I was a sad, strange, lonely, impossibly bright little kid.

Yup, we’re back to the soul searching stuff. The worm has turned and I feel depressed and frustrated and smothered by life again, and so it is time for more therapy pas de deux.

Tonight, I was thinking about the Votours. They were the family across the street from us when I was growing up at good old 135 Belmont Street. A big Acadian family, their home always seemed to be full of life, with various members of the clan moving in and out as well as the full time residents having drinks on their back porch and talking, or having some child’s birthday party, and so on.

This was so very different from my own bright but chilly home, where the six of us were pretty much the only people ever there except for Christmas Eve and New Year’s, that the Votours fascinated me from afar.

See, my parents didn’t have friends. They just didn’t. That seems so weird to me now. Both of my parents knew a lot of people through their work, but they didn’t have any actual friends.

Like I said… bright, but chilly.

As for family, my father’s was all in Ontario, where is is originally from. But my mother’s was right there in town with us. And there was a heck of a lot of them, too. Another big Acadian family.

But we didn’t see them much either. My mother would go see them, but we rarely had them over. It’s like her family were in one compartment, and she could go there to the house she grew up in and be in that world, and we all were in another compartment, another world, and the two were not to touch.

Admittedly, the times I did end up spending some time with my cousins, it didn’t go real well. Relatives or not, the same gap between me and other kids that kept me isolated at school operated there as well.

So my interactions with other kids in the family were as strained and awkward as with any others.

Still, perhaps if I had been given the opportunity to hang out with them more often, I might have actually gotten that vital socialization that could have gotten me out of my shell and into normal social life instead of being a child trapped by his own shyness, brightness, and awkwardness to being terribly, terribly alone.

Sometimes it feels like I grew up in a deep freeze.

And there there was the Votours. On the positive side, they provided me with two of the friends I did have in my childhood : Janet, who was my friend in my preschool years, and Bobby, who was only ever there in the summers, but for the two or three summers he was there, we were quite close.

But then there was Donna. Oh… Donna.

Donna Votour was a nice lady in her mid twenties who made the “mistake” of being nice to me a few times, and thus became the object of my desperate need for emotional warmth and acceptance.

Don’t feed a stray dog unless you want a friend for life, I guess.

I think it would be fair to say that I was obsessed with her for a while. Any chance I got, I would be across the street trying to get her attention or insinuate my way into the Votour household somehow so I could be with her. I would hang around the periphery of their property, listening to all the life going on in there and desperately wishing I could be part of that world.

And for a while, she put up with me. She would invite me in and include me in the edge of what was going on, which is all my shyness would allow me to enter. I spend some days in their household, not even really paying attention to what was going on, just soaking up the feeling of warmth, togetherness, and friendliness.

But I was a weird and offputting child, and I am guessing that the other Votours got tired of me before she did, because eventually, they just stopped answering the doorbell when I rang it.

Picture that : there I am, an incredibly lonely child, ringing their doorbell over and over and over again because I am far too clueless to take a hint that if they are clearly in there but they are not answering their doorbell, it’s because they do not want me around.

And there I would be, ringing that doorbell, getting increasingly freaked out that they weren’t answering but clinging ferociously to the hope that any moment now, someone would open the door and welcome me in.

Now picture them, sitting inside, chatting and socializing, hearing their doorbell over and over and over again, and knowing damn well that it’s me out there (otherwise, they would have answered it) but ignoring it because they know that, eventually, I would go away.

And of course, I did. I would wander back home, and try again later. And eventually, of course, I stopped trying completely and gave up on Donna and the Votours.

I’ve never told anyone about all that before, but tonight feels like a night of birthing one’s pains, and that one has been gestating for a very long time.

That pattern was to repeat itself thorough my childhood. I would completely over-attach to my teachers and end up, I am sure, freaking them out a little, especially because I was such a strange and in some ways difficult child. And I would try my best to just be a normal kid and not overstep my bounds, but my need was too great and I would always end up projecting that.

More or less, I was asking for far more than any teacher can afford to give any one student. Not when she has 25 or even 30 other kids to look after.

I am not mad at the Votours. They were not my family. They never agreed to adopt me. Donna made the mistake of “feeding” me but that didn’t obligate her to keep looking after such a strange little doggie as I was.

But I look back at those days of sadness and loneliness and strangeness, and wonder how I ever survived it.

I guess I had no choice.

Still adjusting to the idea of having more $ now. So far, the only thing that I have done with the extra dough is agree readily to a second evening of eating out with my friends, and of course, count it.

I find counting my money to generally be a soothing act. I know, I know, that makes me sound like the ultimate stereotypical miser, but it’s true. I like knowing exactly how much I have so I can have firm quantitative knowledge of what I have to work with.

