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The most terrifying thing

TW : Mental Illness, Most likely invalid descriptions of mental illness, that i don’t have, i don’t.
This says more about me.

Assuming you sleep for 8. Every day you have 16 hours.

Have you ever thought about what the most terrifying thing is? To you. I've been ruminating on this question. For an awfully long time. And I've come to a conclusion. I am, to my very core, terrified.

Of depression.


I mean just, think about it! It’s such an insidious beast. Lurking in your mind, slowly taking the little you have left out. Slowly taking your motivation away, not on a surface level, not the same way that some shiny new toy or some social media addiction loop takes it away. But at a deep, mental level. It gradually reduces you, to the point where simple things become agonisingly difficult. Reduces you until all you want is to lie in bed, forever.

No matter how powerful your will is. Your mind overrides it. And once your mind overrides it enough. You learn. You learn where your true place is. And you occupy it.

That’s terrifying! Imagine that happening to you. It could happen. It could happen to me. It could happen to. Well, anyone really. There’s no direct cause and effect it’s just your mind, betraying you. Betraying itself?

Considering the time you take to eat. And the time it takes to get out of bed, and readjust yourself to get in bed. It’s fair to say that every day you have 12 hours.

Of course, that underlying terror doesn’t lie exclusively with depression. Our minds are fickle, strange beasts. A plethora of mental illnesses, ailments of the mind, exist. And if you’re struggling with them yourself, I hope the best for you.

But consider this, if a person is suffering from disease after disease, their own body giving up on them every second, causing everyday to be a fight to even be alive. How do you think their mental state would be? Poor would be an understatement. As CGPGrey once put it “The mental and physical are parts of a whole, accelerating one accelerates the other”.

But, what is that whole? If the mind and the body are parts of each other, what does that make their combined content? You? Surely not. You're more than two cogs interlinked. The cogs serve you, but that’s all there is to it. What do they obey? Your will. Of course they do.

So, why don’t they?

If you consider a certain amount of leisure time to be healthy, give or take a third, then you will have 8 hours.

Psychopathy is colloquially defined as the absence of emotion. The loss of empathy. Most managers fall somewhere on that spectrum. But, is anyone ever scared of it?

Sure, you might be scared of other people being psychopaths. But not, you right? I know I’m not. First of all because, it doesn’t develop, it’s an inborn trait. But, if it did develop. Would a psychopath feel scared about being a psychopath?

Both psychopathy and depression can somewhat be described the same way, the loss of feeling. But, whereas the loss of sensation in depression guides you into nothingness. Psychopaths are usually ordinary members of society, typically even more successful than their counterparts. What’s the difference here?

Will. They’re driven, entirely by will. Entirely by will. Distinct from emotion, distinct from feeling, the joy of completing a work you cherish, the pain of failure, the giddy excitement of planning. If you take all of that away, what you’re left with. Is pure will. Distilled from the body. The body is their tool, and they own it. Completely. I’ve spent many a night begging for the same.

When i get caught up, usually in regret. I stop, doing things. It’s, an ingrained habit. I just, pop up whatever the most mind numbing thing I can find is (usually Team Fortress 2), and I go in. Factoring these, breakdowns, regular occurrences, I’m left with probably 6 and a half hours a day.

Sometimes I wonder, about how much we’re limited by our minds. These lumps of flesh that we’re born with. That we entrust with so much. Did you know that in a scientific study, participants who were asked to fill out a survey on political opinions, but then had the wrong answers fed back to them and asked to explain their views, didn’t notice anything wrong? The mind led them on a journey, and the will followed, explaining away everything.

Who is me?

You know how sometimes you see people, who can do nothing but spit gold. The Toby Foxes of the world. I’m sure you can think of a few. People whose minds are so vivid, filled with color, that everyones just scrambling to take even the smallest peek in, and they’re glad to show it.

Ever since I can remember, i’ve wanted to share with others. I’ve had stories i wanted to tell, grand narratives, small introspections. Bursting out the seams. And I’ve tried. Mostly never gotten off the ground. There’s an old adage, that 90% of everything is garbage and so, it’s reasonable to expect that, 9 out of 10 of everything i try to share, bombs. That's not strange.

What am I sharing though? Am I sharing these individual snippets, pulled out of the void?

No.

I’m sharing, myself. My worlds. My mind. What if that, falls into the 90%.

What if, no matter how much i will it to not be so, my mind, an unchanging hunk of flesh. Is just not worth sharing. In any capacity. Stories that’ve been told. Lame corruptions of what’s come before. Weird daydreams that no ones interested in. Ridiculous ramblings on questions that have already been answered. Questions that noone asked. D&D stories that’re fantastic for the experiencer but mean nothing to anyone but them. Incomprehensible in-jokes. Heads up their own asses so far they come out the mouth again in ouroboros of the self ultimately meaning everything to me but nothing to nooone.

And no matter how my will aches for it. I cannot share what is not mine. This is all I will ever have. So what if it’s not enough?

After some borderline obsessive time tracking, I plotted a graph over the last two years. Of the productive hours that I've spent in a day.
96.5% of it is below a certain mark no matter how much I have tried to work more.

I will never have more.

I have 5 hours. For me