ZKM

Take a Peak Behind the Mask

"Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong."- Adolf Hitler

Showing posts with label sanity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sanity. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Sociopathy: Mask of Sanity or Invisibility?



What am I really? I wonder it from time to time. Everyone has their own opinion; I'm a monster I'm a genius I'm a rat bastard. I know exactly what I am, I can feel it. But that's just it, it has no title. No one can accurately call me one thing or another. I'm a creature of too many parts. A lion with the leap of a rabbit and the wings of a bird. What do you call such a beast?

It's a strange thing, gazing into the eyes of your peers and seeing merely a reflection. A projection of something or someone you could never truly be. The academic, the writer, the healer, the human being. As an empath you can never truly fathom the abstract feeling of watching yourself become something else. Laughing and smiling at things you don't really understand. Human interaction and all its little dips and swerves.

Even the people who know, don't know. There's always two parts to every story; what the author writes and what the author doesn't write. Both are equally important. This author will never write the whole story. The very title of this blog suggests the opportunity to 'peak behind the mask'. But it's not so straightforward, is it? Regardless how much I may want to be in full view of the world, by my very nature that is impossible.

I like clever people; I hate dense people. If you can't read between the lines you aren't meant to know their secrets. A sociopath's brain is built on a system of hierarchy. His or herself being at the top and everyone else being ranked somewhere below (usually quite far to be honest). That's part of why we're so secretive. Does a General share information with a lieutenant? Only the bare minimum. Why? Because an inferior is ill-equiped to utilize such data. Would you give a map to a dog?

Yet more and more I find myself bursting at the seams in frustration. No one is brilliant enough, smart enough, clever enough. I'm up Shit Creek without a paddle. My face is melting from the sheer madness of it all. I've always found such proclamations as "the mask of sanity' in regards to sociopathy to be, more than a little melodramatic. Mask of 'sanity'? No one could be more lucid or sane than I.

But now I look back and forward and upside down and see the melted plastic of conformity sticking to my chin and I ask myself, 'what am I really?' Reality to me, has always been a four dimensional construct. Not everything is straight lines and neat little boxes we can all be sketched into. I've always believed strongly that I am everything I appear to be and more. Actions are the words on the page, it doesn't matter that the lines between tell a different story.

If I give a million dollars to charity one day and kill your mother the next, am I a humanitarian or aren't I? Empaths like to view the world through a muddied window of their own pre-programmed beliefs and ideals. If God says a cat has five legs, it has five legs goddammit! Likewise, if you kill or rape or pillage, or perhaps just happen to lack empathy, you cannot possibly provide a speck of good for society. The concept is too traumatic to process. In psychology it's called Cognitive Dissonance, and is the behavioral basis behind why religious hordes are so fucking stupid.

It's also the basis behind why, unless I dance on a pile of corpses in broad daylight with a bloody knife in my hand and a neon-green shirt that reads "I DID IT!" on the front, no one will suspect be of being anything more than perhaps a bit strange when looked at closely. And I suppose that's what I am when boiled down to size. Psychopaths are just like you, only a bit stranger.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Life, Death and Suicide

Let's all feign sanity for the sake of morality!


This week's theme is suicide. Why not? I want to explore what the fuck suicide is, and how it pertains to me.

Have I contemplated suicide? Sure. I'm almost positive everyone has at some point or another, but the seriousness of the contemplation varies.

I'm not sure I'll die of natural causes.

To be honest, I've always expected a violent, or at the very least, premature, ending.

Why?

Various reasons, a lot, really.

I live life how I want to live it. I know that sounds cliche, people really like to throw that kind of ideology around like it fucking means something on a larger scale; it doesn't.

I'm just not smart enough to be society's bitch; not completely anyway. I just can't, I'm incapable. We live in a three dimensional world stuffed into a fucking box. There are four walls crushing us in and all they have to keep us in is fear and a fucking Chair. 'The chair'. Oh I'm so scared, maybe they don't realize the people they're dealing with?

I haven't really feared anything in a long time. What is there to fear? Fear itself? Why? What is fear?

Fear is an emotion, I know that. Fear is a noose around the neck of the innocent, of the happy, of the living.

I've known a lot of people. I've watched people die. I know what fear looks like, I know what fear tastes like; sweat and blood and honey. Some people really fear death. Some people really fear not fearing death. That's really the scariest thing, isn't it? Because if you don't fear death, what kind of shit life are you living?

