TheCloud

I'm thinking of starting a journal here. I have many unexpressed/repressed sentiments, and an often burdensome sense of personal space, so this seems like the perfect place to push my boundaries. I was going to name the journal something like "Crisis Mid-life", but I'm planning to extend this beyond any single issue, so a more neutral name was obviously appropriate. Well, I'll get to it, then. I am indeed having a mid-life crisis. I'm at an age, and state of body and mind, that makes it obvious that my youth has passed. Passed me by, actually. I didn't make much of it. I couldn't, with the burdens of what I was given as a child and adolescent. Rather than growing my experiences as a vital young man, my teenage years were spent staring at a ceiling, composing a vindictive suicide note in my head and wishing I'd never been born. My home environment was commensurate to that activity, with a hateful and aggressive step-father, and a mother with her head in the clouds who was unwilling to confront the reality that her husband was bringing ruin to her dreams of a happy home. When I went to college out of state, I was able to discover a new perspective on things, and a new consciousness, but was unable to make this new consciousness my home. I was academically gifted, but lacked a lot in life and communication skills. Furthermore, I had learned unnecessary "skills" for survival in a cruel household and unsympathetic community that further hindered me from making my way. I developed my new consciousness as best I could figure out how, but without supporting skills, my experiments generally led to failure in practical outcomes, and I became cynical and morose. If I hadn't had the financial support of my birth father, an emotionally distant but dutiful man, and his side of the family, I don't know what kind of situation I would have descended into. I'm tired now. Thinking about all this, with the wealth of unhappy unexpressed details and the unhappy knowledge of what comes after, is draining. I think the hardest part, perhaps the one thing that made everything hard, was and is the lack of communication. My mother, who did well as a single parent, stopped listening or wanting to know our situation after remarrying. She had to have known it was bad, but she was so determined that a fantastic vision of happiness in her head had to be reality that she cut off contact with the actual reality of her childrens' suffering. Our community was a conservative rural one where I didn't fit in as an academically oriented and practical-skill disoriented individual. I wasn't ostracized, is simply didn't have any peers who I could share any interests with, not caring about football or farming or small engine repair. One further feature of the community, though not a unique one, was the lack of support for struggling parents, and for children struggling under struggling parents. It was a see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil situation. Never do I remember anyone coming to address my conspicuously severe adolescent depression. I've since become aware that there were people who knew my step-father's nature and our suffering, but were disenabled from any positive action by the relentless indifference of the community. So I had nowhere to say anything. My experience was unwanted. My gifts, though recognized in my letter grades, were otherwise unneeded. In college, I came to accept that I was atheistic, a perspective which which had no place or forum in a conservative Christian community. Anything I would have had to say would have meant confronting everyone with something they didn't need or want. The upshot is that I learned that my kind of communication was a skill with no remunerative value, and anything that doesn't make money is worth as much as the money given to support it; nothing. At best, it can be considered a hobby; otherwise, a disgrace. Hard physical labor is paid for, and praised. Running a business is paid for, and praised. Shilling in a church is supported by donations, and praised. Raising children, while not directly compensated, is given financial support by the community and government, and is praised. So I've, erroneously, come to the conclusion that my skills in finding the truth behind matters and expressing it, are an insignificant hobby. Even writing this, I feel that every word that I say is somehow less significant than when I do productive physical labor at work. I somehow feel that my only value is as an oxen, a large stupid beast of burden who has no unnecessary thoughts. I'll never be able to live happily this way, though. I have to find a way to see past the rejection I've experienced, and assign equally great meaning to my words as I do to the products of capitalism. Perhaps that is what maturity is, is being able to assign as much significance to one's self as to authority and conformity and money. As a child, one prioritizes one's parents. As an adolescent, one prioritizes one's peers. As a young adult, one prioritizes one's livelihood. Generally, at no point is it made clear that one needs to discard anything and everything that hinders the prioritization of one's self-determination. There is no wide-spread institution, formal or informal, for introducing such knowledge. I've lived, if not without the knowledge, then without the determination. I've had the knowledge for nearly two decades. I'm not sure yet what my mistake was in applying that knowledge, whether it has been ignorance or cowardice or self-annihilation. Part of it is probably addiction, addiction to the tool of the internet to support various deleterious habits. The internet its self is not the issue, nor so much are the habits, but rather the combination. Even knowing this, I have trouble maintaining a state of mind where I can imagine a present or future of greater gratification than these addictive behaviors provide. That is my mid-life crisis; I've reached the point where the greatest pleasure I can imagine is the dull and unsatisfying experience of cheap self-gratification. I no can no longer support the youthful enthusiasm that there is something left for me to grasp for. When I was younger, even when I failed, I couldn't help but have hopes for the future. After all, I was still young. Now, having surpassed my physical peak, even if I know better, I can't help but to be bereft of hope. Even if I achieve something, I have no youth left with which to enjoy it. I lost those times. Actually, it feels more like those times were taken from me, by callousness and ignorance and outright malice. I can't help but resent those who never cared what I was losing. I've never been able to communicate with those people. Maybe I've lacked the determination to do so. It's hard to blame myself for being unable to communicate with someone who won't hear what I have to say, but maybe a part of communicating is being able to persevere through rejection, and to maintain confidence in the significance of my own words even when situations where nothing comes of them persist. To be self-determined.

