Questionora

[Animal]

Interpret these in any way you see fit. Feel free to go with your gut hunch and respond with the first thing that comes to mind. Accuracy is not as important as hearing your voice. I left them wide open on purpose.
_____

1. Who are you?

2. What is the meaning of life?

3. What is power?

4. What is beauty?

5. What do you want?

6. Why are you here?

7. Imagine yourself in 10 years. Describe her.

8. Imagine yourself 10 years ago. Describe her.

9. What is freedom?

10. What stops you?

[Quindary]

1. Who are you?

I am not.

2. What is the meaning of life?

The meaning of life is to see through it and prevail over it.

3. What is power?

The ultimate grasp over something that comes from the deepest root it cannot resist. The most systemically controlling action potential possible.

4. What is beauty?

A personally felt quality found in things pleasing to the senses.

5. What do you want?

True control over my own existence. Freedom.

6. Why are you here?

To figure out the means to what I want.

7. Imagine yourself in 10 years. Describe him.

I finally figured out how to make a "living" for myself in this purgatory planet, earned a bunch of money, and bought my way into a life where I can go back to freely studying and doing what I want with most of my time. If I had enough money, I'd build a lab...and a lair.

8. Imagine yourself 10 years ago. Describe him.

I was teaching English in South Korea and was still recovering from an almost schizophrenic break that occurred while I was in my first relationship. She had raked me over the coals and twisted my mind, but also taught me some great things about myself and my own inclinations in the process. So I was processing that mentally with every moment alone, while adventuring around S. Korea alone and with "fellow" expats.

I'm certain I seemed weird to the others, out of place.. but I met a fellow 5 out there who was as entranced with his own ideas as I was with mine, and we had a sharing that ended abruptly when he flipped a chair at the manipulative bitch who was our petty boss and got fired over it. We never met again.

9. What is freedom?

Not being subject to forces outside myself without agreeing to their influence in my life.

10. What stops you?

I haven't figured out yet how to truly escape. What's the point of going halfway?

[Qassim]

Other TEFL teacher, yay!

[Daeva]

• 1. Who are you?

This question has always puzzled me. The answer depends on what you, the questioner, are looking for. Age, sex, location? To some, I am a stranger. A blond Belgian man living in a strange country, or so I have been told. To others, I am someone they think they know. I can be family, I can be friend. I can be opponent, I can be enemy. What I am depends on who you want me to be. Then, who you think I am says more about you than it does about me.

• 2. What is the meaning of life?

To live. Anything else is what you need it to be. But at the core of things, the only point to life is to live. Is this not enough?
I don't think it is enough. I don't believe I am enough.

• 3. What is power?

Delusion. Want what you want, change the fate of the universe if you will it. Can you?
Perhaps.

• 4. What is beauty?

Truth.

• 5. What do you want?

Freedom.

• 6. Why are you here?

Because I am not there. And I have to be somewhere. While I'm here... now that I'm here... I am trying to figure out why I'm not there.

• 7. Imagine yourself in 10 years. Describe him.

More at ease with who I am. Less obsessive with self-discovery. More open, sharing. More expansive, more free. Less stoic and self-limiting.

• 8. Imagine yourself 10 years ago. Describe him.

Alone, isolated, depressed. Hateful but hopeful. Anxious. Immersed in digital worlds, hoping to find pieces of me I had lost somewhere along the way.

• 9. What is freedom?

To accept oneself. To know thyself.

• 10. What stops you?

Me. Ego. I believe that I cannot cope, that I cannot handle. It is said that this is a false belief. Yet, believe I do.

[Animal]

1. Who are you?
A vessel through which passion emerges.

2. What is the meaning of life?
Something has meaning if one chooses to give it meaning. The feeling of 'meaning' is the result of choices made along the way. It may be a biological imperative for the species at large, considering how many people(s) have believed in God over the course of human history. But for me, meaning is a feeling that results from channeling my desire into passion and purpose.
My purpose is to polish the vessel - to practice communication styles (music, art, clothes, words) - so I may channel passion without the message being obscured by a lack of skills. Through this practice, meaning reveals itself. But I will confess, I don't do it to find meaning. I transform my passion into purpose because if I don't, it will burn me alive.

