What to do, what to do?

I last posted over a year ago, during which time I was experiencing some low self-esteem because of my social perception. Well, here I am again, somewhat unburdened by those issues, but nevertheless plagued by my aimless life wandering.

On paper, my life seems rather impressive, but I've never been able to match the credentials to the way I feel about myself, life, etc. My ostensibly stable life is riddled with family dysfunction, political work drama, and the never-ending battle with depression. Maybe I just need to shove my face in a UV box and I'll start feeling better.

I try to think back to the days when I was the happiest - this was approximately a one-year period when I was around 13. Having been fed spoonfuls of physical expectations from my mother, I had always struggled with my self-image and I had finally reached a point where I was as physically attractive as I was going to be and I was happy. I was successful in my amateur figure skating career, successful in school, and as successful in my social life as I was going to be, having one best friend I really cared about and that was all I needed. I was riding high on self-esteem and self-efficacy. I felt that I could do whatever I wanted and that the world was my proverbial oyster.  Then, freshman year of high school began, and with its classical pubescent upheavals, underlying trauma, physical and mental illness, and social demise, brought on a crash of self-esteem and direction from which I have yet to recover.

I guess it's easiest to try to emulate parts of your life that made you happy in order to make you happy again. Just plug in certain variables and you'll end up with the answer to the equation you were looking for. I guess for me, those things I mentioned before are the variables: physical fitness, professional and personal success. The only concrete variable of these three is physical fitness, soothingly that I lost about 10 years ago and have not recovered. At least getting to that point is a matter of motivation and effort, but the other two, professional and personal success, are much more abstract.

What does it really mean to be professionally successful? Take my job as a nurse, for instance. I work in the most lucrative (for the institution) unit in the number one children's hospital in the country. So I suppose, I've got prestige. That's something. Under a microscope, my day-to-day job is much less glamorous - I work with a homogenous group of people whose unofficial mantra is conformity to whatever social norm dominates a given context. There's a subliminal hazing ritual that you have to pass through to be accepted - adopt certain colloquialisms, styles of dress, forms of humor, and a sense of insecure superiority and derision that will be perpetuated across all generations of staff. In other words, achieving social success is the means to achieving the opportunity to be a skillful, valued employee. Needless to say, conformity isn't my strong suit. Diversity, it appears, turns out to be something I am much more passionate about than I had ever really acknowledged. A multitudinous group contributes much more to a situation than a linearly developed group. Bottom line: being an intelligent, half-Hispanic woman with all the potential in the world gets me nowhere in this job unless I attain some social capital. I want to be challenged and work hard to achieve results and despite my best efforts, I am not given the opportunity to do so in my job. It seems as though I may need to change things up and try something new in order to fulfill my professional goals: to thrive in a prestigious job where I make enough money to be comfortable and am recognized for my contributions.

Personal success. I guess my thirteen-year-old success was being a fairly decent figure skater. Skating gave me an opportunity to work hard to improve my skills and put those skills to the test in competitions. Practice, performance, evaluation, success. Now, I don't have anything in my life like skating to reinforce my personal success, and introspection may bring the answers I seek.

External validation seems to be a ruling factor in my life. I have long been trying to incorporate a self-validating practice into my own self-evaluation, but my self-esteem has been so low that I cannot even trust my own opinion, anymore. I continuously wage a war against depression and it's hard to view life as something I should put my energy into. I think I need to spend more time in my life doing things, seeing things come to fruition, and perhaps I will start to feel like I have enough worth to be judging myself. 

When God Died

My existential crisis continues to evolve over the last 10 years and now manifests as contention between the values I hold as a result of my upbringing and the set of values I am now forming as an unhindered, free-thinking agent.  I believe it is partially my innate disposition and partially my Christian upbringing that have molded me into this human of service.  I never falter to give of myself, often at my expense.

My atheological ideals accommodate a superficial temporal existence that directly contradict my ardent yearning for a deeply emotional and philosophical life. I was brought up to believe that being a "good," giving person would bring me reward in the afterlife - effectively, living for a moral afterlife.  As I've harangued about many times, my belief in any type of afterlife has deteriorated. An existence without an afterlife has significantly altered my views on how to live. Further, the removal of a discriminating deity has left me with an external locus of control that, try as I might, I cannot shake.

