geekpat

How do people cope with decisions? How to they avoid being completely paralysed when faced with choices? I've lost count of the number of times I've wished life was like a video game and I could save at this point, and if it all goes horribly wrong I come back and try again, pick something else. I've lost count, but I know it's often enough that I wonder if it's just a matter of time before I crack a little bit in my head, and start believing it. It scares me. And every day it's the same, every day it's choices. I've already got more issues than reader's digest, and throw choices into the mix, life gets very hard to deal with. And there's no escape from it, not choosing is still a choice. It's so hard.

And I wonder what it is that's at the root of all this. Fear of making wrong choices, fear of going through life regretting every choice that seemed wrong, fear of making an unrecoverable mistake? I don't know, but that seems like it. Does that make me a perfectionist? I don't know. Does it make me scared? Definitely. I'm scared of mistakes, I'm scared of digging a hole with bad choices and one day finding myself at the bottom of this pit with no means of escape, no action I can take other than to keep digging, or do nothing and just give up.

So why do mistakes scare me? I don't know that either. Maybe because I only remember the big, painful ones. All the little ones, the beneficial ones, they're the ones that I've learned from, moved on from and forgotten about. But it's the big ones, the ones loaded with regret and self-abasement that kill me. The ones that leave wreckage strewn throughout my past, the ones that make me cringe, the ones that make me cry, the ones that make me wish I believed in an afterlife or reincarnation or something just so I get another chance, those ones kill me. How could I not be scared of them? And how could I not be scared of making choices, when one of those mistakes is the potential outcome?

I honestly don't know how I cope, I don't know how I'm still alive. I guess I have several semi-functional methods for getting by - being insular, pushing people away, living a small life etc - but they only minimise the choices I have to make, and, as anyone who uses similar coping methods will tell you, they result in a pretty boxed-in, claustrophobic existence. Is it worth living such a short-cut of a life? Is it better to move on, stop sucking down the oxygen and leave it for someone else? Again, I don't know.

Maybe the right thing to do would be to accept my choices, all of them, realise there's no such thing as a 'wrong' choice (my boss who's into buddism told me that the idea of there being no such thing as a 'wrong' choice is a pretty fundamental buddist belief. My boss also suffers from depression, so go figure that out), realise that all mistakes and choices can be learned from, they're all experiences and they're all enriching. Maybe that's how it's supposed to go. Choose, learn, move on, make better choices, even be happy.

Maybe.

But I don't want to end this on a potentially positive note, as I'm not feeling too positive right now. So I'll say that I *know* I will never accept some of my choices. I *know* I'll never forgive myself or stop beating myself up. I'll never put them down to experience and move on, if not happily, then at least content with the knowledge that I've learned something. I'll carry some mistakes and regrets around with me for the rest of my life, probably - and stupidly - to the exclusion of making future right choices. I'll keep being scared, I'll keep being paralysed, I'll keep making bad choices, I'll keep fucking up.

Sorry for wasting your oxygen.