‘Florals in spring – how original.’

So, floral patterns and ‘coral-coloured’ tops are in this season, apparently. Which means my new uniform for work (we have to wear certain types of the shop’s own stock – 50% discount baby, oh YEAH) is basically a choice between pink, or flowers. The only two things I swore I would never wear.

So today, I sold my soul and bought a couple of pink tops – the lesser of the two evils. I don’t know what’s worse – the fact that I bought them, or the fact that I look so damn good in them. I felt a sort of dirty, guilty pleasure in wearing them.

It has to be said, though – the best thing about being vehement about never doing something is the part where you just give in and actually do it. It’s a fabulous way of deriving pleasure from doing something you would have previously found distasteful or disagreeable, and in fact stems from that previous distaste.

I’ve decided to give up being principled about clothing, anyway. When you’re in your early teens you feel there’s so much importance in being individual and non-conformist – now, I see people with that same attitude that I had really not so long ago, and I can’t get over how utterly pointless it all seems.

Maybe this is just part of the moulding-into-a-productive-member-of-society process – the part where you stop caring about everything – but it seems that if a person has to resort to a particular style of clothing in order to show how unique they are, then there’s really not much about them that’s unique at all. To be fair, at the moment I really don’t think there’s anything that’s spectacularly unique about anybody, so it’s a moot point, but if someone wants to show that there is something original about him/herself, he/she should DO something original – there’s nothing original about buying an item of clothing that has been mass-produced in order for hundreds of members of the populace to wear identical replicas. The entire fashion retail process is founded on the principle of conformity.

En plus, it’s a general irony of the universe that anyone who tries to avoid conforming in their teens only ends up conforming to another, slightly smaller, trend – the ‘non-conformist’ style. We’re herd animals, it’s an indisputable, undefeatable fact of nature. So trying to differentiate oneself from the herd in a non-natural aesthetic way is just hilariously futile.

So, it pisses me off when I get dirty looks from people who obviously consider themselves ‘non-conformist’ because of what I’m wearing. I don’t wear what I wear because it’s in fashion – most of the time, if I buy something from a shop, it’s because I like the look of it, not just because it’s there. It’s actually difficult to buy items of clothing that aren’t in fashion – you have to go out of your way and spend more money to buy items which haven’t been mass-produced cheaply in warehouses in the Philippines for chain stores that correspond to what’s in this month’s Vogue. Chances are, your nearest, most convenient chain store won’t sell anything that isn’t in fashion – that’s the whole point, it’s the concept that keeps the industry from stagnating. I’m not saying I agree with it, I’m just saying I’m lazy – sometimes, I will go to a more Gothic shop if I have the money and cba going into the city, but the rest of the time it’s easier to just buy whatever’s the least hideous.

And if I’m not wearing something I like the look of, it’s because I work in a fucking chain store. I have to be the model, brainless fashion clone. I don’t like the fact that I’ve sold my soul to Satan, but I have. So I get pissed off to fuck when people judge me for looking ‘preppy’ – I’ve been there, done that, got the Metalcamp t-shirt. I’m a fucking veteran in whatever the fuck principle they think they’re defending, so let me have my cheap, tacky, mass-produced pink t-shirt and leave me the fuck alone.

And another thing – why does fashion sense have to correspond to musical taste these days? What, do I have to wear my ripped-to-fuck black baggy jeans, New Rocks and dog collar (yes, I fucking have them) to be allowed to like metal? Fuck you. Chances are my musical taste is heavier than Fall Out Boy or whatever fucking shit it is kids listen to these days.

If anyone’s saw pictures of me at Metalcamp last summer, you’ll know I was walking around in my brightly-coloured shorts and a sun-hat. I got told by some wide-ass German guy there that I was ‘at the wrong festival.’ What in the yellow rubbery fuck?

It was fucking 40 degrees celsius. I might have been wearing heavy, black, full-length trousers – if I was a complete retard.

Personality.

Touching briefly (hah) on the topic of Christian constructs and the issue of being a ‘bad’ or a ‘good’ person, I have to address the obvious underlying issue here – the soul. Which, for all intensive purposes, we shall consider synonymous with the concept of personality – a concept I’ve blethered on many times in the past.

Here’s the basic summary of my beliefs on the issue at present:
We are not unique. There is no underlying soul or entity which will determine how we will act in a given situation, based on permanent, pre-determined characteristics.