3. What is power?
Ask me again when I'm naked beneath you.
Ask me when the man I love is suffering from addiction.
Ask me when my grandfather is crying out in pain, begging his body to release him.
Ask me when I'm burning with fever, pining for my next breath.
I'm still here. I still hope, feel, and believe.
I desire. I create and destroy. I become. I love.
That is power.

4. What is beauty?
That feeling where I watch a cat, mesmerized. The protective and nurturing force that took me over when I woke up today to see Daeva's furrowed brow while he growled at the noise outside. I closed the window, and I knew I'd take down the whole army just so he could get another hour of sleep! That feeling is bliss. Beauty is ubiquitous, yet I feel driven to express and create beauty. I have no excuse.

5. What do you want?


6. Why are you here?
It's irrelevant. I'm here, and it's up to me to decide what to do with the time I was given.

7. Imagine yourself in 10 years. Describe her.
Youthful. Refusing to be ugly. Madly in love. On a mission.

8. Imagine yourself 10 years ago. Describe her.
Alive. Hungry. On the hunt. Passionate. Feral. Purposeful. A symbol for others. An explorer and protector of uncharted territory - my soul. Dreaming of my soulmate. Exiled. Alive and on fire, yet alone.

9. What is freedom?
Freedom is an ideal. Some people are driven by this ideal, even enslaved by it. This is why I called my album "Slave to Freedom" - I was describing the people I love. The original name of the album was "Freedom Broke the Exile's Heart." That described me. To me, freedom is the state of having nothing to lose. Exile. Death. I was undead, but free. I resurrected my innocence and brought myself back to life through purpose. I would be 'free' if I let it go, but I would also be undead. I prefer being driven, purposeful, and having something worth fighting for. To me, if there's nothing worth dying for, there is no reason to live.

10. What stops you?
Tell me the odds
I'll beat them senseless
Summon the Gods
They'll be defenseless

[Mahat]

1. Who are you?

The Idea is the Self cannot be objectified. How can the knower know himself? But it can cast a shadow, as it were, if that can be called objectification. The highest form of that shadow, that attempt at objectifying itself, is the personal God. The Self is the eternal subject, and we are struggling all the time to objectify that Self. And out of that struggling has come this phenomenal universe and what we call matter, and so on. But these are very weak attempts, and the highest objectification of the Self possible to us is the personal God. This objectification is an attempt to reveal our own nature. According to the Sankhya, nature is showing all these experiences to the soul, and when it has got real experience it will know its own nature. According to the Adwaita Vedantist, the soul is struggling to reveal itself. After long struggle, it finds that the subject must always remain the subject; and then begins non-attachment, and it becomes free.
- Swami Vivekananda, Vedanta Philosophy: An address before the Graduate Philosophical Society

2. What is the meaning of life?3. What is power?/9. What is freedom?4. What is beauty?

Beauty is what elevates us to the Divine and Sacred. Though perfection and order are traditional markers of beauty, I do find beauty in chaos and discord. Regardless of its iterations, beauty leads us to the Truth. Chaos and order are in a dynamic flux - the universe tends toward entropy and decay but we ultimately find ways to project order onto it. I find this relationship beautiful and a core underlying principle to the further unveiling of nature and the universe. Beauty is like the unveiling of Isis - it further invites us to uncover the mysteries and secrets that nature holds, secrets both beyond our understanding and hidden in plain daylight,

O mountain of unexplored bosom,
Mysterious in broad daylight,
Above the astonished world.
- Goethe

5. What do you want?

I want to feel the embrace of the Divine, to know the underlying motor that undulates the universe.

6. Why are you here?

Certain decisions in life have led me to this place. I have a thirst for knowledge, learning, and artistic expression. This is a place for that.

7. Imagine yourself in 10 years. Describe her.8. Imagine yourself 10 years ago. Describe her.10. What stops you?

My fear

[Mahat]

I interpreted #6 as why you're on this forum, but it could be applied generally as well.