It seems that thus far in life I have behaved as a "good" Christian girl so that one day I can go to heaven.  Now, it would seem, all the qualities and values I possess now as a result of that upbringing have seemingly gotten me nowhere in a social fashion. Naturally, my inherent caring personality and value of service to others has landed me in my current profession.  A significant portion of my self-definition derives from my profession - significantly, my job is what gives meaning to my life.  As I'll frequently postulate, in a purely secular world, social connections define our lives.  I have always felt a social disconnect in my life and I cling for dear life to whatever gives my life meaning. I guess this is why I value what my jobs means about me.

I suppose what has prompted this post is the gigantic lack of self-esteem I possess due to my external locus of control - specifically when it comes to romantic/sexual relations. I feel so empty for having been treated as a sexual object, devoid of humanity, while watching the same handler validate the humanity of another, shinier package. I cannot reconcile how I can possess just enough femininity to be used as a sexual tool, but not enough to have my humanity acknowledged. The worst part of this is my realization that most men value looks above all else - and despite my best efforts, my looks don't make the cut - not for any more than a sex toy, anyway . I've been reduced to subscription to such a bleak mating prospect. It just seems that what I consider to be good qualities about myself are useless for mating. Unfortunately, I value my ability to mate as part of my self-worth. 

Painted Face

Wednesday = karaoke night.  Karaoke, or at least singing, provides me with a catharsis that is unparalleled in other mediums, except perhaps dance or skating. So naturally, after being at home all day on my day off with my car in the shop, I wanted to go to karaoke and release a little tension.  In past posts, I may or may not have alluded to my mating crisis, which has resulted in my habitual use of a cosmetic mask and wearing heels.  Today, I decided to reach into a purer, more ascetic self, and take a subtle approach to my dress for karaoke night.  As I looked in the mirror, I felt incomplete with my makeup on.  And I was horrified.  I have never in my life felt as though I needed makeup to look "beautiful," yet tonight, feeling so inadequate, I compulsively brushed mascara onto my eyelashes before leaving my apartment because I needed something on my face in order for me to depart. How have I come to feel this way?

Clearly, this sense of inadequacy is problematic. I pride myself on a certain liberal level of asceticism in my life.  I crave the purity of uninfluenced humanity, yet I am subject to the "laws" of American society, specifically middle class, suburban white culture. Being of mixed racial decent, I have always felt a cultural disconnect with my peers - I've never been Hispanic enough, nor white enough. Couple this cultural barrier with the interpersonal barrier I've always felt with my peers that has yet to be identified, and you've got one seriously isolated lady.  Of course, as social animals, we all seek to be connected with our peers on several levels - utility, friendship, love -  all of which I tend to have difficulty acquiring/sustaining.  Perhaps the blaring messages I've been raised with within my own family, and of course, in this overbearingly patriarchal society, have caused me to harp specifically on the love/sex category of relationships, so far as to the point where I derive a significant portion of my self-esteem from my ability to mate.

As anyone who knows me will attest, I am the least potent sexual agent I know (for several reasons which I won't get into now). Despite my self-professed reluctance to even allow myself to get into love/sex relationships, I still seek the approval of heterosexual males. This reality is unfortunate because my professional situation will forever entrap me in the cultural demographic in which I currently reside and in which I am repeatedly rejected by males. I do not fit the bill of "attractiveness" for these people.  I suppose I value my ability to mate because it predicts the degree to which I can procreate, a quality which for whatever reason I apparently value significantly - the only way in which my life will be truly meaningful is if I propagate the species (even though I don't understand/support the perpetual propagation of an existence whose meaning I can never grasp).

Call me the victim of covert and overt patriarchy because I equate my self-worth to my ability to have babies. In the most basic biological sense, that is my only worth.  I feel this so strongly that all "redeeming" qualities about me - generosity, compassion, limitless caring for others - seem irrelevant.  I frequently ask myself, what does any of my personality matter if I can't even get a man to look at me to learn about it? I find myself resigned to the reality that I will never attract more than a fleeting intoxicated attraction of a man.  Superficially, one would think this would fulfill the requirement of my self-efficacy; however, the distorted perception of hormone-driven men does not faze me.  Deep down, I want to be valued for my entire self and not be treated as a Rent-a-Vag.  My ultimate problem, it would appear, is my locus of control - it's external.  If self-validation actually came from myself, maybe I wouldn't have this problem; however, unfortunately, as a social animal, some portion of my self-worth derives from others' opinions of me. Ostensibly, I find myself to possess excellent qualities, but my apparent unattractiveness to men really deters me and prevents them from learning who I am.

