I Wish I Could Stop Time

I feel like I’m losing control, but I’m fighting. I feel overwhelmed and distressed by the many things I have to do. I don’t know where to start. I feel so ashamed of myself. I want to hide away. I want to shut the blinds from the rest of the world and live in a warped time bubble. I want to stop time to take a break, breathe, and feel okay again.

I feel ashamed of my need for that. Counterproductively, I don’t allow myself to do that, so I feel worse because I performatively do work without doing anything. I envy other people who could do without that. I want to stop feeling so much, too much, and being frozen in a fight-or-flight limbo due to feeling too much.

I feel ashamed because every morning, while technically awake, I procrastinate when getting out of bed because I dread the behemoth of things that I know I should do but don’t want to and feel overwhelmed by. I procrastinate about the eventual feeling of self-hatred that will come, even though it lingers in the back of my mind, regardless of whether I am working anyway.

I have difficulty applying myself to anything that requires high cognitive investment. I write better when drunk because I don’t self-flagellate on every other sentence. Words flow better with liquid courage. Otherwise, the radio in my head will be playing “Gauche and Tawdry”, “It’s Shit”, and “Talentless” on nonstop repeat.

I envy my partner or anyone who can control their emotions better than I do (almost everyone). I feel incredibly out of place in typical work environments because I am often overwhelmed with feelings and constantly need to excuse myself to the bathroom to cry. Just leave me alone, please. I work better bed rotting in pajamas, with poor lighting, greasy chips, and cold, overboiled tea on my bedside table. I don’t know how he does it; be an average, functional person.

I’m always saying I’m overwhelmed. I’m feeling overwhelmed, so let me take a break. I do, and I still don’t feel better for some reason. I technically know what I should do to make myself feel better. Run? Eat healthy? But I still haven’t done it because it’s hard! For some reason, being decently content and functional, which is the natural state of most people, is a gargantuan task and a giant mountain to climb for me.

The root of it is that I feel that nothing I do matters. If that’s the case, why do anything at all? I need to work on things that give me immediate rewards compulsively. Writing, making videos, and sewing are easy because they give me something to show. Look, here’s what I wrote/sewed/made today.

Then, I’d feel better that day before the whole cycle started again tomorrow because sleep reset all the emotional progress I had made the day before. It is as if there exists a voracious black hole inside me that will never be satisfied. Any new material it consumes would only contribute to its growth.

If I compare myself now and where I was two years ago, I acknowledge that I have come a long way and that who I was two years ago would have been surprised and decently happy with who I presently am. Yet, I feel nothing towards that intellectual acknowledgment. I have more desires now, and I still feel profoundly dissatisfied. Even the feeling of shame, which should have been alleviated with my efforts, did not diminish at all. It may have grown a little.

I feel frustrated when people tell me I only need to work harder. If I worked harder and dominated the competition, I’d finally feel better once I blew everyone out of the water. But no amount of progress towards that makes me feel better. I feel better on the days when I feel like I have done enough to deserve feeling better (which is rarely). But the feeling will reset tomorrow, anyway.

So, what am I working towards? Why does the logic that once I work hard enough, I can finally feel happy make so much sense yet practically never eventuate? Then, they’ll say to set measurable and actionable goals. I did that. But I still didn’t feel better even after ticking off these goals. Did I have the wrong goals? But I don’t know what other goals to put. I’ve tried my best to plan things, and even with the most reasonable goals, I still feel like shit.

It could be because, deep inside, I don’t value what I do, no matter what. A field will only look impressive when I don’t understand and have yet to achieve it. Once I’ve understood how something works and have made achievements in it, I shift from experiencing the beginner’s bias (thinking a field is more complex than it is because I don’t understand it at all) to the expert’s bias (assuming a field is easier than it is because I am used to doing it and has knowledge retained as intuition).

For example, writing academic liberal arts essays is easy for me, and I don’t understand how someone can struggle. Keeping tenses consistent, structuring paragraphs properly, finding sources and referencing, and all the technically specific things to learn are intuitive to the point that I don’t actively think about them, which makes them seem “brainless.”

Everything I do, once it becomes intuitive, seems “brainless”! And therein lies the problem. The only way the person doing the things they perceive as brainless can appreciate themselves is when contrasted with someone who does not have those abilities, making the person realise that such skills are not “brainless” after all — but this only works temporarily.

Usually, after having a weird moment of realising that something that seems evident to me isn’t apparent to other people, I feel better about my abilities for a moment before reverting to feeling like shit again. So, how does one maintain a long-term appreciation for one’s abilities? It is easy to do this if your abilities are socially desirable and highly financially valued. It is tough to do this when no one cares about the field you are good at — which is most artistic pursuits.

I wish I could stop, no, revert to a time when artistic pursuits were still cool. Back when being educated in these frivolous ways meant you were upper class instead of jobless. I want to stop time so that my skills are still needed instead of being replaced by AI. I want to stop time to rest, gain perspective, and regain my footing. I want to stop time so that, for a brief period, I am allowed to feel good about myself for no reason other than wanting to.

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This post was previously published on An Injustice!

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