I use indecision – that infinite hallway of infinite doors – as an excuse not to go forward in life and stay in my little coffin of an existence instead.

Or do I?

Ha ha ha.

I definitely do. It’s my catchall excuse not to do things, because of course all action requires first selecting an action out of the nearly infinite number of things you could do and then you have to decide which way to do THAT and blah blah blargh.

Yet somehow that infinite crossroads does not keep me from playing video games, or making tons of decisions in the playing of said games, or sitting down here and writing something or other.

That’s how I know that it’s all just more of depression’s usual bullshit. Depressives like myself grow extremely attached to our excuses, and use them as shields against reality that we can raise when anyone or anything is trying to make us grow.

We can’t grow! Growth is change and change is bad! Change is death! We have to remain exactly as we are right now or we will just plain die!

And that’s why we love our excuses, and will defend them with our lives and fight like a cornered rat against supposedly well-meaning people who want to take them away from us just because they’re hella toxic and keeping us down.

That’s why we get so defensive when people try to help us. They’re trying to take away our excuses, and we’d rather die than lose them, because without our excuses, we would have to face the world and like…. do things.

Perish the thought. Tangent over.

The indecision is phony, merely an act to cover rank cowardice. Being stranded in indecision is actually a super easy problem to solve if you actually want to.

Try exploring your options! That’s how healthy people pick a path. They check out their options and go with whatever choice seems right

And if they’re wrong and that road is a dead end, they are bummed out about that for a little while then they back up and try a different route.

And they don’t act like a wrong choice will result in instant death. That’s bullshit too. The world is not made of freaking land mines. Wrong choices suck but they are hardly the worst thing in the world.

And that’s easy to see…. if you actually want to get better and move ahead.

But if you want to keep hiding from reality and rotting away inside as the years pile up and every day your lack of growth gets more and more pathetic, well then the problem is clearly completely unsolvable.

Oh, and making a rash, arbitrary, or emotional decision isn’t the worst thing in the world either. It’s a hell of a lot better than languishing in your artificial doldrums while “waiting” for a decision you know will never come.

The main thing healthy people do is they keep moving forward. They don’t shed their momentum. They keep moving forward and in so doing they learn and grow and change and bloom and become more than they were.

Is that so bad? Sounds good to me. I desperately want to finally leave my chrysalis so I can spread my wings and fly high into the sky like the fabulously technicolor butterfly I am and have always been.

But to get there, I have to kill the parts of me that are holding me back. That’s the little part of myself I have to give up in order to be truly free.

I have to murder my excuses. What’s more, I need to break myself of the habit of hiding behind those excuses in order to avoid life.

That won’t be easy. And I get the feeling I will have to return to this particular crossroads many times before the lesson truly sinks in and I actually change.

But I am ready to transform. I know that I am meant to be is so much more than the sad little broken thing I am right now.

And I am willing to gnaw off a limb if that’s what it takes to free myself.

More after the break.

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Oh great, now what?

I feel ill.

Ill enough that my plans to order in tonight just went right out the window. It would be a waste of money as I have negative appetite due to nausea and I am also dizzy and disoriented, so I don’t want to have to make the trip to the door and back.

I might fall.

In fact, I’m not even going to go to the kitchen. I’m going to eat stuff I have here in my room with me and call it a meal.

I hope this straightens itself out before it’s time to hang out with Julian and watch Colbert at midnight.

I’ve felt this way all day. It started this AM when I was taking a leak and felt this wave of dizziness wash over me along with an unpleasant gurgling in that tender area of my gut right behind my navel that causes me trouble now and then.

And I thought, “That can’t be good. ”

But it didn’t keep me from making and eating my lunch today. So I dunno. Maybe it’s something that mostly affects me when I just made that tricky transition from lying in bed to being upright.

At lunch time, I had already been siting here at the computer for a couple of hours, so I had time to get over whatever.

I just realized that I have a weird, hot feeling in my ears, too. Feels inflamed.

Looking back over my childhood, there were a lot of times I was randomly ill in one way or another. And I never did anything about any of it except wait for it to pass, which it always did, and then I just went on my merry way.

I know now that a lot of that was IBS. And it wouldn’t happen that often. Once every three months at most.

I think maybe I just have a fussy digestive system that gets irritated by stuff sometimes.

Ain’t life grand?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

That could be the name of this entire blog, to be honest.

Anyhow, today has been quite a busy day by my reclusive standards.

I am an urban hermit, after all.

First was Wound Care, which went smoothly. In addition to the usual dressing changes, I had my seemingly monthly time with Vivian, the wound care clinician, so she could once again grind down the callouses on one of my feet.

The right one this time, for those keeping score at home.

Something I’ve picked up on is that Vivian and her other wound care specialists definitely seem to outrank regular nurses. The moment Vivian shows up, the regular nurse is immediately deferential and happy to act as her assistant.

And Vivian in particular seems to command respect. With the other wound care experts, the vibe is that the regular nurse is working with them to tackle those pesky callouses.

But when Vivian shows up it’s immediately a “master and assistant” scene.

Well she IS a senior nurse. I won’t try to guess her age but her whole aura is one of easy and cheerful authority.

Anyhow, where was I?

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve said that…

Next was the bank for my monthly transaction. Used to be cashing a check, now it’s withdrawing the cash after direct deposit.

I am still looking for some way to bypass this bullshit and spend my money via VISA and have it come right out of my bank account.

Instead I have to buy these Joker loadable credit cards every month just to be able to spend my money online, How god damned primitive!

And I still have to go to the bank once a month! And take out physical cash and hand it to Julian for the rent and to buy me the aforementioned credit card.

