Journal Time!

Reflections on Evangelion | April 10, 2023

So... probably the most depressing thing I've ever watched. It's not as bad as Strands per se, but it is the most accurate depiction of depression I've ever seen. So much raw self-hatred and insecurity. I'm ashamed that I empathize with a lot of what is said.

Shinji focused on pure dejection. He was and felt abandoned by everyone around him. He hated himself for not being good enough. He felt he lacked any sort of purpose, that he was nobody. Then, all of a sudden meaning was thrust upon him. His father, who had never shown him attention much less affection, suddenly found him useful and brought him into the fold. The people he worked with there and the friends he made fulfilled him. He became trapped into the identity given to him, though, and lacked inner knowledge. He hated himself still, and clung onto the few bits that made him feel stable and loved. In exchange, he couldn't shake the feeling that if he ever stopped being what they wanted him to be that it would all go away.

Asuka focused on abandonment. She too was overlooked, by her own mother no less. She too tried to escape further pain by striving to becoming the best, and then by maintaining that image. If she ever faltered, though, she too felt it would all go away. Where Shinji felt sadness, Asuka felt anger.

Rei is an interesting case. She felt a keen lack of self, for in truth she had been generated along with a great many clones that could be built just like her. She was first and foremost a tool, and for that she had a steady connection to Gendo. Being someone's tool was a secure place, but it wasn't her. She was something more: a person that felt emotion and asked questions and could make her own list of instructions. All of that humanity was alien to her, and she didn't know how to connect, or reconnect, to those parts of herself.

Misato focused on loneliness. She hated being alone. She used love, sex, friendship, affection, and authority in order to maintain relationships with other people so that she would never be alone. People had to give her love or she wouldn't know what to do with herself. She was running from the person she would be when she was alone: sad, dejected, uncertain, scared. She hadn't figured out whom she was in isolation, and it hurt to think that there may be no one at all.

She would become me. I am that lonely someone.

Part of all of these characters are what I am hurting from. Fears of abandonment, of rejection, of separation, of disappointing other people. I think everyone secretly hates me, or would hate me if only I truly opened up. I have to wear the fake face or no one would ever respect me ever again. Everyone would feel pity or sorrow or disgust when they saw the rotten insides that I'm trying desperately to make into something. Unfinished, sloppy, malformed. I think a lot of them are just on the cusp of figuring it out. In the process of trying to sort it all out, I would merely be tipping them off.

So why then do all of Shinji's supporters tell him to not run from his true self, to love himself? Why do they ask him to sort for himself what his true purpose is? Why do they make him go through all that pain so that they can love him on the other side?

I want to keep fighting and get to the other side , but I want to be true to myself in the meantime, too. I want to be true to others. I want to be judged guilty, like how I judge myself guilty. I don't accept other people's admiration. I can't. Why can't I believe them?

I want to love him. I want to tell him that he's a sweet boy and that he should be loved and that I want to hug and snuggle and fuck him. I can't, though. I'm not near him, and it wouldn't work out, and he doesn't even know himself enough to make a clear response. I want to keep all of those feelings away from him, but I know that's not what I really feel. Maybe it's just a lovebomb, a shot in the dark so that someone could please love me. Give me love, attention, reassurance. Convince me I'm not the monster I so desperately want everyone to believe. Convince me I can be more, that I will be more. Convince me that I don't have to try so hard.

I feel so guilty. I'm driven by evil thoughts, and the inhibitions keeping me back aren't much better. I see no end to the suffering I go through. I see no confession I could make that would strike deeper at the truth of things. My outer self, the one that can handle all of everything, is at war with my inner self, so fragile that it can barely discern reality from unreality. I can't tell which or what is truly me. Perhaps it is something in between those two. Maybe I do actually love him and I should admit to that. Maybe that love isn't even real and is an excuse for me to extract love from him, the love I so desperately crave. Perhaps it is something in between those two.

Maybe I'm my own greatest fear

Maybe I'm just scared to admit that

I might not be as dark as I think

Maybe I am not the person

That I never wanted to be

- Art School, Sorority Noise