THE YOU, IS OF COURSE, ME (and maybe you)
You are surrounded by scholars. Everywhere you look, people effortlessly put on extravagant shows of genius, with their easeful eloquence and charm, while you struggle in your lonesome corner and desperately Google ‘well-spoken synonyms’ in a vain effort to catch up. You just want to be as smart as them. To be original, and quote great philosophers at the drop of a hat, and listen to sophisticated music, and go to museums and gaze thoughtfully at art and have a unique, correct, and instant understanding. You want to look down at those who cannot be as evolved as you, as civilized and refined as you are.
You greedily consume art to feel superior, to hide your All Consuming Insecurities, not for any true love of the art, but because your deepest desire is to be considered one of intellect. Perhaps this stems from your highly competitive education, as most things that affect you in adulthood tend to stem from incident(s) in your childhood. You have always been told that if you can recite this poem the best, if you can appreciate this art correctly, if you can write the best essay on some confounded 200 year old man that isn’t even unique to you anyways; just well-written, regurgitated snippets from 20 articles you read on the internet, then you are considered good enough.
You will get into the right societies, meet the right people, be applauded by the people who you strive to be validated by, the ones who speak with posh accents and wear elegant dresses and hold glasses of wine delicately in their perfectly manicured hands. Of course once you enter that circle, you will constantly worry about them realizing that, really, you’re just a fraud, and your nails are chipped, your dress is torn, your accent is put on, your wine is really just grape juice. You are a child playing a grown-up. You feast on any morsel of knowledge you can find to tell yourself:
“I know things. I’m mature. I can be an adult too. People can like me too. Look, look at my carefully curated personality, with my quirky little self-deprecating jokes about existential dread that will garner appreciative laughs! My heart will be warm. I will glow with pride, that my character, the novels, the essays, the videos that I collect in my little bird’s nest that I squeak out like a pet parrot, is all worth it! I did it!’
Except you didn’t. It was never worth it. Don’t kid yourself. In your wretched pursuit of the Ideal, you lost yourself, if there was ever even a you to begin with. You alienated yourself from anyone who cared for you, and maybe you are an intellectual now. Maybe you are loftier, and have a whole deck of witty cards in your back pocket, but how is it worth it if you can’t relate to anyone anymore? The very thing you ran away from, being like everyone else, is suddenly the most desirable thing in the world. All you can think of is what life would be like if you just let yourself be like everyone else. If you didn’t struggle against the inevitability of seeing yourself in someone, and try desperately to set yourself apart.
Why is it that you try so desperately to separate yourself from your humanity? The vulnerability and weakness of being human scares you more than anything, so you search for ways to distract yourself from it. Not to overcome it, that’s far too difficult anyways, and is there even a way of not feeling like a broken, scared little rat? You know that to distract yourself, you must feel in control. You want power over your life, everyone does. You pride yourself on being better than those who hit their wives, or those who drink their lives away to feel like they have authority, but are you really so much better? You alienate yourself the same way they do, you ruin your chances of feeling like you’re a part of something bigger than you, all because you want power.
Perhaps you think you’re better because you’re only ruining your life. It’s yours to ruin, after all. Maybe it would be worth ruining if you can feel the hit of having surpassed those you watched before, and tried so vainly to be. Except even the superiority passes away. You look around, and all you feel is disgust. These preening, pretentious creatures who prance around with their faux notions of enlightenment which they contrive from nihilistic and/or hedonistic worldviews patched together from someone else who’s never had an original thought either, but they all saunter about, deeply unhappy, posing as illuminated beings.
You’re no better, of course. In fact, you are them. The disgust you feel for them is really the disgust you feel for yourself. The disgust is a mirror, and you cower away from it.
But of course, you’re not stupid. The reason you got to this point at all is because you’re intelligent. Maybe too much. There is nothing that you can’t convince yourself of, nothing you can’t distract yourself from. So you resort to yet another coping mechanism. You romanticize. You romanticize the anguish, the loneliness, the pretense. You know the only true romance in the world is found in these raw, ragged emotions. Everything you do becomes a romanticization. This essay is a romanticization of the very things that it warns against.
Most of all, you were promised that all this, all the pain and drudgery and betrayal would lead to the ultimate reward of being remembered. Knowing your existence, your beautiful excruciatingly human life will all be forgotten and snuffed out, you’re being erased bit by bit, every second longer you live. Deep down, you know you aren’t special. Doesn’t everyone? This is just your last reach out into memory. Hoping someone, somewhere will know you, know your intelligence, your words, your pain, and remember.
You are alone, but that’s okay. What kills you is knowing you are unmemorable.
Anandi N, 16, Delhi - India ✯ IG: @anandi.natraj
“A little scribbler of words, in a burrow full of books. She spends most of her time thinking about writing, but never actually writes except for when she can't keep it together anymore.”