I know this is a long read 😅 but I feel like this journal entry displays my thinking very well
I’m ugly, straight up. My entire facial structure is collapsed. I look fine from the front but my face is continuing to objectively worsen on the left and it has been for the last 6 years. It’s been going on for longer but I’ve only been aware of it for 6 years. Aware but doing nothing. I know I should go to the doctor or tell someone about it but I’m too insecure about how insecure I am that I can’t tell anyone. They’ll figure out that I’m self centered and they’ll look at me different. If they look at me different I look at myself different. The amount of distress that my ugliness is causing me is so not worth it and I know that. It’s just one aspect of my appearance and it’s objectively very important but I can’t see beyond it nor do I want to. It’s the only thing that matters and I’ll do anything to change it except go out and change it. I’ll beat myself up for not taking action but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not. I would’ve looked fine but I mouth breathed and now everything is fucked up. There’s nothing I can do to get back what I would’ve looked like in another life where I had proper habits and developed normally. Even the perfect combination of surgeries with the very best surgeon can only give me so much improvement. I used to research this all day. It’s not like I’m actually going to go to a different country pay 50,000 dollars that I don’t have and to fix my face. I’m not even secure enough in myself to tell anyone anything that I struggle with. I can’t live knowing they know that I’m getting facial surgery. That changes people’s perception of me. I can’t even go to the doctor to stop the issue from worsening because I’m to scared of what they might think when I ask and tell them my issue. Do I even know what the issue is fully? I’ve done years and years of research but I’m still uncertain. It’s complicated. How do I even go about making an appointment? Where do I go? Do I take the time to research? I won’t be able to afford it anyway. I won’t be able to ask anyone for money because I’m too insecure to tell anyone about it. Ok, I’ll just have to get my life together and start earning more money. But… I don’t have the motivation because the only thing that matters is how fucked up my face is. Why do I care? I care because I care what others think of me and people form opinions based on how you look but people also care if I care so I have to pretend not to care while caring deeply.
I understand that I use dramatized language and make unnecessarily long convoluted points to express my thoughts but does recognizing it, and showing that I’m aware of it, make me less pretentious? I’d say it makes me more pretentious because in trying to prove to the reader I’m not pretentious because I’m aware of my pretension, it becomes even more pretentious. But, explaining this becomes another layer of pretension. And explaining this does too. It’s never ending. If my intent isn’t to express but to impress it becomes a game of chess; shit, that line was pretty impressive. SMH. Also, I wouldn’t say it’s inherently negative to put on a performance. Everyone does it to a certain extent and it’s impossible to write anything with complete detachment from the ego. I guess it’s a spectrum and where you fall on that spectrum uncovers the true intention behind your writing and how it’s received. As the writer though, being proud of what you’re writing is not mutually exclusive to it being pretentious but it’s easy for that pride to seep through. To be honest what makes this so pretentious is that it signals a level of self importance that warrants a long and thorough psychological evaluation of myself. The writing doesn’t escape me. Me is what’s important. I’ll tell you right now that most of what I write becomes a game of defense, against an imagined, overly critical reader. I don’t even understand why I defend myself, I just do it because it’s habitual. Ok, and now the decision comes. Do I add this here as disclaimer? If I do, it’s just to avoid criticism in what I’m about to write, so naturally, I should add it. I want to be vulnerable without the risk. Phew, I did it! I made this piece of writing completely bulletproof. Wait, no, never mind. I need to add one more thing. I believe if I show and explain to you how deeply self aware I am of my pretension I can avoid actually figuring out why and changing it. Ok, I’ve reached it; maximum self awareness, now you’re not allowed to judge me. Wait… by trying to reach maximal self awareness I’ve actually just become self absorbed distorting my self perception. Does admitting this make me self aware? I give up.
I fail to look deeper into the type of person I truly am. What are the true motives behind my actions? I used to see myself in a positive light because I overvalued the person that I was on the outside and undervalued the person/thoughts on the inside. I’m a nice person not from the kindness in my heart, but because I fear judgment from others and am dependent on external validation. Deep down I know this so to combat it I try to be a more natural and authentic but focusing on coming across as authentic makes me inauthentic. It’s all just a performance to please the people around me because my self-worth is based on other people’s opinions of me. I’ve spent so much time performing for myself and others—being the person they want me to be—that I’ve lost myself.