[Robo]

Intentionally avoiding looking at everyone else's replies before posting:

1. Who are you?

Robert Zachary Armstrong

2. What is the meaning of life?
To pursue the things that drive us as we see fit.

3. What is power?
The ability to affect meaningful change upon that which we turn our attention to

4. What is beauty?
to call a thing beautiful is to recognize that it has moved you in an emotional way, usually positively.

5. What do you want?
I want to experience kindness in as many forms as I can. I want to express compassion and aid those who cannot do this for themselves.

6. Why are you here?
I'm stuck in my current town until I get my degree, after that there's nothing I want more than to leave.

7. Imagine yourself in 10 years. Describe them.
I have amassed enough wealth and power to not need or want for more, I see this defined as having acquired the means to travel and see more of the world without having to worry about running out of money to live on in old age.

8. Imagine yourself 10 years ago. Describe them.
a pathetic wretch of a human who was mercilessly tormented by themselves and others around them. Finally starting to realize the extent of the road ahead and the path to a better life.

9. What is freedom?
the ability to act unhindered by one's self or others.

10. What stops you?
I am my own worst enemy. I seek the comfort of the now rather than the pain of progress far more often than is good for me.

[SpiritoftheGael]

Animal

I feel like I can't answer these questions without answering a bunch of at once so here we go:

1. Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here?

The way I envision myself is the water running through the tree of life. Water collects the knowledge of the globe and connects everyone. It also holds the sorrow of the world. I've always felt like I held all of the sorrow of the world and it was my job to break through people's perception of reality and show them another universe. I relate pretty heavily to the Celtic river goddesses. I was drawn to Irish dance for many years for a reason and my favorite dance performance ever is Riverdance which traces the history of the Celts. I also feel like I get crushed by the sorrow of the world which I've put into many collages and have no way of truly expressing it. It makes me feel like I'm turning into a banshee doomed to wander the world as a ghost wailing.

This was a poem I wrote sometime between 2010 and 2012:



A collage I made about being crushed by the sorrow of the world:


2. What is the meaning of life?

The meaning of life is whatever you make of it. To me it's breaking the boundary of the world for further people.

3. What is power?

When I envision my own power, I see myself channeling an entire river at the world and carrying everything along with it. Power comes in many forms. My own form of power comes in not allowing anyone in and staying detached from petty bullshit. Not many people come pull me down because I'm pretty blunt about myself and not about to get involved in stupid squabbles.

4. What is beauty?

Most things that I find beautiful are simultaneously terrifying. The night sky and the depths of the ocean. To me beauty is the fear of the sublime. Another collage I made a while back sums it up nicely.



5. Imagine yourself in 10 years. Describe her

In ten years I see myself working in a job that is mixture of research in cybersecurity and machine learning. This entire field is in baby steps so it's quite exciting to be on the boundary of new break throughs. I also see myself going back to dancing but I am more interested in trying other forms of dancing such as belly dancing. I really like this style of dancing. I'm not sure my feet can handle all of the jumping in Irish dance anymore, but I love this

6. Imagine yourself 10 years ago. Describe her.

Pretty much the same but more held back by panic and thinking I was a failure who couldn't do anything.

7. What is freedom?

Freedom is the ability to make ones own choices out of what is given to you, no matter the consequences.

8. What stops you?

Fear and panic of failing and not being prepared enough stops me from fulfilling my full potential because I get overwhelmed and start procrastinating

[SpiritoftheGael]

Animal and anyone this song accurately captures the "sorrow of the world" the way I have always felt it. Nothing else ever has and also touches on the terrifyingness of beauty and also comes from Riverdance (to explain one reason why it's my favorite show ever). Some things are just beyond words. I've been trying to capture this in words my entire life, but this is the closest I can think that captures it properly.

[Melancholia]

1. Who are you?

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?

2. What is the meaning of life?

I don't know. I think everyone will come to the end of their life and have a different takeaway. Partly, I feel it must be to suffer. To live, die, and transform with each season of life. Suffering refines you. Suffering transforms you. Suffering forces you out of the ashes or makes ash of you, too. Beauty is in there. Part of the meaning of life must surely include understanding - being able to regard all of life as some kind of beautiful. Seeing the dark and the dank and welcoming it with a warm hand because you have learned to see the way each little atom fits into the cosmic puzzle.

