I Wish Painter was a Worse Person

[Trusk'our he/him]

As a heads-up, this post is going to talk about personal feels, failure of responsibility, and feelings of depression, so. . . you have been warned.

Spoiler

As I read Yumi and the Nightmare Painter for the first time, I got to the section where Painter's friends were talking about him to Yumi, about how he would sit and stare at a wall for hours, not fixing his problems or telling his them about his lies. . . that. . . that really hit home for me.

I actually did something nearly identical to this about a year ago; I was given a certain duty to fulfill on a regular basis. I won't go into detail, but it wasn't even that difficult. And I blew it off about 70-80% of the time, instead choosing to stay in my apartment and piddle around.

And I always began to feel a twist in my gut afterwards, because I knew I had chosen to not do what I was supposed to do, that I had been given a responsibility and had instead chosen to ignore it.

There would be times where I became so anxious that I would actually just sit and stare at a wall, for hours, just as Painter did, not choosing to better my situation, but instead choosing to stew in fear of reprisal.

My parents would call me from time to time, trying to see what was wrong or to know why they were getting calls from the people who were at the place I was supposed to go as to why I wasn't showing up. And instead of changing and letting them know what was going on, I lied. And kept lying. Over and over again.

In any case, I eventually got to a point where I began seriously considering suicide to escape from my shame. I'm fine now, by the way, physically and emotionally.

I eventually was released from my responsibility, as I'd failed for so long that I could no longer be trusted with it, which I also felt pretty bad about.

Over time, I did get better, I saw a therapist and talked a bit about what I'd done, and I'm doing much, much better now. If you have a similar experience, then I get you; it's okay to have failed, even if you made that choice, because you can get better. You will feel better, eventually, and you will be great.

Now, when I read Yumi months ago, I felt a sudden click when the scene with Painter's friends came up- I knew Painter's dilemma, at least in part. . . and then there was the scene where Yumi blows it off as seeming noble, or at least coming from an origin of love. I don't believe that was the case, and it disturbed me more than a little when this came up. It made me feel that, no, there is nobody like me, it's just me and my idiocy that would be so arrogant as to have acted as I had.

I realize that this is a very strong opinion, but that's how I felt, at least at the time.

I wish that Yumi and the Nighmare Painter had portrayed Painter as a more selfish individual, made his reasoning for his actions more relatable to people like myself, but perhaps this is a selfish wish in and of itself.

I also realize that this is not like the usual posts I make, but I felt the need to get this off my chest. Maybe someone else who reads this will be able to relate and can feel some measure of comfort that they're not alone.

If you instead feel like this was cringy or irritating, then I apologize.

[chime]

Not cringy or irritating at all. I am so glad to hear you've found ways back to yourself.

I was upset at the end of the book for my own reasons.

Spoiler

My sister died a couple years ago. So when Yumi dies, it made sense to me. I cried while Painter brought her back, not because I was glad but because I was angry. I don't get to just reach through our illusory reality and pull my sister back into my life. I couldn't save her. It didn't feel fair for Painter to get Yumi back. Death doesn't work like that.

And yet, I am glad the story ended the way it did. Full of hope, full of the rememberance that love is ever present. Even in our darkest hours. When we get depressed and when we mess up and are full of guilt, it can be nearly impossible to feel that. Hard to remember that love never went anywhere and all we need to do is reach out.

I am glad the story didn't go the ways ours did. These are our stories to tell, not Brandon's. We get to choose our narrative though and if I can offer some unsolicited (sorry) writing advice, I think you can afford to call yourself something other than "selfish" and "arrogant". Offer yourself some compassion. Would you condemn someone with those words if they told you they had the same story? Maybe you can have remorse, be accountable to your failings, and still forgive yourself.

Spoiler

Like Painter after all.

 

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 6/2/2024 at 5:40 PM, chime said:

Not cringy or irritating at all. I am so glad to hear you've found ways back to yourself.

I was upset at the end of the book for my own reasons.

  Hide contents

My sister died a couple years ago. So when Yumi dies, it made sense to me. I cried while Painter brought her back, not because I was glad but because I was angry. I don't get to just reach through our illusory reality and pull my sister back into my life. I couldn't save her. It didn't feel fair for Painter to get Yumi back. Death doesn't work like that.

And yet, I am glad the story ended the way it did. Full of hope, full of the rememberance that love is ever present. Even in our darkest hours. When we get depressed and when we mess up and are full of guilt, it can be nearly impossible to feel that. Hard to remember that love never went anywhere and all we need to do is reach out.

