(20200704 or earlier with an update) so. everyone's talking about imposter syndrome now.

20200704

so. everyone's talking about imposter syndrome now.

i first read about it when i was like 14? that was some cool stuff to me back then, and i didn't think about it again until recently when everyone started talking about it. or at least that's what it seemed like.

i didn't really think it was something that could apply to me, because i haven't really done anything much in life. but as i was writing an essay (well, a lit review type of thing) i was suddenly hit by this incredible wave of anxiety.

what tf am i doing? i've been studying linguistics for 3 years but i don't know the technical terms. i don't know how to write a literature review. i don't know the format. i don't know what to say. i have no opinion on any of these things i'm reading about.

i almost gagged with worry. literally.

this all comes despite the fact that i literally just received an A+ on a (minor) assignment the other day, and the fact that my GPA, while nothing special, is totally decent. i'm the hon gen secretary for my society. i just left my position as head of print and publicity in my other club.

i know that i'm not going to fail this assignment. i've gotten 2 Cs in uni, both modules that i knew i was going to fail from the first day. but those were compulsory. even my worst efforts in other classes (a 1,100 word essay which i wrote in 4 hours, maybe less, then lied and said it was 1,200 words) have received a B+.

but still. i just, suddenly and irrationally feel like i'm here in a good university all by chance. that i'm actually dumb as a rock. that i'm going to graduate with exactly the same amount of knowledge i had when i matriculated, holding my stupid degree and shaking inside and hoping that nobody finds out that i actually know absolutely nothing.

my essay is half finished. i know exactly what i'm going to write and where i'm going to find that information. but i still just irrationally feel like an imposter.

there's so much more i could talk about, like how i was a gifted child, how my friends seem to think i'm clever and expect good results from me, things like that. success just doesn't feel good. it's a temporary high of maybe an hour, and then after that every time i think about my past successes i only ever feel worried that my next grade won't match up. so i just never think about those any more. and then i forget that i ever succeeded.

20250604

so anyway turns out majority of the human population are just babbling idiots not worthy of respect, and i can halfass my way into a decent and permissive job where sometimes i do fuck all the entire day and get praised for things i spend 10min on

i dont think im anything special and yet i can safely say im superior to a lot of people. this is highly disappointing of life and i expected better

utterly disgusted actually and unsure if having imposter syndrome is preferable to this

 four years to the day since i last wrote a draft and life has disgusted me enough to bring me back here

i really thought i was done developing but apparently not!!

i always feel like... life in general owes me something for being not ONLY disappointing, but also just so... low quality... lacklustre... offputting... just so incredibly pointlessly bad 

i ALWAYS always feel completely insane here. like... is my sense of whats normal just COMPLETELY off or what?? so completely off and wrong and THATS WHY im so consistently disappointed by literally everything? 

because i think, just as an example, it would be this easy to achieve X. i would say X so that the other person would understand X. but am i crazy??? because why arent most people doing that??? like in fact most people say the most idiotic things like dfghjhgfd expecting the other person to understand X. i dont know how or why they expect it, they clearly dont THINK the other person will understand X because there is JUST NO THINKING HAPPENING. 

AM I REALLY SO WRONG TO BELIEVE SAYING WHAT U MEAN IS NORMAL. what is wrong with using precise words?

and ok ok, i'll let it go if you have a reason to be poor at using your words. maybe you're a maths savant. bad at english. poor vocabulary. 

BUT

someone who doesnt have any reason, i.e. has shown themselves perfectly capable of communicating clearly, literally says they want to learn to speak clearer... CONSISTENTLY NOT?? DOING THAT?? NOT EVEN SHOWING ANY SIGN OF TRYING>????

what i mean is, in a general conversation, if i say something dumb and the other person clearly doesnt get it, i just REASSESS WHETHER MY ACTIONS SERVE MY GOALS. i reread what i wrote and then use different words to explain again, more precisely. like one back and forth. idk maybe 2?? 

yet

them: ABC

me: huh?

them: yeah

me: huh??

them: huh??

ad nauseum

i mean OKAY at this point clearly you don't care if i understand you. right? RIGHT???? what other fucking reason could there be for you to act so braindead???? jesus

sometimes i just. think i should just leave the convo at this point

but im getting to the point

the point is i cant do that because

1. that idiot is probably someone who affects my salary

2. THE WORLD IS JUST FULL OF PEOPLE LIKE THAT?? it literally literally makes me want to die

like i genuinely get hit with an urge to kill myself every time i encounter one too many of these scenarios. NO i am not talking just about people being a dumbass in conversations

im talking about people who dont understand what they say. bitch like u said it urself??? how do u not get it. people who... okay i dont even have the energy to continue illustrating. but like in general, people who get in their own fucking way and dont even realise and then blames something else unrelated vehemently

there are jjust so many layers

least of all

if ur going to put so much energy into something at least bother to have ONE THINK (SINGULAR) about whether that thing is actually the problem????