A friend of mine frequently tells me my problem is that I seek social interaction in all the wrong places, namely the bars of suburban white America, and recommends I expand my socialization to more diverse venues.  Maybe she's right.  Maybe varying location would result in different responses - but to some degree, I can't help but question the steadfast nature of humanity despite cultural differences. I guess only trial would reveal the answer to this question.

Ultimately, I experience difficulty reconciling my own proclivity to embrace others independent of demographics or physical attributes with others' rejection of me based on physical attributes. To overcompensate, I've adopted a method of dress/personal grooming to mimic those around me, in hopes that would increase my odds.  It hasn't worked and yet I clutch to colored powder as though my life depends on it. I abhor this self I have become. I have never been and never want to be this automaton of superficiality. I suppose the next step for me is to attempt to change my environment and trial that option. We'll see if I'll have more success.

-M.E.

Entropy.

In The Republic, Plato metaphorically illustrates enlightenment.  Well, folks, I think I've been irreversibly introduced to illumination. It's impossible to define those moments that awaken us, or what about those moments spark us to animation; however, through a confluence of events, the urge to grab life by the cajones has reinvigorated my passion: el fuego mio. Something about this evolved frontal lobe has provoked me into a neo-Grecian philosophical path; i.e. the pursuit of intellectual excellence and/or realization of human potential.  I suppose the way this plays out for me is ever rigorous philosophizing.

Camus asks us why Sisyphus is happy despite his tedious sentence: roll it up, it rolls down, roll it up, it rolls down.  The image of his smiling face as he carries on with this monotonous endeavor evokes an ostensibly macabre feeling akin to that of a blissful afterlife in heaven.  I'll elaborate on the macabre before I deconstruct the joyful rolling.  For me, the prospect of eternal bliss conjures up such dread in the pit of my stomach, I cannot taxonomize it in any of the languages in which I am semi- to fully fluent.  It is impossible for me to conceptualize feeling bliss fleetingly, never mind as an eternal state. Hayzoos.  What is bliss in the absence of utter tragedy and depression?  The range of emotions is on a dichotomous continuum. Both must exist in order for either to exist (the dependency dilemma of life, as it were).

So there's hell, you devilish sophists retort; the existence of a hell in which residents are continuously tortured serves as the yin to heaven's yang.  All right, I'll consider it on an aggregate level; however, I am not inclined to believe that in either vacation land, each individual feels only the extremity of the ends of the spectrum; either bliss or sheer misery.  Unless human consciousness deteriorates to utter simplicity in the alleged afterlife, experiencing only one extreme of emotion is impossible, and furthermore, seems torturous, if individuals are to have a singularly miserable or ecstatic demeanor with no cognizance of the opposite emotion.  It would certainly strengthen the case for fear of damnation if the damned are in misery only because they know of the absence of joy.  Is that a part of damnation, perhaps, to endure a human consciousness with its inherent flux of emotion?  The reward of heaven, then, to lose the capability of feeling sadness?  If so, send me to hell.  I'd rather experience the organic complexity of humanity than be reduced an automaton in death.  What kind of reward is that?

So back to Sisyphus.  Let's assume that he possesses his full human consciousness in this quagmire of purgatory and he hasn't deteriorated to simplicity.  So he's rolling the rock up the hill, it rolls down, lather, rinse, repeat.  Oh, and before I forget, let's also elucidate the fact that Sisyphus' sport is a penalty from the Greek gods (i.e. effectively, this is his hell).  So Camus claims that we must picture Sisyphus happy.  Oh, happiness!  What an elusively defined word.  So for all intents and purposes, Camus seems to be defining happiness as some force which propels us to sustain our own lives and not commit suicide (although, I am unsure if suicide exists/is allowed in Sisyphus' mythological manifestation).  Camus claims that Sisyphus takes onus of his fate, claiming his rock and his task as his own, which gives him the strength to continue his rolling and live.  Sisyphus' sense of agency is ironically life-affirming, given his eternal "damnation."  Actual or, more likely, perceived control over one's destiny, even if that destiny is fixed (rolling a rock for eternity or dying), seems to be the most valuable power one can assume.  Why?