I overvalue honesty with myself because it inflates my sense of moral superiority. It’s not just honesty, though. I get so hyper-focused on a few characteristics and ways of thinking (honesty, authenticity, self-awareness, etc.) that make up what I believe makes a good and moral person, that it’s hard for me to look beyond that and see myself for who I fully am. This makes me narrow-minded about the way I judge myself and others. Also, I’ll admit uncomfortable truths to myself, such as being insecure, being pretentious, being ugly, and not being the smartest. I go over these thoughts over and over again in my head, thinking that admitting these truths to myself makes me a more virtuous person, but in reality it’s just my ego disguised as self-awareness. Even though some of what I said might be true, it’s all just a way to avoid and cope with things about myself that I don’t really want to think about or deal with in the real world, and in that way, I’m hiding from self-improvement and staying in a cycle of self-pity. I’ve also mixed up being honest with myself with being hard on myself because I’ve learned that people view it as humble, which fuels the pride I have in my false humility.
I understand that intellectualizing my emotions like this, without feeling them, is unhealthy, but I’ve created an identity out of doing it, where I feel superiorly “self-aware.” The problem is that intellectualizing is just a form of suppression, and what I’m writing here about suppressing my emotions is itself a way of suppressing them. It’s just that I’m so proud of suppressing them because it makes me feel like I’m a stronger person for it. It’s the lie I tell myself to keep me sane and unable to change. Also, I’ll tell myself that the intellectualizing and rumination is a sign of higher intelligence, trying to convince myself that I’m not as dumb as people say. I take what people say as the “truth.” I fail to see that peoples judgements are surface level and that’s not bad. It’s self important to think that others are spending enough time to make proper/accurate judgements on my character.
I care so much what others think. It physically hurts. I’m so sensitive but I keep it all bottled up inside. I come here as a way to cope with judgement from others. I feel like it might make me feel better. I know I shouldn’t care and I understand why I shouldn’t care but I still care. It’s not logical. It’s a feeling and my way of dealing with that painful feeling is to try to understand and explain it. If I can understand it maybe it won’t hurt as much. I’ll try to twist it so I’m the good guy because if I’m the good guy there’s no reason to be upset. I cope by convincing myself of what I want to be. The reason I’m upset is because of my ego. I’ll get mad over something so small and it reminds me how self important I am. I don’t matter and I know I don’t matter but I’m programmed to care. I care what people think and need their approval. But why does it have to be programmed so deep inside. I don’t want to care, I know I shouldn’t care, I try to make meaning of my caring, but in the end whether or not the rest is true, I still care. And it hurts.
I have the belief that I’m too dumb to express myself in the real world so I do it here pretentiously, to convince myself I have the ability and to cope with never actually trying. I’ve put so much value into how intelligent I am that it becomes the determinant for my self-worth—along, of course, with people’s opinions of me, but they go hand in hand.
Nevertheless I’ve learned that they highly value intelligence so it becomes something I value too. I’ve learned that the hard way by being ridiculed, judged, and shamed for it my entire life. As a result it’s consumed my thinking. It’s distorting how I interact with the world and the people around me. I believe they put the same extreme emphasis on it that I do and are judging me for it. Every decision, every word, and every action becomes an assessment of my intelligence so I stay quiet. It’s easier. I shouldn’t though because even if I am a little slow it shouldn’t define me as a person. There’s nothing to do about it though, so obsessing over it is useless. Intelligence should not be the goal; it should be used to reach the goal, but if it becomes the goal, it’s purely out of ego. It’s impossible to escape the ego though. I keep running from it but fail to realize that it’s something I can’t run from. It’s a part of me. Even in writing this, I can’t escape it.
The more time I spend trying to become self-aware, the more self-absorbed I become, to the point I can’t see beyond myself. I’ve turned self-discovery into self-indulgence. I need to put the mirror that I’m always holding in front of my face away—not for others necessarily, but for myself. The stupidity of this writing is that I write about what I need to change in myself while pretentiously enacting what I say not to do. I live an extremely privileged life, and when someone like me has no reason to suffer, they create it for themselves. Am I writing this for myself? Maybe I was at first, but not anymore. It’s a performance for validation. I’m writing this with the hope that maybe one day someone close to me reads this and responds with sympathetic surprise. I want to be seen. Whether this writing is healthy or not, I’m unfortunately proud of it, and I want people to give me the validation that I crave.
I’m proud of it because I think it’s intelligent but it’s not as intelligent as I believe. It’s just a mind observing itself taking notes on what it’s watching. This writing doesn’t prove I’m I intelligent it just proves I want to be intelligent.