genuinely genuinely want to kill myself. not specifically and only because of these things but like everything thats like the situations i just described. like these things make life seem completely worthless and not worth living to me. idk the words but just like a bone deep nothingness and apathy like i wouldnt notice or care if every single cell in my body disintegrated at that moment. 

u might think im so angry!! but actually i am completely nihilistic when i encounter those things and thats why i intensely want to kill myself at those times

right now obviously ive decided to live with it, which makes me angry and not suicidal right now

anyway i just question whats good about life. like one single thing not so insufferably unbearable. sometimes it feels like everywhere i look i just see shit. steaming shit. shaped like humans. speaking.

millions of years of evolution to give you the capacity to be better. and you, not incapable of being better, but just NOT being better. NOT even being bare minimum. NOT even a thought passing through that medical marvel of a human brain. what a fucking waste of oxygen

backtrack

i know for a FACT i am not defensive at work. i feel the urge, yes sometimes, but i dont act out at work. its a transactional and logical thing. i am pretty much never emotional at work. i genuinely have just enough emotion at work to be not considered a creepy robot or a psychopath. ive been yelled at by psycho client bosses before. bit shaken but polite and productive. got a chat with HR because a dumbfuck reported me for man hating online. (btw how can it be man hating when men are categorically and scientifically, FACTUALLY worse at a great many things). nada. clients hounding me day and night, saying they felt abandoned because i replied the next morning to their 8pm message. just all kinds of shit. 

i am NOT emotional. i understand emotions have no place at work, at least not my personal emotions. that is actually called EGO. 

letting out your personal emotions at WORK is called mf EGO.

everyday i politely and productively reply. apologise all day for whats not my fault. always making sure i sound eager to please but not a pushover. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS all my clients love me. they prefer reaching out to me. they get upset because shit happens and they blame us... but never ME even when im actually the cause of the problem. they start conversations angry and end feeling heard and satisfied with the response. why? because i make it happen. i put aside my ego. i am singularly focused on the productive direction. there is no one single productive action but i am perpetually in the productive direction.

so tell me why my manager to be says she cant work with me. rhetorical question. the answer is actually that shes a smart and capable woman who lets her ego get ahead of her goals. shes getting in her own way and blames me for it

'do you think i tell my bosses excuses' no i never said that and i never even implied it. you asked me 'is my team THERE' and i asked you what you meant by 'THERE'. i asked you what you think this dept should be like. you berated me and said i should have a vision for my team. i said i do have a vision for my team. i asked you if you had asked me if i had a vision......... before berating me for not having one. i said tell me what your standards are, and i'll get my team to meet them. i said tell me where they're falling short and i'll fix that

she said i need to get on top of the accuracy rate. i said to my knowledge theres nothing wrong with the accuracy rate in my team. she cited client M. i said, do you actually know what's happening with M? i worked on it with the current sales to get the client to finally agree. she was not personally involved. no one from her department was involved. i asked her for a personnel and she declined to give me one.

i said, previously client M didnt want to sign, but now they do. between then and now, NOTHING about the accuracy rate changed. i said, doesn't that mean the accuracy rate was never the issue?

if you imagined that got a productive answer from her, youre naive

the saddest part is that i really respect her. thats why this disappointed me so much. only people you expect things from can disappoint you. i expected her to be sane. she showed me she was ego and emotions driven

you might think its just her

i have stories about most other people doing this shit. and i dont even interact with new people or a lot of people. i talk to the same handful of people every fucking day. they are the best ive found on earth so far. and they consistently disappoint me

i dont mean to say im amazing or something, but at least i dont act like im just a creature without conscious thought, driven by my subconscious and impulse. and ego. at least i dont act like im an NPC at the mercy of whatever storyline and characterisation fate decided to burden me with

thats why i just want to kill myself sometimes. i feel like facing the bare truth of the world is enough to strike me dead where i stand. sometimes i feel like im a single playable character in a world of NPCs and dying is the only way to escape. how can people exist like this? how can 8 billion people exist like this? how can the NORM be this? that makes me want to die

sometimes i look at people and they dont even register as humans. idk like wallpaper or something. thats the significance of their conscious thought at that moment. and at that moment i want to kill myself, finding myself so utterly alone on earth

usually i dont do that!! and theres people like colleague K whom i really just respect and think well of. hes someone who can set aside his ego too and i havent seen an exception in him yet. i respect people who use their ego instead of letting their ego use them. and hes really really intelligent and it calms me down to talk to him

i guess anyone can figure out im severely burn out and underrecognised. i dont know if im depressed but its not like i havent pulled myself out of depression before. its in my head, and if its in my head its under my control.

