I literally just watched a pot boil, because I was so angry, and yet had so little energy to indulge the anger, that I needed to watch something else simmer so I could experience it vicariously.
Today I had a professor tell me that it doesn’t matter what goes wrong, one can accomplish everything if one projects the right level of confidence. Giving in to victimhood doesn’t do anything, he said. You can act on the world, or you can let it act on you. It’s all your own choice. There was this one day where I got up late for a lecture, and stubbed my toe, and dropped a juice glass on the floor all within the first 5 minutes of my day, he said, and I just smiled and started counting because I knew the bad stuff would just keep piling up. It got to 36. But I just went along my day with confidence, because that’s really all you need to get you through any tough spot.
I wanted to scream: “It was overconfidence that got me into every single mess in this considerably messy year, and what do you know about victimhood?” But I did not have the energy.
Today I flubbed my first big presentation, probably due to a mixture of exhaustion, poor preparation, lack of engagement, and low self-esteem. Maybe I could have put on a fake veneer of knowledge; maybe I could have let the continuing feeling of not-belonging slide off my back when I met empty stares in the audience. But I did not have the energy.
To some extent, I understand what my professor is trying to say. I know that he is trying to guide me from his own experience onto a path that’s more clear and less painful to bushwhack my way through. But part of me just doesn’t know how to handle what seems to me to be a false dichotomy of victimhood vs. empowerment. I understand that proactivity has always been the name of the game, and acting like you’ve won the war is the first step.
But (excluding the brief, catastrophic ones) of all the more persistent victimhoods I’ve ever experienced I’ve never overcome any of them through conscious action. Until recently I felt victimized by what I construed as an addiction to food. That seems to have cleared itself up through deus ex mono, or whatever other unseen force is at work to have freed me from perpetual concern over perpetual consumption. I don’t know if I can visualize a concrete plan to overcome low self-esteem and low self-fulfillment, any more than I can visualize a concrete plan to overcome the fascist beauty standards of omg TEH PATRIARCHY.
Sometimes, confidence cures all. And sometimes, victimhood is so ingrained that its subtlety can deceive. I wish I could figure out what actually victimizes me, and what I paint as victimizing so I don’t have to muster the energy I don’t have to conquer it.