3. What is power?

What initially comes to mind is lack of fear. But I don't think that adequately explains what I mean. I think power is acceptance. Power is authenticity. Power is not letting fear, shame, etc. prevent you from BEING. Power is not being afraid of what is in the dark. Power isn't loud, power is quiet.

4. What is beauty?

Real. I give no fucks about any superficial ideas about beauty. Beauty is showing me you, real and raw. Beauty is being uncompromisingly YOU. Beauty is honesty, beauty is dirty, beauty is dark, beauty is baring yourself unashamedly. I think beauty and power go hand in hand in this way.

5. What do you want?

To be real. To feel real. To accept myself fully. To be okay with feeling like an alien. To be free. To leave this body behind. To fly.

6. Why are you here?

I don't know. I feel pissed about it. I feel like I was born in the wrong time, or on the wrong world, or in the wrong dimension. My mother used to always say things like my soul chose her to be my mother. I always hated thinking about it that way, because I wouldn't have chosen any of this.

7. Imagine yourself in 10 years. Describe her.

I literally have no idea. My hope is that my mental health issues are under control. My hope is that I have found a "career." My hope is that I feel some sense of freedom.

8. Imagine yourself 10 years ago. Describe her.

10 years ago exactly, I was 20, 2 months pregnant and 2.5 months married, had become a Christian 10 months before that. I was in the throws of the first trimester and I was miserable. What should have been a honeymoon period was a living hell. If I wasn't bedridden I was throwing up. I was an emotional wreck. I was in the throws of dealing with the way my very anti-Christian friend group had reacted to my sudden change. It was a terrible year.

9. What is freedom?

When I think, "freedom" the same image always pops into my head: A soaring soul. That's it. Untethered ecstasy.

10. What stops you?

Me. Reality. Life. My body. Practicalities. The Mental Health Wall.

[janie]

So many of these answers are so much better than mine~!!
But I made a video without reading hardly any of them first, so that I wouldn't be "cheating" or stealing other people's answers.
I looked really uncomfortable in this video, and it's mostly just because I still always get uncomfortable when talking to a camera. I also got a bit cold after awhile. Sorry if it's too distracting. I was fidgeting a lot, and making a lot of Fi disgust faces, more than normal. But it was an honest attempt, so here goes.
https://youtu.be/yOSa-Ig4WrY

[janie]

And "real" is one of the best compliments, to me!

[Qassim]

I love this post/video, just saying.

[janie]

Thanks Qassim!

[Quindary]

I don't know. I feel pissed about it. I feel like I was born in the wrong time, or on the wrong world, or in the wrong dimension. My mother used to always say things like my soul chose her to be my mother. I always hated thinking about it that way, because I wouldn't have chosen any of this.

Sometimes the soul chooses stuff for reasons beyond the mind. It chooses pain, because of the growth lessons from it. I have done this to myself so many times in my past.

Then again, I'm not conceptualizing this inside the Christian soul construct... maybe more like the root of the being.

[Melancholia]

I am insanely open to learning to conceptualize it outside the Christian soul construct.

[Vive]

1. Who are you?
Someone who's sight is obscured by fear, whose ears are deafened by doubt and whose mind has a whole obscured by it's parts.

2. What is the meaning of life?
Negative Entropy. To create order, by creating even more chaos.

3. What is power?
Perspective. Power is the ability to influence. Everyone can influence, but how much power is perceived depends upon your expectations. Just existing gives you enormous influence. Just because you life there are people doing things they wouldn't have done if you weren't present. Maybe they would never have learned about a topic if it weren't for you, maybe your physical appearance reminded them of something. Maybe the fact that you drove in front of another person in traffic had a profound effect on this person's mood, thus resulting in a whole chain of events that never would have happened without your presence.

4. What is beauty?
The intrinsic qualities of a thing which are deeply pleasant or mesmerizing.

5. What do you want?
That differs. Wants pass easily with time. I do my best to consider what I need, instead of what I want, but this is a far more difficult question that I don't yet have an answer to.

