Warning: self-indulgent depression-related morose crap. Skip now.
The holiday season is here.
I hate the holiday season. Not with a passion, no; can't really work that up anymore. I just hate it. Dull ache sort of hate. Warm classroom afternoon math test you didn't prepare for sort of hate.
The themes of the holiday season, you see, are (no matter what flavor of it you run up against) thanks and happiness. Be thankful for what you have. Be happy with family/loved ones/friends/whatever. Be a 'good person.'
Yeah.
It's not the religion thing, although religion is definitely the fastest way to make me speed my steps and move along. It's pretty much just that the intersection of my particular pathology and the world is rawest right there and then.
Everything is fuel for the self-flagellation. That's the core of the pathology. I am aware of people indicating to me that they find me to be someone they're pleased to know/interact with/generally be connected to. But (and here's the problem) - I only recognize this intellectually. This is just information, about what other people have indicated they think/feel.
I don't feel any of it.
I realize that sounds melodramatic, but I'd like to ask you to believe me when I say it's not. I'm just trying to set down, as best I can, the shape and size and feel of this crap as I observe it roll over me. Sort of like 'did you get the license plate on that truck?'
Anyway, no, I don't feel any of it. And that of course makes it worse. Because I can't feel this positive emotional feedback that people are telling me they are offering, I'm ungrateful and useless. I'm broken. How fucked up do you have to be to not derive any positive emotion (and in fact derive negative emotion) from people you trust telling you they like you? Pretty fucked up. Well, yeah.
Typical cycle. Broken -> something problematic -> that's my fault -> I'm worthless -> broken. Round and round.
How the hell do you survive when you think you're useless and broken and part of your dysfunction is that you are unable to feel or believe anyone telling you different? There's no input into this game except negative, and a plethora of that. It floods in constantly, but no matter what filters I put in, or what I can convince myself of that contradicts that input, it can never be 100% effective. And thus, it erodes.
I know this sounds dramatic and angst-ridden, and believe me (although you probably won't) it's not meant to. I wish it was. It'd be easier to leave behind when the season turned.
I fucking hate the holidays.
When you're in your teens or even early twenties, this kind of thing is something you can try to 'grow out of' or ascribe to the various completely normally crappy phases of 'growing up' that society is foisting on you. When you reach my age, though, it's a serious fucking problem, because it means that absent some large and positive change, this is all you have to look forward to - the light dimming as the brighter days dwindle back down the tunnel.