I have a tendency to not know my limits, either from big things like going 10 days with my appendix ruptured before I finally passed out and was rushed to a hospital, to smaller things like having nicks and scars all over my hands from recklessly handling cooking knives. I eat rotten food and have no real sense that I should stop. I have driven too fast, pushed too hard, lied too much, and turned the screws on people so hard that they snapped. I don't know what it is, I am blind to certain boundaries, certain warning signs that I need to back off of whatever it is that I'm doing.
Another small, but illustrative example -- when I was a child, my parents used to monitor what I ate and in what portions. When I first started eating by myself, it took a while for me to understand not to eat until I vomited. I had no desire to overeat, I wasn't even eating sweets or anything particularly desirable. It was more like I either couldn't feel the sensations of being full, or that I was somehow able to override those sensations, to ignore them and keep eating then promptly wretch it all up into toilets, backyards, parks, parking lots, etc.
These past couple months I pushed myself very hard, particularly mentally. Now I feel a little broken. I can feel that I have hurt myself. I am mentally not all there. I don't feel bad, I just don't feel right. When I go to say something, it's like someone else is saying it, and not what I meant to say. There is a disconnect between me, my conscious self, and the me that is talking and acting like me in the world. I feel like I have a very mild form of alien hand syndrome, but affecting my entire body and mind. The inner me has to some extent vacated the premises, leaving the rest to survive on evolutionary autopilot.
This has happened at least once before for different reasons, and I recovered, but was never quite the same I don't think. I wonder what will happen this time. It's odd thinking that my mind and body can take so much punishment, that I can subjugate my will in so many ways, but that there is finally a breaking point where something will just snap -- an irreparable injury. When I was reading that article about Elon Musk, I found an interesting quote from him, an explanation of why his marriage failed: "I went from working hard to working ridiculously hard. And stress breaks things."
Another small, but illustrative example -- when I was a child, my parents used to monitor what I ate and in what portions. When I first started eating by myself, it took a while for me to understand not to eat until I vomited. I had no desire to overeat, I wasn't even eating sweets or anything particularly desirable. It was more like I either couldn't feel the sensations of being full, or that I was somehow able to override those sensations, to ignore them and keep eating then promptly wretch it all up into toilets, backyards, parks, parking lots, etc.
These past couple months I pushed myself very hard, particularly mentally. Now I feel a little broken. I can feel that I have hurt myself. I am mentally not all there. I don't feel bad, I just don't feel right. When I go to say something, it's like someone else is saying it, and not what I meant to say. There is a disconnect between me, my conscious self, and the me that is talking and acting like me in the world. I feel like I have a very mild form of alien hand syndrome, but affecting my entire body and mind. The inner me has to some extent vacated the premises, leaving the rest to survive on evolutionary autopilot.
This has happened at least once before for different reasons, and I recovered, but was never quite the same I don't think. I wonder what will happen this time. It's odd thinking that my mind and body can take so much punishment, that I can subjugate my will in so many ways, but that there is finally a breaking point where something will just snap -- an irreparable injury. When I was reading that article about Elon Musk, I found an interesting quote from him, an explanation of why his marriage failed: "I went from working hard to working ridiculously hard. And stress breaks things."