Surely there is a better way to do this by now.

Anyhow, the trip to the bank went super smoothly. There was an unoccupied teller when I came in so I just got her to go over to the one booth where you can sit down while you bank and did my banking there.

Then, it was home for a bit. until time for my shower at Rosewood Manor came around.

And that’s when disaster struck! Oh no!

See, I was doing my grocery shopping, like I do every Friday, and was going through the fussy but enjoyable process of establishing acceptable substitutes for the items on my shopping list when I realized I had not picked a time for delivery yet.

So I clicked the leftward pointing arrow button to go back to the main ordering page so I could choose the time.

But instead it just submitted my order! Outrage number one.

That is NOT what I told it to do, god damn it!

So then I tried to change my order. Nope! Orders cannot be changed once submitted.

Outrage number two!

So then I tried to cancel my order and was told that if I canceled my order, I would not get a refund. Can you fucking believe it?

Outrage number three and it’s a whopper!

So my only choices were to get the groceries at a very inconvenient time for me, or NOT get the groceries but end up paying for them anyhow.

That can’t possibly be legal.

Now I had groceries coming at 2:15 pm when I had to be at Rosewood Manor for my weekly shower at 2:30 pm!

I do not need this kind of stress.

Luckily, as it happened, Joe was at the apartment awaiting Julian driving him to the dentist, so he agreed to take the order.

But seriously. What do you mean you won’t give me a refund? Look, DoorDash, either you give me the groceries or you give me my money back.

Anything else would be flat out theft and/or fraud.

I guess this is to keep people from ordering a bunch of food and then changing their minds and canceling their orders when the food has already been made, but when you are talking groceries it makes no god damned sense.

Oh well, Now I know to change the time FIRST, before I even do the substitutions.

More after the break.

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So how else are you?

I am doing OK.

My IBS seems to be rising from its long slumber. I suspect that’s because I stopped taking antihistamines and so my allergies are once more making all the tissues of my body a little inflamed again.

So far, it’s not bad at all. It just means that after I eat, there might be a period of discomfort as my meal makes it pas a particularly sensitive spot in my colon.

Overall, my mood is better lately, although I had a sudden slump into depression earlier today. I was just sitting here playing whatever and it was like someone pulled the plug on the jukebox of my mood and it went, “rrrrrr….” all slow and stopped.

Well, this is to be expected. I have destabilized my mood in order to enable healing and growth and that means my inner world just got a lot less predictable, but also one heck of a lot more alive.

And I would rather be alive and unstable than predictably moribund any day.

And it was kind of nice having a busy day. Like I keep having to remind myself, I am at my happiest when I am busy. This blinkered and half-asleep existence of mine where I limit myself to only video games and YouTube and blogging is the pits and the more I wake up inside, the more inadequate it will seem.

And if I keep going with waking myself up – and I will – eventually that in and of itself will make me actually want to get out there and find new cool stuff to do.

There’s a world full of life and opportunity out there waiting for my rebirth.

I’m working on it. Trust me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

So the Occupational Therapist and her associate visited yesterday.

I was kind of nervous about it – meeting strangers and all – and had planned to take a Xanax an hour before they arrived.

But I forgot. And I was fine. No panic, no anxiety, no self-consciousness. The ladies and Julian and I had a nice chat. I walked out into the hallway outside our apartment door and back so they could see how I walk.

There was a minor kerfuffle about the appointment beforehand. Apparently my case supervisor Galina forgot to actually make the appointment. Oops!

But it turned out the OT and friend were available to make it at the appointed time anyway, so, no harm done.

Oh, and this isn’t really related, but in the morning, Julian had asked me if I was feeling up to going through with the appointment, and I cheerfully told him I felt fine and that I thought I was over whatever had been heating me up.

Not fifteen minutes later I felt much, much worse. Stomach in knots, sweating, feeling quite dizzy and faint. Figures, dunnit?

Luckily, taking a crap then taking a nap cleared all that up. After that, I felt even better than I had when I told Julian I was fine, and have felt great since.

It’s possible that it was something I ate that causes my feeling of overheating on Monday and Tuesday, and when it passed, so did the ailment.

Anyhow. Diversion over. Where was I?

Oh right, what the OT et al and I actually talked about.

They asked a lot of questions about what I can and cannot do, as well as checking out my two walkers, the indoor and the outdoor models.

The indoor one is the two wheel kind, which is a lot less dumb than I thought it would be way back in 2022.

I thought the non-wheeled back portion would just drag on the ground, but it doesn’t really. There’s a bit of friction, which is good because it adds stability, and I quickly got used to it.

I really should remember that I am quite adaptable more often.

They showed me some more advanced “rollator” walkers to maybe replace my four wheeler outdoor walker.

At first I didn’t think there was a point in replacing it, but the ones they showed me looked a lot sturdier than my current model and had a nice padded seat, too.

So I am not averse to an upgrade.

We also had a detailed discussion of landing me the ability to take a frigging shower. At first they wanted to install one of these shower bench things some people use where half of the bench is in the tub and the other half is outside the tub and you sit on the outside part then sort of scoot over to the inside part.

I don’t like that idea. It seems unsafe. I would worry that I would slip right off the bench and hurt myself. And I don’t really want to “scoot”.

But then I realized that the “outside the tub” portion of said bench would block access to my toilet, and that was the end of that.

We decided on a shower chair and some rails that I can grip to help get in and out of said chair, and that suits me fine.

Lord knows how long it will take before I actually get that stuff installed. First we have to get permission from the owner of our apartment, then we have to tell the ladies we got it, then they have to write a letter requesting the install, then that has to make it to Victoria then the government wheels have to churn out a response, then it will wait until the installer is free, and blah, blah, blah.

