Tag: self-doubt

  • Silent Protest

    Silent Protest

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    A protest that cannot be articulated, is a protest spawned by futility, to feed futility.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    My contempt for what I am presented with is rarely expressed plainly. My reservations to express at all is grounded in years of ridicule and dismissal around issues I have held with great conviction. Experience is a bitter pill, whether swallowed or not. Each cycle of decay results in a shortening of the fuse that prompts us into action. I believe that our response at break point is chosen long before we reach that point. It’s not something that happens instinctively. Instead, it has been internalised for so long that when we do reach that tipping point, no contemplation or deliberation is needed. The response is not intended to be measured. It is intended to finally release the silent protest that we chose not to express outwardly for reasons that suddenly fade from significance.

    Silent protests are born when our pleas for sanity or reason go unanswered in a setting that we feel compelled to embrace. It’s a cry for recognition of who we are and what we need that has fallen on inattentive ears, or calloused hearts, leaving us bound to the commitments we once made, while resisting the urge to respond in kind lest we be reduced to the same stature of that which we have grown to despise. But the contempt is not easily expressed. The contempt is reined in to ensure that the commitment remains the priority. After all, in the absence of the commitment, no such claim of aloofness would be credible.

    So the silent protest plays out, often for years, and assumes a sub-conscious frame of reference that we rarely realise exists. The weightiness sets in, the lethargy overwhelms, the fatigue smothers, and the passion withers. Life ceases to be life at this point. Instead, it steps aside to allow existence to take over. Existence, then, becomes the final protest. It protests the onset of death, denies the potential of life, and secretly yearns for both.

    Breathe. Exhale. Remind yourself why the silent protest started, if indeed you are able to remember, and decide if it is still worth the commitment you are trying to honour. If you can’t remember, then remind yourself about where your passion once flared, and use that as a point to return to in order to retrace your steps to the point where you lost your voice.

  • On suicide and insecurity and…my life

    The odd thing about suicide is that it sometimes seems like a romantic end to a painful life. But if there was a single time in your life when something unexpectedly pleasant happened, it gave you a taste of hope that creates the doubt, no matter how little, that suicide may not be the answer. The fact is, we don’t know what the next moment brings, let alone tomorrow…although the trends of our lives may provide some predictability as to what to expect.

    It’s when we dismiss the notions of hope, and worse, when we dismiss the opportunities of happiness that we succumb to our nihilistic tendencies to want to find comfort in the surety of knowing, rather than the insecurity of hope. Eventually when we’re faced with the possibility of happiness, we’re reminded about the pain associated with the retraction of that happiness from our last experience, or experiences, and in typically human fashion, we avoid that which hurts us, especially if that hurt is prompted by others rather than a hurt that we choose for ourselves.

    I’ve stared death in the face more than once…and it’s not a pleasant place to be at all. It’s a conflicting place to be because no matter my conviction, my hard-wired survivalist instinct always left me uneasy about my choice to want to end my life, because in the back of my mind I knew that I was being insincere by denouncing the infinite possibilities that actually exist towards finding happiness. 

    But the greatest realisation in all this was, for me anyway, that my misery is often a making of my own choices. I’m not saying that I chose to be miserable…I always chose to pursue happiness, but the choices I made in such a pursuit had an inherent risk of making me the target of betrayal, condescension, ridicule or just blatant cruelty, not because of who I was, but because of who I sought such happiness with. I saw my fragility and vulnerability in them, and so naively assumed that they would appreciate me appreciating that tenderness in them…instead, as is the nature of those that are insecure or overwhelmed, they struck back blindingly because the realisation of their vulnerability being exposed was too daunting for them, and so the trend of their lives that taught them not to trust resulted in me being the untrusted one.

    I didn’t choose that outcome, but I did choose to risk trying to connect with a troubled soul knowing that they may not embrace me the way I was wanting to embrace them. And in knowing that I am myself a troubled soul, my naivete, coupled with my unnatural idealistic optimism compels me to continue wanting to touch the beauty that I always see lurking behind the sad eyes of kindred spirits, having absolutely no reason to believe that they would reciprocate…ever.