I think the concept of the soul has come about because of this illusion of originality* that people have about themselves. Which is just that – an illusion. We are all driven by the same motivations – basic requirements e.g. food, shelter, company, as well as higher motives such as desire for respect amongst ones peers, power, money, which are just extensions of the basic ones.

I’m not saying people aren’t different from one another – different people do have different behaviours. But it’s not because we’re inherently varied or wonderful. It’s not because we’re different as ‘people,’ but because the human race is unique for its greater – hence varied – intellectual development compared to other species. Our perceived characteristics reflect our upbringings. As some of us have been brought up in different environments from others, and have consequently been exposed to different influential factors during the key stages of intellectual development, different people will react differently to different stimuli. It’s basic behavioural habituation.

For example, you’re walking down the street, and a stranger approaches you and, unprovoked, slaps you in the face. Keeping to the theme of our Biblical references, whether you ‘turn the other cheek’ or take the ‘eye for an eye’ approach will depend on how you have been taught to react, or how you have observed others react e.g. parents, in similar situations.

Another example – apparently, 75% of convicted child abusers were abused themselves.

So, the way we react to certain stimuli is not a prescribed behaviour caused by our being ‘nice’ or ‘impatient’ (or some other adjective) people. As far as I’m concerned, none of the inherent values commonly associated with the soul technically exist. If someone is described as ‘nice’ (I can’t say I’ve ever had the pleasure), it is because they have acted nicely in the past, not because they necessarily will in the future.

I know I’m beating the dead horse here, but for some reason this issue has been really bugging me.

*I got a copy of Girl, Interrupted for Christmas – “Whatever we call it – mind, character, soul – we like to think we possess something that is greater than the sum of our neurons and that ‘animates’ us.”

End.

Spirituality.

I said previously that unconditional love is a religious concept. According to wikipedia it means showing love towards someone regardless of his or her actions or beliefs. It is hence something which is above and beyond human rationale and other material, earthly things and so implies the existence of a higher concept of being by which humans can associate with one another – the soul. This is all, of course, associated with spirituality which, by definition, is that which is above and beyond the material.

This just happens to be what we’re covering in our RE class at school at the moment.

But first, I’ll give you the low-down on my religious education teacher for this rotation – we’ll just call him Mr X, for Christ. He’s, well… Christian. Very Christian. He’s one of these bizarre born-again types – the product of an ‘epiphany’ he had when he was younger, when he was ‘touched by God’ and made the decision to devote the rest of his life to Him. You know the type.

And on the surface, he seems like the loveliest guy – annoying, but lovely. Everything he does is entirely New Testament – you know, turn the other cheek, love thy neighbour as you love yourself, etc – and he’s just very well-meaning. We spent our RE periods sitting in the circle of happiness while he sings hymns at us and tells us to ‘get in touch with our feelings’ and we’re all very awkward and polite and pretend to like it, even to each other.

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not a ‘get in touch with my feelings’ kind of person. I’m a ’sit-in-the-corner-and-hate-everyone’ kind of person. And so that’s precisely what I’ve been doing, and thusly I’ve noticed that Mr X isn’t perhaps as kind and well-meaning as he may seem. He tells us to say whatever we feel, whether our beliefs are Christian or otherwise, but I can’t help but feel that he’s always subtly manipulating the conversation towards his way of thinking, and so we don’t notice when we automatically start thinking about things that way too.

Being in there has left me feeling vaguely annoyed for some time now, and I think that’s me just put my finger on why – On the surface, we’re made to feel that our discussions are completely open, without any boundaries. But I’m left feeling stifled because the topics are actually being closed in by boundaries I hadn’t yet detected.

How can he expect to encourage rational thought in people when the very topics we’re discussing have no place for that element?

An example, since I’m being annoyingly vague, is when we were talking about revenge. One of the boys said that if someone killed a family member of his, he’d hunt the murderer down and kill him in order to even the score. Mr X asked in response, ‘Do you think that would make you a better person?’
The boy said, ‘Yes, it would make me feel better.’
Mr X: ‘Yes, but would it make you a better person?’

And the boy just answered that question in the negative, without even pausing to think what it means. He didn’t even realise that being a ‘better person,’ or any kind of person, is an inherently Christian construct. In reality, I believe, there’s no such thing. Being a ‘bad’ or a ‘good’ person would imply that there’s a scale somewhere, that each of our actions is tallied on the spiritual blackboard under ‘bad’ or ‘good,’ to be totalled up at some point and then to be answered for – think end of the world, St. Peter at the gates of heaven scenario.

