Disillusionment

 Hey Abyss.

Long time, no talk. Well actually, considering my previous track record with any type of journaling, this is actually pretty good. But I'm not here to talk about my history of diaristic ineptitude. Today I would like to talk about disillusionment. 

Like anyone who has lived the vast majority of their life believing their very existence is a burden to everyone around them, I am no stranger to the feeling of disappointment. When you have that mindset, you become intimately familiar with the feeling, in fact, because your brain spends every minute of every day reminding you that you are the biggest disappointment of them all. You are king disappointment. They only thing you succeed at in life is disappointing other people.

You're a disappointment to your parents because you still can't live fully independently. You're a disappointment to your siblings because you don't have the same values as them. You're a disappointment to your friends because you are never anything more than somber with the occasional streak of snark. You're a disappointment to your job because you are incapable of sustaining a high quality of work and inevitably burn out. 

You're a disappointment to your therapist. A disappointment to your neighbors. A disappointment to your pets. Your doctor. Your nieces and nephews. Your grocery store clerk. To every person who has had the misfortune of passing you on the street. No one is safe from the catastrophic bummer that is you. 

And then you start to learn a different way of thinking. It starts out small and weak, just a quiet whisper of "maybe you're not the absolute worst all the time" that is quickly quashed. But it comes back again. And again. Until it takes root and eventually you're able to believe, at least some of the time, that you are actually a full person who deserves to take up space in this world. 

Now enters disillusionment. Because an unfortunate side effect of realizing that you are not the literal worst is allowing yourself to see that sometimes the other people in your life, the people you placed yourself below and spent so long agonizing over how to lessen your burden on, are kind of sometimes a little bit shit. And sometimes they don't know you as well as you thought. And sometimes they still expect you to be that half-person who made every decision based around how it would benefit everyone else.

It can be a startling shift to feel disappointment towards an external target. To look at someone you previously saw as superior to you, and suddenly realize they have let you down. It is an extremely complex knot of feelings to untangle. Because on one hand you have just acknowledged that it was okay for you to have an expectation of someone else, and them failing to meet that expectation was not some cosmic punishment sent to remind you that you are trash and undeserving of happiness. And on the other hand, it is neither fair nor realistic to expect others to live up to the image you established of them when you were only capable of seeing the flaws within yourself.

Then you begin to think...was all of this even worth it? All the progress you've made in changing your brain and helping yourself see life through a different lens. Is it even worth it when the view before you is shit. Even if there are occasional islands of good, they are floating in an ocean of crap stretching as far as the eye can see. And when you dream about finding another place where the oceans aren't feces, you're told you're naïve. You're told that no matter where you go, there will always be an ocean of shit. You're told you should choose be grateful for your islands of good and accept that you live in a shit sea. 

And you realize that now you really are a disappointment. And all you had to do was believe you deserved a shot at a full life. And the anchor wraps around your ankle. And back down you go.