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That damn cake metaphor is sticking with me. Have realized the same thing with the cake metaphor as I did with the hot-chocolate metaphor Hatim asked me after freshman year.
Which went as follows... question was, what's your favorite hot drink, why, and how to do you drink it? Answer: Hot chocolate, because it's chocolate, and I don't. I drink tea. I will always almost opt for tea, and I pretty much only drink hot chocolate at Show Band when it's unbelieveably freezing, and that has no chocolate content anyway. This is, quite simply, because it makes me sick. Point of this question was that hot drink of choice=sex. Look at what that says about me.
So due to this cake metaphor I've had an insatiable craving for literal cake. There is one slight problem (besides lack of cake): I wouldn't be able to eat it. These past few days I've barely been able to eat anything anyway, subsisting mostly off of drink. This is a periodic intensification, normally brought on by some form of anger or melancholy or worry, of a usually ignorable but pretty constant trait of mine: inability to deal with self-indulgence. I do this constantly. I like cake. When there is cake around, I am happy. However, actually eating just about anything, but especially junk food, is always accompanied by the knowledge that I really don't need this, a self-critical depression, disappointment at myself for lack of willpower, and annoyance at myself for finishing it because I somehow feel like it's obligatory. Sometimes I know this is going to happen and thus avoid it. Usually I know it's going to happen and eat it anyway. When I'm manic, I really just don't care until I get sick later anyway.
Self-indulgence is self-indulgence as far as I'm concerned, and I have the same negative reaction to all of it. I don't want to have my cake and eat it too. I've made my decision. I prefer to have my cake rather than eat it. The problem with this is that if I don't eat it, someone else will, or someone will throw it away eventually. Hence I have an apathy about my own high-minded distaste for such selfishness and sometimes engage in it anyway, continuing to get pissed off at myself and feeling like I'd rather just not care but not managing to pull it off.
And usually it doesn't matter. But sometimes, as now, I get very annoyed at the number of people who seem to be able to do what makes them happy and just be okay with it, wonder why I can't just bloody enjoy myself, and wonder how much is inherent and how much has to do with the fact that I have, in the past been severely bitchslapped as a result of self-gratification, and am now usually somewhere between relatively wary and paranoid of possible negative consequences of basing my behavior around my own whims and feelings as opposed to just about anything (or anyone) else.
Unlike life or society as a whole, which start off messed up and contintually move in what they think is a direction of improvement (sometimes is, sometimes isn't), many of the smaller things in life, like friendships, start off in a nice, perfect state of relaxed, fun and friendly chill, and get screwed up from then on. Then you usually can't ever go back to that same state of even and issue-less chilling out, because the past is a part of the present. You can't un-eat the cake if you change your mind. I hate this particular sort of finality. It's also part of what makes me ill. Wounds can heal in a few days, but scars don't go away, no matter what you do, for years, if ever, and they're just sort of there, marring your skin, even if they're not injuries any longer. And there's nothing to be done about it.
Which went as follows... question was, what's your favorite hot drink, why, and how to do you drink it? Answer: Hot chocolate, because it's chocolate, and I don't. I drink tea. I will always almost opt for tea, and I pretty much only drink hot chocolate at Show Band when it's unbelieveably freezing, and that has no chocolate content anyway. This is, quite simply, because it makes me sick. Point of this question was that hot drink of choice=sex. Look at what that says about me.
So due to this cake metaphor I've had an insatiable craving for literal cake. There is one slight problem (besides lack of cake): I wouldn't be able to eat it. These past few days I've barely been able to eat anything anyway, subsisting mostly off of drink. This is a periodic intensification, normally brought on by some form of anger or melancholy or worry, of a usually ignorable but pretty constant trait of mine: inability to deal with self-indulgence. I do this constantly. I like cake. When there is cake around, I am happy. However, actually eating just about anything, but especially junk food, is always accompanied by the knowledge that I really don't need this, a self-critical depression, disappointment at myself for lack of willpower, and annoyance at myself for finishing it because I somehow feel like it's obligatory. Sometimes I know this is going to happen and thus avoid it. Usually I know it's going to happen and eat it anyway. When I'm manic, I really just don't care until I get sick later anyway.
Self-indulgence is self-indulgence as far as I'm concerned, and I have the same negative reaction to all of it. I don't want to have my cake and eat it too. I've made my decision. I prefer to have my cake rather than eat it. The problem with this is that if I don't eat it, someone else will, or someone will throw it away eventually. Hence I have an apathy about my own high-minded distaste for such selfishness and sometimes engage in it anyway, continuing to get pissed off at myself and feeling like I'd rather just not care but not managing to pull it off.
And usually it doesn't matter. But sometimes, as now, I get very annoyed at the number of people who seem to be able to do what makes them happy and just be okay with it, wonder why I can't just bloody enjoy myself, and wonder how much is inherent and how much has to do with the fact that I have, in the past been severely bitchslapped as a result of self-gratification, and am now usually somewhere between relatively wary and paranoid of possible negative consequences of basing my behavior around my own whims and feelings as opposed to just about anything (or anyone) else.
Unlike life or society as a whole, which start off messed up and contintually move in what they think is a direction of improvement (sometimes is, sometimes isn't), many of the smaller things in life, like friendships, start off in a nice, perfect state of relaxed, fun and friendly chill, and get screwed up from then on. Then you usually can't ever go back to that same state of even and issue-less chilling out, because the past is a part of the present. You can't un-eat the cake if you change your mind. I hate this particular sort of finality. It's also part of what makes me ill. Wounds can heal in a few days, but scars don't go away, no matter what you do, for years, if ever, and they're just sort of there, marring your skin, even if they're not injuries any longer. And there's nothing to be done about it.