My Entitled Awareness; Unfinished

     I tend to talk about myself abstractly. I talk about the mystique of my thoughts and emotions. I talk with confusion about how I experienced an emotion after a situation. I say things like "experienced an emotion". I feel deeply dissatisfied with most of what I've said, done, and written. I feel as though most of my late teens and early young adult life has been trying to disconnect with myself, while simultaneously yearning for inner peace. I've felt this growing divide in my soul, that is now such a part of me it's nearly impossible for me to imagine life without it. The most blistering part is that I've always been aware of this. 

 Aware is a word I used to admire intensely. I've grown a hate for it, but I can't stop myself from using it. In middle school and early high school, I would traverse the internet, and I felt that there a was noticeable lack of self-awareness from most people. I would read multiple, nearly identical Tweets from several different people and each had this bleeding aura of self-importance and grandeur. It made me angry, sad, and scared Though I rarely replied to anything I read, I sat back and scrolled. There were a few times I would respond if I considered something overly harmful. Some people would have considered me a "white knight". Riding in on my middle school username to serve social justice. To inform the ignorant of the ifunny comment section. I was aware of it. I read countless arguments between people, picking out where each person went wrong. I always considered it less a debate of morals or righteousness, and more a battle of pride. To the victor goes the man who never replies. I never wanted to be like these people. Left or right, it was all kind of the same to me, just with different stances. All that mattered was the winner.

    Freshman year of college, there was a night I remember thinking to myself about awareness. I realized that in a moment if you choose, you can be aware of being aware of being aware of... whatever it is you're thinking about. What difference does it make, though? I found myself in hypnosis. Still, though, I demanded awareness of myself. Not just in every situation I found myself in but every moment of every day. I thought that if I was able to do this, be aware at all times, and use the awareness to direct myself properly, I could transcend humanity. I think that was the main goal, to begin with. I was unhappy as I was, and I felt that I would be unhappy as anyone else. Nobody seemed happy. The happiness that I saw was temporary or ignorant. The happiness that I felt was fading. As a freshman, I knew that I was entering a new world and that it was up to me to make it special. That started with two things: social anxiety and attendance. I put an emphasis on social anxiety because that was something I actually wanted to work on, and I figured once that fell into place I would have a pleasant enough life so that going to class would be easy. Lucky for me, I had the perfect friends to work on my social anxiety with. But I got stuck. I was overly reliant on some friends and dismissive of others. I knew that to deal with my social anxiety, I had to actually confront it and talk about it. I needed to have open conversations about where my anxiety stemmed from. Instead, I spoke around it. I flirted with the idea of growing and that was enough. The rest of my mind I allowed myself to spend talking, thinking about, and examining the friends in my life. Being aware of how we act with each other.

    I thought that if I was aware of the motivations behind people, I could manipulate every situation to eventually get what I want out of it. What I wanted wasn't malicious, though. I wanted irrefutable evidence that I was accepted. I wanted to experience what I'd seen in other relationships, an obvious connectedness and acceptance of one another. I wanted proof that I could be a part of that. I wanted it so bad that it drove me to hurt people that I cared about and to be ignorant of, or even aggressive towards people and ideas that threatened my chance at a connection. Every time I felt like I achieved this connection, it was tainted by knowing that I still wasn't satisfied. I tried so hard to make people laugh because if somebody laughs at your joke, that is damn near irrefutable? I thought I had a pretty good sense of humor but I started to mystify it. I watched the way other people seemed to be naturally charismatic or funny and I felt that I couldn't replicate it, but if I was aware enough then I could transcend their half-baked attempts. So I started to put an emphasis on comedy, but I didn't care if I made a bad joke as long as someone laughed. I had tainted comedy with my awareness. Only for myself though, of course. I listened as other people got criticized for their lack of humor or their bad jokes and memes and the pressure increased. I had to double down on awareness. Until I realized that perhaps I was unaware that people were laughing only to be nice. I wasn't aware of the limitations of the method I chose. 