Late toddlers and early school-age children are at a level of egocentric cognition that leads them to believe they are solely responsible for actions in the environment around them.  A popular example in my world of pediatrics is when a sibling of a sick child believes he/she did something unfavorable, which led to the demise of his/her ailing kin.  Psychologists purport that we evolve from this egocentricity with age and I agree, to an extent.  While we may evolve to objectivity, we are still restrained by individual, impenetrable psyches that perceive the world through strictly human senses.  Furthermore, despite our cognizance of the world around us and though we are capable of altruism, we can never truly, fully escape our own egocentricity. 

We perceive the world through human senses and reason and, egocentrically, believe that that way we perceive the world is the way the world is.  So, then, we are confounded when the world behaves irrationally, illogically.  How can this be?  Well, because God/pick your entity made it so and that omnipotent, omniscient, fully actualized form of humanity only bestowed upon us limited free will and limited reason to perceive the world.  Of course.  Or maybe our existence does not necessitate the existence of the world/universe and human perception is an incomplete/unreliable interpretation of existence. You decide. But our perception is all we've got, so I guess we've got to shake what our momma gave us.

Egocentricity is what sustains human life, ultimately.  The ceaseless inherent affirmation that the world depends on our existence and our biological drive to propagate our species is a testament to our egocentricity.  What would happen if we had no control over our lives?  Why is the threat of becoming a puppet so frightening?  I haven't quite come to the bottom of it myself.  What I can speculate at this juncture is that as evolved beings, we have learned that we certainly can control certain aspects of our lives.  In fact, we try to control everything in our lives because in at least one instance we have acted and it would appear that our actions have direct results on our lives.  However, our agency, it would seem, is limited for whatever reason/non-reason.  We have all experienced an actual or perceived loss of control, and then we usually try to retroactively give ourselves control over the situation even when we seem completely illogical.  If I hadn't gone to the store, I never would have gotten into this car accident.  If I hadn't invited you to the party, you never would have driven home drunk.  If I hadn't stolen a cookie from the cookie jar when my mom told me not to, my brother never would have gotten sick.  (Sound familiar?)

So Sisyphus takes ownership of the actions in his life that have led him to this point and he rolls the rock in joy, Camus wants us to believe.  The metaphor here is evidently the repetitious way in which we reproduce, reproduce, reproduce, generations pass, but to what end?  We all die, anyway.  What's the point of continuing this monotony?  What is the meaning of all of this? (You might guess that a blissful afterlife is not my desire end or motivator).  I have not quite conceptualized Camus' argument that Sisyphus must be happy because he accepts full responsibility for and control over his fate (i.e. fate is controlled by humanity, not by any divine entity/entities).  Being in control makes him happy/not want to kill himself, although he still feels the range of emotions.  I would say that we aren't fully potent in controlling our own lives, especially because I contend that the world is more complex, or perhaps simple, than our human reason.   I guess, for a long time, that acceptance of loss of control frightened me because if we don't have agency, we have to acknowledge the fact that the world does not operate according to our rules and that maybe, just maybe, the world doesn't exist because we're in it.  I suppose that would make it a lot more difficult to survive/sustain ourselves when we acknowledge our own global insignificance/meaninglessness.

It looks like Sisyphus took a page out of the toddler's book and decided that egocentricity was the way to go - "the gods didn't make me roll this rock, it's my fault I'm rolling this rock."  I can't really reconcile this logic within the context of the myth, but I appreciate the metaphor, nevertheless.  So what do I take from this?  Why do I even bring up this myth?  Well, I suppose I'm a bit of an egocentricist (?) and, barring cerebral damage, I can at least control my own logic and reason.  I am subject to my own egocentricity, in a sense, but I do acknowledge that the world does not exist because I am in it.  I'm as insignificant as an inanimate object.  How do I have the strength to go on?  Twenty-one laughs a day make the woes go away.  Maybe.  Or maybe I exemplify Sisyphus in recognizing that this life is all I've got, so I must as well make the most of it.  I'll experience travails along the way but the glory of this consciousness is the prospect of intermittent joy.