His failures are in the past. Try to meet him where he is, rather than where he was. It's important to confirm and acknowledge where he has improved. It's encouraging if he was willing to sit still and listen to your laundry list; just his willingness to listen greatly expands your opportunities for reconciliation. The basics you might focus on are: does he know how you suffered, and does he care that you suffered? If he doesn't know, then he needs to be GENTLY informed. If he doesn't care, then you need to protect yourself. People can be so ignorant that it's almost impossible to believe, but it is so. He may not know that you suffered when he called you names or screamed at you for minor mistakes. His habitual revulsion for himself cut off that awareness, so he couldn't see or know what was indisputably obvious and true. So you may need to gently remind him of the truly obvious, being as unaccusing and nonconfrontational as you can. "Do you know that I suffered a lot when you screamed at me?" At this point, he's likely to make a lot of excuses. Your job is to listen to his excuses, and then further insist on a clear yes/no answer to your question. If he can't give a clear answer, that is a sign that you may need to take measures to protect yourself by distancing yourself, because he's so disconnected from reality and/or your well-being that it might be better to be strangers. If he does give a clear answer, then a complex process begins. You will surely have much more to say about your suffering, and he will also have much to say about his reasons for his misbehavior and what he'd hoped for that wasn't achieved. There may be a lot that you don't know about each others' experiences. Try to focus on where he's at now, rather than where he was. Does he now understand that he can't behave that way with you anymore? Does he now know what is right and what is wrong? He can't change his past, but he can do right in the present. The goal is to reach a point where the past is irrelevant, and you can relate to each other as adults committed to communication and support. You can't change your father into a different kind of person. What you can do is take measures to ensure that your relationship is based on sound principles like trust and honesty and acknowledgement. If you can't achieve that, then self-protection is a priority. Before you die, you want every single close relationship you have to be based on sound principles.

Quite informative.

I feel good about that breakthrough, it seems to have potential. It's not the end; none of us will ever reach the end, I think. We could all get along better somehow. Regarding boundaries, a major thing that needs to be understood is that you must be able to carry through your enforcement when the boundary is crossed. This is difficult to nearly impossible in a situation where you are materially or socially reliant, because enforcing your boundary may cut those material and social ties. If you can't enforce a boundary, it is usually better not to set it in the first place, and to focus on your independence. It's the same principle as your breakthrough. You can't just directly break through depression and suicidal thoughts when they're reinforced by your environment; you have to break through your isolation and create an environment where depression is unnecessary. Just the same, you can't set boundaries in an environment where you are dependent on habitual boundary-violators. You must become independent of the boundary-violators, to the degree that you can enforce your boundaries.