But the wheels are in motion and it’s out of my hands now anyhow.

More after the break.

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Oh yeah, therapy

Today was Therapy Thursday.

Pretty average session. Doc Costin’s learned to mostly let me do the talking. It’s not that I don’t think he has anything worth saying, it’s just that I have such a strong need to express myself and so many words in my head that the best thing he can do for me is to listen with understanding and sympathy.

In that sense, talking to him is like blogging in fast-forward.

Which makes me wonder what the therapeutic effect of my becoming a YouTuber would be. On YouTube, I suppose I would have to limit myself by time not wordcount, but still, I could probably talk a lot faster than I blog, so… throughput would improve.

That reminds me of a question I have pondered many times : what if one day, I abandoned wordcount and just wrote and wrote and wrote until I couldn’t stand to type one more word?

Well, for once thing, nobody would read it because it would be huuuuuge.

But that aside, I think it might be quite good for me. I get the feeling that if I went on long enough I would start digging really deep for the next words and that could lead to all kinds of progress.

And maybe I will do that some day.

But I am still too depressed for open-ended investments of effort.

I told Doctor Costin about my breakthrough re : opening myself up to the world because I believe that everything I need to be happy is out there somewhere and the only way I am going to get it is if I go find it myself.

Not totally sure what that will involved, but finally getting off my ass and starting to crosspost this blog to Notd (subscription oriented writing host) would be a good start.

Or trying to make peace with Discord or VRchat again. In both cases, a combination of social anxiety and frustration at not being able to find anywhere where people are actually freaking talking have made me quit multiple times.

I tried to get back on to Facebook, but you need a working mobile device in order to do the stupid two factor authentication and I don’t have one right now.

Guess it will have to wait until I replace the battery on my tablet.

But I will find a way to be more social on the Internet, dammit!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I believe that the world contains everything I need.

I believe that the world contains everything I need.

I BELIEVE THAT THE WORLD CONTAINS EVERYTHING I NEED.

Repeat until…. well, you know.

I was watching a video by my new parasocial pal Heidi Priebe and thinking that she was making a lot of good points but nothing that really grabbed me when she said something about how viewing the world as a cold and empty and hostile place makes you cut yourself off from the world (or maybe it goes the other way around) and so in order to heal, you have to believe that all the things you need in order to heal and be healthy and happy and strong are out there in the world and it’s up to me to go get it.

Ka pow. Mind = blown.

It seems so obvious now. I have been cold and hostile toward the world for a very long time. I guess that’s what happens when you’re raped when you’re a toddler.

But I have now realized that it’s a closed loop. What’s my evidence that the world is a cold and hostile and empty place? The fact that it feels that way to me. And why does it feel that way to me? Because I’ve cut myself off from the world. And why did I cut myself off from the world?

Because the world is a cold and hostile and empty place!

It’s like that snake that eats its own asshole.

Logically, I know that all generalizations about “life” or “the world” or “reality” are absurdly illogical and based entirely on how you feel about the world and not on any actual insight into the nature of things.

Because you can’t possible know enough to make that kind of judgment. And for any such massive assumptions you can find ample evidence of the opposite.

War. Love. Hate. Understanding. Ignorance. Enlightenment. Prejudice. Tolerance.

I could go on and on. And I often do.

I know all this, and yet I have had these misconceptions about “the world” for a very long time and I can see now that this nadir of negative narrative has to go.

I feel like I now have a key mantra to use in order to deconstruct that wall inside me. It’s giving me the inspiration and courage to lower my barriers and reach out into the world so I can find the things I am longing for.

That means I have to make peace with wanting things and not getting them right away. To instead just live with the longing until it is fulfilled.

That’s how reality works for healthy people. They don’t sunder and cauterize their entire ability to want things just because they might not ever get them.

That’s not how it’s supposed to work. That’s a cure that’s far worse than the disease.

Of course, looked at another way, what we are talking about is my poor abused id. I need to not just connect with it but embrace it and love it and understand it so I can integrate it back into my personality.

And maybe somewhere there’s a lil red fox who can help him with that.

Fruvous is basically my inner child, especially in the solo stories where he’s a pet in a lovely household with a little girl who loves the dickens out of him.

But my regular ol anthro pervert fox form is my inner child too. He’s me without my inhibitions and limitations, free to be as flamboyant and silly and gay as I want to be.

I need to become that in the real world.

Just imagining that makes me giddy!

More after the break.

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If I were Fru

For some reason, I’m hearing “If I were Fru” to the tune of this :

Now, to be clear, I’m not talking about actually becoming my potentially beloved anthropomorphic fox character Fruvous.

As awesome as it would be to be lap sized and fluffy and cute (and gorgeous), that would cause an awful lot of complications whether it’s happening in the real world (eek, a monster!) or a furry world where I would have to get a job or something.

I’d be a sex worker.

Remember kids, do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.

Seriously though, I’d be trying to become a human version of my cute fuzzy pal Fruvous, with all his extroversion, charm, lovability, and appeal.

And boy, would I have a lot of…. um, paramours.

I don’t know how else to put it. “Friends with occasional benefits” is too long and too cold. “Guys I’m into but don’t have sex with per se” is just plain wrong. “People I think of as friends and often snuggles up with” works a little.

Would “cuddle buddies” be too cutesy?

Anyhow, as Fruvous on Tapestries, I am very extroverted, at least compared to RL.

