Solid Snake
06-25-2015, 01:56 AM
POS is apparently of the opinion that threads like this can't be made without being vitriolic by definition, but I'm going to try a very different approach here and see if I can't prove him wrong.
This has nothing to do with any of you. Absolutely nothing! You're all great people. In fact, I am explicitly writing this message only to inform you of the fact that me no longer be around here has nothing to do with you. I am not angry with Matt, or batgirl, or Shiney, or Fenris, or whoever you think I'm irrationally upset with.
If anything I'm just kind of upset with myself.
NPF has become a kind of a drug for me. Specifically, however, it's the kind of drug that only a really depressed person with serious self-esteem issues could enjoy. It's a negativity drug. It's where I go to remind myself of how worthless I want to feel, in the context of guaranteed arguments I can have with people who will insult me personally and who I will be insulted by.
It's been this huge-ass feedback loop for me to garner pity from certain people and anger from others. It's really subconscious, though. Like I genuinely didn't realize it until I saw Fenris' technically-inappropriate response to my ranting and my initial reaction was practically relief.
When you're depressed and you hate yourself a part of you thrives off that kind of shit, being hated somehow becomes desirable in this warped way. Only there's this extreme cognitive dissonance when half of you likes yourself well enough and the other half doesn't, and suddenly half of you is defensive and argumentative and rationally advocating for your own best interests while the other half is SUBCONSCIOUSLY TYPING INFLAMMATORY STATEMENTS IN GIGANTIC BOLD FONT in the desperate, almost perverse hopes that others will despise you every bit as much as you despise yourself.
This has been a constant problem for me that's generally been way in the background of my existence here -- I kind of want to stress that because I don't want this explanation of things to become some sort of a dominant narrative of "How Snake [Has Always] Worked." This depression thing has always been there but it has never defined all of me. Like, I think there have been momentary outbursts of it all in the past but it was generally contained to these tiny fragmentary bits and pieces. There were ancillary moments, but...
But lately, it's getting worse. I genuinely think I had an experience a few days back where a part of me was actually deriving pleasure from the fact that I had managed to piss off Kim and some of Kim's most egregious detractors all at once. And just now I wanted to adamantly believe that Batgirl hated me. I was feeding off this notion that a person who I liked and respected (yes, Batgirl, I actually do respect you) hated my guts and thought I was worthless and irredeemable.
This shit is just unhealthy. It leads me to this weird double-life situation where there's a Snake who's a real person and who's genuine and authentic with you guys and who has real friendships with many of you and who enjoys arguing a bit too much because he's a lawyer and who types Snakewalls but that's just who he is. But then there's this other Snake who wants that Snake to suffer and who hates Snake with such a passion that even those of you who genuinely despise me couldn't match him and there's almost this secret simultaneous mission where that Snake is trying to convince you all to hate Snake as much as he hates himself.
And, like, so much is just explained adequately with that illuminated. There are a few of you who real-Snake just likes so gosh darn much that real-Snake can't afford to have the self-loathing Snake sabotage for too long or in too lasting a way, so I'll always patch shit up with people like Poch and Kim. But if I'm not attached or invested in a 'real' friendship with you, and especially if you've antagonized a friend of mine, self-loathing Snake is the predominant Snake. He wants you to hate him and find him revolting and annoying and insufferable and, even now, he wants you to be disgusted as you're reading this.
I know I've been describing this almost outlandishly as some kind of multiple-personality disorder and that's not it at all. There's only one me and I've always been in full control behind the steering wheel, I just have very contradictory desires and emotions...and a constant dark cloud around me that tries to sabotage anything I work toward.
I also want to be abundantly clear that this shit I'm working through has at times exacerbated negative behaviors but it's never like, completely changed a thought process or anything. When it comes to my personal beliefs about social justice issues, I've generally been honest and forthright with my actual, genuine opinions. Those of you who despise me not because of the dramatic flair and the penchant for ALL CAPS SCREAMING when I'm upset but who actually despise me for like, my core beliefs when it comes to the issues... well, you really DO hate me. But even those of you who fit that description have often been goaded by me on a subconscious level to hate me more or to make your hatred of me more vocal, if that makes any sense.
In other circumstances I'd end this with some kind of claim that I'm seeking mental counseling or that this will all get better somehow. But I have sought that counsel before and I've taken antidepressants and I've been in great life circumstances and I've had the support of great friends who have been far, FAR too burdened by my bullshit. And none of that has made even the slightest of differences. I am fucked up and the worst part about this is the gradual realization over years of coping and living as best I can that there's no solution, no escape, no magic pill or fairy dust to alleviate this.