The life of a psychopath, the life of the depressed, of the oppressed and the suppressed? Maybe, I don't know. I really don't care that much and people can't understand that.

I don't care! People say that, do they mean it? Not usually. People care, people really fucking care--if they care then why do they say they don't? It's called affirmative thinking; "I say, therefor I AM'.

What bullshit, a crock of shit, nonsense.

Why am I writing this? What is my point?! Get to it, SAY something meaningful and profound! What the fuck, what the FUCK are you doing blathering on? Maybe that's my point, life is pointless, this is pointless. What do you have to do tomorrow? Think about it, errands to run, people to see, lies to tell, people to fuckover and placate and screwover and substantiate. Does it make you happy? Does it make you sad? Does it make you angry? If you can tell; if you could answer those questions, THAT is the difference between you and me.

Fuck empathy. I'm me and you're you. Fuck your feelings and fuck my apathy. What are we? Animals. Ruff ruff.

I really lost it the other day. Lost it? What was it about? Who pushed me? That's not how it works. Everything is internal, I'm internal not external. I am a brain wrapped in flesh, not a heart in a protective shell. I lost it not because of the confrontation or because of anyone but Me Me Me. I lost it because here I was, being passionate and rageful--RIGHTFULLY SO. And what did I feel? Nothing. Nothing nothing nothing, I feel nothing. I felt nothing.
That's a lie, I feel something. Words are so inadequate, really fucking useless. I know a lot of words, use a lot of words. But words alone are dead, meaning with no context.

Nothing is an emotion. Nothing is a feeling, that's why people fucking say it. When you literally feel nothing, what THAT feels like is confusion, because nothing is there, there's nothing to analyze, nothing to compare with, it's like an anxiety attack, being short of breath and drowning quietly without movement or tears or any of the dramatics that make asphyxiation poignant. THAT kind of nothing is what I feel when a 'loved' one dies or something happens that should fucking destroy me but instead I'm standing in the rain on the side of the road fucking contemplating what I'm going to eat for dinner tonight and wondering what's on TV.

That other kind of Nothing, that Nothing is a noun instead of a fucking adjective, that Nothing is incredulity wrapped in a rage so whisper-quiet it's like you don't feel it at all. It's confusion, frustration and rage in a way most people have never felt before. Because it's silent, it's quiet and it's docile. It is so fucking quiet part of you wants to kill it in outrage.

You don't get it. Of course you don't. Some of you will, some of you won't. I'm trying to explain but all I have is words and all you have is eyes.

When you sit a person down on your brand new comforter and put a gun to their head what do you expect to feel? When you watch a man holding his dying dog over a fucking gutter as the blood mingles with sweat and tears as it cascades to the earth like a morbid waterfall, what do you expect to think? Anguish, incredulity, fucking outrage, disgust, fear, Empathy. What?

Now tell me, how do you feel when none of those feelings happen? When nothing you see or do can start your heart again. You're dead. You're a walking corpse. People hate you you fucking freak. Why don't you love me?! Why don't you care? Who the fuck are you?! WHY DO YOU LIE? Why do you PRETEND!? You, my friend, are a monster. Welcome to the club. Do you feel cool? Of course you don't, if you did you wouldn't be you.

What am I saying, what is the point? A literary instructor once said to me almost rhetorically, "Why did the writer write these words, tell these stories, say these things, if they were all lies? Why did he lie, what  was he trying to do?" I didn't say anything for awhile, I just thought. I thought of the poignant words, the hyperbole, the breaking of the fifth wall and the overall feeling of frustration I could read between the words and I answered, "He wants us, the reader, to feel."

I've faced death more than once. I have, more than once, had the realization that death was around the corner and every time what I felt was an anticlimactic sort of relief; the kind you get when you're told you can sleep for the first time in days. I don't fear death because all the things people fear of losing because of death, I've already lost. That doesn't mean I'm 'depressed', it doesn't mean I'm 'suicidal' so much as bored. Bored bored bored. If you asked me to sum up psychopathy in one word I'd say "Boredom'. Hell, maybe even 'frustration' would work. I'm curious if anyone felt anything while reading this. My mood didn't change an iota, THAT, is frustrating.

Welcome, to life after death.