Immature

I spent my childhood and teenage years trying to pleasure myself by playing video games, drawing, fantasizing, listening to music, watching television. I got obsessed about something, obsessed about it intensively for a week or two, and moved on to another obsession. I was always someone else. Someone who did things and went places. A Californian high school student with a sizzling hot body or a witch apprentice with healing powers.

Then someone tried to tell me I was me, whoever they thought I was. But how could've they known, when even I didn't know who I was?

Nowadays I listen to music made by others who are forever heartbroken. I read books written by other wannabe loners. I watch documentaries about people who have lost their loved ones. I feel sorry for myself. I think about how I hate everyone and everything. I cry. Not that different from my teenage years now that I think about it.

But the thing is, I don't hate everyone, and I'm not forever heartbroken. Just as before, I find pleasure in being someone else, even if that someone is terminally mournful. Live–Laugh–Love is a hoax, but the hoax isn't that laughing and loving wouldn't be pleasurable or good for you. It's that being anxious, sad, tearful, or heartbroken wouldn't be.

The difference between my teenage self and the person I'm now is that I pleasure myself not to find myself, but to be myself in a new and different way. In the end, that's what pleasuring yourself is about: getting to know the different 'you's better.