As a result, ‘bad’ and ‘good’ people are ascribed different characteristics – the concept of selfishness, for example, is commonly associated with being a bad person. Such a concept is equally vapid. The term ’selfishness’ is used to ascribe negative connotations to behaviour which, before human analysis, had was morally neutral (there being, at the time, no such thing as morality). Hoarding as much as you possibly can for yourself and/or immediate family is typical animal behaviour – it’s survival instinct. When an animal does this, no such associations with badness or selfishness are made. It’s the nature of living things to kill and compete with one another – the only difference between humans and other animals, therefore, is that the resources we’re competing for are themselves human contructs. Rather than food, or habitat, or sunlight, we compete for money. But it still all comes down to land and possesions.

In any case, it’s nothing to do with ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ People will kill one another, people will fight with one another over material things, people will form purely sexual attachments – it’s human nature. It’s survival mechanisms that, while they are now fairly redundant, will stay with us because they’ve pretty much been bred into us, whatever that means. There’s nothing we can do, and despite the fact that our heightened intelligence makes us as a species, for some reason that I’ve yet to discover, feel the need to go against this, we will never be successful on a large scale.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to change it – to be ‘good people,’ as it were – I’m just saying we shouldn’t be disappointed when our efforts are fruitless. I’m only saying this because if everyone is nice to everyone else, the happiness of each individual is optimised. I don’t see morality in terms of a necessary categorical imperative - it’s just the avoidance of actions which would harm others. It all boils down to the very simple ethic of reciprocity – treat others as you would like to be treated.* Not because it is ‘just the right thing to do,’ or because it’ll look good on the blackboard when you get to the pearly gates, but because it maximises pleasure in this lifetime, which is quite possibly the only lifetime. In that way it ties in with this whole pleasure-seeking, hedonistic ideal I’ve been toying with. Actions which are considered ‘good’ are not so because they are inherently selfless, but because they are, in fact, selfish. Maximising the pleasure of others maximises one’s own pleasure.

I love it.

On that same vein, I give you psychological egoism, which is this delightful theory I stumbled across on wikipedia. Is it the view that humans are always motivated by rational self-interest, even in what seem to be acts of altruism. It really hit a chord with me, because I know we’ve all secretly wondered if our selfless actions are actually selfless. And, I suppose you can guess, I don’t think they are. It’s a well-known fact that we get a ‘good feeling’ out of doing something generally considered to be good, or that we know will benefit someone. There’s are feelings of pride and self-worth which come with making sacrifices for people. Of course, in lower animals, feelings such as pride and self-worth don’t exist, and so no animal ever does anything altruistic. And then of course, there might be a belief in karma, and so good actions are perceived to lead to an indirect benefit to oneself.

But all this doesn’t really matter. The motivations behind a ‘good’ action are superfluous – as long as it results in the maximisation of happiness (not necessarily for the greatest number of people – I’m not too sure about the whole Consequentialist thing) then who cares why someone did it?

*Of course the problem with this is that our actions don’t just directly affect others, they also indirectly affect people, which makes consideration of whether an action will unnecessarily hurt people much less simple.

Growing up.

This is a term I use fairly frequently in my rants, and I think I had better define just what it denotes for me, as it’s commonly understood to be something pretty innocuous out of the context of these posts. It’s really something fairly ominous, in my understanding.

When you’re young, ‘growing up,’ is always made out to be some magical transformation into adulthood, at which point other grown-ups can’t patronise you anymore because you, too, know everything there is to know about everything. And as I’ve got older, I’ve begun to understand that this epiphany that everyone has is just the realisation that there’s nothing to realise. There is… nothing.

And so, upon this realisation, an individual will promptly succumb to the pressures of a society of which they were previously ignorant, and abandon all of the optimistic, well-meaning ideals and goals of youth in favour of settling down, making a living and generally accepting mediocrity as inevitable (and conforming accordingly).

Signs of being dead inside include tea-drinking and liberal use of the word ’successful’ to describe your position in life (one of my least favourite words in the English language).

Competition.

The thing about applying to med school in the UK, and I assume everywhere else, is that it’s competitive as fuck. And I’m not a competitive person.

