Sometimes my self-hatred flares up even worse than usual. There's always a low-grade undercurrent of it throbbing through my head, tainting everything I see, hear, and do, but sometimes it rages across me so strongly that it completely stops every other thought and my brain literally feels like it will melt from the acid racing through it. And then I lock up in every area of my life -- sometimes to the point where I literally cannot talk.
It's been particularly bad this semester -- I'm taking eight classes, which I thought I could handle because I did it my last semester, but I failed to realise that last time I took eight classes they were all performing classes. In other words, they were things I have a natural aptitude for and also they don't require papers. This time, they're all academic classes. Which means papers. I may be a writer, but I'm in my third year of post-secondary and I have yet to write a half-decent paper. Academic writing just does not come naturally to me, and that, coupled with my already-crippling perfectionism, is a source of EXTREME stress. I don't have time to actually write the papers either, because I'm attending the eight classes... Add to this the fact that the flat has the LOUDEST heating system ever -- it literally wakes me up every time it runs. And I sleep like the dead. I have three very loud alarms set on my phone every morning and for the past three days I slept through every single one of them. But the heating system in the building wakes me up every. single. time. Add to that my already-near-crippling insecurity about my vocal abilities and the hit my performing abilities in general have taken, and you have a dangerous cocktail.
When I start into serious self-hatred mode, I get into this loop where no matter how much encouragement I receive, its effect is gone within seconds of my receiving it. I learnt long ago how to manipulate people into complimenting me, and though it's one of the things I hate the most about myself, I find myself doing it anyway at these times. This, of course, makes it worse because I already feel bad about myself and then I catch myself fishing for compliments again and then I feel even worse for putting the other person in that spot (seriously, there is nothing more awkward than being in a conversation with someone who is plainly fishing for compliments -- and I hate being that person), plus the encouragement I do get I suck dry within seconds and then start begging for more -- all without giving a single bit back. I'm just a black hole eating compliments and I can't stop it. So I hate myself even more for not being able to stop it, for not being able to live on one compliment a year like every one else does.
Why am I so needy? Why do I have to be that awkward person who takes but never, ever gives? Why does the coveted encouragement only last all of ten seconds before its effect is gone? Compliments don't make my whole day or even my whole minute -- they fade too fast. I'm torn between wanting more, hoping the next one will be the one that lasts and wanting to die so I can stop asking so much of so many and never being able to reciprocate.
No comments:
Post a Comment