hummingwolf | (no subject)

You associate happiness with children and believe that misery is a sign of maturity. When bad things happen to the good person you want yourself to be, you consider it validation, proof you are truly an adult now that you endure things you never imagined when you were a kid. You see your life as significant when you find yourself screwing it up so royally that you rival anyone in the history books. You do things to hurt yourself just to prove you are no longer an infant, and you rationalize dragging others down into your pit and inflicting them with your wounds by saying they should have been mature enough to know what was coming, the way you did, the way you know it every single time you twist that knife in your own sullied flesh. You call your attitude "world-weariness" or (God help us) the "wisdom of age" when what you're really talking about is the result of willfully making the same damn mistakes over and over. This, to you, is what it means to grow up: Melancholy punctuated by the occasional tragedy. If it must all be self-inflicted, that is the price you willingly pay just to avoid being seen (by yourself or others) as a deluded (happy) child.

If any of the above sounds like you, please smack yourself now so I won't have to.

~~~

Lately I've been insanely tired, brain filled with fog. Didn't want to talk to people, though some kind of nonverbal companionship would have been welcome. It's one of those times when I really miss having a pet. Since online interaction tends to consist of words of some sort, I've been staying away more than usual.

Then today, in the middle of the day, I had some time of terrible clarity, terrible because what I was seeing and sensing were those webs we weave around ourselves and others, tendrils creeping out to try to twist and turn people as we will, threads in a net of manipulation and deceit. (I tugged a little on a few threads, just to see if I still knew how. I'm hoping I can find a pair of scissors.) Yeah, it was exactly the sort of clarity that can inspire bad song lyrics and worse philosophizing. I was very much of a misanthrope this afternoon, at least till I gave up and took a nap.

The thing that gets me about the ways people screw up their lives and the lives of people around them is that, while we may often legitimately claim confusion as an excuse, so much of the time we act knowing exactly what we are doing, act with that terrible clarity. We see our contributions to the web we're trapped in. Do spiders ever trap and eat themselves from the inside out the way people do?

From today's

catholic_quotes:

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

- Richard M. Nixon

Nixon wasn't any more Catholic than I am, but he probably had some Catholics on his enemies list.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

though some kind of nonverbal companionship would have been welcome.

::says nothing::

::snuggles and hugs::

::huggles back::

If any of the above sounds like you, please smack yourself now so I won't have to.

I've written enough rants about that very idea to know all too well that the people things like that apply to are the last to admit to seeing it in themselves. This plays a large part in my own misanthropic tendencies.

The attitude you describe, btw, and the way it seems to spread and feed itself, is very much like what I am talking about when I discuss the Blight.

I think the saddest cases are those who should know better, or talk (loudly) as if they know better, and yet *defiantly* hold onto this way of thinking.

I wonder when people started mistaking "Victimhood" for "Being Grown-Up". I hate the fact that too often those guilty of this are actually the ones showing the least amount of *actual* maturity. This usually means they feel a need to draw a lot of attention to their tantrums and "suffering".
I've also noticed there are a lot of people peripherally in my life who are rebelling rabidly against gaining any sort of maturity, because they have bought into the idea that this *is* what being an adult is all about. They end up doing the exact same thing, only with all of the cheesy angst and melodrama of a perpetual teenager, thinking they are avoiding becoming the horrid, dull and unfeeling Beast they believe all Grown-Ups to be.

This is why I refer to my closest circle of friends as the Big Table. I am relieved to have finally found people who aren't suffering from this local to me.

I wish I could pop over to see you to sit and read or watch movies (or whatever) and not talk.

I think the idea that adults are supposed to be boring is a fairly old one by now, and is probably the reason why so many people are convinced they shouldn't read fairy tales or play with toys after the age of twelve. That's sad, but I can sorta see where the idea is floating around in the culture. But the idea that sheer misery and big honkin' problems is proof that one is an adult? That's so counterintuitive to me it took me ages to figure out. I always figured that maturity meant you should be able to learn from your mistakes (and others' mistakes while you're at it), that you should avoid the familiar mistakes of your past and go on to make new ones (since nobody's life can be mistake-free, after all). These people who do the same things over and over, knowing that the result will be unhappiness for themselves and people they profess to love, and insisting that their acceptance of self-inflicted is "maturity" and "wisdom"--these people baffle me.