![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
09 BRAINS ; anonymous text
Back home, I had a purpose. I had focus. Something to make my life feel like it's not just myself I'm looking out for. Now that I'm here, I still have to do the same reprehensible things I did back home. The difference here is I have no way of making it a part of some greater good. I do what I can to give some good back to society to make up for what I have to do but it seems like all I manage to do things that make things seem more bleak. Add in the severe lack of hope I have for any lasting life changes here, the inability to actually have a future for myself or relationships, and living with the only person who could possibly make me feel worse, and I'm a bag of cheesy poofs away from living on the couch.
How does someone motivate him or herself here? How do I make up for doing something I know is terrible even if it's better than the alternative? How do I keep myself from becoming a monster who feeds on others and doesn't help anyone but myself when I don't have anything real to give in this world?
The one thing that made me "me," the one thing I was confident I could make a difference with isn't an option, so how do I define myself when I have no idea what makes me anything but disgusting?
How does someone motivate him or herself here? How do I make up for doing something I know is terrible even if it's better than the alternative? How do I keep myself from becoming a monster who feeds on others and doesn't help anyone but myself when I don't have anything real to give in this world?
The one thing that made me "me," the one thing I was confident I could make a difference with isn't an option, so how do I define myself when I have no idea what makes me anything but disgusting?
[Text]
Besides we all have something to give. Whoever we are, whatever our skills, our strengths and our weaknesses. I don't know you but I'm sure you're someone worth knowing. The simple fact that you feel bad about not helping others enough, at least in your opinion, shows you're a good person at heart.
We all go through moments of doubt... of despair, even. [Mavis remembered wanting to die back then, in that forest. And yes, there's not many people who like life more that Mavis does.] When you feel like that, there's nothing wrong with letting people help you out.
anon text
Having something to give and making up for doing something disgusting is very different. The skills I acquired in my world are ones that aren't any use here. Magic, the lack of death- they basically invalidate what I spent my entire life learning to do so I could make a difference.
I don't think I'm a bad person. I'm a good person. I know that. I've met monsters- I live with one. It doesn't make me any less disgusted with myself. What I'm looking for isn't some sort of feel-good "buck up, life isn't that bad" speech. I need to find something to make what I do okay. I need a way to motivate myself, not a way to suddenly be okay with something I don't want to be okay with because that's what would make me a monster.
[Text]
Did you use to save lives back in your world? If so, there's nothing preventing you from doing it here, not even magic or lack of death. Unless... [Mavis blinks looking at the screen. Is that even possible?] you somehow needed people to be dead to be able to help them?
I'm sorry if I gave you the impression I was saying you should be okay with the way your life is right now. That's not what I meant. But it is true that life isn't so bad. Especially when you're not living it on your own. It's not just a speech, it's truly what I think.
You need to find what could give your life a meaning, I agree. But you first need to genuinely believe that this thing is possible to find. You say you live with a monster: well protecting others from that person or helping them becoming less of a monster could be a start. It might not be as big a meaning as what you're hoping for but you have to start somewhere.
anon text; filtered from blaine >(
Saving lives at one point. Which I can attempt to do here, but frankly magic and the fact that people don't stay dead here make how I did it pretty much a moot point. The dead part too though. I can't help the dead people, but I can help find murderers and find the evidence needed to put them behind bars where they can't put anyone.
Okay, except that implies an actual having of life. Being dead puts a damper on that point, so does not actually being able to be with anyone because of the aforementioned disease that killed me. (Which, by the way, not curable by anything here.)
New question then: How do you help a self-serving jerk who murders homeless kids and tries to infect people with the same disease you have so he can make money off of the victims? He stopped but doesn't actually regret it so much as I cured him with a precursor to a functional cure so he doesn't have the ability to infect anyone anymore. Said cure was only produced in a small amount and wasted and we haven't been able to replicate more even in my world. What and who we need to do so doesn't exist here either.
[Private]
It does not make it moot at all. It's not because people don't stay dead here that they enjoy suffering, or the feeling of life leaving them as they die. Besides magic doesn't work the same way on every one. It seems to me you are really selling yourself short here.
Finding evidence and helping catch people who commit or attempt to commit crimes sounds like quite an important mission too. Don't you enjoy doing that?
...You're dead? [She almost typed 'too' and then decided against it. Also Mavis knows a disease is different from a curse but they have at least on thing in common. They both can't be cured.] Does it hurt, that disease? Do you suffer from it? Can you contaminate other people?
Life, existence, whatever you wish to call it. You exist, you see things, you feel things and you interact with people. You can just be passive about it - which I don't think is what you want or you wouldn't have posted this message - or take the matter in your own hands. Even if you don't want to call it 'life', you can still give it a meaning.
Help him learn do good things, things that will help people instead of harming them. Show him he can be someone different. You can't teach someone to have regrets though, it has to come from him. But you have to believe he can change. If you don't, he'll feel it and it won't work.
[Private]
I do enjoy doing that. Except, again, people die here and just wake up and already know who killed them.
Dead-ish. It doesn't hurt because I can't really feel anything. Scratches, blood, sex- anything like that is a big no. Which means no relationships. I can't tell my friends or family because, surprise, people tend to see the aforementioned "reprehensible behavior" as something only monsters do. It's too much of a risk to professionally do what I spent my entire life learning due to the risk of infection, and frankly it affects my mind too. In ways I can't predict. Sometimes ways that drive people away or hurt me. So suffering may not be a physical pain, but it's definitely a factor.
He knows how to do good things. He chooses to do things that benefit him whether it's at the expense of other people or not.