My Worth or Lack Thereof

I’m feeling worthless today. I’m not really sure why. The only salient “reasons” I can think of are I overslept by 3 hours, last night I went into the study and apparently my parents still have those damn print outs of IMs from when I was 13-14, I’m considering prostitution again, I don’t feel like going to therapy even though I’ve skipped for weeks and deserve firing as a patient and I’m contemplating skipping again. Also, my fantasies literally made me sick to my stomach last night.

1. I feel guilty about oversleeping because it meant I did not respond to a message about a meeting today until 2 minutes before one of the suggested times.

2. I don’t think this was the cause because I’ve stumbled across those papers before. I didn’t even think about it until after I felt worthless and began thinking of all the possible reasons I’m a bad person. Also, I was 13 years old! That was 10 years ago! Teenagers are idiots. Their brains aren’t fully developed. Most importantly I would not impeach a friend if I learned of similar or more drastic behavior in his/her childhood. That last one has no bearing on my thought processes and self-worth because I often beat myself up over things I would tell someone else not to worry about. I’m simply attempting to justify some self-compassion here…

3. Oh dear… This really deserves its own post, but there are a myriad of distorted thoughts around prostitution. I have a friend who was a teenage prostitute because one parent died and the other was negligent as a result of their own mental illness. She was involved with DFS, but the system let her fall through the cracks. Some men are awful and don’t care whether the person they’re paying is a child and unable to consent. Abusing people who can’t stand up for themselves is the worst crime in my opinion; thinking about it makes my blood boil.

I blame 13-year-old me despite the age of consent because 13-year-old me was an idiot and had no reason for her actions, whereas my friend was trying to feed herself, stay in high school, and find a place to sleep at night.

I brought up my friend because I know it is not a pretty picture. Also, ironically, I’ve encouraged her many times not to go back to that life by outlining the dangers and drawbacks, along with reminding her of all she has accomplished/ her worth as a human being. In other words, stay in school! You have a full academic-based scholarship because you’re smart and you have a chance to graduate with a degree and do some good in the world. Also, you deserve someone who will cherish you and love you as a whole person, not an object, etc… but I can’t convincingly tell myself that.

Lastly, I know it is ironic that I’m talking about prostitution when earlier I spoke about my hang-ups about virginity. I’m a very all-or-nothing person. Yay, thought distortions! As unreasonable as it sounds, maybe I fear loosing my technical virginity because I fear the flood gates would open and I’d lose all boundaries. I might fear the same thing about my masochism. So far, despite my lack of vetting, I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to only deal with people who cared more about my wellbeing than I did. Therefore, nothing dangerous occurred. I don’t know that I could guarantee safe/sane actions if I was with someone who didn’t care about hospital visits…or dead bodies.

On one hand, few people’s sadism can match my brand of masochism. On the other hand, the people who do, tend to be dangerous. One person, I never met him, turned out to be connected with the disappearance of 2 girls and 2 women.

You see, other people get involved in police investigations because life circumstances lead them to certain behaviors. That doesn’t excuse all actions, but I am different. I come from an upper middle class family who love me and don’t abuse me. I have no excuse or reason to do the stupid things I do. I bring all the trouble in my life on myself. That is one reason why I despise myself. However, as sometimes happens with journaling, writing out my thoughts caused more reflection. I was not thinking in all this detail before sitting down to write this post. My only conscious thought was, “prostitution could work.”

Of course, living in a country where sexual contact for money is illegal almost everywhere, complicates things now that I am over 18, but that is another story.

4. Meh, I’ve done this so many times… I feel guilty, but it isn’t something that would make me feel worthless. It is wrong and unfair to my doctor and unhealthy, but I do it a lot. I doubt it contributed to feeling worthless.

5. This one was kind of new. It only happened for the first time a few nights ago. I often scare or disgust myself with my own depravity. Thank God I am a submissive/masochist, otherwise I’d have so much more cognitive dissonance! I’d probably be even more convinced I am evil and I’d probably have many more attempted suicides under my belt…If I was still here.

Anyway, two nights ago was the first time I remember feeling sick to my stomach after fantasizing. At the time I attributed it to the disturbing level of violence, but it just occurred to me that the series of scenes were the first in years that were only female. Usually, my fantasies involve only males or a combination of males and female. This night, it was only women. Maybe that is why I felt sick? To reiterate, I have no issues with other people’s sexual behavior provided it is between consenting adults. I hold myself to different, illogical, standards. Lately the violence has been bad, as in horror movie bad, as opposed to just it-would-be-smart-to-go-to-the-hospital bad. I don’t know why. This sort of goes along with my fear of crossing the SSC boundaries. The more I explore masochism in the real world, the more pain I realize I can handle, and the more dark my fantasies become. While I can draw a distinction between the type of fantasy that remains fantasy (I.e., drugs and BDSM) and the type of fantasy that I might act out, part of me fears as I explore more offline, I’ll adjust the lines in the sand. Apparently the only people who match my level of violence, or at least, who are willing to admit to even fantasizing about it are serial killers.

Note: My fantasies never involve death.

Well, I think I know what spurred the feelings of worthlessness. After writing the paragraphs on BDSM fantasies and prostitution I felt like cutting because I feel guilty. Although the other things make me feel guilty, the level of recrimination associated with the extremity of my BDSM thoughts and prostitution seems to rise to a higher level. Either I feel the need to be punished for thinking/doing bad things or I want to get rid of the feeling of guilt. Punishment would absolve me and therefore I’d feel less guilty, but the two options are dissimilar. On one hand, I’d be redeemed and “good”, whereas on the other hand, nothing would change, but cutting pushes the feelings away.