A Penny For Your Thoughts
I get it. I really do. Looking for logic with some people is a waste of time and energy and my ability to make keyboards beg for mercy. But why in the Hades' name is it that way? Sometimes I just want to scream because even when you've countered every point, even when you've made all the right moves and they've had to concede everything else, people won't admit when they're wrong. Dead wrong. They just stop altogether, as though they weren't just screaming about how wrong you supposedly were, or they insist that somehow, someway, despite it all, they're still right.
And I get it. People don't like to be wrong. People sometimes won't bring up points they're hiding because of X, Y, or Z. But when all you say is "Well, I still think it's this" then that's just...
I've been in the middle of a very long spiral towards... something, I guess, for a long time. I don't know what, exactly - depression, or insanity, or just pure apathy - but I know that I'm getting there day by day because people don't seem to use or understand basic logical flow. If your concerns are A, B, and C and I address A, B, and C, it is not your duty to come up with D just so you can still say no. If I prove to you, not just to me but to you, that what you've said is wrong, it isn't your moral obligation to downplay that in order to keep your opinion alive. If I, or anyone for that matter, tries to explain to you that you don't know what other people think and feel just because you think you do, and you can't get it through your skull that you're not psychic, or some sort of emotional savant, or whatever else then you're the problem.
I don't know where I'm going with this one. I'm tired and overworked. I'm at a job I honestly don't know if I like or hate, but I know that most other jobs won't pay nearly as well, and I can't afford to be paid less. I really can't. Tuition, sick animals, sick cars, sick family members, rent, insurance, and lord only knows when my laptop is going to go out, and then I'll really be in a hole. Every time I build up a little bit of savings, BAM, something nabs it away. And I'd get a new job tomorrow if I didn't think it would all happen again. And you know what's stupid about that? I tell everyone that if you don't love your job, you shouldn't do it. Yeah, I'm a hypocrite, but I'm also someone who doesn't back down from obligations.
Actually, I have a bleeding heart. I probably have two. Four twelve hour shifts into an 8 day work week and I stayed on for an extra two hours tonight because I wanted to help out my coworkers. I didn't do it for the money, heck no, because I'll barely see a few dollars out of that time I spent, but I did it because I couldn't just abandon them with a store full of people. I helped out because I could, and I always do that. And it's driving me further along this spiral to somewhere (or nowhere, I guess) because, at the end of the day, I just keep doing it. I don't ever stop. I can't. I've tried and tried and I really don't know how to be selfish without it eating me up inside. If I were religious I could blame it on The GuiltTM, but I'm not and so it's just regular, everyday martyrdom.
Because I would. I would throw myself in front of a bus if it would help someone, and I would do it again a second later, broken in every way, if it meant someone else would smile. And that's what I don't get about people. Who in the world is your inability to follow basic logic helping? Is it just your own ego that can't stomach it? Are you somehow saving children by insisting that your interpretation of a vague ruling is right? Is acknowledging someone else's point of view - and not just any point of view, mind you, but one backed up by logic and facts, sometimes even more than your own - really going to hurt anyone? Just acknowledging it. Not saying it's right but just saying "I can see where you're coming from," is that really so much to ask?
And, no, I'm not just ranting for myself (as you might have guessed). I'm ranting because I see people dismiss arguments and rational discussion, or insist on something being a different way, and it does hurt people when they refuse to yield. It hurts group cohesion and it hurts people whose only crime is presenting a logical path to follow that doesn't jive with the one some pig-headed Rules Lawyer thinks is the Only Way (patent pending). Maybe it doesn't hurt all of them, and maybe I just have softer skin than most, but it kills me to see someone ignored and dismissed because someone can't get their head out of their own air of superiority. It kills me to see rational discussion lose out to trolls, to unsubstantiated claims, to petty biases, but it especially kills me when it means that someone is going to see it and think 'Well, it looks like neither side won so maybe giraffes don't exist.'
Giraffes exist, no matter how much I might joke otherwise because of a video I once saw.