Signing off,

Midnight Enchantress

Gah

I've felt the need to release a lot of my stress about work as of late.  Much of what I've wanted to express all week has already been said in October 21st's post, "Fear and Courage."

The long and short of it is I'm in a paradoxical purgatory of misery and contentment.  A large part of me is totally fine - in fact, probably the larger part of me.  There's objectively nothing wrong with my life- and, as I like to say, I've got all my limbs, so things are good.  The other contending part of me is struggling with my job and its responsibilities.  To say that my job is stressful is an understatement.  The weight of literally taking people's lives into my hands is increasing as the end of my training looms near.  I have little to no confidence in my ability, which leaves me feeling incredibly vulnerable.  Where I used to be mostly successful in school, my success has not transposed into my job.  I've been unprepared for the practical aspect of my job in school and the transition has been anything but easy.

I find myself intensely anxious about my job at work and out.  My utter lack of personal life contributes to my persistent anxiety - I have nothing to distract me.  Sure, I've begun a concerted effort toward personal fitness, but that gives me about an hour or two a day of distraction - the rest of my time is unoccupied.

I do have to admit while I can manage my job, it's not a job that I want for much longer than I'm required.  I was never very interested in this profession during school and while I thought working in this specific nursing environment would allow me to reap some fulfillment from this profession, I can't validate that wish.  I'm going to have to find a way to cope for the next 19 months.

Uncertainty

I go through these phases in life where I will ignore myself for a while so I don't have to deal with my insecurities, and then, when faced with the threat of intimacy and attaching myself to reality, I zoom back into myself.  I find that I devalue myself as a self-protective mechanism against rejection, socially and existentially.  Attaching no value to myself protects me from feeling hurt when others do not attach value to me.  Globally, devaluing myself helps me cope with my perpetual existential crisis; having no existential value makes it easier to deal with the fact that I can't determine any existential value to my life. 

Today, I thought about a lot of things, two of which being myself and my opinion of myself, and Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion. A concept I frequently ponder and discuss is human egocentricity and inevitable narcissism; as my original disclaimer noted, this blog is evidence in itself of this concept.  I suppose I have an inherent feeling that narcissism is a bad thing, that self-service is bad.  Perhaps it was because I was raised in Christianity that I maintain such low self-worth and self-esteem; being raised to believe you are evil is traumatizing, especially as a human with a sense of morality.  Historically, I've sacrificed my own self-love and self-validation for that of others, which became complicated when my search for self-validation turned into affection for those others, who, many times, recognized my behavior at some level and manipulated me to their advantage.  When I realized the extent to which others were using me and manipulating my feelings, I reached one of the lowest points of my life and in an effort to overcompensate, I've completely retracted myself emotionally from others.  I recognize that the only sustainable way for me to feel worthwhile is to validate myself, which I have difficulty doing because of my bleak worldview.

I continue to grapple with the disorderly appearance of the world that my orderly mind perceives.  Human efficiency largely occurs due to the logical nature of our rational minds; however, I am convinced that this rationality and order only exists within the rational human mind.  As an orderly organ, our brains wish to categorize and organize behavior around us.  This attempt is more effective when analyzing the behavior of other rational human beings, whose behavior is the manifestation of an orderly mind.  Things become mucky when our rational minds attempt to organize disorganized events, such as events of weather that kill a lot of people, especially "innocent" people.  Humanity's sense of morality contributes to the distress that results from seemingly senseless phenomena - "bad" things happening to "good" people.  (My mind is gravitating toward a Nietzche-esque exploration of morality, but I shan't digress during this train of thought.)

Objectively speaking, events such as hurricanes and tsunamis and natural "disasters" likely aren't inherently disastrous.  Yes, they may seem to some as disastrous because they frequently cause the deaths of many people and, as I discussed in a previous post, death is the most significant disaster for humans (even to those most devoutly religious, I would wager).  Here is what I can surmise about life: we all die at some point.  Does the point at which we die matter existentially?  Does what we do during our lifetime really matter in the end?  Is there really any reason to inhibit our natural proclivities, whatever those may be, in an effort to achieve some otherworldly status?