Whenever I confess this to someone, they act like this is a bad thing, although I’m not entirely sure why. As one guy said outside the interview room at Glasgow university, ‘Well, you need to be.’

That’s not necessarily true, I don’t think. I mean, obviously it is in the sense that in most school’s there’s one place for every seven people who apply, but just because I don’t take well to competing with others doesn’t mean I want it any less. The career itself doesn’t require any typical business-like qualities such as competitiveness – the course doesn’t either, for that matter – only the application process. So, no, I don’t need to be competitive to be a medical professional. It’s not really a high priority on the list of requirements – certainly it comes way after attributes such as patience, empathy, professionalism, and a general want to be (and interest) in the profession due to some form of goodwill. And I do want it, I want it a lot. And I’ve got all the requirements. Surely that alone should be enough for a discerning interviewer to see that I’m a good candidate. That said, maybe I’m not what they’re looking for, in which case I trust their judgement – I don’t think I need to be in any way cunning or underhanded for them to realise to what degree that may or may not be true. If I want it, and if I’m well-suited, it will show without me having to make any more of an effort than I already have. And if I’m not, then that’s also down to my compatibility as a person with the profession – I don’t think any amount of application effort is going to change that. I just need to put in enough work to let the information they have about me be an accurate depiction of my attributes and motivations, and let them decide if it’s enough or not.

Competition is just too capitalist a term – in industry, the result is that there’s always going to be losers. And, in my mind, that just doesn’t seem compatible with a job which consists entirely of trying to improve the health and lifestyle of people – ALL people. Competitiveness is for careers, and of course being a doctor counts as a career, but I don’t see it in that sort of light. If I got the job, for me it would be something which I do because it interests me and because I’m giving something back to the community. The word ‘career’ to me means doing a job and trying to advance in it so as to earn more money. And so I don’t see the job in that light, because money really has bugger all to do with it.

In fact, I’m scared of the job for the fact that doctors do generally earn a lot more money than anyone else in the health sector. I don’t want the older me to have a lot money – I don’t trust her with it. I’m too weak-willed. Money distorts people, it completely changes their focuses and motivations in life. Obviously the older me, being a bit more beaten down by the world and unable to see past the norms and common goals of the people, will want lots of money. Maybe there’s something I can do to prevent me ever earning a lot of money, that I can do now, while I’m still lucid, and wise and seventeen. So that I can still do something I’m interested in without becoming blinded by such a shallow prospect.

Although I’m sure that won’t do much good, as the fruitless wanting of it will be exactly the same has having it, but with less of the apathetic boredom and it will probably destroy me and narrow my mind even more.

One of my favourite quotes from The Liar by Stephen Fry is when the protagonist and his schoolfriends have just circulated a dissident magazine around his public school, and he fears that in twenty years or so, when he reads it again, he will shudder at the pretension of it. “It was terrible to know that time would lead him to betray everything he now believed in.
What I am now is right, he told himself. I will never see things as clearly again, I will never understand everything as fully as I do at this minute.” It’s written ironically, I know, but it still strikes a chord with me. There’s that old cliche which I hear constantly that young people always think they know everything about the world, that you don’t realise how ignorant you’ve been until you get older, and I’ve already been over what I think of people calling me naive. But I really do think that I’ll never be more wise than I am at seventeen years old.

And I can already feel myself growing up, and it’s a little scary. I think if my youthful buoyancy and selfless simplicity isn’t already gone, then there’s not much left. I guess the reason I rant so furiously in this blog is that I’m panicking to preserve something of it that I can remember, that I can refer back to when I feel my mind has become completely clouded by trivialities. And the reason I get so unhappy with the things I write is that it’s obvious by everything I write that there’s not really much to preserve anymore.

Fashion

I’ve always expressed a hate for the fashion industry, for various reasons; how it encourages conformity, sets women a ridiculously high standard of beauty and profits from, and encourages, people’s insecurities about their appearance.

Hypocritically, I’m a compulsive buyer. In my defense, I’m selective – I don’t buy an item of clothing because that’s what everyone else is wearing at the time. But if I see something that I find aesthetically pleasing, I want it. It’s a base urge. However, I’ve come up with a pretentious-sounding theory to justify it to myself.

Put simply (since I know of no other way to put things), the female body is the perfect medium for artistic expression. This isn’t an original conclusion, I’m sure. It is the canvas on which the artist (in this case, the designer) paints his/her masterpiece.

