Oh man this brings me back to when I was an undergrad and totally obsessed with Mr. R n D. The dude just spoke to me on such a profound level when I encountered him and I quickly bought up all of his stuff, multiple different editions for the same works etc. I even tried teaching myself French and Latin to make sure I was getting all that this madman was doing. His ideas consumed me.

Eventually it got to the point where I even started styling my hair like his and grew a similar goatee. My eyebrows weren’t as defined as his so I used to sneak some of my gf’s cosmetics to help fill them out. I carried Meditations and Principles of Philosophy everywhere I went, and always tried to center conversations around them no matter who I was talking to: a cashier, my parents, roommates etc. I used to be able to quote practically the whole of them by heart. I also got into really aggressive arguments with dumbasses like OP who didn’t understand his genius at all.

Eventually something kind of broke in me. I guess I had already snapped to some degree looking back on it, but then everything went tits up. fast. My gf didn’t like the fact that I had accumulated like fifteen portraits of Descartes on the nightstand and on the walls by the bed and the fact that I was apparently constantly looking at them during sex rather than her. Then one day she found me applying her volumizing eyebrow gel and some foundation to try and get that odd tint that Descartes has going for him in some of his portraits, while having an enthusiastic debate in the mirror between an imagined Leibniz and myself as Descartes, just responding how I imagined he would and so on, and she broke down in tears and started screaming at me for being a lunatic and about how she couldn’t take it anymore. I tried to explain to her that she really couldn’t know for sure that any of what she was experiencing was a true reality that ought to be defined as “Real” and therefore should maintain a rational level of skeptical detachment, but this only exacerbated things.

So she broke up with me and started spreading rumors about how I was a fag and a weirdo who wore makeup and was gay for old philosophers. My life on uni quickly plummeted as I was ostracized which only succeeded in driving me further into my obsession with Descartes and I was eventually suspended after getting into a very heated argument with one of my professors (an empericist) whose car I later desecrated.

My life is pretty shitty now teebH. I usually alternate between cycles of NEETdom and McDonald-tier wageslavery since I never finished my degree but have loads of student debt and legal fees still. I’m not into Descartes anymore but I’m kind of glad for the experience. I doubt others have ever gone quite that far into something.