That, in turn, gives me a feeling of security. I am the sort of person who dislikes uncertainty about key things, and who is soothed and comforted by knowledge. Being prone to anxiety as I am, it is always good for me to know things in advance so I can prepare for them instead of leaving things open-ended and hence resistant to planning.

Because here’s the thing. I don’t like surprises. That is not negotiable, not on a fundamental level. And the less secure I feel, the less I can handle the sudden things of life.

And I haven’t felt very secure in a long time. The new money should help.

So no, I don’t like surprises. Obviously that has limits. I hate spoilers precisely because I want to be surprised. But when you are talking about life instead of media consumption, I don’t do “sudden” very well.

There’s a highly obnoxious ad on TV lately based around a very irritating song where the chorus is “Everybody love’s a surprise!”. Fuck you, lady. Some people, like me, hate them.

Disliking surprises as I do, I am forced to be somewhat of a planner. By planning, I can control my future and create the sort of predictability I need in order to feel secure enough to function.

This all makes me sound deadly dull, and those of you who know me personally know that I am not. This need for predictability operates primarily on the top level of my life, the sort of things that happen to me or that I decide to do with my entire self.

On most other levels, I prefer variety in a strong way. I thrive on stimulating conversation, for instance, and that is the antithesis of predictability. And I love comedy, and the very heart of comedy is surprise.

Hear that, hack comedy writers?

And I definitely consider my desire for predictability and security to have been cancerous in my past and in my present. After all, what is more predictable than staying in your apartment all day and never going out? The outside world is an incalculable matrix of uncontrollable and unpredictable variables. Compared to the static world of one’s home, everywhere else is a nightmare of chaos and danger.

But that, of course, ignores the role of the nature of one’s own psyche in the equation. Mentally healthy people go out into the world, acquire wisdom and experience, and thus increase their own ability to handle uncertainty and chaos because now, they know how to handle a wider variety of situations and have learned over time that they can overcome whatever life throws at them.

In a sense, they bring their predictability with them. Life is less chaotic not because they insist on hyper-controlling all the variables, but because no matter what, they have one constant that remains firm : themselves.

So really, it all boils down to self-trust. It is misguided to think that you can ever control the outside world enough to provide the sense of security that hyper-predictability would provide you.

The more sensible route is to work on your own world, the one you personally live in, and concentrate your resources on making yourself better able to handle the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

This is hard for the mind fixed in the hyper-rational mode to grasp, because it requires accepting the inherent value of life experience instead of knowledge, and that is something that cannot be predicted, controlled, or even understood ahead of time.

You can’t tell how experience will change you. From a certain point of view, if you could, the experience itself would be unnecessary, and while that is a tempting idea for us who seek refuge in the rational, it simply does not stand up to the evidence.

Experiences change people. There can be no doubt of that. The anecdotal evidence is overwhelming, and of course, science reveals the same thing.

Experience changes you even if you don’t remember it afterwards. After all, the ability to remember something is a function of the conscious mind. And we have know since Freud that the conscious mind is merely the interface to the vast resources of the subconscious mind.

Being unable to find something does not mean that it has ceased to exist. It just means that your filing system has failed to keep track of it.

This all means that the real solution for use refugees from reason who have been held fixed (and decaying) by our own need for predictability is to go out in the world and experience things.

That is the vitally necessary balancing element needed to bring the sort of inner harmony that brings the security and self-confidence to face the world instead of hiding from it and be able to live in a much larger and less constrained and claustrophobic world than ever before.

To be able to walk into the sunlight and feel the wind on your skin, and know deep down in your heart that the entire world is your home, and you are truly free.

But first, you have to make a leap of faith : you have to believe that it is within your power to, through your own actions, improve yourself to that glorious point when the fear is gone and you feel content.

This cannot be proved to be true beforehand. Sure, most of the human beings on the planet could tell you that experience has made them better and a lot of those experiences were things they chose to do, but they cannot actually prove that the same would happen to you.

So it takes that tiny spark of faith, faith that you are no different than any other human being and experience, even surprises, can makes you a much better, happier, stronger, healthier person.

It is a tiny leap, and yet, it can seem like an endless chasm when you have spent yourself on the futility of seeking total control for so long.

Jump anyway. The grass is greener on the other side.

Go out and teach your soul to dance.

It’s nice and sunny outside the ol’ bedroom window today. I hope that means that it is my ideal Fall day out today : sunny enough to be warm but not so warm as to be hot.

Basically, I like a “sunlamp in the fridge” sort of day. The sunshine keeps your surface area warm, as does radiant heat reflected off the ground, but the actual ambient temperature is still nice and chilly.

