empty vessel

Guest post by the wonderful and brilliantly talented phantasmagothica.

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we human beings know a lot about deserving.

we know if someone had it coming, we know if someone should've had it better. we learn so much about each other and ourselves as people, we have so many thoughts and beliefs about deserving. it helps us cope with whatever reality surrounds us.

the disillusionment came earlier for me than most people around me, I suppose. no matter how hard you try (or don't), sometimes you just never really get what you think you deserve. or what others believe you deserve. and it's harsh to come to terms with it. to learn the world isn't benevolent, to learn that there really is nobody out there balancing the good against the bad. to learn that it's all up to us, and we're not very capable of doing the right thing unbiased.

I think I always wanted a lot from life. I wanted more books, I wanted more friends, I wanted more love, I wanted more nourishment, I wanted more cats, more appreciation, more enthusiasm, more determination, more ambition, more, more, more. there has always been so much left to be desired. it never seemed unrealistic. why should it? I was only wanting to be more human. to live a bit more vividly than the way things seemed to be. and every time I heard somebody say 'you deserved better', it cut through me and made me bleed. it emptied me further than I already felt. how self-involved to want and to cry over not receiving. how obscene to want to be seen. empty vessels truly do make the most noise.

what kind of a ridiculous concept is 'deserving' anyway? it flits, it oscillates, it expands and contracts with each person it goes to. at some point in early history we decided this is how we will comfort ourselves. we decided that 'you deserve better' is the balm we need to soothe our disappointment and failure.

anyway. what I'm trying to say is after wanting more and more and receiving lesser and lesser, I learnt to shrink myself. shrink my wants, shrink my needs, shrink my self. the smaller I get, the lesser I'll need. the lesser I'll hear the words 'you deserve better'. I won't need to deserve better if I keep my needs small. if I keep myself small. learn this bitter lesson early, learn it before you're 50, 'settled', and crying about how you wanted so much (how you still do) and how you wish you could've been content with the empty rooms and corridors in your life. learn it now, please learn it now. don't wait for another let down, don't want for someone else's joy to remind you of the bottom of the black pit you're now happy to call your home. learn it so that these walls around you are all you want, are all you need to get by each day.

when you'll want less, you'll hurt less. when you unlearn the concept of 'deserving', you'll be free. because that is what it is, after all. just a concept. nobody is keeping records here. if you cut loose everything that makes you who you are, then you won't need anything. and what a blissful existence that seems to me.

I'd kill to have a moment where I didn't feel like it could've been more. I'm ashamed of my desire for more. I'm ashamed.

how utterly shameful to have learned the same lesson for a quarter of a century, how utterly shameful to be willfully blind to it, to still want more. I lose track of how many times I punished myself for it. I lose track of how many times I had to hold my heart in my hands and crush it, make it compact. shrink its volume, choke up the empty spaces so it won't desire to fill them up with all that I keep wanting. it's such a luxury to break myself over the dichotomy of believing I deserve more and unlearning the entire idea when the world is on lock down because of a once-in-a-century pandemic. how unbearably obnoxious to want a more fulfilling life when people are losing theirs to a fuckin virus.

I'm still trying to forget each time I heard 'you deserve better'. I'm still trying to forget each time someone could've given me what we thought I deserved, but never delivered. I'm still trying to forget each time I believed I could have more but came up empty. I'm still trying to forget each want, each need. I'm still trying to forget parts of me to make space for the contentment I should be feeling but don't. I'm still trying to forget that not everybody understands the value of offering what someone deserves. I'm still trying to quit giving people all of me, all of what I believe they deserve.

because, honestly, as human beings we know a lot about 'deserving' but we don't do much about it.

as human beings, we forget the universe's indifference to it.

To read more from this supremely talented writer and intellectual visit phantasmagothica.wordpress.com