Why Is Everybody Better Than Me?
by John William Waterhouse
Years ago, I got a jumpstart in the world of spiffy corporate fuckery by working for a contact center. For the longest time after, once I moved on to more ‘fulfilling’ pursuits, I regarded it as the most trivial of jobs; a blemish on my career trajectory that I took special care to omit thereafter. Perhaps it was because I was 14, passing for 20, talking fast and slick but in no way prepared for the grown up world — yet I had landed the job so easily. Time has since ferried me out of this petty prejudice. Perhaps not entirely. But you live, you learn.
I coasted through training for a job that seemed like child’s play to even me. I say ‘even’ like that dash of implied humility would somehow water down my insufferable arrogance and unwarranted confidence in my non-existent abilities, but I was in fact insufferably arrogant and confident in my non-existent abilities.
Somehow, in spite of these qualifications, I repeatedly came in second to a man when it came to achieving monthly goals. I was the crowd favourite, but that didn’t bring the extra cash in. How was he doing this?
The thing I distinctly remember about him is that he would sanitize his hands with a solution before and after each meal. After the meal, he would even put lotion on them. His hands looked like they’d be soft to touch.
I would bring this up countless times, derisively, seemingly in good humour but with pulsating jealousy lurking underneath. Most of our colleagues would join me. We were united in our belief that his success was an accident, and ours merely delayed. Our acrimony was totally justified.
This is not an isolated instance, of course. Time and again, I have encountered versions of this person; time and again, I have been outperformed. A lot was going on in my life, and so any self-reflection this may have instigated resulted in no desire to better myself. I was doing my best, after all.
Maybe I knew I wasn’t, but I am the worst, so, like, whatever.
From the time I discovered my anxiety disorder, all of my interactions find themselves encumbered by my understanding of anxiety. Each day, I spend at least a little bit of time analysing the source of own constant dread, renewed after subsuming a fresh set of worries daily.
I spend an equal amount of time, perhaps longer, piecing together others’ behaviour — connecting the dots to assume the presence of underlying anxiety, using it as explanation for the things they do. Most of the time it makes sense.
People don’t let on that they have it — even to themselves. No one wants to be known to have anxiety, unless it can be used as means to an end, and with good reason considering the deep-seated stigma and revulsion around mental disorders. But denial does not obliterate what exists. People’s actions and words do not cease to be motivated by their fears simply because that is what they wish for.
I spent a sizable chunk of 2015–16 chained to my bed, only leaving nightly to traverse a multitude of bars — three sheets to the wind. Some days there was no alcohol involved, and those were perhaps worse. The depression my form created in the mattress told little of the time I spent feeling emotional nausea — always moments away from screaming to be heard and simultaneously disappearing into myself never to be seen again. It barely hinted at the voice — once external, soon seamlessly internalised — that sent me hourly reminders of how I was inadequate, disclosing nothing of what the inadequacy was for, insinuating a generalised incompetence.
This was definitely not the first episode, but perhaps the most prolonged one.
If this is who you are, and surely this is how will continue to feel, then what is the point in attempting to be a person? Even if the feeling passes, you know it will come back. Perhaps the cycle exists for a reason. Why try to break it?
Why fucking bother?
It changes you, not paying attention to why you can’t get yourself to initiate, let along see through, the most basic daily tasks. You know there are things you are not doing, things that could probably make you feel better. However, being completely engrossed in pretending that the uncomfortable heart of your problem doesn’t exist can tire you out.
Also, when you are spending all your time trying to not think about why you behave like a piece of shit, it is easier to convince yourself that you are choosing to be a piece of shit. Pop culture taught me that this is very cool and not at all problematic.
If you are used to feeling terrible all of the time, getting good at what you do doesn’t seem worth attempting. Feeling shitty is a lifestyle.
This lifestyle leaves no time to spare for an objective analysis of what is making others’ tick, save for a passing consideration of what they accomplish in small ways, and how the results might add up into something powerful. No space left to recognise and concede that maybe doing stuff is a superpower, but it does not require being thrown in a vat of radioactive material to activate.
What I chose to overlook about Ashish, my former hand-sanitising colleague, was his clean, crisp clothing. I ignored that he brought home-cooked food thoughtfully put together in order to make him feel better. I blinded myself to how he would always arrive a half hour earlier than the rest, and sit by the window, cup of coffee in hand, doing nothing in particular except spend time with himself.
I chose to not pay attention because acknowledging it would mean acknowledging my own executive dysfunction. I ignored everything because the alternative was to get mad that he was able to do stuff for himself, and I wasn’t, and that it fucking sucked.
I cry a lot. Sometimes the tears are triggered by memory of the hand I will never hold again. The last time I held it, it was cold and stiff. Just how all literature describes death. I held it, expecting a different result somehow.
Mostly, though, I cry when I see people rallying; people practising self-care — dancing, taking selfies, developing skin-care routines, experimenting with make-up, doodling mandalas, planting herbs — in spite of this tremendous cultural burden that conflates taking care of oneself with conceit. I cry when I see people demanding happiness.
I cry because I know firsthand how long the distance is between experiencing executive dysfunction and leaving it behind just for one victorious moment.
The hardest lesson I have learned is that platitudes can hold true. The worst feeling in the world is knowing that you could have anything you want, if you were willing to work for it. It is terrible in its assumption that ‘working for it’ is easy. Man, working for it is damn near impossible some days.
At a certain stage, though, you have to adopt it instead of tossing it aside like the shitty, rigid platitude it is. After a point, you have to be accountable to yourself.
Accountability is hard. Accountability in the context of self-care is a thousand times harder. I will never cease to hiss in contempt whenever someone doles out this banality, or something similar even. I will scream from the rooftops about how sublimation is exhausting. Don’t you dare tell me to just fucking do it. But I gotta take care of me. I gotta. Everyone else is.
