tl;dr and srs bzns alert!
On an unrelated and very serious note, I just got an enormous wake-up call. I'm at a potentially extremely destructive level of psychological unhealthiness even though I didn't realize it myself and thought I was a normal, healthy person. I need to change, right now, because I'm at the level psychologists label "red flag level", where all the attempts to avoid the thing one fears most have produced the exact opposite, and that fear becomes the reality one is confronted with - in my case the fear of being a bad person, one who's become a complete antithesis of the principles I held so high, of being evil, and irredeemable, of failing oneself and one's standards. It's basically the level that signals the beginning of extremely destructive behaviour towards the self and the environment. Right now I'm a disaster waiting to happen, to myself and my surroundings. It's not too late to turn it around, I hope, and I'm starting right now.
I'm feeling awful, afraid and mentally very ill (not in a crazy sense, but in a damaged/poisoned one), but I know what's wrong with me now, I know what all those things beneath the surface have been that make me so judgmental, intolerant and sometimes downright cruel. The things that made me a bad person - exactly the very thing I've always found most important to avoid. I'm going to try and heal myself even though right now it looks like an impossible task. First thing I have to determine for myself is whether or not I'm irredeemable, whether or not I'll ever be able to understand, and truly realize and live with the fact that the standards I hold for myself and others are unattainable and that I can accept that people, including myself, have faults and that being human is not a reason for condemnation. I don't know if I'll succeed, I might not.
As to how that affects you guys, some of you are the same as I am, just as unhealthy in different ways, and I still feel completely justified in confronting you with your imperfections, even if my methods weren't always productive. I still stand by many things I've said that were critical, because even though they may have been painful, they were things that needed to be said, things that if received correctly, hopefully have have made better people out of you.
But the main reason I'm so messed up inside is guilt, so I need to start finding ways to stop that feeling consuming me. One of those ways is understanding why I act this way and explaining it to you people, even though you're all people on an internet forum and internet is serious business and all that bullcrap. You people are all real people, and though some of you may dismiss what I say or even laugh at it, you all have feelings and coming to terms with myself means respecting yours.
Therefore, to some of you, I've been unnecessarily harsh, judgmental, intolerant and hurtful, striking out at you unfairly and unjustly. You have no idea how difficult it is for me to admit this, even on an internet forum, but I was striking out at you people when in fact I was, without even knowing it, raging against myself for not being able to live up to my own standards, and dulling that guilt, justifying myself by capitalizing on others' faults, or what I saw as faults. It's no excuse, and I'm not making any, but I am saying that if I've kicked out at you unjustly, that the one I was truly hating was myself and my imperfections. For that I am truly, deeply sorry. Towards you for being that way, and towards myself for knowingly allowing that behaviour to deceive me and pushing me deeper into my personal Hell, where the desire to make the world better was unconsciously replaced by the desire to silence critics, justify myself and put down others to make myself appear better. I have to change this back to what it once was, I have to fix my faults instead of silencing people that draw attention to them, and that way, I can again begin to do what healthy people like me do: make the world better by setting a good example, instead of ruthlessly convicting everyone but myself.
It's going to be a hard road, if it's even worth starting at all, but I have to do this or I'll destroy myself (which right now feels entirely justified) and maybe others as well, and that I will not allow to happen. This post was one of the first steps, and I don't doubt many of you will see it as weakness, or a good opportunity to be snide or gloating, but so be it. If people react this way, that's their faults showing, and I need to learn that people are permitted to have them. However, if you do feel the urge to be rotten about this post, stop for a moment and wonder if it's not at all realistic that you are like I am. And wonder if, maybe sooner or later, you'll receive the same wake-up call that'll make you feel as awful as I am feeling right now.
I have a long, slow, painful process ahead of me, and right now I just want to lay down and die, hating myself for not being as virtuous as I wanted to be, and thought I was, but as long as there is still a possibility that I can get through this and come out a better person, I'm going to fight.
Wish me luck. And hope, like I am doing right now, that I'm not irredeemable.
