Those 3 were written in the order I like the least to the one I like the most... Yes, I hate praises, I absolutely hate praises, I hate them a ton more than depreciation, and that's not because I like being depreciated (I do like it under specific circumstances though... More on that later).
Though I'm saying I hate praises, it's not all sorts of praises that I hate... I hate a specific kind of praise, that just so happens to be the most common one... Or essentially, what I defined as praise on this blog post... Which is... A one-sided praise.
If you are praised for something you didn't do, it feels horrible, getting an undeserved praise feels the worst, makes me feel terrible and makes me feel like there are some unreasonable expectations thrown on the top of my head, expectations I don't want to answer to, because I never deserved them in the first place, don't throw these to me.
"My daughter is so smart", "She could do whatever course she wanted in university", "Such a waste to have such talent on a history university" Shut up mom! That is what I wanted to shout, that is what I wanted to shout because I am one of the dumbest people I have known IRL... Not because I don't necessarily know my stuff, or because I can't get what people say, but... Because I can't study, I don't mind doing some research for a one-time thing, I don't mind working, but I hate studying, I can't study and I won't study... What do you call someone that can't study in an environment that revolves entirely on studying...? Dumb. I'm not smart, I can't pass medicine university nor would I ever be able to (not that I wanted to anyway), I had enough grades for engineering I guess, which is a good enough feat...? Not, I just had a good High School, anyone that bothered to pay attention to classes (which a surprising amount of people didn't do) would be able to get grades as high as mine.
It felt horrible because I knew I didn't deserve the praises I was getting... I kinda turned a new leaf on my life and understood I was simply a fish trying to climb a tree, so it's no wonder I felt dumb, but it cannot be helped if I was raised without even considering not going to an university, only to realize that I couldn't survive finishing one, so I needed to find a job that didn't require a superior degree... Wish I had discovered that 4 years earlier, but... Eh? That's life.
The important part is that I was being praised not for something I deserved, not for something I was good at, but rather... For something I was horrible at, for something I was one of the worst people at... It was so funny, funny in the bad sense, in the sense that you laugh at self-mockery, it was funny to hear how "smart" I was, then look at some friends of mine that came from way way waaaay worse High Schools getting maximum grades at exams, while I got barely passing grades... How was I smart? "It's because you didn't study." Yeah, I didn't study, I couldn't withstand studying, I couldn't study, study was a hassle so absolutely big and impossible for me that there was no way I studied... I remember one point in which I needed to read a text, and I was so absolutely not wanting to do it, that to force myself to read it, I read 5 minutes of text, then played 1 match of Touhou (usually lasts some 10 minutes on Extra Stage), I had to keep on switching between breaks and studying at an absurd pace... Just to make myself study.
I can't study, I absolutely can't... And I hated, hated, haaaated being praised for being "smart", for being a "genius" child when I knew it couldn't be further from truth... Because geniuses aren't people that just listen to a teacher throw the exact thing that will appear on the university's entrance exam and then remember it, geniuses are people that do that, and actually study for themselves and ace the test. It's a completely different world, and it has nothing to do with me... Undeserved praises are horrible. I hope I don't ever get those again, the expectations that come with it are bad enough, the guilty feeling that comes from knowing that it is absolute bullshit are worse... Ah, and the shame is pretty terrible too.
As in... I remember my mom saying this kind of praise in front of one of my friends... Not one of my friends, the smartest among my friends, the one that always had the best grades, the one that was on the hardest to enter university, the one that was the most dedicated... Felt so... Ridiculous. Me? A genius? In front of him? Come on, this is absurd, I'm just a dumb girl that happened to pay attention to the classes of good teachers. Don't go mocking me like that, it's hateful.
And while that much was hateful... What didn't feel nearly as hateful, was to be depreciated.
Being depreciated can go two ways... Or three... Yeah, let's go with 3, one at a time.
The first is... Fake depreciation, fake depreciation can be offensive for some, and laughable for others, though it varies a lot on your mood and in what way they are depreciating you, and about what... But putting it simply, it is generally not very troublesome. If someone calls my mom a bitch, I may get offended for the insult, but I know it is not true, so it doesn't really hit close to home... I might want an apology, I may even pick up a fight, but it's really hard for this kind of depreciation to hurt... It doesn't hurt, because it is not true.
