Notes on Autonomy

my safest place is stillness. I rely on those around me because I’m disinterested in any level of ownership. ownership requires effort and performances. I’d rather walk on the surface of relationships because I’ve been told my honest expression is damaging and unacceptable. i’d give it all away if it meant I was acceptable. I’ve learned well how to play a political game with my family to keep myself afloat, and I hate myself for my inability to find autonomy. I am chronically dependent at my most honest and endlessly diplomatic and therapizing at my most hopeful. everyone sees i’m a patron saint, everyone wants to bask in my light, but none of them see me supine in my own dark room. I can’t help but see my generous energy expenditure as an intelligent avoidance of my own feelings and lack of autonomy. I become obsessed with momentary metrics of engagement in lieu of anything that endures. previously it’s been work, school, and more recently it’s been “understanding people.” I understand others so well as a hardened mask that diverts anyone from knowing my vulnerable self. my mind hooked to my belt. life’s somatics at the edges of the ego are where I feel most alive. It’s a good recipe for monasticism, advisory. what does that even look like in modern times? to be endlessly materially unreliable yet still relied upon. I wish for the privilege to protect my own peace and assessment of beauty, and I wish for community to engage with as pressure release. I guess the answer is the human work pays for the solitude. but it’s still its own avoidance. clientele is a one way street, who bakes for the baker? how does the baker ask for a loaf, or signal his own hunger? maybe he just bakes for himself, it’s really grim. I understand the celibacy of the papacy, a devotion to internalized transmutation and philanthropy. it’s a romantic idea, but the issue arises in the institution. the coercive control and dogma are downstream of the leaky human desires of the “exalted.” not to mention mistreatment and deviancy in private. the salary man might keep a holy home, at the expense of the moral clarity of his profession. it’s almost as if structurally we are doomed to sin in one capacity or another. I’ve chosen stillness as my solution, at the expense of my family’s abundant generosity. yet I still don’t respect them. who does that make me? fraudulent, extractive, cunning, subversive, vacant. how does the shrink’s skillset differentiate itself from con artistry? admission of the trick rarely works even, because people often aren’t present enough to listen, or lack the spine to say no. so an eternal life condemned to suffering behind the marionette. hands tied to the trolley problem, and trains never stop coming and people never stop dying. given endless resources I’d be free to give emptily, or exit the game entirely. It feels like the only reprieve.