    Sophomore year of college, my silent obsession with self-awareness transformed into a belief in the importance of awareness of individual perspective. Underlying this belief, though, my distorted self-awareness played puppet master. Scrolling on Instagram and reading the folly support for Black Lives Matter my peers posted, I vowed to myself that I would be better. That I would educate myself and actually get involved with making real change instead of treating it as a social media fad. This decision came from the condemnation of my peers rather than empathizing with the cause and the lives that were affected to erupt the movement. I was ignorant. I was aware of this. I hated myself for it and shamed myself constantly. I pushed through the shame and hatred and chose to take action and... watched a documentary or two. What can I do, I guess. I feel no passion burning for the rights of anybody but me. I am aware of this.

    By Junior year I knew it wasn't working. My problems had only been growing. I haven't mentioned it yet but I had fallen into a chronic cycle of substance abuse, involving alcohol, marijuana, and some psychedelics. This combined with my unmitigated anxiety and my already distorted view of the world and my relationship with it, was a cocktail of disaster. In my clearest state, I would've recognized it and steered away before I drove over the unfit road. It was my world, though. It felt like the only way to achieve the connection I wanted so badly. Even if I had gone to another school, I don't see it going much differently. I was a product of the people around me, easily influenced, as long as it stayed inside "my world". I pulled you in and we could talk about why you were there and why I needed you but I couldn't let you go. I silently blamed other people for my problems, yet shamed them for their own. Sometimes, I was aware of this. 

    I got to a point where I realized my world was crumbling apart. There was a time when I didn't think it was possible. I thought my friends needed me as much as I needed them or, at the very least, I didn't cause enough problems for them to intentionally distance me. Even if I didn't know the true depths, I've always known that I've had serious problems. When I feel strongly about someone, I create problems for them, because that's what I do for myself. It's not intentional and I am not always aware of it. Probably, though, because I don't want to be aware of it. I began to want people to push me away. I knew that I couldn't willingly leave anybody, I needed their acceptance, as much as I pretended that I didn't. I want to be cared about but I don't think I should be cared about. I don't feel capable of accepting it. Even in moments of quiet happiness, my mind is interrupted by imagined voices. Judgments and hatred feel true and justified, while love and care feel distorted and wrong. I don't want sympathy. I want a distant understanding. My initial problems being expanded and confused by drugs have turned me into a dysfunctional human being. At 22, I am dysfunctional. I work a job that is too stressful simply because I can't stop thinking about interpersonal dynamics both inside and outside of work, as well as personal problems that might as well be branded into my prefrontal cortex. Every time I make a mistake it opens up a world of shame and regret. I don't feel like I can operate automatically. It feels like every conversation requires as much energy as I can muster just to manage a semi-coherent response. I have to navigate through a thick fog of unclear, unmanaged thoughts and memories.

    For years, I watched myself and the world I created slowly crumble. I might have been aware but I had little control or understanding of what I was going through. Intensely insecure thoughts began to creep in, slowly establishing themselves within my waking mind. I felt my mind being taken over by parasitic ideas, and I was too fearful to say anything about it. When I spoke of it, I avoided talking about this fear and instead, I focused on the insecurities themselves. I discounted my self-awareness. I knew that I was losing control. My solution became to let myself lose control. I didn't feel as though I could ask for help, so I wanted to show my friends that I needed it. I was silently begging them to notice my problems. I allowed myself to let go of trying to be a good friend. Simultaneously, I wanted to establish deeper connections on a more individual, person-to-person level. If I was going to let myself make mistakes, I was also going to let myself be honest with people about how I think of them. My approach was to explain how I feel and what I think about them and explain that I would be there if they wanted to talk. I am a self-interested, sometimes pretentious, neurotic, and lazy person but I do find a deeper connection with people and a better understanding when I hear people talk about themselves the same way I think about myself. I feel like I begin to understand other people and I start to feel accepted. I think that's something I missed out on growing up, sharing these deeper thoughts and emotions with other kids. I learned to keep things inside at a young age and it's only recently that I began to truly open up. I think it makes sense how I've gotten to this point. It really does break my heart that I have hurt other people, and I've come to accept my actions and the consequences of them, but I will forever hold on to a piece of the friends I've lost. That is love and care and the acceptance they gave me, though I was too conceited and self-absorbed to truly appreciate and reciprocate in a way that makes sense.