Considerations

I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor out of spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can’t explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don’t consult a doctor, it is out of spite. My liver is bad; well—let it get worse!

The first page of Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground has always been fascinating to me. Not because I fully relate to this sick, spiteful, unattractive man, but because I share a sentiment with him: spite. I have always carried it with me, as long as I have been self-aware. I do things when I’m spiteful; I do things because I am spiteful, and it usually becomes a strange mixture of emotions, actions, and sentiments that gets me results.

I am in pain. I have been for as long as I can remember. My leg hurts, my hand hurts, and now my neck hurts. Age? Sports injury? Your guess is as good as mine. Yet despite all that, in spite of the pain, I prevail. I walk, I run, I lift, I write, I draw, and many more. It hurts? Sure, let it get worse.

One of the first things I have learned was trust—or rather, mistrust—shortly after spite. It was fairly obvious. Simply figuring out ways I can do things myself is more cost effective. Simply put, I don’t trust. Not anyone but myself. Sure, I will share responsibilities some of the time if I deem the cost insignificant, but when there are stakes that matter, then I am alone. Which is usually always. Surrounded by people whom I love, but alone, nevertheless. Spiteful, in pain, and alone.

Despite all of that, I prevail. I am successful, I have accomplished things that people my age have not even dreamed of, and I should probably be proud of this. I’m not. I feel disappointed, but not unhappy. Never unhappy. How I feel cannot be described as unhappy, or depressed, or anything of that sort. Neither happy nor unhappy. Disappointed, at best. Today was a normal day, nothing out of the ordinary. Yet I feel overwhelmed by disappointment more than ever. Acceptance, perhaps, of the fact that it is meaningless. Disappointed that knowing how things will end up in 5 years, 10, pushing onwards as if there is something on the horizon. Does it matter? I don’t know, but I’m not particularly sure if I care either. I want to give up, with my whole being. I have never been more sure of something. There is not a doubt in my mind that I want to leave everything behind. And go where? I don’t know. I don’t care. Yet I know that even if I did that, even if I left everything and everyone behind, the ideas and memories would continue to haunt me as if nothing happened. Such a cost for nothing in return.

There are many things I have invested in. Not in a way that calls for sunk costs; I invested willingly, and I don’t regret any of it. Not one bit. It is not like my investments were for nothing either. I have invested my time, my efforts, and have gained trust in return. Yet, despite it being my choice in the first place, I feel powerless to betray the trust people have put in me, a trust I have never shown them. A little funny, perhaps narcissistic. I should be happy, right? That I was able to gain the trust of people who value me as a friend, a mentor, or whatever I may be to them. But I don’t feel happy. I feel trapped. The idea of betraying this trust becomes my worst nightmare. If I were to describe this, I would ask you to imagine gasping for air in between choking on water while you are drowning. You know what’s going to happen. You know what’s next. Yet every single cell in your body screams and pushes for one more moment of survival. Every nanosecond becomes minutes until it ends.

My life was even then gloomy, ill-regulated, and as solitary as that of a savage. I made friends with no one and positively avoided talking, and buried myself more and more in my hole.

I enjoy solitude, possibly more than anything else. More than the company of people I love. It is liberating—not subconsciously overanalyzing every expression or making small predictions based on clues within a conversation—not something I do willingly. In fact, for a while now, my dream has been to get my things and live in the middle of nowhere with not a single soul around. Not one. I do not care for a warm greeting, I do not care for any appreciation. If we are going to coexist, let us do so quietly and peacefully. There is not much I can ask for. Yet it is not what is going to make me not feel whatever this feeling is called. I find myself yearning for something. It is not solitude, nor company. It is not some kind of big win that will lift my spirits, and it is not salvation. I want an end. It is beginning to feel awfully like a boring movie that I have seen, and I am dying for it to end. In fact, I spite every second of it. In fact, I sometimes think I thrive under discomfort. My spite for it makes me take one more step, just to spite some imaginary enemy. Laughable, isn’t it?

I would be remiss, however, if I did not point out the irony of it all. This is all of my own making. I chose to want the things I wanted, do the things I did. I built a prison, got inside, and locked myself in. I could get out whenever I wanted to, but I don’t want to be wanting to escape. I want to know that I can simply curl up somewhere and rot away with everything moving on around me. I want it so that I can simply give up without the consequences nagging me. Let me stop grasping for air, and I will be at peace. Though chances are, nothing is going to change. I am full of spite, regardless of how I feel at any given moment, and it’s not long before I find something to direct it toward. There will be something to pique my interest and distract me from the fact that I have not signed up for any of this. That will be the way things are for a while, and then back to drowning. Each time with more water in my lungs than the last, each time more aware of the inevitable. This is how I have been doing things for a while now, and it is probably going to remain that way until the end of time. Why do I even bother? Let it get worse.

This has been a piece much outside of my usual pace. Truth be told, I am writing to clear the thoughts in my mind. I don’t want them; maybe you do. If you don’t, well, then you should have stopped reading earlier. How about that?