I have this habit of using obsession to avoid stress. When there's something important looming ahead of me, whether it be the past few months of trying to find a job, or trying to deal with my own anxiety and depression, my brain takes a hard left turn and focuses all its energy on something entirely different. Often, I place all of my self-esteem in the hands of another person. Most times a stranger. Sometimes a celebrity. I decide that if I can get this person to like me, everything I am will be validated.
I think the core problem is that I need to be needed in order to feel like a real human being. I need other people around me in order to feel validated. I've been going on hikes alone lately, and when I find myself in the middle of the woods, no one else around, I find myself wondering if what I'm experiencing is even real. If no one is around to share it with me, how can I prove that it happened? If someone important doesn't care about me, how can I be sure that I am cared for?
Obviously, this logic has flaws. What about all the friends and family who do care for me on a daily basis? In these stretches of obsession, nothing I already have is good enough. It's always about acquisition of the impossible. I think this is also a reason I chase fame; I feel I can't rest until I have been validated on a mass scale.
My therapist asks me what is wrong with living a normal, quiet life. One that wouldn't be in history books or remembered beyond my immediate circle of loved ones. When she asked that, it felt like she was asking me to die alone. I felt a panic rooted in loneliness creep up my arms.
Not only do I need to be needed, but I need to feel indispensable. I do this with jobs; working hard until I'm all the way up the ladder, a mental support who will always come when called. And then, once I am established as an important and valuable member of the team, I grow resentful. I hate what is expected of me. I feel that the sacrifices I make to be there are unappreciated, that I set the bar too high and have no one to fall back to. Worming myself into being important left no room for me to support myself. My choices begin to weigh on me. I become bitter, exhausted, burnt out.
And so what will it mean if I get what I want? What happens if I climb the social ladder into being an indispensable friend and support to my famous heroes? What happens if I get the fame, the widespread validation that I seek? Will I grow resentful? Will I burn out? What happens if the opposite is true- what if the rest of my life is just me screaming into the void, hoping to be known? Would disappearing into unwritten history be okay in the end? Would it be more peaceful than the alternative?
The answer is somewhere in-between, but I have never been good at balance. Right now, I have a million things on my plate, but all I can focus on is the deep, crushing desperation I feel at needing one specific person to know me. Once that person sees me, knows me, and likes me, all of my problems will be solved. By focusing on this, I get to ignore the work. I get to put off fixing everything else. It's an escape, but it offers me no comfort. It only redirects the stress away from reality.
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