Here’s my extroverted online traits :

1. Lots of friends. I have a pretty wide circle of friends on Tapestries. There’s a core eight to ten that I see and/or chat with regularly and then loads of people I either only seen once in a while or whom I consider acquaintances because we just keep ending up hanging out in the same places but I don’t really known them.
2. Pathological need for attention. This is a main driving force for me on Taps. I need constant interaction or I get sad and bored and leave to go find somewhere where someone might pay attention to me. It doesn’t have to be adoration or anything like that, just any level of friendly interaction. Cuddles a plus.
3. The nerve to just walk up to people and introduce myself. And to chat them up and make a play for them. As Fruvie, I will totally see someone I am interested in and turn on the charm and the funny and the cute. It can quite honestly be a tad overwhelming for some fuzzies but meh, I am what I am. And sometimes I get shot down like a SCUD missile and it doesn’t really bother me at all. I just tell myself that if they can’t see how awesome I am, I don’t want them anyhow.
4. Feeling free to really express who I am at full volume and with great enthusiasm and no inhibition. This might be the biggest one. In the real world, I am shy and awkward and tend to mute my big personality in order to not stand out or draw attention to myself. As Fruvous…. I don’t have that problem.

That’s why I think I am actually an extrovert turned into an introvert by mental illness. The true story is that I am probably somewhere in between. On the one hand, I will always hate crowded parties, need alone time, and love to curl up with a book. On the other hand, I could easily be the life of any party.

I will just need to take a Xanax first.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Yup, you guessed it.

I was too sick to go to Wound Care today.

Woke up this morning feeling hot all over, just like yesterday. Especially my face. It felt like someone was aiming a hair dryer at it.

And I was dizzy and headache-y and such as well. God damn it.

So I sat there between 8 am and 9 am willing myself to get well and guzzling water like I was trying to create blue skies on the Arrakis of my stomach.

I drank over 3L of water in that time and while it made me feel a little better, for the most part it made no difference at all.

So I had to call up the CCC and tell them I could not make it. AGAIN.

And I freak haaaaaate this. I really didn’t want to have to make that call. I was looking forward to getting out of the apartment and have a nurse take care of my feet.

Oh, and just to spike the pain of it, the nurse I was going to see today called to make sure I was OK, and he sounded hot and had a mild French-Canadian accent.

So not only have I been cooped up in the house all day, but I missed having Jean Pierre and his sexy accent working on my feet. Dammit.

Oh well, At least I didn’t have to worry about getting an obvious boner, though I am pretty sure nurses are trained to ignore that kind of thing

Unless, ya know, they’re interested.

“What’s this sticking out of the bandage? Holy crap, it’s a phone number!”

It could happen!

Oh, and the kicker is that after I went back to sleep for a couple of hours, I felt a lot better when I woke up.

Not totally better, sadly. I still feel all heated up inside. But I don’t feel nearly as ill as I did this morning and I can live with the heat for now.

Hopefully that means that whatever this is, it’s on its way out.

It all makes me wish I had the option of getting a home visit from a nurse. I imagine getting an imaginary “ticket” every three months and being able to call in and instead of saying I am sick, I just say, “I’m using my ticket. ” and voila, I would get a home care nurse visit later that day.

Speaking of home visits, tomorrow the Occupational Therapist will be dropping by and teaching me how to weave baskets for cash.

OK, not really. She’ll be here to assess my needs so she can tell the province what they need to get me in order to make me better able to live a healthy. capable life.

As far as I am concerned, she is here for one reason and one reason only : to get me a shower chair, god dammit.

I want to be able to shower so bad. Sometimes when I am taking a leak, I look over into my shower and sigh wistfully because I miss being able to shower so much.

I may try to clean my room up some before she shows up. Not that I think she will judge me for living in such filth and mess. But her coming might give me the impetus I need in order to get my shit together and actually tidy up some.

My shit has been apart for so long that I don’t know if it even fits together any more.

That’s something I am going to try to fix. I want to feel together and focused and powerful and healthy and able to pursue my desires instead of being this being that’s all wrapped up in himself and still very emotionally isolated.

But that wall inside me is breaking down.

Some day, I will be strong enough to be free.

Oh, and if I still feel this way tomorrow, I’m going to Urgent Care.

More after the break.

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More about tomorrow

This trend of actually continuing to talk about what I talked about in part 1 is wild.

What’s next? This blog spontaneously evolving a format?

Well, technically, it has a format. The format is, “what Fru is thinking about when he sits down to write on his blog”.

Readers who are not my beloved friends might want more than that, though.

Like I said in the above, if I still feel all hot tomorrow, I will go to Urgent Care after the Occupational Therapy lady is gone.

And tomorrow is also Deposit Day, so I would really like to get my banking done so this five week month can officially be over and I can order the new battery for my tablet.

A tablet is, of course, a female tab.

Or would that be a “tablette”?

This feeling so hot I feel like I am glowing is Not Good. But it so far has not come with much in the way of suffering, and it would be all too easy to be a child about it like I have with so many things before and decide if it doesn’t hurt, it’s not a problem.

Kind of discount the very concept of preventative medicine.

But no, this has hung on long enough to force me to deal with it. If it’s still around tomorrow, I will have to assume it’s not going to get better any time soon.

Of course, knowing my luck, I will go through all the hassle of going to Urgent Care and they will do tests and take my temp and then declare there to be nothing wrong with me.

And then I will feel foolish and embarrassed and ashamed of wasting everyone’s time, even though I know the doctor will SAY it was the right thing to come in.

But I can tell they’re disappointed. Damned empathy.

As you can tell, I don’t have any faith that this mysterious condition will disappear on its own. My immune system has had a good chance to tackle it, and struck out.

So I am gearing up for an annoying, boring, and potentially humiliating experience.