But it’s more than that – it’s dynamic. Unlike a canvas, the human body interacts with the work displayed on it – the clothing. This is because, unlike a canvas, the body itself is a work of art. It’s unique, and original, and beautiful. Hence the aesthetic appeal of the clothing is meaningless without the body, and it is the combination of the two which make it so bloody addictive.

Despite this, I still walked out of The Devil Wears Prada feeling absolutely shit about myself. What was the moral of that film?!

Clothing allows the wearer to express personal creativity without following the crowd, which is a seemingly contradictory statement. Normally it is associated with a celebration of conformity. But it conveys personal preference if one only wears what he/she finds aesthetically pleasing. It’s equivalent to a painter carrying his portfolio with him everywhere he goes, in clear view of the public eye, in order to communicate the aspects which make him unique. Except that unlike painting, or music, or theatre – skills which take years of dedication to develop – fashion is easily accessible to the general public who are excluded from the more highbrow art forms. I read something that made me think about this in my book:

“According to [Walter] Benjamin, the major repressive technique of the bourgeoisie with respect to art is achieved by creating an ‘aura’ about it, and ascribing to it notions of authenticity, uniqueness and originality. He believed that discussion of the work of art’s beauty – if carried out to the exclusion of its social context – could also contribute to this false ‘aura.’

‘Bourgeois society treats works of art as if they are a mysterious secret to be worshipped – as a cultic substitute for religion so as to sustain art’s economic value and their own class power.’ “

That attitude is not so much relevant today as it was back in the early 1900’s when Marxist philosophy was obviously a big hit, but we can definitely still identify with it. There is an aura of the mystique and inaccessible about art, as I’ve mentioned before in relation to Charlie and his pretentiousness. People are made to believe by others, although not necessarily wealthier others anymore, that they don’t understand the traditional art forms as well as they do.

Hedonism, Aestheticism, Narcissism

Today I’ve been sitting in doing bugger all, except reading a beginner’s guide to aesthetics, which I know nothing about. Even now, after I’ve read half of it. It says something about my intelligence that I can’t even grasp a beginner’s guide to basic philosophy – I always finish these things with a sense of only having mentally scraped the surface of the content. Nonetheless, the bits that I do understand I find very interesting. Even if I could explain them, I wouldn’t do it here, as I’m trying to avoid becoming the pretentious fuckwit that I seemed destined to be. I want to have read these things motivated only by a thirst for knowledge – a desire which is fairly apathetic at the best of times, meaning I never actually get anything read – rather than the urge to immediately reiterate it to others with the hope of impressing them. Now that I’ve officially given in and become dead inside, and began to once again pursue the medicine career under social pressure, I need to study the subjects which interest me in my own time.

It seems that at this point in my life the schools of thought which are most relevant to me are hedonism, aestheticism and narcissism. It just seems like it’s the right time for me, in my adolescence, to say ‘fuck it’ to conventional principles of what is valuable in life and set off on a rampant pursuit of pleasure, paying no regard to my inevitable self-destruction.

That would be wonderful, I think, but it’s unrealistic. It’s too late. My habits and principles have already been formed – I am set in my ways. I am unrelentingly conscientious, driven by a unquenchable desire to ‘succeed‘ (which, I suppose, at this age is synonymous with good grades and sensible behaviour), probably derived from society’s expectations of any child who shows a hint of academic aptitude. As a result, I’ve been subject to it for most of my life. The thing is, I’m not intelligent. Well, no more or less intelligent than the next person. I recently took the UK Clinical Aptitude Test (UKCAT) which is now obligatory for all applicants to UK medical schools. It’s basically an IQ test, designed to make selection easier, since the course has so many more applicants than the universities are able to accommodate, all of whom are high-achievers, which makes it difficult to differentiate between them. 80% of people who apply in Scotland have 5A’s in their Highers in 5th year, which is one more than the required AAAAB, and the most that 5th years in public school are allowed to take. Hence, academic merit is not enough – according to undergraduate prospectuses, candidates must have ‘non-academic’ qualities (work experience, etc.), be 18 or over, and, now, presumably, have a fairly high score on this test. I took an extra subject last year, which means I have six A’s, which is my edge. Despite this, however, I scored fairly average (which is poorly, for me) on the UKCAT, which may be my downfall. I deliberately didn’t try out any practice cognitive ability questions apart from those provided by the official website in order to familiarise candidates with the layout of the exam, as it is, after all, an intelligence test, and according to the website no further preparation can be done, as their is no syllabus on which they can provide questions.