I am glad the story didn't go the ways ours did. These are our stories to tell, not Brandon's. We get to choose our narrative though and if I can offer some unsolicited (sorry) writing advice, I think you can afford to call yourself something other than "selfish" and "arrogant". Offer yourself some compassion. Would you condemn someone with those words if they told you they had the same story? Maybe you can have remorse, be accountable to your failings, and still forgive yourself.

  Reveal hidden contents

Like Painter after all.

 

Thank you, friend, for the encouragement and the advice. That means a lot to me.

I hope you're doing alright as well, and wish you my condolences. 

[Duxredux he/him]

I keep coming back to this post and wondering if I have something I should add. I hope you don't mind me getting out my soapbox, @Trusk'our.

Something that I think is worth noting is that Painter never hears Yumi defend him, nor does he ever get the opportunity for a rebuttal. There is room in the story for Yumi to be wrong about Painter here. That said, I don't think she is wrong in that he fundamentally regretted his actions and wished for a good way out of his perceived obligation towards his friends who trusted him. Good people feel bad about unintentionally or intentionally being a jerk, stringing someone along, or lying to people they care about. It's different if the person has zero guilt, qualms, or regret when they do that kind of thing to friends and family. Yes, the obvious response would be: "well, if they actually cared or loved them, wouldn't they just do the right thing?" Well... ideally yes, but I've learned for myself that there are a host of things in life that can cripple someone's ability to actually do what they feel like they should. Addiction, depression, anxiety, poor physical care, disorders, emotional trauma, the list goes on and on. It can take months, years, a lifetime for some people to learn the principles of how to manage their own environment, schedule, and personal idiosyncrasies in order to consistently do what they really intend to do. For some, it's learning to manage and overcome guilt to seek restitution. For some, it's fighting addiction and learning to live a life in perpetual recovery. For others it's learning about their own mental landscape and learn what can be changed through medication and therapy, and what gaps in the mind that they must live with that others do not.

A bit of my story:

Spoiler

I was a brand new sanitation supervisor for a university with less than a month in my new position when COVID-19 shut down our campus. I was assigned the building that housed the university president (who needed to hold regular meetings to discuss COVID response), the payroll office, and the legal office. I was driven by a substantial amount of fear and uncertainty as I scrambled to learn everything I could to keep my crew, my building occupants, and asthmatic wife and newborn daughter safe. I burned out - and while I lasted for a really long time, I lost the necessary stamina to hold a full time. I did not make the adjustment to suffering burnout symptoms well, particularly with a newborn who would not sleep unless she someone was actively holding her. There would be times when I would do everything I could to stay awake to help her sleep and give my wife a break, but then I would suddenly snap awake, terrified that I had accidentally dropped my daughter or rolled over and smothered her in my exhausted sleep. In the mean time since you first wrote this post, I've learned that I have a severe dairy allergy, despite eating dairy my whole life. This seems to be something new since COVID. I now will get exhausted and fall asleep for 10 hours if I eat a slice of pizza. Basically, I learned that if I want to put my daughter to bed at night, I can't eat anything with milk in it that whole day. The ironic part of this is that I had always assumed that my willpower and integrity was disintegrating along with my self-esteem considering that I found myself playing games, reading books, or doing things to felt like I was dodging my responsibilities - when actually I had incredibly poor stamina because I had been unintentionally putting my immune system under immense stress every time I ate a bowl of cereal to start my day right. In this case, failure to do what I believed to be right was not actually an indication of poor moral fiber, rather that my body and mind gave out before my heart did. Things have improved now that I have removed dairy from my diet and now have medications because I'm apparently allergic to the great outdoors with fresh air that brings pollen, spores, mold, and dust.

Long story short, in my opinion one of the hardest life lessons on self-mastery is learning what truly is within your volition, and what is not. It's soul crushing to want to do the right thing, but for whatever reason find that you cannot make that decision. It's easy to make the assumption that the task is just too hard, or perhaps you're just not a good enough person, but this is not the whole story. Physical, emotional, mental, or social well-being in addition to our environment can have tremendous impact on our ability to make the decisions that we want to, but generally we don't start looking for these issues until things fall apart. Some handicaps are easy to both see and attribute difficulty to, such as amputees, blind, deaf, Down syndrome and more. Some handicaps are not so easy to see or know what they affect, but that doesn't mean the aren't there, be it depression, anxiety, allergies, chronic illness and more. I believe the absolute hardest to identify are patterns of thought that feel like our own decisions, but are built on childhood fallacies, trauma, or mental illness.

