Trying/Giving Up

It just dawned on me that my plan to abandon any idea of being appealing to others is some kind of neurotic cop out, some fear of trying, and failing.

I am weary that I have to be a person who makes any effort to be perceived as good for others.

So hard, pleasing others. Buying clothes, cutting hair, wearing certain kinds of moderately flattering clothes. Wearing different clothes a lot. Getting this thing and that thing and having this thing that indicates to my other humans, socialized in my milieu that I comprehend what is valuable in that range of rules and can display it to them in an appealing fashion.

I mean, I'll shower and so forth. I will please immediate family members by not smelling bad.

I wear professional clothes. It is just a uniform for me, some professional protection. These primarily come from Ann Taylor and Target. Of course, I do notconnect to those clothes in any significant way. Does anyone? I have a couple soft cashmere sweaters. (Some of the cheap cashmere sweaters were very crummy.) Soft! Soft is good. Who does not like soft?

Soft is nice but soft is not self-expression for others. The soft things are a bit of my solipsistic mode.  And I realize that I do not want to abandon the professional clothes because that does not involve effort. Rather, it is a disguise to get people to leave me alone.

I've written about this before: The expression of self in adornment and possessions and how I periodically resist the striving it involves. It is a type of communication we do with other people and I want to be invisible to other people

It always occurs to me that  any effort made for the perception of others (1) takes up time (2) costs money (3) creates worries that I am not doing it right.

I want to make a plan to buy nothing, to do nothing in the vein of self-improvement. (I do not count health things. I exercise because it is necessary for my sanity, not for my body. I am not sure I can give up face cream also.)  To get trims at the barber, to let my hair go gray, to pare down possessions.

It is hard to describe this because I have been on the edge of a migraine for over a day.

Except then I remember that I've been here before. This desire for self-abnegation is an old one for me. In some ways, there's this Buddhist/Stoic thing of disliking desire. Enlightenment doesn't come into it-- it is more about laziness probably.

I don't want to want love (I use that word loosely.)

Also, can't you just see my soul, my beautiful soul?  Can't you see past my horrible jeans to my beautiful soul? 

Then, I kind of snap out of it and am slightly horrified by how I let myself go. It becomes clear to me later that depression is involved in some way. I usually do not feel depression as sadness but as a craving for complete and total detachment, a desire to disappear.

Once I thought I was in love with someone so when we went out on a date, I wore a pendleton shirt I hadn't washed, I did not take a shower and I wore some kind of faded black stretch pants under my pendleton shirt.

For an entire year, I slept in this room with no furniture but a dresser. I slept on a carpeted floor under a blanket. 

Unrelated, I wanted to point out that if you know someone and they experience pain on a regular basis and seem like a horrible, awful person you don't want to be around: Pain does that to people. It is not good for the personality.

Next time, I will explain that I do have friends. Somehow I've always managed to have friends but I have such a weak interest in friends. I can't be the only one, can I? Why is not wanting friends something people don't talk about?

Having no friends is a curious stigma. I wonder why that is? 

Damn, I'll bet I AM the only one.

Comments

[schmutzie]

I don't know how to leave a simple comment to this post, because it spurs an entire book of things.

[ozma]

That's a great comment. I think I will use that one when I have that same response, which I do often--sometimes to your posts. Sometimes I actually write a book in comment.

Actually, I had to re-read my post because I forgot what I had said.