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When you agree to be subject of love songs, my discography will then be more than just diss tracks.
When you agree to be subject of love songs, my discography will then be more than just diss tracks.
Just because I got myself into couples of hairy situations you think I should walk around getting suspicious at nothing. Theoretically I should even more throw caution to the wind now that I already met the trifecta hence know all the tricks.
Isn't it the case that the ones who say “Be yourself” are the least of all to know how to do that?
Like, you can't learn courage by parroting motivational quotes . You learn it by going on the extreme end of both courage and cowardice. Then you know what's worth the risk and what is not. Because cowardice will cost you morality, and courage will cost you safety. Someone who knows every choice will be costly either way often doesn't go around telling strangers what they should do. Since you then will have to live with the responsibility for someone else's bad outcomes. Who would want that?
Who are already “be themselves” would understand that being fully themselves without adjusting to different environments is a bad idea all around. I'm not 5. Can't rely on my mom to threaten my classmates anymore. Of course, not being fully myself also costs me being seen as a human and keeping relationships at a superficial level.
The false self is not problematic for its existence. And normally it's there to serve necessary needs, like job security or social safety. It becomes problematic when it can't be integrated with other traits, or when people refuse to recognize us as a full-body person.
One attempt to solve this problem is compartmentalization. All of your traits will be seen, but each by different groups of people. Sort of a low risk, low reward situation. Still better than not being seen at all.
Another attempt is to introduce several positive traits to gain acceptance. Then later reveal less popular traits. This is actually how most normal relationships go, and it's effective most of the time. Only if you are not too different from the majority of your culture or class or gender. Most people don't use splitting defense, they are capable of seeing people as 3 dimensional. But when your differences are on the extreme end of all the traits, success rate goes down significantly.
Since civilization requires shallow interactions to avoid conflicts. The most boring person will have a private life matching the public one.
I read my notes back when I was 17. Most of them were how much I wanted to travel as far away as possible. But I was very depressed and almost suicidal back then. Which, seems unreasonable, because I had good academic records and caring family. My friends also bought me candies all the time.
Apparently, when Winnicott said “It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found”, it wasn't about telling you how to use social media strategically.
The false self is what it takes to get social acceptance. There are traits/emotions/conditions needed to be hidden in dysfunctional environments for safety reasons.
I think it's less of a problem that we try to adapt to different situations at all. But more of a problem that, without a helpful guideline, we might actually forget about certain parts of ourselves that want to be seen. Or go as far as to convince ourselves it never existed in the first place.
There is this stinky moment when someone realizes I'm not innocent therefore ruins their illusion. But I never advertised that. The reason everyone in Literature (except my teacher) hated me was because I said the defense mechanisms out loud. You know how teenagers can get defensive. Being naive was never the personality I aimed for.
Oh but I'm totally fine with being seen as sweet and lovely when it works for my advantage. They are not wrong though. It's not all I have. But if it comes from someone I don't have much care for, I feel flattered.
But Eta enjoys my sadism. My sister enjoys my narcissism. My parents enjoy my destructiveness. Khanh enjoys my avoidance. And I wouldn't know any of that if I didn't ask them 8 years later. As it turned out, I was lying to myself back then that people only liked me for being a good kid. But they seemed to know exactly who they were dealing with and chose to love me anyway. The only one denied the love was me.
You didn't give life advice just then. You wanted someone else to live their life in a way that confirms your beliefs.
It's alluring to weaponize someone's secret weaknesses when I already figured out what they are. Even more so when I feel inferior in other aspects of myself.
I stopped writing in my early 20s. Because, I knew what I was doing.
I deleted everything I wrote after 15 minutes. It didn't take more time than that to realize I employed narcissistic defense.
Writing when I was 14 was fun because I was purely idealistic. Sure my classmate hired older dudes to (unsuccessfully) beat me up and my teammates threw trash at me. But I also had many good relationships at the time. And normally, it took years for avoidance to peak. In the beginning, it only made me funnier therefore a great conversationalist.
Depressive + narcissistic personality is a great combo for creative communication. As you feel deeply, and have the courage to say it out loud. But after 18, all I had left was narcissistic. Avoidance ate all the depressive in my disposal. Which was more than okay. Because I was about to sign myself up for the best economics school in the country and couldn't wait to join the dark side of humanity. For I was a total realist.
The problem with knowing your own arrogance is, there is very little you can actually do about it. And being just arrogant with no redeeming qualities is not something to be proud of. To be more socially acceptable, a quick fix solution is to employ moralizing defense. But it would be a performance. Much like how changing clothes doesn't make you a new person. The boho maxi dress doesn't make you more loving and peaceful. The denim jacket with rivets doesn't make you more courageous.
Now that I get my depressive back, I want to write a gain, and listen to love songs as well.
There was this huge kid at school that I never talked to and didn't care for. One day I found out she was into stars. It just so happened I was into black holes. Before we knew it, we promised we would go explore the world together. It was fun to be 16 and have a best friend.
We all want to see ourselves as 3-dimensional characters. But judging others using shortcuts is way more effective. From there, we select very few people we like to get to know them better. Then we realize, they are not just a goth, or a punk. But what happens if the person is radically different, almost like false advertising?
It's clear to me that to have any chance of being understood at all, one needs to make effort to know others.
I spent no time thinking about genders until my first job at 23. All my childhood I was surrounded by people who also didn't care for gender norms. During school ceremonies, Eta and I hid behind the bushes for we didn't want to wear proper dresses. Some kids made fun of my appearance or behaviour but who cared? I expected they would get over it as adults. But most only move from one stereotype to another, with some flavor of progressive. And to be honest I don't see it getting any better. If using shortcuts is still working for someone, why change? After all, I too, use shortcuts for most people I encounter every day. And only leave curiosity for people that I know to be outliers.