I guess... what I really wanted to say is that a weak or ill person is not necessarily the same thing as an immoral person. The result of their actions can be the same, but the treatment is entirely different. If anyone finds themselves in a similar loop of making decisions they hate for reasons they can't describe, then my advise is to look for other factors that may be hindering your ability to choose and perhaps give yourself a bit of grace. Some wounds need years to heal, and odds are you'll make the exact same hated decision when given the opportunity until you have healed or built the necessary neural pathway around the damage.

I'm glad that you were able to find professional help, @Trusk'our, my friend. I think that both you and Painter were more of a weak person than a bad one. It sounded like neither of you gained a hint of satisfaction for what had been done, and deeply regretted it. That is not an evil person seeking to abandon morals and become comfortable with evil, but a good person wanting to live morals they are not yet able to. If this feels like it is a good addition to your thread, let me know, if you feel like it is detracting from what you really had to say and get off your chest, let me know and I'll take it down.

[Trusk'our he/him]

4 hours ago, Duxredux said:

I keep coming back to this post and wondering if I have something I should add. I hope you don't mind me getting out my soapbox, @Trusk'our.

Something that I think is worth noting is that Painter never hears Yumi defend him, nor does he ever get the opportunity for a rebuttal. There is room in the story for Yumi to be wrong about Painter here. That said, I don't think she is wrong in that he fundamentally regretted his actions and wished for a good way out of his perceived obligation towards his friends who trusted him. Good people feel bad about unintentionally or intentionally being a jerk, stringing someone along, or lying to people they care about. It's different if the person has zero guilt, qualms, or regret when they do that kind of thing to friends and family. Yes, the obvious response would be: "well, if they actually cared or loved them, wouldn't they just do the right thing?" Well... ideally yes, but I've learned for myself that there are a host of things in life that can cripple someone's ability to actually do what they feel like they should. Addiction, depression, anxiety, poor physical care, disorders, emotional trauma, the list goes on and on. It can take months, years, a lifetime for some people to learn the principles of how to manage their own environment, schedule, and personal idiosyncrasies in order to consistently do what they really intend to do. For some, it's learning to manage and overcome guilt to seek restitution. For some, it's fighting addiction and learning to live a life in perpetual recovery. For others it's learning about their own mental landscape and learn what can be changed through medication and therapy, and what gaps in the mind that they must live with that others do not.

A bit of my story:

  Hide contents

I was a brand new sanitation supervisor for a university with less than a month in my new position when COVID-19 shut down our campus. I was assigned the building that housed the university president (who needed to hold regular meetings to discuss COVID response), the payroll office, and the legal office. I was driven by a substantial amount of fear and uncertainty as I scrambled to learn everything I could to keep my crew, my building occupants, and asthmatic wife and newborn daughter safe. I burned out - and while I lasted for a really long time, I lost the necessary stamina to hold a full time. I did not make the adjustment to suffering burnout symptoms well, particularly with a newborn who would not sleep unless she someone was actively holding her. There would be times when I would do everything I could to stay awake to help her sleep and give my wife a break, but then I would suddenly snap awake, terrified that I had accidentally dropped my daughter or rolled over and smothered her in my exhausted sleep. In the mean time since you first wrote this post, I've learned that I have a severe dairy allergy, despite eating dairy my whole life. This seems to be something new since COVID. I now will get exhausted and fall asleep for 10 hours if I eat a slice of pizza. Basically, I learned that if I want to put my daughter to bed at night, I can't eat anything with milk in it that whole day. The ironic part of this is that I had always assumed that my willpower and integrity was disintegrating along with my self-esteem considering that I found myself playing games, reading books, or doing things to felt like I was dodging my responsibilities - when actually I had incredibly poor stamina because I had been unintentionally putting my immune system under immense stress every time I ate a bowl of cereal to start my day right. In this case, failure to do what I believed to be right was not actually an indication of poor moral fiber, rather that my body and mind gave out before my heart did. Things have improved now that I have removed dairy from my diet and now have medications because I'm apparently allergic to the great outdoors with fresh air that brings pollen, spores, mold, and dust.