No wonder I’m such a cheery soul.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well, I have been keeping myself busy sleeping, playing video games, and hanging out with my fuzzy friends in order to avoid thinking about it, but now that I have stopped to do the good ol’ eat n’ blog, I can no longer deny it :

I am ill, and I’ve been ill all day.

And there is nothing vague about this illness. I have felt hot since I woke up this morning, so I am pretty sure I must have a fever.

Look, it was that, or go on about “more cowbell”.

And I think my other symptoms are related to said fever. I feel dizzy – every time I move my head it’s like my brain is sloshing around in my head. I feel hot, obviously. And with the dizziness comes these little stabs of what amounts to seasickness.

My life is so very neato, ain’t it?

Luckily, so far there is not a lot of pain or discomfort involved. And I think I’m thinking clearly, despite feeling like my brain ain’t doing so great right now.

What pisses me off is that this might mean missing my Wound Care appointment tomorrow, making it yet ANOTHER time I am missing two in a row.

And I don’t want that! My bandages feel all gross. I want to get them changed.

But I can’t deny that I am unwell and fevers are generally caused by infections (your body is trying to cook the germs out of you) so it would be wildly irresponsible for me to go to the Community Care Clinic (CCC) and maybe infect some old people with something they are poorly equipped to fight off.

Not that I’m in that great a shape to do so myself.

Well, that’s not true. My diabetes is under control and my blood pressure is under control so it’s really just my sleep apnea keeping me from being, like, healthy.

That and whatever the fuck is happening to my arm and leg muscles, of course.

I know that I am going to have to goose Doctor Chao into getting back on the case. I still need to know what the fuck is going on and whether it can be stopped or not.

I’ve accepted that I am probably never going to walk normally again and that in all likelihood I will stop walking entirely and end up in a wheelchair soon.

I don’t wanna go there, but my condition keeps getting worse and nobody is doing jack shit to stop it so I can’t see any other outcome.

Oh well. Given recent advances in the energy density of batteries as well as the energy efficiency of all kind of electric motors, motorized wheelchairs must be getting pretty good by now.

Out of sheer vanity, I don’t want to be a fat dude on a scooter. People sneer at fat dudes on scooters and make rude comments.

Nobody talks smack about someone in a wheelchair. Plus it’s not just a matter of my not being able to walk far.

If I have hit the wheelchair phase, that means I can’t walk at all any more. And so I would need, like, a full-time vehicle.

I guess it’s still possible that the damage to the muscles in my legs and arms can be repaired somehow. Maybe there’s a drug for my condition out there somewhere, awaiting a competent physician’s actual diagnosis.

I have to shamefacedly admit that sometimes I wish I had the money to go down to the US and see a doctor there.

Their system may suck but at least you can keep their goddamned attention.

More after the break.

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Nobody loves Fru

Actually, lots of people love Fru. It just doesn’t get through.

So in some ways, reverting to thinking nobody loves me is just… easier. Easier than constantly reminding myself that, despite the message my feelings are playing on a loop 24/7, it just isn’t true.

Sometimes it’s a lot easier to believe a lie than to believe what you believe is a lie.

And it hurts to think of how incredibly sad and lonely my life has been. When I was raped when I was 4, that thick invisible wall went down between me and the world and it cut me off from all that is whole and healthy and vital and good.

No wonder I am always starving for affection. I need that touch, even if it’s only via text over the Internet. I am making up (I assume) for all the love and affection I did not get during a crucial part of my early childhood, both before and after that wall went down.

I think my childhood might have been a little fucked up even before the rape.

Speaking of that wall, it’s another thing that it’s hard for me to think about and so it’s hard for me to remember that it’s there.

Now that I am consciously aware of its presence, I can feel it in my mind. It feels like polished marble, the kind that always feels slightly wet to the touch. It’s hard and dense and kinda cold, and it is what is keeping me from feeling my world.

Not entirely, thank God. But mostly. That wall went up to protect me from the horror of being sexually assaulted when I was still young enough to be scared of the dark, and when it went up, no mechanism for lowering it was included.

In its own way, it was a final judgment on the entire world. World bad. Make world go away for good. Only let mind things in.

And that left me so deeply and profoundly disconnected. And like I keep telling myself, if I am to reconnect to the world, I am going to have to convince that deep part of me that was formed on that terrible day that the world is a good place after all and therefore it’s safe to let the wall go back to whence it came.

And then maybe I can truly come home again.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

More or less.

Finished the major overarching plotline of Assassin’s Creed : Odyssey just now.

Man, what a game. According to Steam, I have played it for slightly more than 150 hours so far. And I am not quite done yet.

To get the final ending, I had to defeat the Minotaur (aka the OG Taurus), the Cyclops (there’s only one in this game), the Sphinx (who followed tradition and tore herself to pieces when I answered all her riddles), and finally the Medusa.

After defeating each one, I retrieved an artifact created by the Precursors, or “Isa”, who are some Clarke level alien race who built Atlantis and irresponsibly left behind a bunch of way too powerful artifacts and build these sanctums (sancta?) full of impressively brutalist geometry and such.

What is it with alien races building everything out of pyramids and spheres and shit, anyway? How come you never see an alien base or ship that’s decorated with comfy furniture and bookshelves and a nice throw or two to warm things up a bit?

Not alien (or alienating) enough, I suppose. After all, they are supposed to be impressively enigmatic and far, far more advanced than us.

Which apparently means a lot of bare stone and the Platonic solids. I guess it shows just how impenetrable Geometry is for most people.

But I dunno. I suppose if someone from ancient Greece was transported to our time, they might be somewhat freaked out by all our very regular rectangular buildings and of course by cars and computer and such.

