Georgia O'Keeffe. Untitled (Mt. Fuji), 1960
Sometimes I forget that I have a voice. I forget I’m the one that curates my own life and brings me to where I am. I overly emphasize others’ impact on me and forget about my own impact on myself.
I’ve always thought of myself as someone optimistic, with all the hope in the world and a big heart. But I’ve loved this quote from The Great Gatsby since I was 18:
“So we beat on, boats against the current, bourne back ceaselessly into the past.”
I see myself as the boat, trying so hard to swim upstream, but no matter how hard I swim, this unknown force will always send me back to where I came from. (This quote affected me so much that I even got a tattoo.)
When I was at my very worst, right in the middle of a depressive episode, I often woke up crying, with tears in my eyes, wondering how unfair life was. That wasn’t me. Even though I acted like that, I know that’s not who I am, or at least not the person I want to be.
But why does it feel so good? It feels so good when I tell myself I’m unfortunate; it feels so good when I think of myself as unlovable; It feels so good when I believe that nothing good will ever happen to me. It doesn’t make sense! How can feeling bad for myself feels so good?
I heard that it is all about being comfortable. Our brains are not wired to make the right decisions. It’s instead wired to do something that makes us feels comfortable.
Growing up in a relatively unstable upbringing, I needed to cope with many uncertainties. I couldn’t understand why my parents were so unhappy or why my dad needed to beat me, so I told myself it was because I wasn’t good enough. When kids can’t understand the happenings around them, they often look back on themselves cause it’s the only thing they know how to think about, and it’s as far as they can reason.
To the kids, their parents are everything. And when we were little, we just wanted to believe that our parents were the best people in the world. So, how can the best people in the world be any wrong? It must have been me. I must have been the reason for all our unfortunate encounters.
Whenever things don’t make sense to me, it feels like I’m again losing all control, just like how it was in my childhood. So my way of getting everything back in order again is to tell myself. You are not good enough. That’s why you can’t get any part of your life right.
It was a conflicted feeling in a society where you were taught to have self-confidence. (And all the girls’ power/ autonomy stuff I learned in the women in tech communities.) But, as I started my “self-empowerment” journey, I learned too well and became good at addressing what was wrong with the environment around me.
I dehumanized R. As if I was all innocent, being manipulated by someone with sophisticated strategies. Of course, I was harmed, but when I’m at my worst, I choose to take zero responsibility for our relationship and victimize myself. After all, it’s the easiest when we have others to blame.
We blame the market when we can sell/raise as we wish. We blame people for not understanding us when we know way ahead that they might not understand. Finally, we blame our partner for not being on our side when we should have known that we all are human with our concerns.
I deliberately ignored the fact that the people around me were the consequences of my choices for my social circle. I was almost convinced I was extremely unfortunate because things were out of my control. I wanted to be the victim because that’s the easiest way to make sense of the world.