becoming more naive sometimes has come with sadness
when i strip away my cynicism and numbness i just see a lot of hurt and scared people. i see how the people i love struggle and are in pain. i also see that they are finite and going to die. i remember being little and the enormity of all of those things was overwhelming and it devastated me and eventually i numbed out but now i see it again and i feel it deeply
i don’t really know how to move back to feeling good other than feeling these things when they hit me. if i try to redirect my attention i feel the ignored feelings buzzing in the background, where they can remain as agitation for days to weeks if i insist on not facing them. so i give the feelings my attention and they swallow me for a little and i sob harder than i’ve sobbed in memory. and then after that they start to recede
i don’t know if this goes against the method, it’s just kind of naturally started happening as i’ve started paying more direct attention to what’s going on in my mind and body. i know crying doesn’t change anything but it really demands to be felt, i can’t get around it. it has been making me kinder and more patient with people. but i also notice the desire to help people emerging, out of compassion. i’ve been noticing this without entertaining the fantasies too much because it seems silly to have someone who is not fully free of pain wanting to guide others out of pain. towards what? i don’t know where i’m going, but i feel more raw than i’ve felt since childhood.
maybe this is part of the compulsion of self-immolation, because it feels like i as an emotional entity have to choose between being numb or feeling intense and destabilizing emotional pain in response to the misery of humanity. humanity loves its weeping martyrs but honestly from an experiential perspective, being the martyr seems like kind of a raw deal. sure it’s pretty blissful to feel loving and compassionate and connected but it seems inextricable: if feeling connected with other people supplies the druggy good feelings, then feeling disconnected from them or rejected by them produces bad feelings. if their happiness brings good feelings, then their misery brings bad ones.
so i’m handing other people, who are often volatile and repressed and on some level unhappy, the reins to my well-being.
i don’t like living this way.