Yet I am pretty sure it could be made to make sense to him or her. They didn’t have cares but they had chariots. A rectangular building with rectangular rooms is not all that different from what the Greeks had.

Computers would be tricky to get over, I suppose. Call it magic book?

My point, and I do have one, is that an advanced alien race would not necessarily be completely opaque to us, like in Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke.

In fact, it was when reading a sequel to that story that I came to the conclusion that above a certain level science fiction can’t help but turn into religion.

After all, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I think that we can’t help but imagine sufficiently advanced aliens as gods, even when that doesn’t necessarily make any sense.

Basically, there’s two kinds of really advanced alien races : just like us with better gadgets, and space gods.

This is what comes of trying to imagine the unimaginable, I suppose. The truth is that, almost by definition, we have no idea what an advanced creature would say or do because we would have to be that advanced to think of it.

I think that makes sense.

But it’s a slippery problem because go back to the mid to late 19th century and you will see that much of what they had then is just a more primitive version of what we have now. Not everything, but a lot of things.

So you could probably get an intelligent 19th century to understand the basics of modern life, although the culture shock would be enormous.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh right, Assassin’s Creed : Odyssey. 

I finished the big plotline, but I still want to finish assassinating all the members of the Cult of Kosmos. That’s the original evil cult trying to control the Greek world in the main plotline of the game. I pierced the heart of the cult and shut down all their evil plans, but there’s still like fifteen members of the cult out there up to no good, and I plan to exterminate every one of those motherfuckers.

After that, I will probably start a new game, but I won’t get far in it before my interest in the game completely dies.

That’s kind of how it goes for me. I lose interest in a game when I know what will happen next. I am a very plot driven dude. That’s why I write them well.

Maybe I’ll start putting my mad writing skills to use.

More after the break.

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On being productive

I came across a sobering set of facts recently.

Men commit suicide in much larger numbers than women.

In general, women are more likely to attempt suicide but men are far more likely to succeed, often due to a difference in methods.

You’re a lot more likely to survive swallowing a bottle of pills than jumping off a bridge.

And someone did a simply massive longitudinal study^[1] examining the reasons why so many men take their own lives.

And the biggest factor was, essentially, failure. These men felt like they were failures, or losers, and that is literally the worst thing a man can be in terms of society and status.

Worse than being a wimp. Worse than being a coward. Worse than being an animal.

Being a loser is a total negation of your value as a human being if you’re a man. And when that is how you feel, suicide may seem like the only solution.

Take it from one who knows.

Because the massive mountain I have yet to find a way to climb is feeling like I am a total loser for being 51 and never having had a job or a boyfriend or my own place to live or pretty much any other of the usual signs that you have become an adult.

Ergo I am not one, and that’s beyond pathetic when you are 51, and the worst part is, it’s the kind of pathetic that only gets worse with time.

With every birthday, I become an even bigger loser. Yay me.

Now I can see these beliefs of mine from the outside. I know that from a detached but sympathetic point of view, they are unfair, unhealthy, and just plain wrong.

I know that other people do not see me that way.

But that iceberg of shame and self-loathing still looms enormous on my horizon and I can’t seem to find a way around it.

I can’t seem to convince myself either that I am not a loser, or that being a loser is not that bad after all.

And while I am not suicidal, if my Titanic ever does sink, I know exactly which iceberg will have done it to me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Back home, around mid-spring, people start talking about the state of the ice.

You see, the ocean freezes over in winter. And once the ice is good and thick, people start ice fishing.

In fact, a guy caught two tons of ice one year. But when he tried to cook it, he drowned.

Look, I’m never gonna have kids, my Dad jokes have to go somewhere.

Anyhow, ice fishing is where you drill a hole in the ice and fish through that hole. People built little portable shacks for themselves so they can do this in comfort.

They tend to be around the size of a phone booth. Remember those?

In fact, every winter, a little village of these shacks springs up every year on the ice out behind the Waterfront Mall every year.

See, that way you’re never too far from the liquor store.

Fishing’s too boring to do sober.

Come mid spring, the ice starts to melt, and people start sharing opinions about whether the ice is “safe” any more.

Got to know when it’s time to take the shack home and store it till next winter.

And when people start talking about how the ice pack is breaking up, you know it’s time.

I told you all that to tell you this : I feel like my own personal ice pack is breaking up.

Right now I am still mostly frozen inside. But what was once a rock hard glacier is now large icebergs bumping and jiggling like ice cubes in a cocktail.

And when I give my frozen innards a little nudge to see if it’s time to pull in the shack yet, I can feel my cubes jostling around.

Right now, it only lasts a second before my decades of self-conditioning kick in and I reflexively freeze up again and regain my strapped-down eyes-forward fixity.

But for just a moment, things loosened up.

I get the feeling that, like the ice back home, my thaw will seem to be going incredibly slowly until suddenly it accelerates and comes apart completely in a couple of days.

Sometimes with big loud dramatic cracking sounds I could hear from my home six blocks away from the action.

So right now, it might seem like nothing much has really changed, but I know different. I know that underneath the surface, things are breaking up. The thaw has begun, and some time soon, the cracks will begin to show and then the whole damn system will start falling apart in big wet clumps.

It’s not the sort of thing that can be done intellectually. We’re talking pure emotion born from a terrible thing that happened when I was very young. The intellectual mind can, at best, administrate it.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t guide the process consciously. The secret for me is imagination. I have a powerful imagination and by using it to imagine the ice melting any breaking up and the sun shining on my soul at last, I can make it happen.

I can push myself in that direction. Guide my growth like I am kindly showing myself the way to a better world and, like a plant, I am growing toward the light from that world.