It’s bollocks, of course – they only want people to take the test equally unprepared so as to make selection easier. You can certainly find similar types of questions and tutor your brain into the optimum processes for answering them, but due to the combined factors of my laziness and desire to ruin every one’s expectations of myself, I did none of this. And I scored average. Which, I feel, accurately reflects my intellectual ability. I work hard, and I get good grades. You don’t NEED to be bright to pass highschool exams. It’s just a matter of memorising the syllabus, which takes effort, but not intelligence.

So, because when I was 8-years-old I was perhaps slightly more advanced intellectually then my peers, I set the standard for myself for the rest of my academic life, and am expected by society to live up to it, despite the fact that my peers have long since caught up with and, in many cases, surpassed me in intelligence. One of my pet hates is that when I get a lower mark than usual on a test, or someone in the class beats me, everyone acts so surprised. ‘I beat LAURA! Oh my God!!!’ or, ‘A B?! Laura got a B?!’ It annoys the shit out of me. I’m not competitive – I’m really not peeved if I get beaten by people in a subject. I don’t have a lot of self-confidence and normally I don’t expect to do as well as I do, my recent exam results being a good example. So yes, I’m glad that you got a better mark than me, I’m happy for you, but must you use me as a constant standard of intelligence? I’m here by my own choice, my own work, and I can just as easily not be here if I want to, if it weren’t for the constant fear of disappointing people and the urge to live up to their expectations. I should be able to do whatever the fuck I want.

So, really, the choice isn’t mine, and this returns me to my earlier point. I will always be the hard-working, ’successful,’ person. There’s no place in society for me if I discard all my money-making potential in favour of making the most of life. I’ll never have promiscuous sex or do recreational drugs, or develop an all-consuming substance addiction, because deep down, I’m the person everyone wants me to be. In all seriousness, I’ll probably end up in an unhappy marriage with children I don’t, and will never, want, and work over-time until said marriage breaks up, just like my Dad, and wake up one day when I’m 45 and realise I’ve missed out on everything in life, by which time it will be too late to change my priorities. Basically, I’ll become everything I don’t want to be.

In that respect, I think I’m like Lord Henry from Dorian Gray (speaking of aesthetics), who, throughout the entire novel spouts scandalous rhetoric about The New Hedonism, and criticises conventional morality, but never seems to express these principles in his own actions, or really do anything but attend dinner-parties. I am a hypocrite, the most hated type of person in society. But I like the hypocrite, because he is everyone, really. The reason people resent hypocrites so much is because when they look at them they see their personal qualities mirrored. As in the preface of the previously mentioned novel, a.k.a. the greatest book ever written in the history of the universe (because it’s the only book I’m able to understand); “The 19th century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in the glass.”

God help me, I’m becoming a tea-drinker.

This is a sure sign that I’m dead inside. The world is chewing me up and is about to spit me out as a well-rounded, bitter, productive, adult member of society who lacks a will to live.

Only grown-ups drink tea.

Charlie told me yesterday that I have Alzheimer’s.

I’m convinced I caught it from him. He was the one who gave me the fucking cup of tea. Now I CRAVE it. It was all just a cunning, elaborate plan to crush my youthful naivety and optimism.

I will destroy him.

I am an arse.

I realised this on Tuesday night.

Well, no, I didn’t, I’d be ever-so-slightly delusional if I hadn’t noticed it beforehand but this is what really made me consider it:

I was coming out of work with Charlie, who was telling me something about blueberries being antitoxins, and I told him, jokingly, ‘I don’t care.’ It was in a tone that let him know I was only mocking his useless facts, and he understood this, and didn’t take offense, but later on that night when I remembered it, I realised what a mean and insensitive thing it was to say. And I can’t for the life of me figure out why I said it: I LOVE his useless facts, and his plural pedantry, and his wee dark blue Peugeot 106, and his milk-drinking. It’s just one of the wee things that makes him so endearing (and I, strangely enough, do not feel odd talking in a patronising tone about how cute someone thirty years my senior is).