6. Why are you here?
Because my curiosity eventually overruled my fear of judgement. My continued presence is testament to the fact that I still haven't caved under the burden of my own judgment. I'd like to keep it that way.

7. Imagine yourself in 10 years. Describe him
Lighter. More aware of his own capacities. Less internal pressure.

8. Imagine yourself 10 years ago. Describe him.
Afraid of everything. Arrogant. Convinced of having the answers to what is important, but mostly young, pessimistic and naive.

9. What is freedom?
The ability to choose what you will be a slave to.

10. What stops you?
Immense internal pressure, but ultimately it is a desire for control, mostly self-control that stops me from progressing, changing, and relieving myself of the pressure I put on myself.

[Animal]

'5. What do you want?
That differs. Wants pass easily with time. I do my best to consider what I need, instead of what I want, but this is a far more difficult question that I don't yet have an answer to.'

Interesting angle. I see my desires as a very permanent thing or, at the very least, a cycle.

[Animal]

9. What is freedom?
The ability to choose what you will be a slave to.

Hehe. Great answer.

[Princess of Hearts]

Some of these are tough, just writing first thing that comes to mind.


1. Who are you?
I'm me ??????????????????????????????????
2. What is the meaning of life?
I don't believe in meaning and looking for meaning seems like the most meaningless thing to me, it is what it is and it is whatever you make of it.
Or maybe it's not meaningless if looking for meaning is what someone thinks of as their meaning, I just think they should know that to fully appreciate the meaningfulness of it.

3. What is power?
Ability to make things go your way, or whichever other way you want them to go.

4. What is beauty?
Power.

5. What do you want?
Allll the beauty.???????????????????????????????????????????????????????
6. Why are you here?
I was born.

7. Imagine yourself in 10 years. Describe her.
My crystal ball is all dirty?
???????
8. Imagine yourself 10 years ago. Describe her.
14 going on 15, pretty much the same except younger and things weren't as horrible and my crystal ball didn't have a decade of dust and dirt piled up on top of it, it was just charmingly cloudy and mysterious.
I don't feel enough distance from that person to be able to tell, in my mind I'm still 15, maybe I'm even more 15 now than I was even then. And simultaneously I feel like 55 but that too isn't too different. I'm just getting dangerously close to the age I always feared being.

9. What is freedom?
A somewhat mysterious concept to me, and something I quite frankly wouldn't know what to do with.
At the same time I think everyone is completely free all the time as well as never free no matter what, but I feel like most people don't realize just how free they are, how 'captivity' comes from you and choices you make knowingly or unknowingly. Even in complete powerlessness and enslavement on some level I feel free. Because I know that deep down that is what I chose and what you choose is yours.

10. What stops you?
Me, just the way I am, fear of rejection, how much meaning/what kind of meaning I give to things

[janie]

Oh, and not to mention the crystal ball! XD

[Princess of Hearts]

[janie]

I "bleed Fi"! ::sigh:: It's amazing I survived my upbringing without knowing about typology. If I could have understood why/how I was different than other people, it would have made the world so much more bearable.

"And if I take too long to answer I might end up not posting it at all so I prefer to just write what comes to mind and post it. But I want my answers to feel whole and final and hopefully try to get the essence across and everything else is easy to add with time, over-elaborating to me in a way takes away from the essence. I'm not sure if that makes any difference."
It's funny--I went from completely agreeing to completely disagreeing, as that went on. It's not that I hate organization or conciseness, it's just that I only ever lose something if I do shorten my thoughts, and sometimes it's the essence, because i have to delve in more to get to it. It's like we're so opposite, yet there are similarities. I could have a whole discussion on these differences, but I will stop now.

[Qassim]

Come laugh at meeeee.

1. Who are you?
I take this to mean, who is my most essential self. Like, my soul. The qualities I would have if you stripped away the functioning "Qassim" that I've had to tack up in this lifetime--all of these genetic quirks, personas, and little life lessons that have shaped how I interface with others. Looking at my original self is a pretty good way to get there. My 3 year old self, with its inherent tendencies.

This is not necessarily how I interface with others today, but the "secret me" that has always existed:

I'm someone who is, in my natural state, filled with joy and enthusiasm and bliss. I look out into the world eagerly, and into the future, expecting really great stuff to come to me. Life is filled with wonder.