So, I dunno. I mean, I literally don't know what to do. I'm going to leave and it will probably have the opposite effect of what I'm intending because I will only further isolate myself in an effort to spare others from knowing me. Even now, self-loathing Snake is behind the steering wheel and even this action isn't so much about curing myself as it is about punishing myself, because I always have to punish myself, it makes me feel good to do that.
...This isn't helping at all. I thought at first I had reached some huge epiphany but, nope! Nothing life-changing or earth-shattering here. Hell, nothing any of you didn't already know about me or couldn't predict.
But it's clear at any rate that the happiness I'm searching for can't be found here -- self-loathing Snake has thrived so much here that it's practically his hometown. It's his fucking stomping grounds. I come here to feel terrible about myself and the world generally and, truth be told, NPF is great at serving that exact purpose for me, while simultaneously providing Real Snake with genuine fellowship and companionship with those of you who I genuinely do consider friends. But every time I come here, it's for the express purpose of wasting what little spare time I have making myself miserable. It is a continuously self-fulfilling prophecy of the worst possible kind, wherein I am asking all of you to shout me down on behalf of myself.
And worst of all, all of this can even corrupt my best friendships. I consider Kim a great friend, yet the comparatively few times I've antagonized her have almost always centered around Self-Destructive Snake taking some social justice issue and trying to, however subconsciously or inadvertently, make it really about poor, precious, pitiful, unlovable Snake.
This is a fucking neverending pattern and it has sunk friendships before and it will sink every friendship I have with all of you if I stick around. Eventually you will all hate me and I will persist in collecting more examples of your hatred of me by playing the part of the over-defensive naive sucker, all the while secretly enjoying every last morsel of negative emotions you serve me. I will fucking goad you all into calling me all kinds of awful shit and I will somehow simultaneously love and hate the experience and leave feeling wounded and afraid and distraught but also ecstatic. Soon you will all hate me every bit as much as Batgirl hates me and every bit as much as so many people who've left this community grew to hate me.
So rather then continuing to inflict this upon anyone, I'm just gonna walk away. And, I dunno.
I just don't fucking know.
I've been living like this with these exact feelings for decades on end and it's never, ever, ever going to change.
But once I'm gone this dying community is going to stop decaying and it's going to grow again because it sure as hell won't be getting any worse once I'm out of it.
This has nothing to do with any of you. Absolutely nothing! You're all great people. In fact, I am explicitly writing this message only to inform you of the fact that me no longer be around here has nothing to do with you. I am not angry with Matt, or batgirl, or Shiney, or Fenris, or whoever you think I'm irrationally upset with.
If anything I'm just kind of upset with myself.
NPF has become a kind of a drug for me. Specifically, however, it's the kind of drug that only a really depressed person with serious self-esteem issues could enjoy. It's a negativity drug. It's where I go to remind myself of how worthless I want to feel, in the context of guaranteed arguments I can have with people who will insult me personally and who I will be insulted by.
It's been this huge-ass feedback loop for me to garner pity from certain people and anger from others. It's really subconscious, though. Like I genuinely didn't realize it until I saw Fenris' technically-inappropriate response to my ranting and my initial reaction was practically relief.
When you're depressed and you hate yourself a part of you thrives off that kind of shit, being hated somehow becomes desirable in this warped way. Only there's this extreme cognitive dissonance when half of you likes yourself well enough and the other half doesn't, and suddenly half of you is defensive and argumentative and rationally advocating for your own best interests while the other half is SUBCONSCIOUSLY TYPING INFLAMMATORY STATEMENTS IN GIGANTIC BOLD FONT in the desperate, almost perverse hopes that others will despise you every bit as much as you despise yourself.
This has been a constant problem for me that's generally been way in the background of my existence here -- I kind of want to stress that because I don't want this explanation of things to become some sort of a dominant narrative of "How Snake [Has Always] Worked." This depression thing has always been there but it has never defined all of me. Like, I think there have been momentary outbursts of it all in the past but it was generally contained to these tiny fragmentary bits and pieces. There were ancillary moments, but...
But lately, it's getting worse. I genuinely think I had an experience a few days back where a part of me was actually deriving pleasure from the fact that I had managed to piss off Kim and some of Kim's most egregious detractors all at once. And just now I wanted to adamantly believe that Batgirl hated me. I was feeding off this notion that a person who I liked and respected (yes, Batgirl, I actually do respect you) hated my guts and thought I was worthless and irredeemable.
