This is going to be about empathy.
I don't write much anymore. Mainly
because I feel like a fucking hack, but also because I can't motivate
myself to do it unless I feel like bitching about something. I'm
still very good at bitching about things, but I don't have much to
bitch about lately. I don't really care much at all about much of
anything lately. What is there that I could possibly exert effort
over to talk or complain about? My problems? I got a Hell of a lot
of those, but I don't much care at all about those anymore. It's
really fucking tiring to give a shit about things you have no
expectations of ever getting fixed. It's exhausting.
This is also going to be about being
tired. About being exhausted.
When you stop caring about your own
problems so much, it becomes important to have people who will. That
sounds selfish, because it is, you prick. But desiring people to
care about your problems is a human thing too, I guess. Problems are
objectively still problems. If you stop caring about them, it
doesn't stop making it a problem. I stopped caring about my car
getting fixed and getting insured, but that son-of-a-bitch still cost
me 68 dollars to get it towed to my new apartment, and it'll still
cost three to four-hundred dollars to get it fixed while it sits out
there being an obtrusive piece of shit inconveniencing my life. Just
like I stopped caring about my friends and family but those assholes
are still in my life, being people and shit, all up in my fucking
business like they own the place.
But I can't be bothered to care about
most of them anymore. If you're reading this, yeah, you. And you.
And maybe you. Not you, though, I wasn't friends with you in the
first place, you're mostly just there. And not you, you're just a
dick. I remember when I tried going out of my way to force myself
into people's lives because I know they wouldn't. Nope. Not doing
that shit anymore. Waste of my time. If they have business
somewhere else, then go do you. If there's shit between us, I don't
care enough to fix it anymore, that's on you if you want to. None of
this is inherently the other party's fault, I just don't really want
to bother anymore. People lose the ability to connect with others.
They get burned out too much, or they get tired of the upkeep. Or
maybe that person's perceived value just drops and you lose the
desire to make an effort. Sometimes it's all three.
You get tired of how much people value
you or how open they aren't about it. And when they decide to make
an effort, is it your obligation to let alone want it anymore? Was
too much damage done in the first place that all you could do at that
point is shrug? I've been beaten up my entire life in a whole manner
of ways. At first, empathy something I've wanted to enjoy with
people my entire life. Connecting with people, trusting them, that
shit is great. It's wonderful. It's liberating. But when you get
slapped around often enough, empathy becomes scary. You're nervous
about people treating your empathy like shit, underappreciating it.
Your empathy becomes something you
timidly offer forward, hands shaking, not making eye contact. Hoping
the person thinks it's good enough, hoping you're not doing anything
wrong approaching them. Are you pitying them? Being too direct?
Not direct enough? Even looking them in the face you're fucking
terrified of it being rejected again. You want it to be appreciated
so much and paradoxically don't think it's worth anything. You can
be close to crying because you think you relate to that person so
much that it hurts the living Hell out of you. You're scared of
people taking your delicate, dainty little emotions and throwing them
into the fucking wall like the second-born child of two abusive
alcoholics who found out you've been lying about your grades for a
whole trimester because you were afraid they were going to slam you
into the wall again, and I was right. Oh hey I'm projecting again.
Or significantly worse, and even
simpler than that, people just ignore it because it doesn't mean
anything to them.
Eventually empathy stops being a
desire and it starts feeling like something you should do. You don't
want to empathize with people because you legitimately care about
them anymore, you do it because you know it's the right thing to do,
and solipsistic feelings like alleviating your own guilt or
obligations becomes the motivator. But even then, people are still
kind of indifferent and then you sort of realize that being a selfish
bastard is easier and you eventually just stop altogether.
I'm projecting a lot, but I suppose
that's all my writing is good for nowadays. God forbid it be for
anything constructive.
I've just sort of disconnected myself
to the thought of being relevant to, well, anybody. When you yearn
for a validation of worth from people and hardly ever get it, you
just get tired after a while. And when you're finally surrounded by
reasonable adults who might actually care, you've already stopped
caring. There's really nobody to blame, that's just sort of how it
is. The internet's a terrible place to expect that shit from, too.
You're nothing but a shitty character on a TV show. The safe-zone
for people where someone's value, someone's worth is in a screen name
and the opinion attached to it. Nobody cares if there's actually somebody on the other side of it. It's so goddamn easy to just interact
with each other and feel that's good enough without having any of the
responsibility to empathize or occasionally treat somebody like a
human being. Hell, the only reason I attempt to empathize with
people anymore is honestly just to reassure myself that I'm still a
decent person, I don't give half a toss what actually happens.
Phantom empathy is easier than actually caring because that requires
commitment.
It's not like people haven't tried.
Maybe they just didn't try hard enough, or they were too late. Maybe
they tried and they just fucked it up constantly, DAD. But I'm just
projecting again. Maybe a functional person would've responded
properly.
When a person has had such a strong
desire to just empathize and connect with people his entire life, to
make others happy however he can, what happens when he doesn't want
that anymore? What does he have left to define himself by? I have
felt like I've meant nothing to people my entire life. My entire
life is my desperate attempts to empathize and care about people and
mean something to people, and people have never been receptive, have
never cared about me, never helped me. They've been indifferent.
Hell, they've been exasperated by it, burdened and angered by it.
I used to be a good person. I used to
be a good kid who loved people, who tried his hardest to make people
happy. And it's barely meant anything to anybody. I am empty. A
vessel that only exists to be validated by other people. Half the
reason I think I go on these bleak and nihilistic rants is to fulfill
some self-defeating prophecy that nobody is listening, nobody gives a
shit about any of this and I'm only here talking to validate this
isolation and fucked-up absence of worth in my head so I can give in
further to it. That anything said here means absolutely nothing.
It's become a well-versed act, almost a mantra because I've become so
desensitized to bringing it up constantly. I've hit a point where
I'm tired of it.
So what does this all mean? I don't
frankly know. I doubt anybody will read it, at least I doubt the
people who should will. And even if they did, I've sort of
surrendered to the thought that anything wouldn't come of it anyway.
I'll wake up tomorrow and go back to my dead-end job like nothing
ever happened.
Empathy is hard. If people haven't
done anything yet, why would they now? Maybe out of obligation or guilt? Hah.
