Officially ranting under existential depression.

Throughout all our lives - there are many roles that we play other than ourselves, basically because we love to pretend... pretend that we are what we want to be - or worse, what we think we need to be. It struck me today after a trivial conversation that too often we end up becoming what we pretend - in a very weirdly twisted manner. It's not that too, I realized further... We don't actually 'become' - we just start believing in the pretense, and end up becoming something like the shell of what we actually intended to portray. Often to such a level of accuracy that we even fool ourselves!


You know, among all the characters you play - all the images and appearances you maintain with people (you don't? Then why the heck are you even reading this? Go get yourself either canonized or institutionalized!) there are some aspects that you majorly do try to portray. It hit me today when I realized that it took me a prolonged conscious effort to switch one of those aspects off! Even then some undercurrent (!) of that tendency remained which threatened to take over any time I'd relinquish control! (yeah I too have noticed the abundance of exclamations but that's exactly how surprised I was!!)

The experience was scary. I think I'll keep turning them off at random just to avoid this kind of surprises from now on. But that led me to think - how many of us are already living as such empty shells of characteristics and mannerisms and tendencies which are not one's own?

An even worse thought that followed (No, this entry does not contain any upward curves in positivity - read the title duh!) was the dreadful question: "How many parts of myself have I already lost in this manner?" and then began a journey of extensive soul searching (though it's his property but the Devil allows me to perform basic maneuvers) and guess what? I did manage to find a few things from my past that I used to recognize as myself but can't find anymore... Now normally I'm all for change but not when the change is replacement with an inferior copy of a genuine upgrade! Cropping out all these crappy add-ons are the order of the day but I'm doubtful (rare, but happens...) of how much is recoverable.

And do you know what's the worst part of this recovery? Testing it is almost impossible! You see all these pretensions gone bad... they were put there for a purpose, which are still valid! The original facets that have been smothered by the covers still need a cover! And the pretensions serve that purpose very well (the problem being that they serve too well!) so they still need to stay in most of our daily interactions... And you don't get to test the recovered material! But they need to be there as they define you for yourself! What a dilemma...

So instead of wallowing in self pity lamenting the cruelty of this world (which is very not me) I decided to write about it (which is kinda not me too) and thus we're here mulling over the possibility that I'm chronically insane. Oh well... it's possible!

NesQuarX

P.S. Don't link to this post - knowing me I may take this off in the near future...