Ok. So you know you'll be harrowed by the misery of loneliness 'till you die.
What's the consolation prize? What can possibly convince you to go on, to keep living day to day?
I suppose the answers are as various as we lonely folk are.
But are these various answers all equally realistic? Are some of the ways we keep going actually delusional and harmful in the long run? Whereas some of the such ways are more sane and not harmful at all?
I compensate my misery one way. You compensate your misery another way. Our two ways conflict one another, such that my way hurts you and your way hurts me. In the name of relieving our own misery, we inflict more misery on one another.
I find such situations tragic.
And it makes me wonder to what extent the ways I compensate for my loneliness misery end up hurting others.
You see, I have reason to suspect that the ways I compensate for my loneliness misery are delusional, and that others, who claim to love me, feel pain as they watch me trap myself in my delusions. They have this idea that if only I cured my delusions, I could become happier and thus attract friends and enjoy intimacy. They hate watching me "writhe about" in my delusions. It hurts them to see me do so.
I suspect my method of coping with my loneliness misery is a delusion. Mostly this is so because my coping method involves believing I am doomed, as opposed to believing there is hope for me yet. This is very unusual, strange, and probably not acceptable to the mental health profession. In the context of loneliness, I suspect mental health professionals will only support hope, not doom. Likewise, they will insist that a coping method based on believing one is doomed, must be delusional.
But that's not all. There's another ironic twist to my sense of loneliness doom. Here it is:
Believing I am doomed makes me feel like I have unusually significant objectivity. After all, if someone really is doomed, it would take an unusually great objectivity to accept that fact, rather than rationalize reasons why they were not actually doomed. Ok, now here's the real twist: Felling like I have unusually great objectivity gives me the hope that I will be admired for that objectivity, wherein such admiration would relieve my loneliness.
And there we have it. Feeling doomed ironically leads to not feeling so doomed.
Who in their right mind would sanction this ironic twist?
And as I wrote that question it occurred to me that it is not a rhetorical question. I really want to know. For if there are actually people who would sanction it, I have the sense that I might find a friend or two among them - people who find the dignity of objectivity in accepting their own doom. The prospect of finding such people gives me hope. I think that meeting such people would be a ... an occasion to weep in relief at having found others who feel as I do about incurable loneliness. We could admire one another for that brave objectivity, see one another's stoic dignity.
If all this strikes you as really bizarre and an unhealthy approach to chronic loneliness, then I think you can also understand why I also feel as if this approach might be delusional. You can understand why I occasionally question my sanity. What the hell is wrong with me?
What's the consolation prize? What can possibly convince you to go on, to keep living day to day?
I suppose the answers are as various as we lonely folk are.
But are these various answers all equally realistic? Are some of the ways we keep going actually delusional and harmful in the long run? Whereas some of the such ways are more sane and not harmful at all?
I compensate my misery one way. You compensate your misery another way. Our two ways conflict one another, such that my way hurts you and your way hurts me. In the name of relieving our own misery, we inflict more misery on one another.
I find such situations tragic.
And it makes me wonder to what extent the ways I compensate for my loneliness misery end up hurting others.
You see, I have reason to suspect that the ways I compensate for my loneliness misery are delusional, and that others, who claim to love me, feel pain as they watch me trap myself in my delusions. They have this idea that if only I cured my delusions, I could become happier and thus attract friends and enjoy intimacy. They hate watching me "writhe about" in my delusions. It hurts them to see me do so.
I suspect my method of coping with my loneliness misery is a delusion. Mostly this is so because my coping method involves believing I am doomed, as opposed to believing there is hope for me yet. This is very unusual, strange, and probably not acceptable to the mental health profession. In the context of loneliness, I suspect mental health professionals will only support hope, not doom. Likewise, they will insist that a coping method based on believing one is doomed, must be delusional.
But that's not all. There's another ironic twist to my sense of loneliness doom. Here it is:
Believing I am doomed makes me feel like I have unusually significant objectivity. After all, if someone really is doomed, it would take an unusually great objectivity to accept that fact, rather than rationalize reasons why they were not actually doomed. Ok, now here's the real twist: Felling like I have unusually great objectivity gives me the hope that I will be admired for that objectivity, wherein such admiration would relieve my loneliness.
And there we have it. Feeling doomed ironically leads to not feeling so doomed.
Who in their right mind would sanction this ironic twist?
And as I wrote that question it occurred to me that it is not a rhetorical question. I really want to know. For if there are actually people who would sanction it, I have the sense that I might find a friend or two among them - people who find the dignity of objectivity in accepting their own doom. The prospect of finding such people gives me hope. I think that meeting such people would be a ... an occasion to weep in relief at having found others who feel as I do about incurable loneliness. We could admire one another for that brave objectivity, see one another's stoic dignity.
If all this strikes you as really bizarre and an unhealthy approach to chronic loneliness, then I think you can also understand why I also feel as if this approach might be delusional. You can understand why I occasionally question my sanity. What the hell is wrong with me?
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