I've been talking quite a bit about priorities in therapy. To me, it feels as though there's never enough time in the day to do the things I want to do. This isn't a novel thought, but it does cause me a large amount of grief around being unable to be everywhere, do everything, support everyone at once. Being forced to choose between one friend or another, or instinctively choosing my family over a hobby I'd like to get more involved with is never something I want to feel bad about. And yet, this shame around being a human persists.
Why?
Why can't I transcend time and space to be everything to everyone I care about?
Why must I take my time?
I don't know that this is much about Persona, but every time I think about my use of time and what I choose, I think about my first time playing Persona games, and how I typically attempt to play it without a guide. Of course, this is before I inevitably give up and decide that I want to get X ending or Y ability, and then I start working off a guide. It's interesting, though. I don't generally want to do everything, but I want the ability to choose to de-prioritize one activity or a social link and have the knowledge that it was the "correct" choice.
I think part of why I play these games in this manner is specifically because I'm fulfilling the desire that I have in real life. I want to truly know that what I'm choosing to do is the correct thing in any given moment. This is impossible, of course, and I know that I need to work on my understanding of failure. Choosing to do something always comes with the risk of failure, and doing nothing isn't an option. I mean, it is, but that has a cost like any other choice, and when it comes to time you're generally better off doing something rather than nothing.
To me, so much of my fixation around time and the implications of "wasted" time seem to be primarily grounded in my inability to properly sense, track, and exist within time consistently. Often I feel untethered from or unaware of time, and with it, reality. Time-blindness is an oft discussed "symptom" of ADHD, but I don't know how often the terror one feels from it.
The fixation, then, is likely a desire to "defeat" or "conquer" an unseen or unknown monster. Something primordial, ancient, and eldritch. A being I cannot possibly fathom or comprehend and is therefore more terrifying than anything else I've encountered in my lifetime.
This, it seems, is likely what triggers existential crises in me the most. The concept of nothingness, death, doesn't bother me so much as the implications therein. How time affects one's nothingness and how nothingness approaches, quietly, without so much as a peep.
Death is fear-inducing but the uncertainty around when, especially when unable to grasp "when" in a normal fashion, is what makes much more difficult to process.
Does wrapping my thoughts up into flowery verbiage help me understand things better? I dunno. Does it help you?
Until next time,
Alex