Blots

\Wordy Rant/

I'm so masochistic it's no longer a muse. I've always guarded myself against being a drama queen, or being inconsiderate, or pathetic, or awkward, or unresponsive to life, because any one or more of these emotions directly equated themselves to douchebaggery. I try not to be any of them, and end up being one thing to avoid being the other. It's loopy and paradoxical and just fucking saddening.

I remember when I was thirteen a century ago, and didn't have a care in the world. I did what I wanted, which was pretty much studying, and loved myself for it. I could have been annoying to a lot of my friends but I never let that worry get to me. That was the foundation of my confidence really. I was too stupid to realise how much I sucked. On retrospect, I think I studied so much that there was hardly room for any rumination.

Then I stepped into college, and all at once the incompetence of my personality came rushing at me like so many daggers. I felt downtrodden, angered, betrayed for not knowing half of what my friends prattled on for hours together, giving me side glances and hoping I would elicit some reaction. The depression that followed was inevitable; there's only so much you take, and fake, before you start cracking up.

I've gone over the episode so many times; we broke for the Diwali holidays, I understood I had to get myself out of this hole, I started writing to get rid of my feelings, my writings fell into words and sentences and poems, and for the first time people knew some part of me that wasn't wannabe or self-demeaning.

I was getting me out of it all, and yet I wasn't. It's not enough to merely acknowledge you're depressed; it's just as important to let it go. Not obsess over it, not laugh at yourself for feeling that way, not feel superior to others for going through that shit, but just leaving it alone, another part of life that stays invisible until summoned. I don't think letting go has ever been my forte. If I like an object, say a pencil, I will frame it in my room and shower it with agarbatti and mogra every morning. If I don't like something, say Donald Trump, I will kill him in my dreams every night. Being over it feels boring. Even now.

It was an upward spiral, but one that instead of instilling acceptance and friendship in my fibre, goaded me towards more arrogance and spite. I began to go rotten, be meaner, be more of a jerk than I expected myself, and got off on it. I hurt people for badass points, and had a quiet dance of victory when they were mean back. Their backlashes was intoxicating. I was an asshole; I was on the other side of the line, where I'd only dreamed of being a year ago. Someplace the cools respected me and the nerds got bullied. Cuz hey, I was here because I once got bullied.

My happiness was strangely contradicting. I was good because I was bad, and nothing felt better than getting dissed at. I had always been selfish to the core, but I covered it up under layers of politeness and self-absorption, and when those feelings found the tiniest sliver of white, they broke the window and pooled out in a bloody heap. I was addicted.

A long time later, and closer to now in a scary way, I discovered that I liked being hurt. The mean remarks were orgasmic for a reason. The sudden rushes weren't coked-up versions of douchebaggery. I was the same sensitive and kinda feminine guy from two hundred years before. But now, a frightening piece had fallen into place and I knew it was going to stay for as long as I breathed. All pretence blurred out in face of the cancerous reality. I was evil.

Not in the literal sense. I didn't like people getting hurt, although I still hate a lot of people and wish they got hurt, and I certainly was nowhere near cutting myself. Bodily pain was, and gratefully still is, something horrifying; something beyond the reach of even my self-inflicting tendencies. What I enjoy is repeatedly falling, so I can cajole myself back I to normalcy and celebrate my 'getting up'. I have found a small group of friends I love and adore, and I'm scared I'll turn them away with my pathetic neediness and revolting bouts of apathy. It would've been better was I sure my feelings were real. Truth is, there is none. I'm obscure like those friendly conversations now, and in no mood for getting out of this venomous warp. I'm stuck, and I'm smiling while my foot bleeds to numbness. Pain is real. Internal pain, less so. And I'm terrified that the ambiguity of this pain will one day tempt me enough to try out its physical alternative.