I enjoy learning. It has my highest enthusiasm--I don't feel fully connected to life without understanding everything, and I imagine that this is part of my highest expression of self and not just a quirk.

I'm stubborn and willful, and no one can change this. I'm typically easy to get along with though, unless you tell me I can't do what I want to do, or start imposing your ill-conceived, un-examined bullshit on me.

I'm at my happiest when I feel like the world is my friend. I'm a people person, even, outgoing and eager to befriend others. (I'm the exact opposite of this as an adult, but since I am talking about my unblemished soul here...)

I'm discerning. I see through the world and its lies. Yes if you're wondering, this is a quality I had even as a small child. I was never taken in by the world and its promises. I'm not materialistic. I know far too much about how to tell people what they want to hear in order to get what I want. And I always have. So I'm not easy to fool. I'm cunning and conniving, and still I am deeply moved by the beauty of music.

I'm accepting of others even when they're mean to me, because its yet another thing that's just really interesting to me. The human condition. (I've want to destroy people as an adult because I've gotten SICK of abuse...but again, inherent tendencies.) I love nature and rocks and plants. I can see that each has its own soul, not necessarily a soul like ours.

I was put on this earth to command armies and, at times, rule nations. I swear it, just as surely as I commanded my stuffed toys into battle as a child of three. It is my true and highest calling, even if I am not fated to express it in this lifetime. (I expect derisive laughter for this one, I'm such a poser, I'm so kewt. Go on. At least I'm being honest at long last.)

All these things are super important core qualities about me.

2. What is the meaning of life?
Just to live it and experience it and do the things you want.

I don't have an awful lot to say about it, because I believe this answer is best determined for oneself. I've made peace with the fact that objectively it's essentially meaningless and we have to understand this matter on our own terms.

3. What is power?
Power is the capacity to use resources to effect change. Resources may be people or money, and sometimes an inner quality (this last one gets overlooked in the reductionist West).

4. What is beauty?
I'm not smart enough to have a meaningful discussion about this.

All I can say is that I have my own sense of aesthetics that is personal to me. It is probably influenced by my culture, but more often it inadvertently flies in the face of commonly accepted norms. I very seldom live up to my own aesthetic preferences, btw. I don't care if everyone else tells me my artwork is good or if I'm pretty, it has to check out with me to actually be true.

5. What do you want?
I want many things in life, but predominantly, death to my enemies.

6. Why are you here?
I'm on earth to burn off all my bad karma ( ). To grow my innermost self. And to overcome the ego.

I'm on this forum because I have an undying compulsion to discuss personality theory and make a total moron of myself in front of random anonymous strangers on the internet.

7. Imagine yourself in 10 years. Describe her.
To be honest, this is way too scary to contemplate. Not even sure if I'll still be alive. I really can't go there.

8. Imagine yourself 10 years ago. Describe her.
Ten years ago I was at the start of my journey. I was 26, going on 27. I had just left the country for economic reasons. I was on my way to teaching English in China.

I had known enneagram and MBTI for a decade, but still didn't have a clue as to my actual types. I didn't see myself clearly and my self-esteem suffered for all the things I thought I was not. I lashed out at certain times over certain topics without understanding why. I hadn't faced my shadow, despite staring it in the face every day.

I had my little orange camera and my trusty Toshiba laptop...my phone with the Sheikh and Me as the background. Smart phones almost didn't exist in those days.

I was innocent then. I still had optimism and confidence in my future. I still looked out into the world and saw things to engage with and be happy about. I knew nothing of illness, loss, mental illness, abandonment, betrayal, legal affairs, death, and true suffering. I still believed in love.

I was right on the cusp of disaster, and it almost physically pains me to think about what came next. I knew it was coming though. I always do.

I miss those times, when hope was still real and ignorance was bliss.

Sorry for the self pity. I know people in this forum hate that. But you know...the compulsion to anonymously make a fool of myself and all.

9. What is freedom?
Don't ask me, I'm an American.

My people tell me freedom is having over-zealous security watching you 24/7 and having the right to spend and consume anything in the world at any time of the day or night, regardless of public health consequences.