That's not to say it can't hurt. It can hurt, if it's something more... Constant, if you work hard, if you do your best, if you try your hardest, but everyone looks down on what you do, of course it will hurt... This is more related to acknowledgement though... Or rather, to the lack of it, so I'll go deeper into it later.
The second type is what really hurts... When someone hits you where it hurts, when someone says the truth right in your face. It hurts, but at the same time it is generally useless, if someone goes and tell me "You haven't worked in the past 2 weeks? Alice, you need a change of pace! You can't stay like this!" I go like, "Thank you captain obvious!", of course I know that I can't stay 2 weeks without working, I'm not stupid, I need to work to earn my keep, if I don't work, I don't get money. I don't need someone reminding me of what I know.
Remember how I called myself dumb? Yes, turns out I'm not stupid, I know what I need to do, doing it and knowing I have to do it are completely different things though... Still, acknowledging that I'm not dumb was already a huge improvement for myself.
Still, when someone goes and says "You are lazy.", "You are just a slacker" (I can't find a better word for it, but the word in my home language has a similar meaning, but it is a lot more offensive... Imagine it is a more offensive version os slacker, even if the meaning is essentially the same) and other similar things... It hurts, it hurts because it is all true. I can make a thousand (all real) excuses as to why I did not do certain things, but deep down I know that the real reason why something wasn't done, was because I procrastinated on it... And because I know it, it hurts a lot more when someone ignores all of my excuses and calls me "slacker" (I really want a better word for it... T.T).
Funnily enough, being slapped over it didn't hurt nearly as much... Well, mainly because I could laugh at how my father was unable to use words to talk, so he had to use his hands... Depreciating someone with the truth hurts a lot after all, he was saying the truth, and so was I... Kinda surprising to look back and see me doing that, I'm not the kind of person to usually go and throw the truth right in someone's face when I know it won't help anyone one bit... I just said it because I wanted it to hurt, and it I'm sure it hurt him... I guess it just shows how stressed I was... Well, no surprise there, I was boiling from stress back then, leaving my parents home some 2 or 3 days later was an excellent choice.
And then... There is a third type... A weird and... Relieving type of depreciation. I can't quite explain how it works, but... Being depreciated during sex feels incredibly... Relieving.
"You aren't good enough even to fuck yourself", this was... This felt amazing, I'm useless, I know I'm useless, I'm useless I'm useless I'm useless, I can't do anything, I can't do a thing, I'm just a useless girl that can't even hop up and down properly, that's how useless I am. It feels great, I don't need to be useful, I don't need to try being someone that does things right, I can just... Be useless.
Call me useless, mock me, spit on me, cum on me, hit me, make me bark like a dog and feel like your slave... And then put your head near my ear and say you love me.
It feels incredible because I know it isn't true, and at the same time it is true. I suddenly don't need to make this depreciation false, I can simply allow myself to be a girl in love, in love and uselessly in love, that needs my girlfriend for anything and everything...
I feel loved and free, I'm not in this world anymore, I don't need to worry about delivering a project on the deadline, I don't need to worry about making ends meet, I don't need to worry about doing things right... I don't even need to worry about moving my hips up and down, I can just let myself be taken in pleasure, I just need to hear what my girlfriend says and move as she wishes me to... I love it.
I never knew I could love being talked down to so much. It is not something that is completely untrue, I am useless at lots of things, I can't even study for heaven's sake, how useless can someone be to not do even that?
And at the same time, I'm not useless, I can work, I can pay my bills, I can take care of myself and live alone...
It's true, and yet it is not, and it's why I know that much, that I can enjoy it so much. I can let myself be fully taken in the parts I hate the most about myself, and instead of hating myself for them, I get pleasure from being like that.
I hate a lot of things about myself, I am a pretty depressive person that was borderline suicidal in the past... And suddenly, the things I hate became good things, because those hateful parts of myself allowed me to be put into that kind of situation, allowed my loved one to talk to me like that, to make me feel her love like that, while I loved her back...
It's not as if I didn't know in advance I would probably like this kind of thing, I had already fantasized a fair bit about it... But experiencing it firsthand and simply fantasizing are two completely different things. I loved it, I had no idea I could love it so much, but I did, and I wanted it more and more.
