I realized today that I have been depressed lately.

Spent another day in bed, sleeping, looking to avoid reality and press fast forward on life. Classic depressive behaviour.

I think I just failed to recognize it because my extensive emotional reintegration has been slowly robbing me of the sort of emotional distance that I used to use in order to remain analytical about myself.

I am more whole than ever, and that is wonderful, but it means I will need new tools for handling myself. The old tools are dying every day now. I will need new methods based on actual emotional growth to replace the old methods based on intellectualization and mental growth.

I cannot keep treating myself like a deep and fascinating problem to solve. That kind of detachment kills.Instead, I will learn to set my massive crystalline sphere of glittering analysis aside, and live like a human being instead.

I have been keeping myself away from my fellow humans with isolation, both mental and physical, for a long long time, and it is a very poor long term solution. Nothing living can survive in that kind of cold for long.

So I have been pretty depressed lately. Honestly, it feels good just to admit it. I realize now that I have never really dealt with my depression in realtime before, as an event in time instead of just a attribute of myself.

So, last couple of days have been crappy and depressive. I retreated from reality and hid in sleep a lot.

So what? I’m a depressive. This happens. It’s the main symptom of the disease. Some days are good, some days not so much. I am dealing with a lot of stuff lately and that has required a certain amount of retreat into my inner world.

Heck, for all I know. my psychological health absolutely required this extra sleep time in order to deal with all the emotions emerging from the frozen morass of my mind. I have certainly been dreaming a lot.

I had a dream today that I was laying into some American right winger about how anyone who rejects helping the poor is anti-Christ and therefore not a Christian.

This is, in a way, a wish fulfillment kind of dream, because I would really love to do that, especially in a public forum where my point of view will be seen by many others.

The American right really needs some angry reformers to take them on with all the fire and energy of a Martin Luther about how far from Christ’s love they have strayed.

And to be honest, the dreams where I get super fucking angry about something are probably very healthy for me in the long run. I have a lot of latent rage stored up, and anything safe catharsis for it is appreciated.

So as I was saying, so I spent a few days getting not much done because I had to sleep so much. Big deal. That is perfectly normal for the likes of me, and nothing to be ashamed of.

I am a very sick man. Some days worse than others. That’s all.

And the last thing I ever want to do is get mad at myself for being sick. An awful lot of the journey for any modern human from misery to enlightenment is forgiving oneself for being human. For not being the idealized version of yourself that we irrationally cling to as the way we should be.

Fuck “should”. You are who you are. You get nowhere in life trying to play the hand you “should” have. You have to play the cards you got, no matter how much they suck, if you hope to get yourself up out of the mud and into the sunshine.

Another thing I realized today is that I have never felt equal to others. I have felt inferior my entire life. I have no idea what I would do in a position of true equality, where I had nothing to apologize for, everything is one hundred percent equal, and I have to really deal with people.

From the time I was a little kid, I felt like I was existing purely on the sufferance of others and therefore did not really have any rights of my own. And ever since then, I have gone from one situation to the next where that was true, whether it was being supported by friends in the USA where I could earn no income, or my position now, where I have financial equality (I pay my share of rent et al ), I only do so because the Province of British Columbia has taken pity on me.

Plus, Joe and Julian do all the housework, because I am completely incompetent.

So I have no idea what it is like to be truly equal with others. I have trouble even imagining it, and I have an excellent imagination. I have lived with this extremely deep sense of shame and inferiority for so long that I don’t even begin to know what life would be like without it.

In some ways, the idea scares me. It would be so new and different, and I would somehow feel more exposed. Being inferior to others makes great cover for those of us who are as troubled as I am. Being ashamed of yourself is a great excuse for hiding from others. Without that….

…well, you would have to go out there and deal with them, wouldn’t you?

That said, it could also be amazingly good for my self-worth. Removing that enormous sense of shame and inferiority could be just what my ego needs in order to find some sort of stable ground. I could finally become a full human being in my own eyes, just as good as anyone else, with nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? All healthy and open and pure.

So why does the prospect scare the living shit out of me?