“How is this helping?!”
“You’ll see.”
There are many things adults do not prepare you for when you are a child, such as how to pay an energy bill, that hard work does not pay off, and that you will feel painfully alone once you reach a certain age. When you are a child, you are free to run round to your best friend’s house and bang on their door until they come out and play with you. In fact, sometimes you run so fast that you trip and hurt your knee. But nobody warns you that this freedom is only fleeting. In fact, eventually, making friends will be hard for you. If you approach someone, as an adult, with your heart open, they will fear that you are planning to steal from them or hurt them.
When you are a child and learning your alphabet and trying to colour inside the lines, nobody tells you how to cope with losing the things that not only matter to you then, but will also matter to you as an adult. Apparently, the wide-eyed joy you feel as a child should end so that “life can start”. But life has already started. It started the moment you were born. It will not start when you begin secondary school. It will not start when you go off to university. It will not start when you find a job. It will not start when you retire. I believe the sadness a lot of us begin to feel in our late-20s, a bleak example being “The 27 Club”, is to do with the realisation that we have been lied to. We have, in fact, been living all along. Despite going to work, making dinner, paying bills, and doing housework, all we really want to do is run round to our best friend’s house so fast that we trip and hurt our knee.
But we no longer can.
Over human history, people have devised, without planning to, various methods for making friends as an adult. Perhaps it started by sharing a cave, then moved onto building mud-brick hovels next to each other, to coming together to worship a god, to raising an army to pillage a city, to opening a factory, to creating an internet chat forum. Somebody always has to be in charge though, which defies logic. The person in charge will create logic for their leadership, however, and this logic will usually change to suit anyone questioning their authority. You don’t need someone to tell you how to run round to your best friend’s house. You know not to trip and hurt your knee, but you will anyway.
A standard musing may go like this:
PERSON A: What’s the different between a religion and a cult?
PERSON B: The number of members.
While sort-of true, the phrase “cult”, as we think of it today, is a shortening of “mystery cult”. Basically, it refers to a religion that you need to apply for membership to. The religion does not hand out literature on street corners, instead whispering to potential members: “Hey, wanna get involved in something cool?!”. Open religions and mystery cults, whilst gaining members through different means, basically end up in the same place: one person requiring mental, emotional, and financial subjugation from a number of other people.
Private initiation and evangelism are just two sides of the same coin and a means to the same end.
My mind is somewhat broken. I do not view the world as most seem to. I broadly define this as a “mental health illness”, although more concisely my doctor defines it as “cyclothymia”, which is a form of bipolar disorder. Reading the official definition of my illness is like reading my biography. This makes me feel both happy and sad. Happy, because, at the very least, I am not alone in my mental anguish; but also sad, because of the simple fact that I experience this mental anguish. I find isolation therapeutic, but also counter to my instinct. My instinct, of course, is to run round to my best friend’s house and bang on their door until they come out and play with me. But I am unable to make friends as an adult, so attempting to recreate this childish instinct is impossible to me. I have had fleeting friendships over the years, but they have all failed. The current time limit I give any close association is five years. Tragically, I am usually correct in my estimation. I post on blogs and formerly on social media in the hope of making friends, perhaps unwisely considering my personal history, but it no longer works. Sometimes I get hundreds of page views for a review on here, but nobody talks to me. While this deepens my loneliness, I now know it is for the best. For them and for me.
Sometimes I look at my life as it is now and think how much of a prime target I am for religious groups. I am lonely, troubled, riddled with disability and low self-esteem, and yearning for companionship. But, much to their annoyance, I will take my current situation over being subjugated by someone who takes pleasure in subjugating others. I have come to terms with the fact that, when I die, nobody will know about it for a long time. I will not “die peacefully surrounded by family and friends”, but instead be found by the emergency services who have had to break down my door. I will most likely have died of natural causes, most likely in front of my television. The television will be off, because the power in my flat will be off. The power in my flat will be off, because my electricity meter will have ran out of credit months ago. But I will have died with a smile on my face, knowing that I never broke and subjugated myself to someone who takes pleasure in subjugating other people, simply to quell my loneliness.
Due to my broken view of the world, I now believe I was born into a mystery cult. It was definitely not an open religion, as you had to be initiated into it. The leader was a woman who called herself my “mother”. She had a dutiful lieutenant, known as my “middle brother”, and a drone, of very low intelligence, who collected money for her, known as my “father”. I had an “eldest brother”, who was shunned from the cult for not obeying the strict rules laid out by the cult’s domineering leader. The “eldest brother”, whilst certainly provocative, was full of life and from whom I gained many of my interests and pastimes. I will most likely never see him again. Once I achieved my first taste of freedom and realised I was in a cult, I spent many years fighting to escape for good, which I finally achieved when the leader died of natural causes earlier this year. I only assume her lieutenant is now desperately searching for someone new to be led by. He is very eager to subjugate his mind. During the years of my self-isolation, as I attempted to escape, I would have fleeting contact with the leader. At first, she would be pleasant, until my individuality did not provide her with satisfaction. At this point, she would become cruel and dismiss me. The dismissal would usually come at the ten minute mark. That was all the time she had for me.
At one of the eight schools I ended up going to as a child, apparently I had been so visibly scared of my parents during a parent-teacher conference that the headteacher felt inclined to come find me in the playground the next day and ask if everything was alright at home. Considering the man was basically an administrator, with usually-scant concern for his pupils, this was quite a significant incident. At the time, I did not know why I had been so scared that day, but, looking back, I believe I do now.
I cannot engage in society anymore, for which I am sure I will eventually be punished. I have committed no crime, other than to want to be left alone. At first, I found society would be pleasant, until my individuality did not provide it with satisfaction. I drink excessively due to my mental anguish, loneliness, and acceptance that I will never again find love. But at least, for now, I am free.
This was a review for the Paul Thomas Anderson film The Master. Whilst not a formal analysis, with details of short composition, performances, and musical score, my above thoughts are what this 2012 film inspired in me. I urge you to see the film for yourself. And to live for yourself, even if you fall over and scrape your knee as you go.
Do stay in touch, darlings.
Toodles!
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