i mean short of actual physical issues resulting in depression etc

but idk how to fix burnout. its not like i can create enough money to have a safety net so big i dont need to sacrifice my wellbeing and self respect for a salary.

cause lets be honest if i didnt need this salary i wouldve cussed them out SO BAD. and i dont actually mean cussing them out because NOW irl i am absolutely calm and logical and really smooth in a disagreement. i would absolutely destroy them with cutting words while coming across as a good caring person, because at this point i potentially have pathologically lost the ability to be emotional at work. my adrenaline could be tearing me upppp inside but i think i pathologically became unable to show emotions in a work setting beyond friendly and helpful.

i guess one silver lining is that this could all potentially help me hate life skinnier since skinny is making a comeback. but i might also be completely unhinged at the end as well

oh and im actually quite devastated i dont get to speak like this irl. this is actually my real inner dialogue but my mouth cant be saying this because 98/100 people i know wouldnt even be able to process sentences like these. i think these are normal sentences though!! if a little long

the sadder thing is that the 2 people who could probably process this if i verbally said it are colleague K and my mf ex

and dont get me started on my ex i legitimately think he owes me half a house (apartment) for free for the shit he made me undergo. also a huge disappointment. used to crash out over him and now i genuinely cant imagine caring about him that much, but also he had a lot of uses and i miss having someone for those things a lot. mostly being an intelligent and soft person who only cares about me in the world. hard to find, yes. on counts one and three.

so yeah on top of everything i feel like im losing my verbal communication skills because i actually really need to dumb down and shorten everything, and limit myself to 1 logical step per sentence only. otherwise nobody i interact with on a daily basis can process it

I FUCKING WISH I WAS EXAGGERATING

i fucking wish i had just gone on an ego trip. because then i wouldnt feel like killing myself 5 times a day. i fucking wish i couldnt call anyone dumb because we're all just as smart as each other. i really fuckn wish

 i think the simplest way to explain it is: my mother has no sense of boundaries and no respect for others. 

ever since i realised she's a full blown narcissist, i've started thinking about how she could seem so normal when i was younger. but here's the thing: she wasn't. 

i always remember my father carrying baby me in one arm and cooking with the other arm, after he came home from work. my mother would be at the hospital, working as a nurse. and the way she told it, she was an amazing mom for making sacrifices. 

i remember my dad buying me legos and building lego houses with me. i remember him doing puzzles with me. buying me sudoku books. teaching me electric circuits. and he was a full time phd student raising a family through grants. yet he always spent time with me, taught me things, explained things to me. 

where was my mother? who the fuck knew. i don't actually have many memories of her.  all i knew was that my dad was the smart one, the reliable one, the one with solutions. the stable parent.

and i always think my mother was more normal "back then", but she wasn't. like, we had crazy screaming matches all the time, neighbours would complain, and my mother would talk about it as if i was a demon child, like there was something wrong with ME, like everything was MY fault. ignoring how i wasn't even ten years old and as if she wasn't screaming back at me even louder. even now she'd start going at me, saying "she's been screaming ever since she was three years old" like what the fuck?? as if three year olds aren't basically ALL nurture at that point.

it does fit now that i know she's a narcissist, though. when i was a child that was cute, smart, pretty, which all added to HER status, she was nice to me. when i'm lacking, suddenly i'm worthless. she only ever considered me as a tool for her own social status.

in my teenage years, i got so sick of her that i started avoiding her. at one point after (yet another) huge argument, i resolved for a while to just ignore the batshit crazy shit she said, and just humour her. so she'd call me fat and ugly and i'd just stay silent and move away. which was what my dad had been doing for years.

but nowadays she's literally crazy. she'd start yelling at any one of us over the tiniest things. like if my she offered to heat up pizza (which i bought) for my dad, and he responded in a way that was unaccedptable to her (i.e. "it's ok i'll heat it up myself") she'd sit him down, yell at him, and insult him for hours. i listen to this shit all the time in my room because she's so loud.

she'd lecture him for hours. and she's so rude, so insulting, so belittling. she'd cuss at him, call him useless. and all the time she's spending his money, living in the house he's paying for, not even cleaning the house or raising the children who are the product of BOTH of them. 

she'd say she's the calm one, and that he's violent and abusive towards her. and 2 seconds later she'd be screaming and cussing. she'd gaslight him.

to be honest, i've seen my dad put his hands on her neck once or twice, but those times were in the midst of insane arguments where she'd just swing her arms at anything that moved. including me, who was a child. and because she wasn't discriminating in where or who she hit, and never held back her strength, i'm sure it was incredibly dangerous for me. he never actually strangled her, though. like he'd just put his hand on her neck and then back off, like he's ashamed of himself. but that's incredible self-control on his part, all things considered. my mother can goad and insult and belittle like no one i've ever seen. if i had my dad's strength, if i had to put up with this bitch going off on me every single day and not giving me a single moment of peace, all while i earn all the money AND do all the work in this fucking household, i think i would've goddamn murdered her. 