For a big sweaty fat guy like me, that is perfect. When everthing is just right, then it’s the best I have ever felt outside, period, and that includes days on the beach.

And from me, that is truly saying something. A hot day at the beach is lovely (I am always happier near the water) and the heat doesn’t bother me as long as I am either a) lying still and soaking up all that wonderful dry heat or b) in the water or still wet from it.

It’s the moving around the beach itself that really sucks.

But those “sunlamp in the fridge” days are all good. As a (very weird) kid, I used to find an out of the day stretch of pavement and lie down on my back. The warmth (more dry heat!) felt heavenly, and yet the ambient temperature kept my poor sensitive noggin from overheating and giving me heat stroke.

If I wasn’t prone to heat stroke, I would probably love the summer. But just like my Dad, if I get too hot, I get a headache, nausea, and dizziness. Sometimes I would even get spots in front of my eyes and a humming sound in my ears like the sound of a vacuum cleaner running in the apartment above you.

So, very not good, this heat thing for me. That’s why even if the rest of me is enjoying the heat, I have to keep my head cool or I will become quite ill.

Things are going OK with me. Nice to have (currently) $415 in my wallet. That’s an unusual feeling. Right now, I am resisting the urge to make plans for the money. It’s all too new to me yet and I have to give myself time to adjust to the new realities of my high income or I will become overcome with option paralysis and end up freaking out when I should be just plain enjoying it.

It’s complicated being me.

One idea I am pondering doing is doing some grocery shopping for myself to get the sort of things that we either can’t get at Costco (they have weird gaps in what they stock and the minute you get used to something, suddenly it is gone) or that would COULD get at Costco but I am the only one who would eat it, so it is not exactly the right thing for a communal purchase.

Mainly, I am thinking of convenience foods. Things like microwave burritos, frozen entrees, maybe a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, and so on.

What I want is to create the conditions for me to eat better. Less junk, more real food. If I have easy to make food at hand, I will be way less tempted to have peanut butter and jam sandwich, a bowl of munchies, and a piece of fruit for every single fucking meal.

I will also investigate canned goods, like some of the soups that I really like, like Scotch Broth and Chicken Noodle. I grew up on Campbell’s soup and while I am sure that I am still at least partially pickled from the high sodium content, otherwise they are quite healthy and sure as hell a lot better for me than chips or cheezies.

And more than just improving my nutrition, I think that having more of what my brain thinks of as “real food” will be good for me emotionally as well. There is a powerful truth to the concept of “comfort food” and if you grew up with a mother who cooked for you like I did, that sort of homey food can do wonders for you sense of well-being and security in this cold and uncaring world.

So I may begin investing some of my newfound wealth in better food for myself. I am still learning to reach out into the world and grab the things that will make me happy, and this would be great practice.

I will have to experiment a little to see what foods give me the biggest comfort bang for my still-precious buck, but it seems like a good investment. Better nutrition plus more comfort seems like a powerful one-two knockout punch against depression.

No rush, though. I will let my mind process all the possibilities and come up with some genuine inspiration on its own schedule. The money isn’t going anywhere.

What else… oh yeah, I had a weird dream the other day. Not as weird as that fascist one, but odd.

In the dream, I went to Tim Horton’s because I decided to use some of my newfound wealth to buy some donuts and TimBits to share with my friends. And somehow, in this universe, Tim’s was right next door to the skyscraper of an apartment building we all lived in.

So I go to Tim’s and order a dozen donuts, no coconut. (I don’t like coconut.) The girl behind the counter seems to understand me, but then starts putting only coconut ones in there and I have to be very firm and clear with her that I wanted NO COCONUT. This happens again with the TimBits.

Then I get home, and somehow, the donut items have transformed into a chicken sandwich and a bottle coffee drink. D’oh! I say to myself. She gave me the wrong order!

Then I remember her telling me that she couldn’t give refund to anyone for any reason. So now I am out fifteen bucks (damn, dreamland donuts are expensive) and I don’t have any donuts to show for it.

So the next day, I go back, determined to use all my charm and persuasiveness to convince her to give me a refund anyhow. No dice. She does agree to store credit though, so I figure, what the hell, and put in my order again.

This time, instead of TimBits, she starts pulling out things that look like skewered meat made out of chocolate. And the coconut thing starts up again too.

I start to get really pissed off, and that’s what trips the circuit breaker and ends the dream.

Sure, it;s not exactly Fellini, but it was such a vivid and particular dream.

And of course, super Canadian.

That’s all for today folks. Oh wait… plus my vid.

Have a great Sunday!