Love really does the most weird things to us I suppose... In a good way though.
And lastly... Acknowledgement. Acknowledgement can be, in a way, seen as the good type of praise. The type that is well-deserved, the type that you want, and worked for.
When I got a 99% win rate on Freecell, I got pretty happy, like... Hey, I got this! I worked hard for this, I played some 7000 games for this, and now I have it! I got 99% wins!
... It's a petty thing, who cares about Freecell win rate? Seriously, it's such a... Petty thing. And yet, it mattered to me.
I got really surprised when I wasn't mocked by it, but actually congratulated... Like, seriously? For this? I'm... I was happy, I was happy and thankful that what I worked hard for was taken not as something to be snickered upon, but something I should genuinely be proud about. I was happy with it.
Just like how I was happy when I cleared Touhou 6 on Normal for the first time without using the Shift Key, or when I cleared my first Extra Stage, or when I edited my first Pic on Photoshop...
I did it and I was happy for it. Those aren't the greatest achievements ever, people get 99.9% wins on Freecell, people clear Touhou on Lunatic, people clear Extra Stages without using Bombs, people make some amazing edits on images that you can't even tell there was an original in the past... And yet, I was happy with it, because I did it, I, myself, by my own power, did something, something that was hard for me, something that I considered impossible in the past, and yet I did it. Even I can do it, even somebody as useless as me can do it.
It feel nice, and feels especially nice when someone acknowledges me for it.
... On the other hand, the lack of acknowledgement, the depreciation of our achievements... This hurts. And it hurts a lot, a lot lot more than when someone simply says the truth about something that is wrong about you... Because when someone throws the truth in your face... Deep down, you already know it, you already know that what they said was true, and you can fight back because you already understand it. It doesn't matter if they are right, all that matters is that they don't have the right to look down on you like that.
But when you did something nice, and nobody bats an eye? This hurts. This hurts because you expect more than that... You expect praises, real praises, praises from the bottom of one heart... And yet you get looks that say what you did was nothing... Or even, what you did was bad.
"Got your first job? This isn't a job. You have no contract, you can be scammed, this is from your home, you won't talk to people, you have no responsibilities, you have no deadlines"... It's my first job... A job I myself got... A job in a field that I love... Does it hurt to give one single congratulations? I don't care if I didn't work that hard to get it, I still got it, I still got it and I still love it, why in the world would you look down on it just because it is a home-office job without a contract? Why is a job, on a fast food restaurant; 40 minutes away from home; that works from 3pm to 11pm; that pays 6/10th of a minimum wage; that works 6 days a week with the day off almost always being a weekday and never a Saturday; that would make me lose the 1 year birthday of my niece, better than a home-office job that pays more than a minimum wage and has the possibility of getting even better payment?
It makes no sense... I don't care about why I "need" to learn how a proper job hierarchy works, how it feels to have a boss yelling at you and ordering you around... I don't need it, I don't want to know it and I don't care about it, I want to work at my home from the front of a PC screen, and it's what I'm doing... Why should one look down on it instead of congratulate me? It's my first job! My first job!
... This kind of thing hurt, and it doesn't hurt a bit, it hurts a lot, the thing above was the most recent example and the one that was more deeply engraved in my mind because it was absolutely against everything I expected. There were other times something like that happened, but they didn't hit me as hard as this one...
The point is... Acknowledging someone for what they did is nice... It feels really good to be on the receiving end of this... Not because you did something amazing, but simply because you did something that you want to be praised about. Being praised when I want praises feels... Very very nice, call it attention seeking if you want, I still want it anyway, I rarely do things that are praiseworthy, so when I do, I don't think it hurts to get a good reaction out of it.
Ah... It got big again... Oh well. I remembered another moment I wanted acknowledgement and didn't receive nearly as much as I wanted, but I think exemplifying this one feels a bit unnecessary... Especially because I already talked about it on another blog post anyway.
I think I might have repeated on this post some parts that I already said in other posts... Well, that is life, I don't remember all the details of my personal life that I shared... Teehee?
Uhn... Kudos for everyone that read it all! ^^)/
Edit: Just threw it in a word counter... 3000 words... Oopsies~
Praises, Depreciation and Acknowledgement
Author
AliceShiki
『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』, Female
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