Long story short, in my opinion one of the hardest life lessons on self-mastery is learning what truly is within your volition, and what is not. It's soul crushing to want to do the right thing, but for whatever reason find that you cannot make that decision. It's easy to make the assumption that the task is just too hard, or perhaps you're just not a good enough person, but this is not the whole story. Physical, emotional, mental, or social well-being in addition to our environment can have tremendous impact on our ability to make the decisions that we want to, but generally we don't start looking for these issues until things fall apart. Some handicaps are easy to both see and attribute difficulty to, such as amputees, blind, deaf, Down syndrome and more. Some handicaps are not so easy to see or know what they affect, but that doesn't mean the aren't there, be it depression, anxiety, allergies, chronic illness and more. I believe the absolute hardest to identify are patterns of thought that feel like our own decisions, but are built on childhood fallacies, trauma, or mental illness.

I guess... what I really wanted to say is that a weak or ill person is not necessarily the same thing as an immoral person. The result of their actions can be the same, but the treatment is entirely different. If anyone finds themselves in a similar loop of making decisions they hate for reasons they can't describe, then my advise is to look for other factors that may be hindering your ability to choose and perhaps give yourself a bit of grace. Some wounds need years to heal, and odds are you'll make the exact same hated decision when given the opportunity until you have healed or built the necessary neural pathway around the damage.

I'm glad that you were able to find professional help, @Trusk'our, my friend. I think that both you and Painter were more of a weak person than a bad one. It sounded like neither of you gained a hint of satisfaction for what had been done, and deeply regretted it. That is not an evil person seeking to abandon morals and become comfortable with evil, but a good person wanting to live morals they are not yet able to. If this feels like it is a good addition to your thread, let me know, if you feel like it is detracting from what you really had to say and get off your chest, let me know and I'll take it down.

Thank you for sharing friend, I feel that this is a great addition and insight here.

I still occasionally struggle with things even now (and based on my family history I might actually be on the spectrum, which would explain a few other problems I've been having), but it's nice to have the ability to share with others. 

I've actually known a few people who are severely dairy intolerant as well. The pain and discomfort it can cause is no joke, I can tell.

How is your family doing now, if I may ask?

[Duxredux he/him]

On 10/15/2024 at 9:12 PM, Trusk'our said:

Thank you for sharing friend, I feel that this is a great addition and insight here.

I still occasionally struggle with things even now (and based on my family history I might actually be on the spectrum, which would explain a few other problems I've been having), but it's nice to have the ability to share with others. 

I've actually known a few people who are severely dairy intolerant as well. The pain and discomfort it can cause is no joke, I can tell.

How is your family doing now, if I may ask?

Ah, the spectrum. That's my family along with my wife's family, though only some of went out of our way to be officially diagnosed. Min-maxers, all of us. For some of us our minds have been highly optimized for specific tasks, like researching vacuum cleaners, music theory, writing children's stories, and more, but as grown adults still regularly forget to tie our own shoe laces or have difficulty holding a conversation with someone not on the spectrum. My audially hypersensitive brother is the music theorist, whereas I, the tactically/audially/olfactory hyposensitive one in the family with a high pain tolerance, went out for cross country and built up my endurance for manual labor and heavy lifting in the family. Among us all we have phobias, hyperlexia, depression, linguistic polyglots, anxiety, programming polyglots, suicidal ideation, perfect pitch, probably hyperthymesiac, mnemonists, and I could keep going. With all of the ups and downs, life on the spectrum seems to rarely be "average". Let me know if you ever want to chat about it.

Actually, dairy allergy is a separate condition from dairy intolerance. An allergy provokes a response from the immune system, whereas dairy intolerance means the body doesn't produce enough of the enzyme necessary to digest dairy products, generally lactose. My dairy allergy means I get congested and lethargic as if I had suddenly contracted a cold but without any of the symptoms of the cold itself, though if I'm unlucky it can progress to anaphylaxis where I would need to start carrying an epipen. I don't have any of the bloating, cramps, nausea, or vomiting that you often see with dairy intolerance.

As for my family, I would still put myself in the category of "weak but trying". I'm still trying to identify what my food allergies are, as things got better than dipped/plateaued after a few weeks dairy free, so unfortunately I think I need to keep searching for what else I'm allergic to. Hopefully it's not gluten, sugar, or something else hugely prevalent in the U.S.. I got a lot of benefit out of being hyposensitive when I could just ignore or push through most discomforts with apparently little ill effect, but now I'm getting the downsides as well as I can apparently get major allergic reactions that wipe out my energy without even noticing. We're getting there, slowly, sometimes much more slowly than I would like, but we're not even close to exhausting all of our options. I just really hope I don't develop or fall back into too many bad habits during this period of unemployment.

Edited October 21, 2024 by Duxredux