This shit is just unhealthy. It leads me to this weird double-life situation where there's a Snake who's a real person and who's genuine and authentic with you guys and who has real friendships with many of you and who enjoys arguing a bit too much because he's a lawyer and who types Snakewalls but that's just who he is. But then there's this other Snake who wants that Snake to suffer and who hates Snake with such a passion that even those of you who genuinely despise me couldn't match him and there's almost this secret simultaneous mission where that Snake is trying to convince you all to hate Snake as much as he hates himself.
And, like, so much is just explained adequately with that illuminated. There are a few of you who real-Snake just likes so gosh darn much that real-Snake can't afford to have the self-loathing Snake sabotage for too long or in too lasting a way, so I'll always patch shit up with people like Poch and Kim. But if I'm not attached or invested in a 'real' friendship with you, and especially if you've antagonized a friend of mine, self-loathing Snake is the predominant Snake. He wants you to hate him and find him revolting and annoying and insufferable and, even now, he wants you to be disgusted as you're reading this.
I know I've been describing this almost outlandishly as some kind of multiple-personality disorder and that's not it at all. There's only one me and I've always been in full control behind the steering wheel, I just have very contradictory desires and emotions...and a constant dark cloud around me that tries to sabotage anything I work toward.
I also want to be abundantly clear that this shit I'm working through has at times exacerbated negative behaviors but it's never like, completely changed a thought process or anything. When it comes to my personal beliefs about social justice issues, I've generally been honest and forthright with my actual, genuine opinions. Those of you who despise me not because of the dramatic flair and the penchant for ALL CAPS SCREAMING when I'm upset but who actually despise me for like, my core beliefs when it comes to the issues... well, you really DO hate me. But even those of you who fit that description have often been goaded by me on a subconscious level to hate me more or to make your hatred of me more vocal, if that makes any sense.
In other circumstances I'd end this with some kind of claim that I'm seeking mental counseling or that this will all get better somehow. But I have sought that counsel before and I've taken antidepressants and I've been in great life circumstances and I've had the support of great friends who have been far, FAR too burdened by my bullshit. And none of that has made even the slightest of differences. I am fucked up and the worst part about this is the gradual realization over years of coping and living as best I can that there's no solution, no escape, no magic pill or fairy dust to alleviate this.
So, I dunno. I mean, I literally don't know what to do. I'm going to leave and it will probably have the opposite effect of what I'm intending because I will only further isolate myself in an effort to spare others from knowing me. Even now, self-loathing Snake is behind the steering wheel and even this action isn't so much about curing myself as it is about punishing myself, because I always have to punish myself, it makes me feel good to do that.
...This isn't helping at all. I thought at first I had reached some huge epiphany but, nope! Nothing life-changing or earth-shattering here. Hell, nothing any of you didn't already know about me or couldn't predict.
But it's clear at any rate that the happiness I'm searching for can't be found here -- self-loathing Snake has thrived so much here that it's practically his hometown. It's his fucking stomping grounds. I come here to feel terrible about myself and the world generally and, truth be told, NPF is great at serving that exact purpose for me, while simultaneously providing Real Snake with genuine fellowship and companionship with those of you who I genuinely do consider friends. But every time I come here, it's for the express purpose of wasting what little spare time I have making myself miserable. It is a continuously self-fulfilling prophecy of the worst possible kind, wherein I am asking all of you to shout me down on behalf of myself.
And worst of all, all of this can even corrupt my best friendships. I consider Kim a great friend, yet the comparatively few times I've antagonized her have almost always centered around Self-Destructive Snake taking some social justice issue and trying to, however subconsciously or inadvertently, make it really about poor, precious, pitiful, unlovable Snake.
This is a fucking neverending pattern and it has sunk friendships before and it will sink every friendship I have with all of you if I stick around. Eventually you will all hate me and I will persist in collecting more examples of your hatred of me by playing the part of the over-defensive naive sucker, all the while secretly enjoying every last morsel of negative emotions you serve me. I will fucking goad you all into calling me all kinds of awful shit and I will somehow simultaneously love and hate the experience and leave feeling wounded and afraid and distraught but also ecstatic. Soon you will all hate me every bit as much as Batgirl hates me and every bit as much as so many people who've left this community grew to hate me.
So rather then continuing to inflict this upon anyone, I'm just gonna walk away. And, I dunno.
I just don't fucking know.
I've been living like this with these exact feelings for decades on end and it's never, ever, ever going to change.
But once I'm gone this dying community is going to stop decaying and it's going to grow again because it sure as hell won't be getting any worse once I'm out of it.