Reflecting On: A Deleted Blog

There is only one post I have ever deleted from any of my blogs (that I can remember at least). I saved it as a textfile on my laptop on 7th December, which I guess is the day after I wrote it and had presumably come to my senses. I have decided that after 14 months, it should see the light of day, as it is an interesting and important snapshot of my mental state, and I am sufficiently detached from it now that I'm not so ashamed - but once you read it, I am confident you'll understand why I deleted it.

This post caused my friend to push me to seek professional help, and looking back I'm grateful that he did, and in turn that I wrote it. It was an attempt to express myself as honestly as possible, at a time when my thoughts were tangled and venemous, seemingly the enemy within my own walls.

I am somewhat proud to see the glint of self awareness hidden among this self absorbed drivel. I knew that every word I was writing was awful, and I had the decency to hate myself for it. I was distinctly conscious that my words could've just as easily been penned by Holden Caulfield and not myself, and the comparison pained me at the time - but maybe everyone goes through a Catcher in the Rye phase. The important thing is to come out on the other side, alive and better for it.

NB before reading - things with my parents have gotten a lot better, and continue to move in the right direction, since writing this.

Do you remember this one, Ted?

I don't think I have it in me to put in the effort to write in Spanish today, so just going to whine in English instead. If you are, for example, sick of Argentinians complaining then probably don't read this 😊.

When I was younger, I was told I was good at pretty much everything I tried, without ever putting in very much effort. Now I am older and I think that has ruined me. I have never tried at anything, but I always had the expectation that when I did, I would excel at it. After all, if I was good with no effort, I would be incredible with effort, right?

Obviously not. But it still feels gross. Having to admit that I am trying very hard at poker and that I am still not only not good, but very bad, is a bitter pill to swallow. My ego is tortured every day that I play poker, but I still can't let it go. There is a scene at the end of Tokyo Ghoul where the protagonist, Kaneki, is being tortured. He is chained to a chair, and his torturer uses a metal tool which looks like a giant wire stripper, to systematically break his fingers and toes. It is even worse than it sounds, because Kaneki regenerates, but still feels pain. So every time his fingers heal, they are broken again. The torturer makes Kaneki count backwards from 1000 in increments of seven - to keep Kaneki as sane as possible during the whole experience. And really, poker is my torturer and I am Kaneki-kun, except for the fact that the shackles that bind me to the chair are purely of my own design - they are in my head and might be far less real than I think. Perhaps there are no shackles at all, instead every day I walk into the office and sit in the torturer's chair and allow him to break ego again and again and again, day after day after day. I understand why so many poker players speak so highly of Buddhism now; poker accelerates the ego-death required for enlightenment.

So, my ego is hurt, and I am complaining, which is without a doubt the nut low of human activities. My ego was too big anyway. But without poker it feels like I have little else to identify with positively about myself. I underachieved at school, dropped out of uni, quit my job, I have no employable skills and no prospects. I am about as undateable as they come, weirdly arrogant with low self esteem (how is that even possible?), some kind of pseudo PTSD about intimacy, physically average-to-unattractive. I have squandered innumerable opportunities in my life. The only things I am really passionate about are seemingly impossible to make a living from. I spent my whole life thinking I am intelligent or somehow "special" but really I have no fucking clue about anything, I am just a child who needs a lot of help but I am adult enough to be far, far too stubborn to ask for it, because now I think I should be independent and not need any help. I need therapy still but am sick of self-identifying as being mentally ill. What if I am in therapy my entire life, trying to fix my problems but never do, what the fuck is the point? The generic spiel is that "you are not you (mental) illness", but maybe that's just bullshit to try to make you feel better about the fact your life is a mess. This whatever-it-is is in my brain. I am in my brain (I have no idea what "I" in this sense is though, and I can't be fucked to meditate to find out). Either we co-exist - which is terrifying, like I am constantly fighting off something else in my own consciousness, and will eventually succumb, or perhaps live out my father's worst nightmare and become like my schizophrenic grandmother. Or we are one, and that is my identity. I really am just some mentally ill kid. From a natural selection point of view that would make me highly undesirable as a mate, and so really I serve no purpose (this is going off the rails huh?). Mental illness is hyper-garbage but I am skeptical about being neurotypical too, perhaps that is the true mental illness. Maybe the human condition just sucks.

