My Worthiness
Your view of yourself never matches how others perceive you.
This past summer’s experiences plunged me into a whirlwind of self-doubt that I did not foresee. Donald Trump was lavishly branding COVID-19 as the Chinese virus; after frantically searching for off-campus housing, I lived by myself; I was getting scared on the streets. Being an international student from China, home and belonging became obscure concepts.
“To lack a center, after all, may be to lack something essential to the state of being human; to be rooted, is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul,” Simone Weil said.
The sense of rootlessness and lack of belonging rendered more than some sadness and a bit of moodiness in me. It was crippling. It sucked my energy, filled me with doom and gloom, and with a creative touch, drew out my hope and desire to take actions, the very element required to release me out of the quagmire. I was emotionally and mentally trapped by the perceived incapacity, inadequacy, and the ultimate meaninglessness of my existence.
Such a mental quagmire existed irrespective of my grades, social network, appearance, and various criteria considered as achievements. My dilemma was an internal construction of the self, made believable by the cognitive and psychological processes accompanied and triggered by experiences. This was my customized rabbit hole.
I knew though, that the real me was out there. The me fascinated by both the natural and digital world, the me eager to live to the fullest and challenge the unknown, the same me who decided to come to the other side of the planet and explore another facet of her identity. I could almost see it, touch it, grab it, embrace it, and live it.
I could not — not when I struggled in futility, sinking deeper.
Terrifying and exhausting, the intensity of emotions and huge pull of inaction debilitated my capacity for logic, reason and analysis. I would never be good enough, not for myself and not for anybody. Being so defined by my intellect, my actions and my drive, in those moments, I felt as if I had lost everything.
The nature of such a state, a lack of sense of self, prevented me from regaining it. What am I feeling? What am I experiencing? I could not pin down any words — they were all stuck in my rabbit hole, the dark, messy, moldy little room with an invisible door that I unknowingly stumbled into.
Yes, I heavily and routinely considered the possibility of the “D” word, which brings with it immediate compassion. However, I do not wish to discuss the “D” word here. Over time, I learned to retract from giving myself clinical diagnosis that would overlay another layer of complexity that my mind employs as an excuse to imprison itself.
My mom suggested that I had a false and unreal perception of myself. I accepted this statement — and the implication that my own assessment is faulty. I did not question this, as it was not hard to believe that I was wrong. The irony exists, however, as I question myself in an effort to remedy self-doubt.
Shouldn’t one’s perceptions of oneself, in an environment granting freedom of thoughts and opinions, be the ultimate truth?
After all, shouldn’t my sense of self be the absolute reality, as I perceive the perceiver, the only entity I supposedly have control over, and suggesting otherwise would be subjecting myself to outside judgements and voices? Isn’t it cruel to suggest that my self-perception is flawed, implying that the best judgment of me does not come from myself but lies in the hands of others? In a way, then, should I be readily embracing my quagmire, my rabbit hole, my little dark room, because they are unobtrusively and adamantly a part of me, so paradoxically, my lack of sense of self is also part of my sense of self?
Some validation of judgement should exist.
It is a world where definitions are so universally sought and given that even one’s self worth, thereby one’s being is given a framework. I could not embrace myself because I already accepted the given framework. I assumed the structure of division between humanities and sciences, introverts and extroverts, China and the United States, beauty and ugliness, competence and inadequacy, a healthy and productive state of mind and a diseased one, being single and being in a relationship, and so on with this endless list of definitions and structures and theories and systems and boundaries and ideologies and … bullshit.
Admit it. We were never taught to be ourselves. We were taught to be “ourselves” within a system. We were never taught to be free. We were taught to be free within a definition of “freedom”.
I realize that I am ostensibly portraying a “fuck society” mentality. (Don’t we all, to a certain extent, given the amount of ugliness?) I, however, would argue that is not my intention. Instead, would it be possible (and potentially wonderful) to have the mentality by which you embrace the polar opposites, and whatever emotion and perception that arise out of whatever reason to allow for “indulgence”, “confusion” or “instability”, because they are more than what they are defined for — they are all, you?
Can you, (by that I meant, I), imagine a world, where the “negative” does not carry the connotations of being negative, that binaries are not the definitive structure?
Can we be open about existences, starting by being open about ourselves by truly and fully accepting and understanding our own beings, which are every bit as justified and complicated as the existence of this massive and convoluted machine that thousands of years of evolution renders as the “society”?
I realize that I have given no definitive answer or solution. I may have even barely defined a problem. I accept that — just as I will try to accept my existence and its place within this meaningful meaningless society.