and in fact i think i've hurt her worse than he ever has. and that's because she's hurt me worse than i've ever hurt her, and i'm just talking about physically. she's hurled glass objects at my head. she's swung huge sticks at me indiscriminately. not even taking into account how she's my mother and she'd probably inflicted many times more psychological damage on me than i've ever inflicted on her.

i don't know what positive things she's ever done. like she'd act like going out to get takeaway for us was a huge sacrifice, something to be praised. meanwhile my dad and i are just glad that she's out of the house so there won't be any arguments or loud noises, and we can work from home in peace. she'd ridicule me and my dad if we asked for some silence during work hours, and proceed to NOT give us silence by watching her tv shows loudly, yet she'd get angry at us for making any (truly ANY sound, like closing a cupboard too loudly) when she's having a video call for church work. unpaid work. my dad and i are the only ones drawing a salary.

she'd act like her money was hers to spend, ignoring how she has the responsibility to provide for her 2 kids, and ignoring how her daily expenses are all on my dad's card.

it's already a long post (again) but i'm trying to say she's a narcissist, incapable of self-awareness, a hypocrite, violent, and honestly kind of stupid.

and her existence in my early life has made me overly possessive of things i consider mine (she'd take my things, go into my space), afraid of showing my cards to anyone (she'd belittle me), afraid to be emotional (she'd belittle me), afraid to trust anyone (she'd dismiss me). and i think that's why i enjoy living out of a suitcase so much. 

all my belongings assessable at a glance. my things are always with me. no one can rearrange them. also my hatred for clutter because my mother is always so scatterbrained and never knows what she has or where they are. 

it's why i spend so much time rearranging my belongings at home, and always worry about being able to haul them out quickly if there's a fire. other people display their treasured belongings. i lock them in boxes. 

just earlier today she was lecturing my dad again when i went out to look for something. i closed the cupboards too loudly a few times, so she ran over to scream and throw things at me and assault me. i'm really not making this up. she threatened to sever parental ties with me (again). i just go back into my room. later i come out again, and as i'm walking back into my room she throws something at my head. for no fucking reason. i slam the door, and immediately she's gone looking for my room key. she opens my door and starts trying to throw my stuff out because she was to throw ME out for the night.

i live with this sort of madwoman. how could i ever dare to display anything i truly care about?

i was literally in the process of moving all my important items into a storage box to put inside my closet. 

this is why i always lock my bedroom door whenever i close it. my dad knocks and waits for an answer before opening. my mother? nope. my brother has been screaming at her about this for years. she's just that entitled and just incapable of understanding the concept of boundaries. 

i just don't feel safe. because of her. except this problem she gave me now means that i can't even trust anyone else either, regardless of how nice and good they are.

i hate her so much. i just hate her so much. i wish she'd get into an accident through her terrible and reckless driving, specifically in a way that car insurance and life insurance pay out, so we'd be rid of her and also get at least something back for all the years we've had to put up with her. for all the emotional trauma she's put us through.

this bitch gave me so many goddamn problems. i have so many interpersonal relationship hang ups. i'm masking all the goddamn time. i'm exhausted, stressed, and i STILL have to deal with her shit. and i STILL have to live in fear of the next problem she'll put the family through. maybe she'll hit someone with the car and WE'LL have to pay out because she doesn't even fucking work. it does seem likely enough. she's already a terrible driver and emptying my dad's medisave because hers is more fucking empty than mine. 

god i fucking hate her.

fyp post

ive just been too stressed and worried and scared of failure to even talk about my final year project until it's done and ive received my grade. well, now it's all over and i can finally talk about it without wanting to literally die.

so anyway i did it in one week, and consulted my supervisor about like... 2 times. i didn't sleep for a week, i'm not too sure ? but i was doped up on coffee.

i was like, as long as i pass... turns out i got an A-, which honestly is far far beyond my wildest dreams. i initially thought there's no way i'd ever get to do a masters with a shitty fyp, and that my academia life would end with a bachelors... but this grade has given me renewed hope? some professors said i lacked self confidence but like i seriously have no idea whether im actually good or if it's just inflated because other people are shit. some say that's the same thing but idk

in any case im not interested in academia unless it's necessary later in my life, because research just stresses me out so much. like i care about theories and stuff and i'll gladly debate about them, but i don't care in any meaningful or practical way. it stops bothering me the moment we end the conversation. im just intensely unmotivated for research without practical applications.

anyway it's on to the next thing that i can worry myself to death over and never talk about until it's done and settled: finding a job

starting to think i seriously need a therapist. as opposed to previously when i thought having a therapist would just be nice. i have a lot of unresolved and completely unaddressed issues 

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