I have too many appliances and I HATE cleaning juicers) so I blend it up with water and then press it through a fine-mesh strainer and it's good enough for me. Often you can get it super cheap if you buy it right after Thanksgiving and then you can freeze the extra. I usually also juice it in combination with other fruits, roots, and vegetables. My standard thing is usually fresh ginger juice and lemon, which is super easy to strain, and then maybe fresh turmeric and celery or cucumber. For me, ginger is one of my panacea herbs, especially someone who has had lifelong digestive sensitivities.

I mostly go on there (and similar places) to lurk and get a temperature reading of whatever the issues of the day are for a specific community. In this case, mostly I tend to focus on issues relating to female physical health (especially news that I might have missed from other sources), the current state of reproductive rights (mostly in the States), marital issues and issues interacting with the opposite sex (e.g. the uneven distribution of physical and emotional labour in relationships). (Though there is a ton of selection bias that skews toward the negative -- it makes it seem like everyone has a shitty husband and male friends, which I have trouble believing is the result of issues that SUDDENLY APPEARED with no red flags beforehand. People aren't that crafty, even when they try to be, haha.) Maybe there is an occasional post about human rights issues for women worldwide, but most of it is very US-centric and it shows. I mean... any kind of place where people repeatedly go to consolidate their bitterness isn't good for anyone emotionally. After a while, the collective attitude tends to automatically rub off. Even I feel it and I'm not one to automatically identify with the agendas and ideologies of specific communities, even if I'm in the demographic group. This is what happens when people go to a specific place to bond with people over a shared lack or wound though. Bonding through perceived shared trials and hardships. It offers a very strong bonding potential.

He's an almost 50 year old guy with not a lot of melanin. I'm not sure what sort of cosmetic procedures he has had done as well. He also has really low body fat, doesn't he? None of these factors really help with aging. For cosmetic work, the result can be a wildcard even with "good" work, especially with new procedures seemingly being implemented at least every 5-10 years. The long term result isn't always known (e.g. the migration of fillers, undissolvable fillers). Very low body fat makes everyone look older. East Asians tend to have more face fat by default which helps with the appearance of aging even if we also lack the melanin. I think he looks fine enough, though I guess you could ask if that amount of effort is worth the reward (looks wise). IDK. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ People really think that diet or controlling external lifestyle factors fixes everything, don't they? The obsession with the visual aspect of aging has gotten completely out of hand.

There is a certain kind of sadness and desperation (like a kind of existential emptiness and not being at peace with that) which tends to follow around the formerly religious like a scent. As if they are trying to fill the void with some new kind of religion, whether it's New Age spirituality, another religion, a food-based "religion" (like veganism, specifically if they're dogmatic and evangelizing in an extremely aggressive way), or turning some other niche into a whole-ass ideology. It could be fitness, it could be intellectualism or anti-intellectualism, techno-utopianism, or something else entirely. Food-based "religions" (particularly as a Western phenomenon) is an obsession with foods as a sort of moral marker of purity, and the obsession with remaining pure or worthy in this way, which in turn calls for demonizing others. There might be a point to reducing the load placed on your body, there is a point to ethical concerns, but I'm simply referring to the emotional and thought processes attached to it and the attachment to specific identity markers. What you demonize in others you reject in yourself, and that always has a cost. He was raised as a hardcore Mormon, wasn't he? If he doesn't believe that he's going to get a Mormon afterlife, then he at least wants to live forever? (Which I get, but I still find sad. Who wants to live entirely like themselves as they know themselves..... forever.... just because they are afraid?)

Why the negative framing by default? What invisible benchmark are you comparing everything to?

This is so goofy, why would you think this is onesided when people are left to their own devices? I was a tween (probably even younger) when I realized that "smart" or "nice" doesn't matter if you're not cute as a girl either, and "weird" is only ok too if it's offset by people thinking your attractive, but that also has its limits.

Personally I think the difference between him and many who would envy being in such a position is that he is truly committed to a service mindset, so it's like a vocational or even sacred calling, Not just the idea of it.

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Have you gone out of your way to find people who share similar enough niche interests to commune with? Or can you honestly say that there isn't some part of you that takes pleasure in feeling like you're the best person in every room?