I believe there are (at least) two modes of thought; reflective and experimental. Reflective thought is about reviewing the past, such as looking for clues or understanding errors and faults. This includes revisiting what actually happened, as well as "what if" scenarios where I try to change the outcome in my imagination. I could also call this negative thought, not because it's bad, but because it is proscriptive. It tells me what actions are safe, and what actions to limit or avoid in the future. It tells me what not to do. Experimental thought is about future intent. Dreams, goals, aspirations, predictions. This kind of thought is prescriptive. It's how I decide what actions I will pursue or reinforce in the future. This could also be called positive thought, because though as with any good experiment I don't know what the outcome of these thoughts will be, I do intend for a certain outcome or range of outcomes. It tells me what I am or am going to do. I think balance is key between these two modes. Without reflection, I'm doomed to repeat or exacerbate the errors of my past. Without experimentation, my life becomes a list of actions to avoid without any direction, and repeating the past over and over in my head without limit, I'm just plain doomed. The experience you describe with your sister, and your mother's response, is clearly something you find worthy of reflection. You learned how not to play around like that with your sister. You also learned how easily influenced you are by fear and your mother's scolding. Your experimental intent here is, I am guessing, to find other people who have had comparable experiences and engage with them. When I was around six, I intentionally jabbed my younger sister of around four with the sharp point of a compass for drawing circles, just to see if she would cry. Predictably, she did. I didn't get caught and didn't get in trouble. I also didn't repeat the action, deciding on my own that it was usually better for me when my sister was not crying. So you're not the only child who disregarded their sibling's human rights. Nor, I can assure you, are you the only child who has received excessive scolding with resultant trauma, though I can't think of a specific example at this moment. So you may feel lonely, but you are not necessarily alone. Is there anything else you want to know about our shared experience?

To me it sounds as if you wish you could be the winner, so of course you hate it when you lose an unfair competition.

If you met someone who went through what you've gone through, who was looking for hope and trying to make things better, would you say those same things to them; that they are spoilt and ruined? Would you tell them that they'll never be the same?

Your approach sounds healthy the way you describe it, though it's hard to be sure when it's just one perspective. I doubt her friends show interest in your healthy, artistic social activities, though. Good on you for not capitulating on your values.

@zenburnt You're being really hard on yourself for little reason. There are millions of people starting from much lower standards than you; people who commit violence, abuse, manipulation, etc. You watch porn and play games. The only people who might think that's bad are the parents and teachers who raised you to "make something of yourself." You're traumatized by the control they exercised over your life as a child, with little or no consideration for your independence. Independence of thought is the greatest achievement a person can make, though, and freely entertaining the independent thoughts of another is the greatest gift one can offer (to someone who isn't dying of starvation or something).

To me, it sounds as if most of what you've tried as solutions for finding joy are to remove basic pleasures and add regiments. You're not accepting responsibility for the results of your own actions; you're draining the color out of your own life. The question is, how and why are you doing this to yourself? Have you explored your emotions for hidden bitterness or resentment? Do you have a troubled past, or unresolved traumas?

@Sabth You describe yourself as not being good socially. How bad are you? Do you have friends? Close friends? Does anybody know you? I don't know you and have never met you, but I get the impression that it's been a long time since you've tried to look anyone in the eye and get close to them. How close to the mark am I?

@matoriii IMO, the most important question is: who raised the bar? Where the bar is, what the bar is, all kind of questions about the bar itself are great, but who raises the bar is key. That's a question that could have a lot of answers, but the main difference comes from whether it was you, or somebody else, whether it was your parents or teachers or peers. Humans are beings who require freedom more than success. We're taught that achieving our goals should being a pleasant and thrilling outcome, but what we're not often taught is that choosing our own goals and being in full control of our choices comes first. What slaves achieve always belongs to the masters, and can always be taken away. Though likely, if you're a slave, the only place that applies is in your own mind. It is in your own mind that the fruits of your labor are being taken from you, and your bar is being raised by a ghost hand. As an adult, it's no longer your parents or teachers or peers who hold supremacy over you, but rather your own fear of them.

People who put you through hardship obviously won't like it when you complain, but it is deeply necessary to feel and acknowledge your emotions. If that acknowledgement comes in the form of a complaint, then complaining may be the correct way to start. From what you said, I understand that you find your present situation to be painful and lonely. Acknowledging and exploring those emotions won't change your current situation, but it may lead you to the next step to take. What specifically do you find to be the most painful and/or lonely?

@at_anchor Have you found the beauty inside yourself, or ever had a profound or life-changing (positive) experience?

What sort of activities do you see as a "waste of time"?

That makes it sound as if you're more afraid of yourself than you are of dying. If you were to try again and fail or lose, it's more frightening than giving up everything.

@Ramzi08 You could just ask her, so what do you need an outside opinion for? Either your relationship with her is hot garbage, or you misunderstood something. Are you going to trust what we have to say more than your "good female friend"?

Get married, have kids, get a stable job, save for retirement, make your parents look good. Does this describe your hopes for your life?