So I wouldn't know.

10. What stops you?
Literally nothing stops me if I don't want it to.

There are times when I HAVE been stopped. One time I was stuck for 15 months in Japan, involved a depressive episode. I was stuck was for financial reasons--but if I'd been so determined, I could have asked my father to send for me. Or crowd funded my way out. Or gone back to where I'd started from. Or or or. I didn't, though, because I was too angry at him to ask for help, and too mired in the unseemly clusterfuck that was my brain, to actually care.

I'm currently stuck abroad again--sealed inside with no money. Borders closed. Are there ways around this? Yes. I'm looking for them--but my first order of business is to determine just what my goal is here. "Getting out of here" is not a real goal.

And at other times, it simply isn't worth the consequences that will ensue to defy the existing order. Sometimes stopping is just the wisest course of action. But if I decide not to be, chances are high that I won't. I told you, I'm a willful lil shit.

[[redacted]]

Gosh, these questions. I've been sitting on this for a while now but I think this is the best I can do to answer them

1. Who are you?

I'm me ?????????????

Honestly, I resist identifying with anything. Partly because nothing feels quite right, but also because I don't like to feel pinned down. Once something starts to take too much shape, it feels limiting and restrictive. Still, I'm always drowning in myself. To try and explain what "me" is, I used to feel like a really rotten person, I still do but I realized that is not necessarily my essence. It's more like pure potential, which is like electricity. Well, I think as an element it's called quintessence.

But to try and describe myself in more specific terms, I'm temperamental and willful, but also hesitant... cautious. Over time I've learned to control my temper (or at least try to) as I've learned that it leaves me vulnerable to show myself like that, and it's not always useful for getting what I want.

I've always gone into new situations with the underlying assumption that everyone hates me until proven otherwise. At the same time, there's a part of me that feels like I can make anyone like me if I want to. And I am drawn to people despite my anxiety, though it can get so overwhelming that I feel like I have to run and hide, but as long as I feel like I have at least someone to confide in, it makes facing the horrors of the world more manageable.

2. What is the meaning of life?

To be alive, I don't think it needs any further meaning than that. Although contemplating the meaning of life can be a way of dealing with the fear of death, but it hasn't helped me so screw it.

3. What is power?

It's the ability to influence something or someone. To get what you want. Energy and charge.

As for my personal sense of power, I usually do not feel very powerful, but the kind of power I'm mainly interested in is in the context of relationships. Otherwise it's not very interesting to me.

4. What is beauty?

Something that's strongly stimulating in a way that feels attractive and also often profound. Often it refers to physical qualities or aesthetics but it can also be a quality of something like a story you find emotionally moving or meaningful. I think when things are put together in a way that fits very well, that's what makes up something that registers as beautiful. But to really grab attention it also helps to do something unexpected, or maybe if you add an element that feels disturbing as well, it will create a contrast that makes the beauty stand out more.

5. What do you want?

To feel free.

And... what else comes to mind is something along the lines of "connection" yet putting it that way makes it sound nobler than it necessarily is. I don't feel very empathetic or I'm too selfish to have much capacity to love anyone, so any connection I feel is mostly in my imagination. So I have been trying to become better at caring for other people, though it often feels phony.

But well also I want to have fun. >WWW<

6. Why are you here?

I ask myself this every day...

7. Imagine yourself in 10 years. Describe her.

Horrifying. And I would have thought the same 10 years ago. ???????

Honestly it is. The only strategy I know how to deal with issues in my life is to throw a tantrum or cry until someone fixes it for me, and as I keep getting older I realize this is kind of problematic. But it is hard for me to find better ways of handling things, and even when I try I end up falling back into different variations of the old way. So physically I've been a legal adult for a while now but mentally I have yet to catch up to this fact.

8. Imagine yourself 10 years ago. Describe her.

Less heartbroken, traumatized and grey-haired. More hopeful. Otherwise the same.

9. What is freedom?

Lack of limitations.

10. What stops you?

Self-loathing and insecurity. Second-guessing myself. Fear of rejection and humiliation. Fear of death. Not knowing what to wear.