... I just don't know what to do sometimes. I don't know if I belong where I am or if I'm trying to hard, or just not enough. Maybe everything I do just isn't enough and if I did more I'd find out that's what I was supposed to do. Doing less feels like quitting, like giving up, like being selfish. And I think - I think, because I don't know - that that's just the guilt talking. But I do feel better when I help people, when I succeed in doing more, and so maybe it's not. Maybe I'm spiraling because I'm supposed to catch a draft somewhere and soar back up. Or maybe I'm just delaying the inevitable, trying to soften the landing. The blow. The end.
I'm not suicidal. I don't really believe in taking my own life for a lot of reasons, nor hurting myself. I do though, in some ways. I hurt myself mentally by agonizing over everything. Over what I should've said, could've said, might've done differently. I hurt myself emotionally by keeping this all bottled up until it bursts. I don't mean to. I just don't know where it's all supposed to go because the last time I talked to anyone about it all it was clear to me, truly clear, that it didn't mean as much to them. I was just another person to them, not me but... anyone. Anonymity sucks when you're spilling your guts. Not the anonymity that comes from being behind a screenname, the kind you can choose for yourself, but the kind that people assign to you. Being no one to someone you're trying to talk to is far worse than saying nothing at all.
I guess it all kind of cycles around, eh? I guess I hate seeing all of this because it reminds me of myself and how powerless I feel to be heard. I want others to be heard and to hear so that maybe there's some hope for me. Maybe I am selfish after all, but who isn't? Who has ever done good deeds repeatedly when they did not experience some sort of good themselves? Maybe an inkling of a feeling of an edge of happiness or peace, but something. Who does good to feel bad, truly bad, with no reward at all?
It's 11:34 and I should've been in bed an hour ago. I need to wake up tomorrow. Go to work. Help more people so I can keep helping people. But as I sit here I keep wondering, keep asking myself in my head, 'is it worth it?' Is it? When there are people who will deny the facts, who will insist on giving you nothing, not even a penny for your thoughts, people who will take that penny and use it to gouge out the carefully laid lines of your arguments and yourself, when those people are the ones with the loudest of voices... how long can you keep shouting against the wind, wondering if anyone hears you? I tell myself it is. I tell myself that if someone doesn't fight then soon no one will, and then, without a revolution, all of it will be lost.
Rage. Do not go gently into that good night. Fight for what's right. But don't let it consume you. Don't let it become zealotry and hate. Listen. Hear. Understand. Try to be the good, the change, you want to see in the world. And Heaven help us, if it's right that it should do so. Or Paradise. Or Asgard. Or Jamaica. Or Narnia. Or anywhere in the universe, in anyverse, in everyverse, help.
Help. For I fear I am lost, and yet I keep going. I keep trudging through the muck in hopes of a brighter tomorrow, and yet it seems I plunge only into darkness. I fear evil. I fear good people doing nothing, losing their hope and faith. If I were religious, maybe that would mean something more. Maybe it would inspire or... maybe it would deject. I don't know. I'm so tired and I just feel like I don't understand. For all I know. For all I get. I don't understand.
I know the advice. I give it out like candy, like free samples, like pamphlets and flyers on a street corner. I've talked to a therapist, I've talked to friends, I've talked to myself and although I probably should, I guess I just don't talk enough to anyone who might give me medication (which I probably wouldn't take long enough to notice if the effects were working). I know. That's stupid. But it gets harder and harder to talk the more anonymous you feel. The more you feel they aren't listening, or that they are and you just can't muster up all this - this wall of text and words. - the harder it gets to try and save yourself. I would hold anyone to a wall and talk to them for hours if it meant someone else would get help. But me? Well...
I guess this is all to say that I wish people were a bit more logical, and that I'm hoping there's someone out there who feels the same. I know there are. I just... I had to say something. I had to, and so I have. It's disjointed and broken and it's made me feel like I'm more lost than ever, but I've said it in an anonymity I've chosen, not one given to me. Maybe that'll make a difference. I hope so. I need sleep.
Thank you for reading, if you have. Thank you, and goodnight.