As long as you aren't in constant physical pain, have your mind, and have a means of expressing yourself, you have a way to show the beauty that belongs to you. If you're already suicidal, you have nothing to lose even if someone kills you for showing it. So what are you holding back for, when you're already talking about giving up everything? Are you more afraid of humiliation than death?

Ultimately, it sounds to me like what you're talking about is saving people. It doesn't seem to me that enlightened people are so occupied with saving people, but are rather more concerned with something like the beauty of life. Such beauty could be a reason for saving someone, but it could also mean a whole lot else. I think that if you try to save someone, but your efforts are "ugly", that you might have trouble just staying out of the way. Then you have to wonder whether you were really any help at all.

You don't write as if your brain has been destroyed. You still have means and places available to express yourself.

I don't want you to die, and I don't think you really want to die. You're still a child inside, living under the thumb of a perverse authority. You never even got to grow up, so it can't be alright for you to die already. The images installed in your mind that haunt you, particularly of the feminine/maternal and masculine/paternal, aren't real or permanent. Even though it's been repressed, ignored, or denied, there's still something beautiful inside you. It's something more important than your life, but it's also something that can make it important for you to go on living. If that's how you feel, I highly recommend Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" to you if you haven't read it. There are certainly parts to contest with or grow past in her philosophy, but I know of no greater treatise on virtuous selfishness.

Rather than eradicating the sense of self and other, I think it's more like embracing both equally without barriers. On the contrary, what I suspect is that the harder the division that remains between the two, more that one side seeks to exclude and eradicate the influence of the other. The determination to ignore internal matters (which is more often the case in people who show lower levels of awareness or consciousness), and the determination to be driven exclusively by internal matters (which I think is more common among people who are just discovering how to expand their consciousness or awareness), will both inevitably run into irresolvable issues. I do agree that there is a difference in how we experience ourself compared to others. It's not as if dissolving a psychological barrier will make it possible to literally experience being another person while also being yourself. I just think that we're fooled by the fact that we can't see through one another's eyes into believing that the conceptual division between ourselves and others is also something factual. It can't be helped if none of this connects to your experience, though. I don't think I know enough about you to give a more practical explanation of what I'm aiming to explain. If you haven't hit your limit in perfecting your internal self, there might not even be a reason for you to care. I agree that the sense of division between self and other, such as in your given example of sexual attraction, can be a source of pleasure or excitement. My goal is to perceive the truth more clearly, not to obscure it in favor of simplistic ideals or pet theories. The truth is that our experience of our own actions is vastly different from our experience of other's actions, in ways that can't simply be said to be bad or good. Embracing those differences is, I believe, a part of my pursuit of the truth. I've not had an experience quite like that, where there was a sudden and permanent shift. It sounds rather extraordinary. I do understand that epiphanies of any kind require an adjustment period, where old habits and thought patterns are questioned and modified and discarded. My epiphanies have been slower processes than yours, with adjustment periods measuring in years. I am curious as to how what you're describing might relate to what I've been discussing; it certainly sounds as if there could be a connection, especially where you describe your sense of self as having become unbound to your mind and its fixed patterns. I get the feeling that you're not quite used to it yet, and are exploring new ways of describing what you've experienced. I'm not really interested in pushing some kind of unity agenda. I mostly brought it up to get a clearer idea of where you're at and what kind of experience you're having to have started this thread. Of course, I do believe in what I'm saying, it's only that I don't particularly care whether you end up believing it as well.

If it's because you feel restless, try doing some squats. If I spend too much time physically inactive, my legs get restless and twitchy; if I do enough squats, the feeling goes away. If it's a psychological tick in your case, though, this method might not work.

@Sugarcoat Another way to define external and internal as I'm using it is "others" and "self". Ultimately the difference between the two is arbitrary. When a neuron on the left side of my brain communicates with one on the right side through ion channel impulses we call that my self, and when a neuron in my brain communicates with a neuron in your brain through text over the internet we call that communicating with others. However, setting aside differences in the speed, bandwidth, and fidelity of the signal, the fact of neurons communicating is identical. The neuron itself doesn't know the difference; it just sends and receives according to its nature. I think that the ultimate perspective is to erase the imagined difference, to perceive others as our self and our self as others. That doesn't mean that our processes of communication between your neurons and mine will change, and it probably won't change how some people are more externally active and some more internally contemplative, but I believe the difference in how we regard each other and ourselves would be substantial. I'm not claiming to have achieved this state of unity, I only believe that it is possible and worthy of achieving.