Part of my process of healing will be the complete separation and divorce from my ice so that I fully embrace and accept that my ice is not a part of me, it’s just something that happened to me, and it can all die and go away and I will have lost nothing of value.

And gained an incalculable amount in terms of being truly alive.

And my ice can learn what it’s like to be water again.

More after the break.

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More past blasts

Here’s some more fun videos from my ancient playlists.

This man is so funny it’s like bloody magic :

Plus he’s working the inexhaustible comedy mine that is misheard lyrics.

I’m not sure why misheard lyrics are so reliably hilarious. I guess they hit a sweet spot between error (novel ways to get things wrong are always funny), relatability (we’ve all been there), surprise (root of all comedy), and density (so much funny in so few words).

And part of the density factor is that they use cultural properties that are already in your mind and powerful because of their heavy pop culture weight and, of course, the fact that they are musical because music, like comedy, is magic.

One last thing : it shows just what a master of comedy Peter Kay is that he knows when to stop feeding the misheard lyrics to the audience because now they hear it themselves, without prompting.

Now here’s a VERY deep Canadian comedy cut :

You know it’s a deep cut when the only reason it even still exists to be found is that it got pirated for some bootleg Latino CD label.

I used to have the entire album that track came from. Recorded off the radio. Back when radio stations would play entire albums sometimes.

I won’t claim it was pure comedy gold but I liked it. It had the silly, slightly subversive sense of humour I loved back then.

Now they do stuff like… this.

Finally, here’s a piece from an animator I truly adore :

Not only does FattyDragonite do animations featuring gay furries (hello!), they are extremely well made and, unlike so many other furry things, actually complete, well written, professional, and just plain lovable.

I find it hard to relate to people who feel bound by the rules. I understand them and I strive to make sure I take their needs into account but for me, it’s always been intuitively obvious that the rules are, quite often, optional and can be disregarded when they don’t make sense or are being unnecessarily cumbersome.

That said, I obey most of the rules most of the time because for the most part, they DO make sense, and in fact make it possible for us cranky primates to share this world with one another peacefully.

But I have no sense of the rules as an independent force of authority that must be obeyed. To me, it’s always contingent on my own judgment.

As is everything else.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I feel like, as my self-excavation continues, I am beginning to get glimpses of who I really am, underneath all the madness.

Like I have come to terms with the fact that I am, in fact, rather high strung. I might front like I am a laid back mellow guy, and I am… some of the time.

But I get the feeling that, sans mental illness, I would also be somewhat excitable and maybe even hyper, at least in spurts.

I know that I get waves of inspiration and I wish I could loosen up inside enough to be able to just follow those wherever they lead.

I wish I could be the sort of creative genius one sees in the movies where I get a sudden inspiration and then dash off to my computer to get it all typed down as fast as I can in hopes of bottling that lightning.

But I’m not that guy. Not yet, anyhow. Maybe never… my Taurus need for predictability and calm would find that kind of life very jarring and chaotic because I would never know when the next lightning bolt would strike and interrupt whatever it is I am doing to demand that I drop everything and follow IT instead.

I hate being interrupted. And I hate not finishing what I start.

So instead, the brilliant ideas last long enough in my consciousness to amuse, amaze, or impress me, then dissolve back into the rich primordial soup which birthed them.

I suppose that’s not so bad. But it’s not that good, either. There has to be some way to tap into more of that wild creativity of mine. A way that produces something of lasting value instead of just an ephemeral phantom of the mind.

And often my ideas are not really gone. They are filed away in some back office of my mind and will re-emerge at some salient moment when I need it.

Fruvous secret revealed : sometimes the brilliant ideas he appears to come up with spontaneously are actually ideas he is just remembering.

I mean, either way, they’re my brilliant ideas. So it still counts.

I also suspect that, buried under entire geological eras of insanity, I am actually a neat and organized and orderly person.

After all, it’s not that I like living in chaos and filth. I’d much rather have everything be clean and bright and well organized.

I just don’t feel like I can do that myself. Yet. But the impulse is in there and if I ever regain my energy and drive, I am going to start leading a much cleaner life.

Somewhere underneath the pain, I definitely have the nesting urge to clean and organize my living space to make it nice for myself.

But self-neglect, low self-worth, depression, anxiety, and learned helplessness all get in the way of giving in to that urge at all.

So I need to either get radically better self-esteem or find a way to make enough money to hire a housemaid and/or manservant.

I just love that word. Manservant. Give me chills just thinking about it.

Then there’s the ever-present anger issue. I don’t think of myself an angry person and I don’t want to be one, but as I loosen up inside and get in touch with my emotions and learn to feel them all, I am going to have to deal with all my latent rage and find some sane, safe, non-destructive way to vent it or it will eat me alive.

They say depression is anger turned inwards, and it sure as fuck is with me.

More after the break.

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Another sick day

Didn’t make it to Wound Care OR my shower at Rosewood today.

And I find that depressing.

The first hint of trouble was when I woke up and REALLY didn’t want to get out of bed. That’s quite rare for me. I have trouble getting out of bed fairly often but that’s more a lack of focus and motivation, not reluctancr.

But this morning I *hated* the thought of leaving bed.

But I got up anyhow, and sat there eating breakfast and chatting with my fuzzy friends like I do every morning, but I had this vague sense that something was wrong.

I was awake for half an hour before I realized what it was : I felt terrible.

So I had to get Julian to call Wound Care and tell them I was sick. And then a few hours later, I realized I was not getting any better, so I had him cancel the shower too.

I am bummed out at missing both. With Wound Care, I mean, it’s only been a week and change since I had to miss two in a row. Now I have to wait till Tuesday before I get fresh bandages on my feet.

