i'm 40 and i stood under the hanging tree twice in my life. i can blame myself for a few failures, seeing how i'd act differently now than how i responded to certain situations when i was 23, but i can't blame myself that badly compared to other 23 year olds. i was always very responsible, my only flaw was a bit of idealism that led to passivity by putting faith in the nobility of leaders. i also have had to sort out what really is my fault or not, and i've realized that i've been through a set of actually heinous environments - the type everyone encounters made once or twice or not at all. but i've had about 90% of my adult professional life from one shitty environment to the next. i can admit it's bad luck and doesn't apply to everyone, but i won't blame myself for the shitty people i ended up stuck with. to some extent, my experience reflect a decline or "downward mobility" in society, a kind of slow collapse and consolidation of old models and industries where there's a lot of vultures. one thing i've learned under the hanging tree is that i've been through the cycle of "take the risk, give it a shot, what's the worst that can happen" more than a dozen times. it always trends down and requires a frantic escape, and now i have a fucking blood pressure problem caused purely by stress. i have diagnosed ptsd not from any particular trauma, but literally from cumulative experience under assholes who didn't care about me and maliciously tried to undercut and diminish me. starting with my father by abandoning me, then my mother by punishing me little by little as i grew up to be less than her expectations. pygmalion effect there. she's a professional victim. i know what it means to "go out and do shit", i've been there. there are certain risks i could take where 1) i have every rational and reasonable cause to think there's a 60-90% chance of failure 2) if i fail again, big, i will kill myself. i constitutionally won't have any hope left.
United States