Self and self-consciousness often go hand in hand. They’re the source of those subtle admonishing jerks whenever you threaten to step outside the learned bounds set by your self-concept. When we’re young and haven’t yet had the chance to calcify ourselves into any fixed form, we are open to exploration and trying out new things. We are open to growth. Then, as we learn how the world works, we learn our own place in it. We shrink until the outside pressures cease its violent molding of us, and then our outlines begin to harden.
There’s no metamorphosis waiting to happen. It’s a cocoon that’ll turn into a grave in a few decades.
I vaguely remember my own hardening. I remember my deep wish for consistency, and I couldn’t cope with the idea of relying on any external source for it. I needed to find it from within, and I began preferring lack of change as opposed to the wild flux of life.
I found it. I think. I built my own little abode that’ll one day be my grave. I embraced simplicity. I embraced the elimination of the frivolous. I embraced isolation. I guarded my homeostasis fiercely, and I still do to this day. By doing this, I inadvertently rejected life. Life is ever-changing. I can close my eyes to it and pretend it isn’t so, but it would be closing eyes from truth, and embracing a lie is gifting of precious time to a wasteful coward.
My own calcified outlines double as electric fences. Coming against them is like trespassing a harshly guarded boundary. I know when I’m toeing the limits of my self-concept when I feel anxiety bubbling up within me. It’s a warning that I’m now approaching my accepted limits, and there’s no guarantee for what awaits beyond. I often mistake this anxiety as a monster from beyond the bounds, and I back off without ever truly discovering what’s out there. I don’t make myself vulnerable for real feedback from the real world out there, because my anxiety guides me back before I ever get there.
There are real wars out there, real dangers that’d be the end of me, and I, in my utter lack of perspective, find life alone a threat. Nothing has ever been as scary as my anxiety has made it out to be. I do not want to die inside a shell of my own making. I’m breaking out.