I don't know the answers to these questions, if there are answers to them.  Sometimes, I grow frustrated and tired of asking questions, especially about the universe.  The universe doesn't answer my questions.  For some, God and religion answer those questions, but for me, they do not.  Judeo-Christian-Islamic dogma contrivedly answers existential questions.  I suppose I identify myself spiritually as agnostic towards the atheistic end of the spectrum.  I resign to uncertainty, and as a self-declared oblivious entity, I cannot rule out any possibilities, as much as I would like to.  I have a difficult time believing in a God primarily because, independent of other flaws I can identify with the concept, God serves as the order to the disorderly world that our minds so desperately seek.  Perhaps I would have an easier time buying into the idea of God if 1, he weren't depicted as a male [evidence of historical patriarchy that has yet to escape our society], 2, humans weren't made in his image - this is just a projection of human egocentricity at its finest - and, most importantly, 3 - if the concept of God effectively served its purpose in providing order to the world.  Even the most scholarly of theologians cannot reconcile certain ambiguities like natural disasters that affect the "innocent" and babies dying "before their time," and will frequently concede that God is omniscient and wishes things this way or that the character of God is beyond human perception.  It really doesn't cut it for me if this entity that should ultimately validate and explain our existence only does so in certain situations.

My second issue with western religion, and even with eastern religion, is the concept of an afterlife.  For western religions, the afterlife exists after a one-shot life, and, if you did it right, you'll exist in eternal bliss.  For eastern religions, it's more of a battle, and you've got many lives to get it right, at which point, you've reached nirvana and eternal bliss, but it might have taken you a little longer than the western believers.

Let me just throw this little scenario out there.  Let's say I'm myself and I get brutally attacked and murdered by a rapist, ax-murderer.  And let's say for the sake of argument that we're living in a Christian world and my saintly self joins the ranks of heaven after my unfortunate demise, and that this crazy murderer becomes truly repentant, and when he dies, we both inhabit this peachy place called heaven.  Apparently, my soul would have had to have undergone a SERIOUS transformation on the journey from life to the afterlife in order for me to live happily with my murderer in the afterlife.  Maybe it's my own inability to forgive people or the sick feeling I get when I think that what happened in life can so easily be dismissed in an afterlife.  Most importantly, the notion of having consciousness for eternity exhausts me - my consciousness exhausts me and I've only had it for 22 years or however long it has existed in my neurological development up to this point.

I guess the thesis of this post is that I continue in my existential crisis without any foreseeable relief and this persistent uncertainty renders me incapable of self-validation.  This lack of self-validation, in turn, contributes to my continued detachment from life and achievement of happiness.  Bah.

-M.E.

Karma, Reason, and Dreams

I was a slave to my rational mind today when a subjectively fortuitous exchange occurred.  A certain individual on whom I've had a crush for the last month serendipitously appeared at work today.  Despite personal uncertainty, he revealed that he is not romantically entangled, which, of course, excited me to no end - the possibility of achieving happiness through love awakened my 14-year-old self.  Suddenly, my orderly mind that seeks to add specific meaning to arbitrary events encouraged me to emphasize the new information and tried to convince me that this revelation is some kind of karmic sign.  Somehow, I want to believe that my acquisition of this knowledge foreshadows a future relationship.

My self-preservative mode kicked in shortly thereafter and adamantly convinced me that I am attaching false value to the information and simply discovering this man's relationship status, one that happens to be conducive to my pursuit of this man, does not predict any imminent coupling. 

My mind flew through a sequence of the future, from love to marriage to children to the end.  The future flashed before my eyes and my romanticized flash brought me incredible joy.  However, seriously considering mating also sent a shiver up my spine - the vulnerability inherent in a romantic relationship frightened me. This fear of intimacy elucidated my fear of rejection.  As a self-protective mechanism, I have intentionally avoided intimacy in any of my relationships because the crushing pain of unreciprocated intimacy or affection traumatized me.  Also, facing the possibility of a romantic relationship unearths my insecurities that otherwise remain dormant. 

Ultimately, I would be very interested in this man if the opportunity presented itself and I would hope that my fears would not paralyze me and prevent me from at least an attempt at intimacy and vulnerability.  Will an opportunity arise?  I don't know.  What I do know is that regardless, I recognize that I still have a long way to go in loving myself and losing my insecurities.

-M.E.