Ars ad Misera
Hello.
It seems you’ve come this far. Perhaps more because of a sense of insult than anything else. But I will simply tell you not to take it personally and await my explanation.
I will also say that if you feel no connection to me, or that I am simply an acquaintance whose journal you read out of mild curiosity, I offer you an opportunity to read no further, as your involvement in my thoughts is too much of me to put on your shoulders without such an offer. In fact, while you’re at it, please take me off your friends list, because then any purpose this journal might have is utterly compromised by the anonymity of both the writer and the reader. I won’t be offended. If you meet these criteria and intend to continue reading out of some compulsion of sympathy, I would like say that there is really no need to do so on my behalf. And so, if now you are still reading out of pure curiosity, my warning stands.
It has been a long time since I was personal on this journal. Truly personal; I may never have been truly personal in it before, in fact. It’s quite possible I’ve never been truly personal to anyone.
I grant you so much warning because souls are dark, dark things and I would never wish such a discourse on someone who did not come willingly and know exactly how far what they were going to hear would go. The latter is key; to accept a challenge when ignorant of the extent of its dangers is not bravery.
This perhaps characterizes my reluctance to confide the whole truth - my real thoughts, my real desires - about myself to any other person. The whole truth is something guarded, protected with a sacred privacy; it is someone no one seeks the knowledge of and no one offers the knowledge of up to others. The whole truth contains those things we would rather not acknowledge; the shameful things, the things so undesirable that not even shame in them is admirable, things which, once brought to light, are never forgotten by those who learn of them and leave a subtle taint on their relationship with the person forever. So many people live their whole lives never revealing the whole truth of their souls. They themselves try to forget of the darker half’s existence.
And so here I am, cursed with a reluctance to speak for the sake of those who listen. I wish to speak the truth and yet the truth will fill them with fear, push them all away.
And you feel a twinge of pity for me, though for entirely the wrong reasons. The boy is needlessly melancholy, you conclude. There is nothing so terrible in the depths of all his being that would scar your perception of him, change how you think of him, turn him somehow repulsive in your eyes. But you are wrong. I do not say that to offend, and not this to patronize, but you are indeed wrong, I say as a matter of fact, because this is true for every single person we have ever met. We build an optimistic portrait of them in our minds, based on such a select and limited array of stimuli we perceive about them. There is darkness in every soul and we simply endeavor to hide it and overlook it in others. You don’t know me well enough to presume my harmlessness.
Perhaps, if I have convinced you of this possibility (otherwise this next part shall mean nothing to you), confronted with it you grow slightly wary? Worried? A bit of fear that I am building up to some dreadful, terrible admission, one which your imagination has hypothesized to suit your personal array of dreads and presumptions? I will tell you that this piece ends in no such epic confession. Instead it looks to unwind your conventional fears of darkness, which in my pessimism I assume that you possess. I do this out of no manipulative desire to change or better you, but rather out of a desperate need to create an audience to whom I may be honest. And that is not something I can subject to any lens of presumptions, those terrible and inefficient macros of perception, and so I must first relieve you of the lens.
It is here that I might say that I am a madman, disbelieve me as you may. But I am not; I am a horribly, agonizingly sane man. Every dark thought, desire, compulsion and belief is driven by an array of motivations, all rational and logical and sound, known or unknown. The way I am makes sense, through and through. It is the conventions of society that are insane. A cliché, you think. The defense of all madmen - “I am sane; it is the world that is crazy.” But no, you see through the lens of presumption. The argument is valid. Society denies me permission for what my mind so strongly desires - honesty. Society is the government reigning over the human mind; should it not be devised to suit its subjects, rather than its subjects transformed to suit it?
I admit that I too am a victim of presumptions. I presume that you are incapable of handling the darker aspects of my being. Presumptions based on the statutes of society! A man who does not observe social norms is shunned like a leper. And so I ask you, prove these presumptions false. Overturn the conventional repulsions; pass no judgment and fear none in return. That said I shall speak to you earnestly.
My soul is dark! My soul is dark and it is wretched. It is not cruel or sadistic, it is not without some trace of good, but it is indeed terribly wretched, and I loathe to divulge any trait of its darker aspect. This is but for pride; one terrible affliction of my mind is pride, close cousin of wrath, a dreadful axis that restrains me from logic so often. I said before that I withhold my truth for fear of harming those who receive it, but this is only partially true. The other factor is my dread of disrepute, in their eyes and in mine. I do not trust my own opinion of myself; as long as I can prevent others from judging me disgusting, my own appraisal is mollified by their unknowledgeable praise.
So frail a revelation after so lengthy a build up. Perhaps I do not trust you with those things of which I am truly ashamed. Dare I sample them without lengthy discourse on context, reasoning and rationale? A thousand crimes we’ve all committed in soul if not in body. My disregard for the casual burdens I place on parents, friends, teachers, strangers. I fall in love with girls I have never met and come to hate them and myself without a word being spoken. Every broken promise. So many things of which I am ashamed, and yet I come to you not seeking to confess them, but to destroy the notion of shame itself!
Perhaps the true things that are beyond confession are those we are ashamed of, yet also proud of.
Part of me wishes for madness. I am compelled to feign insanity. Perhaps it is a freedom from responsibility that I find so alluring. A freedom from behavioral requirements, from all semblances of predictability. I worship logic yet loathe the cage it places around me; thus, the wish for insanity, as one of Poe’s madmen, damned yet free. Perhaps that is one revelation that is truly dark and truly guarded.
Do you see how much sense there is in Kurtz’s words? “You have the right to kill me, but you have no right to judge me.” Oh, I would make a fine photojournalist.
The truth is, I owe you nothing, as you owe me nothing. You have no right to hold me to any standard, unless I first hold you to one, and vice versa. Whether or not we are actually capable of discarding these demands of one another, as our expectation of others to obey social norms is a deeply engrained, remains to be seen. Though true withholding of judgment is impossible - it is only a machine which can perceive without bias - know that my opinion caries no weight, my thoughts of you have no value and no sway. Thought (without action) is powerless, and thus I pose you no threat. We declared the comfort zone. Now let us tear it down.
And so, for now, I conclude my fearsome essay, and can only trust that those who read it do not misunderstand, for I have gone to great lengths to ensure my clarity. This bout of fitful debate, whether brought on by madness or misery, some chemical imbalance of the brain, Concerta, some perceived slight or injury for which I wish to make amends, or whatever else, the argument stands. Normally, such things as I have written above would seem the harbingers of shame and awkwardness with those I must interact with after having read it, but I defy this norm, this crippling stigma that contradicts my mind and soul at the behest of society, and implore you all to do likewise, out of no pity for this raving fool but out of a sense of righteous empowerment. Thought should be free, and bound by no petty constraints; fear should be mastered by reason.
When I see you next I shall be a very different person from the man who writes this. Now I am my whole self, and then I shall be my presented self. The mask is too familiar to discard so easily. I do not ask you to overlook what things you may glean of my whole self - I ask you to understand them and make peace with their existence, for denial solves nothing and further enroots the social contradictions of the mind.