And I'm still not done complaining, if anything this is already pretty concise. I could write a book about why I'm such a victim and how unfair life is. I don't really have many friends, somewhat by design. But even the ones I do have (I guess three at a push) I am distant from. The closest one I think I am probably in love with, which seems like the PERFECT thing to complain about while we are in that kind of mood. I am very fickle with "love" - it doesn't take a lot for me to seemingly be far more into a lady than I should be, and they are always unobtainable and/or uninterested and/or I spectacularly fuck it up anyway. So I am annoyed at myself for even suggesting I could be in love with this girl, when it feels like only a couple of months ago I was complaining about the same situation with a different girl, but whatever, I am a victim, leave me alone. Before we get too much further, what the actual fuck is "love", I have no idea and I'm 99% sure nobody else does either. I guess it is just my monkey brain saying that she is an ideal mating partner. But anyway. I know she is not interested in me "in that way" - sadly for her I am not an ideal mating partner, another great reason to pity me. We are "just friends", but we are very close and talk about a tonne of personal/intimate stuff, much like you might do with a bf/gf, even sometimes slightly flirtatious or very vaguely suggestive, but there is still some void for me, some desire for something more, but I don't even know what. Maybe it's just that I really want to have sex with her and that's it, I want it more because I can't have it and my monkey brain is upset about it. Maybe I want a "relationship" which is basically exactly the same as being close friends + having sex, as far as I can tell, but you add the label and there are some extra rules which somehow makes both parties involved enjoy the experience more. I would love to pretend that I am somehow sophisticated enough to pretend that what I want/am sad/am complaining about it somehow more than just to have sex with her, obviously I am just lying to myself/you though. Saying "I am in love with her" seems so poetic and to justify this complaining though, somehow? Which is bullshit again now I think about it. "I want to have sex with her but she doesn't want to" and "I'm in love with her, but it's unrequited" are literally the same sentence but one is pathetic and one allows plenty of room for self pity, so guess which narrative we are going with.... Although maybe being a pathetic loser that complains that girls won't have sex with him also allows a tonne of potential for self-pity too, it seems like a close spot. I don't even know if I am complaining about the fact she won't have sex with me, the ease/comfort of being able to identify as a victim (or even romanticise it, "unrequited love" makes me feel like I am in a Shakespearean tragedy or some shit) might be preferable to actually having sex with her. Maybe having sex with her would undermine my whole identify as the "special"/unfortunate victim and I'd have some kind of existential identity crisis. Another good reason why love/sex sucks.

Oh and that is not even including my parents. I know they like to lurk my stuff on the internet so if they somehow find this, then fuck me I guess. Anyways, you can't spell "my parents" without "emotionally unavailable". The basic unspoken agreement we have is this: they tacitly acknowledge that they have never provided emotional support for me and provide very generous financial support to make up for it (NB this obviously does not make up for it). But now I am too proud (what the fuck am I even proud of?) to ask for any kind of financial help. So now our unspoken agreement is that we talk once a week for half an hour and the experience makes me resentful and full of self hatred. For the last few weeks I have thought to myself, hmm, I am struggling this week, perhaps I should tell my parents how I feel, they are not going to judge me or mind that I am complaining, and they are obliged to help/support me in a way I wouldn't feel guilty about. And then I have a masochistic chuckle to myself and remember what a fucking stupid idea that is. Our relationship is about as businesslike as it gets. In the past I tried multiple times to open up and try to improve our relationship (even though I feel like the onus should never be on the child to do this), and time and time again my efforts were thwarted by my parents' spectacular inability to articulate any human feelings, specifically my father's. It turns out that that ability is in fact hereditary, and now I have to try to fix that by writing fucking blogs on the internet which make me hate myself more than I already do. I hope by this point the pity is flowing, it is like mana for me. There are things my father has said to me I am not sure I will ever forgive him for. Maybe when he dies I will have some moment of clarity and/or regret, assuming he dies before me. Having said that, I'm not sure if that moment or lack of that moment would be worse. I think he probably wants to be a better father to me, which is laudable, he is just blinded by his own idiocy, which is quite impressive for a man as intelligent as he is. He needs to go to therapy and sort himself out first before he can help the rest of his family, but he is too proud and too scarred by his experiences with his own mother to go, so there is no point even trying to start a conversation about it. He is old now too, in a way I pity him, I feel like I should just try and not cause him too much trouble as he nears retirement and perhaps he can find some peace. It is frustrating how I still care/want to be close to him, even though logically I have no reason to. Perhaps it's Stockholm Syndrome, or something biological, I still crave his approval. I have been trying for the past 7 or so years to stop caring about him but unsuccessfully. I was told recently that the thing with your demons is to "just accept them, even though it's going to be very difficult". This is literally the worst advice I've ever heard, and is clearly not working for my father and I. I am still grateful for them adding to my narrative of victimisation though, and in my infinite naiveté maybe I even believe that when/if I ever have close relationships in the future, my negative experiences with them will make me more emotionally resilient. However, I have left my brother alone with them, and if they impede his emotional growth in the way they did mine, I do not think I will forgive them in the same way I can for the way they raised me.

Anyways, back to the point. As you can see above, my life is really really terrible and honestly I am doing a great job just getting out of bed every morning and deserved to be heaped with pity and praise simultaneously (/s). What I was getting at is that all this stuff is why I get upset when poker doesn't go well. It is my way of justifying feeling down short term results don't go my way and being even more down when mid-long term results are also bad. All my eggs are somewhat in the poker basket, because all my other eggs are infected with salmonella. Which brings me to now. Today I definitely feel depressed in the most clinical sense of the word - I do not want to do anything. I don't want to work, or play games, or go to the beach, or watch youtube videos or anything, with the exception of drink. Life and poker, synonymous as they are, have got me to this point. Not doing anything is an option for a few days, perhaps until Monday, but soon the reality of life will set in and I will have to do something again. And given everything, that something has to be poker.

It is obvious I need to do something, in part because I have complained so much about everything. Complaining serves no purpose apart from catharsis and some emotional relief, it doesn't actually change your situation, the only thing that will change my situation son actiones, no palabres. It's also clear that with regards to poker, I need to change something; what I am currently doing is not working. There's a few different things I am going to try, and hopefully one of them works. I can't quit, my ego would die, and I assume that if my ego dies then I die with it. Maybe the one positive thing to come out of this terrible, terrible, terrible post that I hate myself for writing will be that I have some accountability to actually do something different rather than allow my fingers and toes to broken once more.

If you read this far, then jesus fucking christ why?! I warned you at the top not to, you're not getting that five minutes of your life back you know.