learned helplessness

Learning to give my own injections took way too long.  I started when I was maybe fifteen, and had a really hard time of it.  It wasn't until starting again in my forties that I understood how to grow the fuck up about it.  I look back on it though, and I see the tricks my mind played on itself.  I understand how my rationale wasn't even conscious.

If only someone could have explained it to me, in the detail that I understand it now, that would have been all I needed.  Maybe a parental type just being an authoritarian jerk does that trick too, but I'm not sure.  I only remember sitting there by myself for so many hours trying to prove that I was so incompetent that I wouldn't have to do it.  No one will blame me, if I can't do it.

This is learned, I know where I learned it, and yeah, of course it's fucking crazy.  What kind of cowardly bullshit is that?  I needed to understand how to ask myself, is not doing this a serious option?  Maybe I needed some consequences explained, but there was no reason for ambiguity.  Do I seriously want to admit that I chose not to do this?  I needed to understand that yes, I was making a choice - it just wasn't conscious.  I couldn't see it, but now I understand that it was there.

So, if yes, I'm going to do this, there's no reason not to do it right now.  As long as I can think of something to do, and yeah ok.  Of course I can.  Not after weeks of inner struggle to prove that I can't. I've been getting better, I do things eventually, but it shouldn't even be such a long drawn out battle.

It took me a long time to unlearn this nonsense.  I'm still unlearning it.  I still do this, in so many ways.  It is more difficult, with some things more than others, I definitely have some obstacles, but seriously, I know, I need to grow the fuck up.  It occurs to me that I never really try, anymore.  I can't even draw something, without sketching it out quickly, and if that's not good enough, fuck it.  It's not worth it.  What the fuck am I doing?

This is why I've been doing everything I do.  The omnitrope, the running, meditating, giving up coffee and alcohol.  I think maybe all of this has helped, and it's been so gradual in accumulating that it has been hard to tell.  Maybe it's time to admit that I'm doing better.

Either that, or I've come down with some sort of horrible brain disorder, and this is the part right before I try to eat my neighbors.