And I do this all the time: at school; at work; when I’m with anyone, really, or on the phone, or on a forum, or even on this (in fact, especially on this). People think I am ridiculous. And no wonder, when I keeping saying things, or doing things, to make myself ridiculous. And after I do these stupid things, or even as the words are projectile-vomiting from my mouth, I’m thinking, ‘Shut up! What are you saying?! Are you even thinking about what’s coming out of your mouth?!’

I continually wonder why I hardly ever click with people, why I annoy them so much, and this is why. I am an arse. Everything I do in my interactions with people is a completely inaccurate reflection of my personality. Like when a close friend reveals they have a mood disorder, or are contemplating suicide, and when you wonder why they’ve seemed fine up until now, they tell you they’ve been ‘putting on a mask’ in front of everyone to make them seem okay. Except their masks are convincing, and mine is just a mess. If I was going to deliberately put on a mask, it would at least be a decent one.

So maybe I’m wrong when I say these actions don’t do my personality justice. Maybe they do, and I’m just not willing to admit it, that I’m a bad person. If such a thing even exists. And if it is just a very worn and cracked mask I am wearing, then I’ve been wearing it so long that I’m not sure where my personality ends and my mask begins. It all comes back to my confusion about what a personality even is, if I even have one, if such a concept even exists. If I’ve been acting like a complete fanny for most of my adolescent life, then whose to say I have any other attributes left? If a person considers himself to have the quality of, for example, generosity, but never expresses this in his actions, then he must be wrong in his assertion, if what makes up a person’s personality is based on the way they behave. But if that person only expresses his generosity when nobody else is there to see it, can he be considered generous? Is your personality made up of the attributes others ascribe to you, or those which you ascribe to yourself? Generosity is perhaps a bad example in my case, or any case; maybe… maybe ‘caring.’ If a person genuinely feels compassion for his fellow man, but in the process of day-to-day social exchange this fails to manifest itself in the opinion of his peers due to whatever social or mental barrier has been placed between his mind and the rest of society, is he ‘compassionate’?

I think that more accurately describes my problem. But then there’s the question of, do I feel compassion for others, at ANY time? I mean, I’ve not really been feeling anything lately, except petty, vague emotions – nothing deep, or poignant, or moving, just scratches on the surface, like jealousy, or insecurity. Am I just inherently like this, is this one of the features of being a bad person, or can it be attributed to some external medical problem that, if removed, would allow my inherent qualities of a ‘good person’ to express themselves, if I even have them at all. If they even exist. I mean, I suppose in order for a person to have inherent (I’m sorry, my thesaurus isn’t handy) good qualities that are just there regardless of external influence or expression, that person would have to have a soul. And the soul doesn’t exist. Therefore, personality, if it is understood in that sense, doesn’t exist.

I remember reading Kurt Cobain’s suicide note, and the inly thing I really remember from it now was that he frequently mentioned empathy. At the time I didn’t know what empathy was – I know now, by the standard defintion, but I still don’t really know what it feels like. It’s something I’ve never felt, not even for the people I care about, not even when they are suffering. I’m numb to the pain of others. There has been only one time when I can say I have experienced pure, unadulterated empathy, which has been entirely liberated from personal motives and the selfishness that dominates every other feeling, or lack thereof, that I experience. Saying it felt wonderful would sound insensitive, and it would be untrue – it was awful – but there’s something really poignant and beautiful about experiencing another person’s tragedy. Not that I was happy that this person had a tragedy – at the time I felt as if I would do anything to prevent it, to make it evaporate, to help him – I suppose there’s something poignant and beautiful about experiencing your own tragedies as well, but that’s obviously coming from a naive, narcisstic, impractically romantic person who has clearly never experienced true tragedy and certainly wouldn’t enjoy it if she did. But it was like rain in a drought season – it felt good just to feel.

I wish I could change myself. I wish I could just slip into a coma, or escape to some mountain range far away from civilisation, where I wouldn’t have to engage in the actions or words or thoughts that I have when I am in society, that I always regret later. I wish I could just wipe the slate of my ‘personality’ clean – all the things I’m not proud of, all the things that I’ve done or said or thought or felt that have made me the self-centred, self-pitying, apathetic person that I am – and start afresh with a blank canvas, and make myself the person I want to be – someone who can help people. Someone who doesn’t embarass herself with every sentence she utters. And the two go hand in hand – if I make myself unfavourable or unpalatable to people, if they think I’m stupid or vacant or insensitive, they won’t want to be close to me. But mostly I just want to care about people. To care about anyone but myself.