Techniques for survival

 Survival is necessary(until it isn't), and these days I have realized that it is sufficient. Sorry for the old school signal processing terminology, but can't be helped.

When survival becomes necessary, you need to switch everything else off and focus on it as being the only thing that matters. You'll need to cut off supply to other modules, and they will suffer, but the bigger picture has to be kept in mind.

Somehow I keep repeating the same things over and over again in my life, to no avail. They are never heeded by me, and I keep falling in the same traps. I know this is the definition of stupidity, but this is what I am.

I think mental balance is a fairly valid metric, and it can be estimated indirectly through a number of things. Mine has always been fragile, and it is seriously disturbed these days. Sure, things can be a lot worse in a number of areas, but the current state is pretty horrifying and demeaning. Lack of mental balance robs you of your personality, your drams and your life. In a way that is very real, yet can be communicated through neither texts nor poetry. The unhinging is so obvious that sometimes even I can't help noticing it, which leads to a strange feedback loop of doing something while knowing that a small, rational part of you will hate you for doing it. Self control is often touted as the solution to a lot of problems, but self control becomes exponentially harder in these kind of situations.

What constitutes identity is a fascinating debate, and there are few clear cut answers. However I am all too well aware of how something tangible or intangible can take over your life, transform you into something else and put you on an unprecedented path. In rare moments of rational clarity, you sit back and analyze your behaviour and feel that you no longer recognize this person. I guess addiction must feel somewhat like this.

The offshoots of events are strange, very strange indeed. I do a lot of things these days but the underlying lack of confidence is not even pathetic, it is scary. I have zero- absolutely zero-self esteem as a writer, as a woman, and as a worker. Everything I do, I do with a superhuman effort of will and after battling with an incessant storm of anxiety and fear. I shy away from speaking at the most important points and indulge in self sabotage to an astonishing degree. I am the only one who knows what it cost me to send in a bunch of stupid applications, to talk to people about them and to do all the work. Confidence was never ever my problem, but now I stubbornly believe that all the work I do is utter trash, even when it gets a stamp of approval from some valid person. 

And yes, I am mortally afraid of having to talk to someone about my work. As for talking about anything else, I have always been most stable on my own, carefully secluded in my own cocoon, away from the world. The world isn't going anywhere, and it will always welcome me back with open arms when I decide to get back to it. My cynicism is still there, but it has shifted its focus from some aspects of human relationships to some other. On some particularly horrible days, I have gotten by because some random person thought some random shair of mine was pretty. Sure, my eyes are dead, but I'll take the compliment about my poetry.

Sometimes I think the best thing for me would be to live the life of a monk till September. No one knows what is going to happen till September anyways and I'll have to be content with this amount of uncertainty.  No one even knows what will happen after Sep either, but how many things can I worry about?

 Of course, I am equally scared of all these time periods, but it can't be helped. However, personally I'd like the idea of catching the virus and having a valid reason to pass away. The constant struggle for mental balance is too much effort, and rarely worth it. Maths used to be a joy for life but I can neither read nor write a single equation now and turn out poorly written drafts on how to process text.

I could be solving inverse problems somewhere by next sep, but there are a lot of unknowns involved. Even if things work out, I'd be scared of the whole situation. Maybe I should read up on fear and see what it is and how it operates. Till then, living a completely isolated life might be the best thing for me to do, although I'm already fairly isolated. Once upon a time, I used to be my own person, and that got me through a lot of things, which is something very few people can say. Somehow an absolutely dark horizon gives hope to one through its sheer bleakness. If I was left alone to die in a desert, I would not beg, I would not cry, I would not whine. I would tighten my belt and get up and get going with a knife in my hand and courage in my heart and with a come-what-may attitude.

I like stories, and get stuck in them. The real life has little worth to me, and when I try to fit in I fail miserably. My experiments at fitting in and making myself acceptable have all ended horribly. I am not going to try this again.