The LIFE Project

Chapter 9: Confessions of a Fallen Icarus

Discipline is actually  something that I've had trouble with my entire life. If it was something I didn't want to do, I would procrastinate until the last possible moment and then use my absolute terror of failure to push through the mad rush to get the thing done. 

Turns out that my procrastination habit became easier to control, but was also the less damaging issue. There was another discipline that I lacked: the discipline of stopping. Of knowing when far enough is indeed far enough and giving myself a break. I would always push myself harder and further. If I enjoyed dancing, I wanted to aim for the world championship. If I enjoyed fencing, I wanted to go to the Olympics. If I enjoyed a class, I wanted to be the top performer. This destructive frame of mind was caused in part by a deep competitive streak. Mostly, though, it came from my eternal search for external validation. 

As a child, if I wasn't the best, I didn't feel like I was worth anything. It was all or nothing with me. To the point where I gave up on some things I truly enjoyed because for whatever reason (usually financial or time constraints), I would never be able to reach the top. If it was something I could keep doing, I would push to the point of exhaustion.

Unfortunately, this behavior was and continues to be praised, which encouraged me to keep up the habit until it almost destroyed me. It turned me into a perfectionist and a workaholic. There was no stopping me. No matter how much I did or how well I did it, I could become faster. Aim higher. Do more. And more.

ALWAYS more.

I reached the point where I was either working, eating, or sleeping. So I started eating at my desk and tried to figure out the minimum amount of sleep I could get away with. And then I would cut back some more if I had to.

After all, time is money, and my money went to supporting others. It wasn't enough to provide something. It had to be everything, and it had to be the best. This too, was praised and encouraged by those who benefited from my behavior. More than a decade after the first cracks had started to show.

I blew past all the red flags. I ignored the check engine lights. And then I didn't crack so much as crumble into a useless mess. That's where I learned the hard way that when your body says "stop", you stop, or it will make you.

You know the worst part of pushing yourself that far for external validation? It's all for nothing. You don't earn love or appreciation. You don't earn respect. You earn praise at the cost of your mental health. You earn people basking in or even stealing your light because they're either unwilling or incapable to make their own. 

And when you break, they're gone—moved on to the next person they can drain, and you'll be left almost completely and utterly alone. The moment you stop being the dancing monkey, they resent you for anything they can come up with and call you a failure. All to make themselves feel better for leaving you in the dust.

You played Icarus and flew too close to the sun. And if you survive, maybe one or two of the people will still be there to help you mend your wings.

This is the dark side to being seen as a success. Oh, we love a high flyer. We praise them. We boost them. We adore them. But we love when they fall. There's always that bit of schadenfreude, especially when we didn't like the person who is suffering. And when even that entertainment value has been pulled out of their being, we leave them discarded and move onto the next. I include myself in this because I am not immune to this way of thinking. It's been fed to us since birth and it's hard to imagine a world that could be any different.

We are a consumerist culture. Part of what we're all consuming every day is the blood of others. The artist who worked for an exploitation rate so they could eat, at least for now. All the people up and down the value chain, some of whom are slaves in all but name. Not only that, but 99% of us all are being sucked dry as well. Emotionally. Physically. So it's no surprise that it's everyone for themselves when things go south. Or when you are one of the people who stuck around for Icarus-pick-up duty and Icarus just doesn't get better fast enough. Or if Icarus now has a different, unexpected idea of what healing even means.

We only have so much to give, and the work of trying to get Icarus back on their feet seems to be a thankless one if they don't want to just flap their wings and soar back into the sky. Again, I'm saying all this without resentment as resentment would make me a hypocrite. There is so much that needs changing before one could assume that any of this behavior comes from a place of malice or spite in most of the people in the world.

But this brings me to my point. As a fallen Icarus, I have learned a very key lesson: Take care of yourself. No one else will.

This seems to be such an easy thing, but it takes a nearly inhuman amount of discipline. We live in an extractive society and we are among the resources being extracted. So woe betide us all when one of us says, "You know what? I don't think I will allow for this extraction to continue. Thank you but no."

Then you suddenly become "weak". Lesser. Other. A--gasp--quitter.

It takes discipline, even bravery, to say "No." in the face of societal expectations. More so when it's your loved ones doing the demanding.

But I've been around and around this merry-go ride and I'd like to get off, please. My process of doing so in the past two years has been met with derision and so much pain. I guess going against the stream will always do that. But I've put a lot of work into learning this discipline to stop.

I've had to as a matter of life and death. And so I will continue. Alone probably. As I decide when and how I rebuild my wings this time. There are costs to bear. But I can bear them. I have borne them. But I will not idly waste my life by draining myself into the needs, comforts, and pleasures of others. Some might call me selfish. But those same people would drown me to turn my corpse into a life raft, so I think giving weight to that opinion feels somewhat unwise. 

So where does that leave me? It's hard to tell. I still have my wings, but I haven't decided how I would like to use them. In the meantime, I'm strapping them onto my back and then I'm striking out on my own. 

It's time.