And I am tired of this shit.

And this was only going to be my second Rosewood Manor shower ever. I felt like I was missing the second day of school.

The whole thing gave me a deflated feeling. Like I had been building up energy within myself to get these things done and then I had to just let it out again,

But I had that feeling like my whole head was solid again, plus runny nose, scratchy throat and lungs, headache, and general malaise.

And that meant I did not feel like it would be safe for me to be around old people with compromised immune systems.

I will admit, though, a small selfish part of me wanted to just go anyway. Ignore the risk to others, ignore my own suffering, and get my shit done.

But I am too sensitive and responsible for that. So I stayed home and nursed a little mild depression for a while.

I feel better than I did earlier today, but not by much. And now my face feels hot too.

I am so over this crap. I am tired of this mysterious bug popping up and wrecking my day. I am thinking that if I still feel bad tomorrow I might go to Urgent Care.

Maybe I just need more sleep. I don’t know.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Did the Therapy Thursday thing today.

I talked about how I now knew that all that chilly fear that grips me when I try to do anything outside my very narrow corridor of existence is my brain’s way of keeping that enormous fraction of me that’s been frozen and locked away all these years from thawing out and upsetting the whole system.

That is, in essence, what I am so scared of. That enormous icy dread that freezes me in place is simply my maladapted mind’s way of maintaining stability and keeping me strapped down, head immobilized, eyes pointed at the screen as if I was in A Clockwork Orange except that what I see on the screen I’ve taken to be reality for a long long time.

And it is. But just a narrow little slice of it.

It gave the illusion of reality partly because I can see very far and very deeply from my Barcalounger of doom. I know so much and understand so much that it never felt like my point of view was limited at all.

And it wasn’t…. on the intellectual level.

But emotionally and spiritually, quadriplegics have a greater range of motion than I.

Luckily, the illusion has (obviously) started breaking down. In those rare moments when I Am not playing a video game, I find myself wondering, is this really all I am going to do today? Is this all there is for me? What other things, new things, could I be experiencing? And most importantly of all….

…could I be having a heck of a lot more fun than I am right now?

The answer, of course, is yes. It’s not like video games, as great as they are, are the most fun things in the universe. There’s all kinds of fun things I could be doing. Things that do more than just keep me occupied and entertained. Things that enrich me and bring me joy and love and fulfillment.

Or things that just get me laid, god dammit.

These cold fears of mine have kept me from thinking about things like that. Anything that felt like it might awaken my soul was a source of nameless terror that paralyzed me and kept me from moving forward in the slightest.

And that’s bad.

It’s trapped me in this tragically limited existence for almost 30 years now. But now my soul is slowly thawing out and waking up and it wants so much more.

So these fucking fears and aversions have got to go.

G’wan, get outta here! Vamoose! Shoo! GIT! *chases inner demons with a broom*

Right now, I don’t have the mental resources to launch a full out assault on the system. I am still too scattered and weak and diffuse for that.

But a storm is gathering within me, and soon (I hope), I will throw my all at all that god damned ice and break it up so it can melt in the sun and be gone for good.

This will not be easy. The old bad maladaptive part of me will insists that I am going to die (no, it is), that the walls of reality itself will come crashing down and I will be broken beyond all hope of despair when that ice gives way.

But I am not my ice.

I am the sad motherfucker trapped in that ice. I am a living, breathing, id-bearing animal who has been cut off from the wellspring of life force by all this ice for far too long and I am just about ready to hook that fucker up and throw the switch.

I’ll take the pain, the fear, the nausea, the dread, the heart palpitations, the illusions of illness, and anything else the system can throw at me.

But LET ME LIVE.

More after the break.

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Digging the terminology

I am really digging calling my mental illness “the system”.

Taps into my latent anarchist side. I am good at subversion. I have a real knack for taking down bad order. I can jam “the system” real good.

If the system is just, I’m for the system.

If the system is corrupt, I’mma throw a brick through a window.

My love of good order and my hatred of bad order are two sides of the exact same coin as far as I am concerned.

Hence my being “neutral good” in RPGs.

The Odyssey continues

Playing Assassin’s Creed : Odyssey continues to pay out nicely.

After completing the main plot then more or less fucking around for a while, I did the bucolic quest of paternal bliss that I knew would result in a loved one dying in order to kick off a long bloody question for vengeance.

And yup. One minute I am enjoying the domestic life in the lovely little village of Dyme (dee-may) with my father-in-law and fellow assassin Darius and my wife Neema and my infant son, Elpidios. ^[1]

Aaaand the next minute a bunch of assholes from the Order of the Ancients show up, slaughter everyone in the village and burn it to the ground just to get me to show up so they can try and kill me.

And yet, their leader, Amorges, still thinks he’s on the side of justice! Bah. He’s a bloodthirsty monster who chooses the most vile and violent solutions to any problem and tells himself it’s all justified in the pursuit of “peace”.

Burning villages for vastly insufficient reasons does not promote “peace”.

Anyhow, that was the introduction to Chapter 3 of the game, which was a pleasant surprise to me because I had forgotten I was on Chapter 2.

I just finished chapter 3, where I killed Amorges, tearfully reunited with my infant son, and just as tearfully said goodbye at him as his grand-pater took him away to parts unknown because he’d never be safe around someone with as violent a life as I.

And I think that’s what I have enjoyed most about this game : being set in ancient Greece, they do not hold back on the emotion one iota. My hero, Alexios, cried like an infant when his wife Neema died.

And you know what? That’s exactly what his culture would expect of him. That’s so much more enlightened then our compulsive emotional constipation that keeps us all bottled up inside.

Let it out, Alexios!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.