Fairy Tale

Note: My 2011 self wrote this. It is selectively preserved for historical interest and amusement from a lot of similar, chronologically nearby posts. I am not as angsty any more.

I don’t know where to start.

First there was a headache. No biggie, sleep it off. But it’s easy to lose yourself

The pain, the random gusts of nausea, confusion, irritation… it’s another person in this body, speaking a foreign language I can’t even begin to fathom

playing by his own rules, won’t let you figure them out. his kingdom, and there’s not even a way to surrender or take the path of least resistance. Every path looks the same from here

blackness, vagueness, shadows, defying all interpretations

Life used to be a fairy tale. All there was to do was push buttons. Take these pills, write these words, read this book. Figure out what’s the right thing to do, the hidden or implied message in the story, because the answer is obvious. You’re the same as the rest of us, probably, share the most basic values and concepts of what’s right, what’s good, not a psychopath or sociopath, so on and so forth. You know how to prioritize. You know the future matters and that it’s best to prepare for it. You know about consequences.

Now, every decision is a standoff, with even votes and no end of supporting evidence from either side. Can I push myself any harder and preserve my sanity? How hard do I have to try? How do I tell where the limit is?

I know I should give myself slack but I know that if I overshoot I’ll have wasted time and energy and disappointed myself, and every time getting back on track is a little harder. And sometimes there’s no place to escape to. Everything is a dead end: idling, games, sleep, glossing the front page of the internet or just hitting a pillow. Lose-lose situations. A sea of homogeneous, impenetrable murkiness.

I wish I had something higher to turn to, draw the lines for me, tell me how to aim and how to shoot, give me a guarantee that the plan would work out and that it would be the best way to do things for me. But there isn’t. No hints in this adventure; that’s not how life works. And I don’t even know if any of this experience will apply even once elsewhere. Life is supposed to be about learning from your mistakes but right here, right now, I’m struggling to tell even what a mistake is.

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