Loneliness

I am convinced that loneliness is the single most damning cause of human misery. Loneliness draws a person inward and focuses their attention on themselves. Loneliness causes a person to stop moving toward any goal. They get stuck. Loneliness is an achingly empty feeling. People don't do particularly well under conditions of un-relationship. They get lost in their own minds, tangled in emotions that aren't as overwhelming as they might seem.

I don't like to be morbid about my eating disorder. It reminds me too much of when I was really, really depressed. But for any of you who may have forgotten the cost of eating disorders, here's something at which to look: http://www.something-fishy.org/memorial/memorial.php

What I learned about humans from an eating disorder

Not to mention gads of other mental illnesses.

1. Most people aren't happy. Hell, they are lonely, sad, insecure and miserable. Mental illness is everybody else on steroids.
   
2. People want to avoid risk.
   
3. People don't want to be different, wrong, or "out of place."
   
4. People want to know, desperately, who they "really" are.
   
5. People are egoistically focused. Looking outside themselves is HARD. Looking outside, decentering, is SO important to living a wonderful life.
6. The world isn't a happy place; sadness is hyperabundent. The theodicy problem is the single most damaging aspect of religion. Shut up arguments are easy and prevelant and very comforting.
   

Why I am going to continue to be a perfectionist.

Because I have no reason to do otherwise. I mean, really, why would I stop striving for perfection?

I don't know why

But I am really anxious right now. Shaking. Stomach in knots. I don't know quite why. There are the normal issues--lacking in productivity, didn't see my horse today, et al. But in some sense, there is a lot more going on than that. Something biological too I think.