This may be the second-most asked question I used to get along with why was I so angry all the time.
Logically, it seems purely rhetorical because if a person is always seeming to be one thing, then they can't very well be another simultaneously now, can they?
I started a new job last week and with that came the implied expectation that being able to make money and pay bills again would provide a measure of happiness. And while this may be true on a certain level, I think we often confuse safety and survivability with happiness.
Yes, being able to take care of myself is a nice thing, but that's a given. What isn't is that even though I like my job, it hasn't made me happier by any real measure, either.
In fact, I honestly cannot remember the last time I felt truly happy about my life from top to bottom.
On the one hand, I suppose it's natural for human beings to never want to reach that apex of complete satisfaction with their existence. After all, there are entire threads of both philosophical and psychological theory that state we never can and never should reach that level, because we should always keep driving towards various goals and never rest on our laurels.
And yet, if you're in the rarefied air of the financial and/or social elite, the rest of us poor paeans assume that's the absolute pinnacle of our modern existence, so it must be impossible to not be anything but happy.
I suppose if that were true, we wouldn't have a need for tabloid journalism, because there's few pastimes we love more as a culture than knocking an elite off the pedestal we sycophantically built for them to stand upon in the first place.
Then, on the flip side, are those of us for who being unhappy has become so ingrained in our DNA that we don't really know any other way to exist. It's not that we don't want to be happy. To the contrary, we spend a great deal of time and energy thinking, hoping, praying, pining for the means by which we can escape the maze of misery that we've locked ourselves into, only to realize that we sealed off the way out a long time ago.
For myself, I'm pretty sure that's been the background of my existence since before I was still in elementary school, and there's a name for this sort of psychological mindset:
Emotional Masochism.
Now, the implied connotation of that word aside, I'd like to think I'm not much different than anyone else in that I am not a big fan of being inflicted with pain. But the difference between physical and emotional masochism is that the former is obviously affiliated with sex, while the latter is both more subtle and also more destructive.
Emotional masochism isn't even so much a byproduct of Depression. For a lot of us, it can become the hinge point on which our attempts to break out of a Depressive cycle or resort to self-sabotage often hinges on.
In hindsight, this shouldn't be anything new to me. Like I said, I've lived like this for longer than I really recognize. Part of what I've been willfully ignorant of, though, is just how pervasive and deeply rooted my emotional masochism has become in the last ten years.
I was talking with my brother a few weeks ago and mentioned that I've been trying to convince myself it's beyond time to get off social media and go back to a non-connected lifestyle. After all, I don't get anything out of it and really haven't for a long time. To the contrary, whenever I do go on it, all it does is make me feel empty, unwanted and depressed because 1.) no one really reaches out to me anymore and 2.) I get a deep emotional longing to talk to people that I can't talk to anymore, because they've permanently disconnected from me.
This is a key tenant of Emotional Masochism. You know that something is only going to make you feel emotionally wounded, and yet you do it because on some level, you can only function by being in that position of emotional pain.
The same goes for:
- Trying to hang on to toxic relationships.
- Seeking approval from people who will never give it.
- Having difficulty existing in a conflict-free environment.
- Disregarding compliments or positive affirmations.
- Chronically pushing people away.
- Being unable to let go of past trauma.
- Needing to fix things with other toxic people.
- Taking responsibility for everything, even if you're not at fault.
- Beating yourself up through external stimuli that invokes sadness or pain.
- Feeling bad and apologizing for trying to be your genuine self.
Now, I may be crazy...but does that sound like anyone you know...?
I'm the first to admit that I truly despise either generating or being in orbit of drama. I've had more than my share for one lifetime and in coming to the realization of my propensity for passive-aggressive behavior a few years ago, I've tried making a concerted effort to both recognize and limit my output of both as much as possible.
But this is different.
It's not because I somehow like being miserable. Hell, nobody likes being miserable.
The problem is this is how I've learned to function for so long that if I find myself potentially deviating away from it and in a direction of possible, genuine happiness, my mind sees that and overcompensates by reminding me of all the reasons why I can never be happy.
And believe me...that list is incredibly long and makes a rather valid case when it wants to.
So when I find myself in those brief moments where I start thinking I've found the way out of my particular labyrinth of self-imposed misery, where I think to myself if I can just summon the means to get one of my books done, or focused on my video essays, or opening myself up to someone I might have an emotional connection with, I'm flooded with all the times I tried to do something similar and it blew up in my face.
Then there inevitably comes the sense that...oh yeah...this is how I'm supposed to exist. I'm the one who's not supposed to be happy because like all things, there's a finite amount of happiness to go around in the universe and if I manage to get my hands on some, then it means someone else has to be miserable instead.
Either that or the few people I have left in my life won't have reason to stay connected to me, because I somehow serve as an emotional counterweight for their own happiness and/or successes.
"Remember, if you're not careful, you'll end up like Devin and we ALL know what he's like. Whatever you do, DON'T end up like him!"
The weirdest thing, though, is as much as I feel the hurt I subconsciously inflict upon myself sometimes, other times I just end up feeling...numb. Like I've gotten so used to the emotional self-flagellation at this point that the sting isn't as sharp as it used to be. The result is I don't downshift into feeling miserable or anything, but more that it establishes a baseline for how I'm going to feel for most of the day.
By now, I'm pretty sure I know every nook and cranny of the labyrinth I've constructed for myself, because I've been round it more times than I can count. If anything, I'm at my most stable when I'm sitting dead in the center of it because, as physical/sexual masochists will likely agree with, you feel the most alive when you're in the most pain.
After this long, I don't know if I'll ever truly stop being emotionally masochistic. I'm so comfortable in beating myself down and self-sabotaging every possible avenue that could lead to some form of contentment or happiness that to suddenly stop doing so feels incredibly alien and scary to me.
I've always told people that I'm my own harshest judge and my own worst critic and for good reason. There's things I've done which warrant such scrutiny and some form of punishment. And I've had people try so many times to convince me over the years that I need to forgive myself for both those things and what other people did to me that I still shoulder the blame and responsibility for.
I know they're right. I know that I should. I know there's nothing I can do about all those things and continuing to hurt myself over them on an emotional level is just as damaging as if I were doing it on a physical one.
But honestly...the reason why I don't, as bizarre as this is going to sound...is because I've been hurting myself for so long that I feel the closest thing to happiness I can reach only when I'm feeling miserable.
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