vicious circle?
Mar. 13th, 2026 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primeidealMaybe I'm on the threshold of being able to articulate some new facet of the problem that I haven't been able to express before, or maybe it's all the same noise.
Sometimes it's like...in the grand scheme of things, there are a lot of people whose vices are worse for them and/or surrounding society. Like imagine being at the doctor's office and they're like "hey, we have to ask about your medical risk factors, do you do any of these 'hard' drugs?" "no" "okay, what about tobacco products?" "no" "alcohol?" "no" "risky sexual habits?" "not so much" "boring sexual habits?" "uhhh" "driving fast cars?" "not me" "okay well look, surely you do something that's not good for you, and do it to excess" "yeah you should have seen me put away ice cream, I would ignore those recommended serving sizes and just pound that stuff. don't wait around for it to melt. You eat it, it's a food group." "Ah yes, and when was the last time you had a nice big quantity of ice cream?" "too long ago, I stopped being able to metabolize it and it causes gastrointestinal problems, no one could be more disappointed in this outcome than myself." "ah yes, well. any, um, unattainable romantic pining?" "idk I'm not sure I understand romance." "okay but you know what the words 'unattainable' and 'pining' mean" "sure, around fifth grade I read Animorphs and the character death and cliffhangers really did a number on me, that screwed me up, and I felt bad for caring about fictional characters who weren't real when there were so many more people in the world whose suffering was real" "oh, hmm..." "but then i discovered fanfiction and that helped a little." "oh, okay, so you're not weird about Animorphs anymore?" "at present, i'm being weirder about" *squints at back of hand* "Antarctic explorers, actually?" "get out of here, you have some issues but not the ones we can treat." In the grand scheme of things I'm a functional adult!
But. In part what I'm admiring about people who are understated and stoic is their lack of emotional excess. It feels like something to aspire to, especially because I so often feel that other people are emotionally dumping on me and I would like them to please not. The fact that I can get emotional, worked up, about reading things written by people a century ago who are all dead now one way or another...it makes me feel so fragile and vulnerable, and I do not like that, in part because that emotional overwhelm is specifically the thing that I'm aspiring not to be!
Now a lot of people would say "it's not a weakness or an inconsistency to have emotions or be vulnerable or affected by things, even by fiction, it's what makes us human." And what I always say is "well I don't want to be human, I'm only here because the robots are not taking applications."
Part of the "complicated interconnectedness" is that I can't tl;dr it, trying to talk about one Big Question ties into a bunch of other Big Questions and even if I felt like there were friends I could talk to about one or two, they probably won't be able to handle five or six (at least, not without me panicking that they're actually condescending to me). Sometimes I "see" other people around and I just kind of want to dump on them like "hey, I think you're the same kind of weird as me, please give me a hug," and like...I don't know how to do that without coming on too strong. I think eventually I might work up the nerve to, maybe at some point I'll be like "look, this is stupid, if these dorks are crazy enough to Antarctica without modern technology the least I can do is be vulnerable and fragile on Al Gore's internet," but, not yet.
Anyway tomorrow I am going to see friends and that will be good, but I don't want to be too weird around their additional friend who I'm not as close to, and also we're going to consume some media that they like but I have not gotten into, in part because I think it might be Too Sad for me, so, bracing for luck.
Sometimes it's like...in the grand scheme of things, there are a lot of people whose vices are worse for them and/or surrounding society. Like imagine being at the doctor's office and they're like "hey, we have to ask about your medical risk factors, do you do any of these 'hard' drugs?" "no" "okay, what about tobacco products?" "no" "alcohol?" "no" "risky sexual habits?" "not so much" "boring sexual habits?" "uhhh" "driving fast cars?" "not me" "okay well look, surely you do something that's not good for you, and do it to excess" "yeah you should have seen me put away ice cream, I would ignore those recommended serving sizes and just pound that stuff. don't wait around for it to melt. You eat it, it's a food group." "Ah yes, and when was the last time you had a nice big quantity of ice cream?" "too long ago, I stopped being able to metabolize it and it causes gastrointestinal problems, no one could be more disappointed in this outcome than myself." "ah yes, well. any, um, unattainable romantic pining?" "idk I'm not sure I understand romance." "okay but you know what the words 'unattainable' and 'pining' mean" "sure, around fifth grade I read Animorphs and the character death and cliffhangers really did a number on me, that screwed me up, and I felt bad for caring about fictional characters who weren't real when there were so many more people in the world whose suffering was real" "oh, hmm..." "but then i discovered fanfiction and that helped a little." "oh, okay, so you're not weird about Animorphs anymore?" "at present, i'm being weirder about" *squints at back of hand* "Antarctic explorers, actually?" "get out of here, you have some issues but not the ones we can treat." In the grand scheme of things I'm a functional adult!
But. In part what I'm admiring about people who are understated and stoic is their lack of emotional excess. It feels like something to aspire to, especially because I so often feel that other people are emotionally dumping on me and I would like them to please not. The fact that I can get emotional, worked up, about reading things written by people a century ago who are all dead now one way or another...it makes me feel so fragile and vulnerable, and I do not like that, in part because that emotional overwhelm is specifically the thing that I'm aspiring not to be!
Now a lot of people would say "it's not a weakness or an inconsistency to have emotions or be vulnerable or affected by things, even by fiction, it's what makes us human." And what I always say is "well I don't want to be human, I'm only here because the robots are not taking applications."
Part of the "complicated interconnectedness" is that I can't tl;dr it, trying to talk about one Big Question ties into a bunch of other Big Questions and even if I felt like there were friends I could talk to about one or two, they probably won't be able to handle five or six (at least, not without me panicking that they're actually condescending to me). Sometimes I "see" other people around and I just kind of want to dump on them like "hey, I think you're the same kind of weird as me, please give me a hug," and like...I don't know how to do that without coming on too strong. I think eventually I might work up the nerve to, maybe at some point I'll be like "look, this is stupid, if these dorks are crazy enough to Antarctica without modern technology the least I can do is be vulnerable and fragile on Al Gore's internet," but, not yet.
Anyway tomorrow I am going to see friends and that will be good, but I don't want to be too weird around their additional friend who I'm not as close to, and also we're going to consume some media that they like but I have not gotten into, in part because I think it might be Too Sad for me, so, bracing for luck.
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Date: 3/14/26 07:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 3/14/26 01:24 pm (UTC)