Why do I feel like I have something to prove?

I guess everybody does, in a way. We are born to find our place in society and to seek status within that society. I was told at an early age that I was exceptionally bright and that I was bound to go places.

And I probably would have, if certain things hadn’t happened.

I am still exceptionally bright. I’m also witty and highly creative, as well as a pretty nice guy. And I am not dead yet. I still could go places. I could still become a success.

The problem, then, is not with wanting more. It is with beating yourself up for not having it yet and/or not pursuing like you “should”. The more I examine this inner fascist regime of mine, the better I understand its methods. Like a corrupt dictatorship, it will use any means at its disposal to maintain its power over “me the people”, and its main weapon is fear.

After all, if you can convince the people that the world outside is a horrible, horrible place filled with dangerous enemies that only you, Dictator Depression, can save them from, it is a lot easier to get them to comply with your demands for more and more power and less and less freedom.

Even if the people start to wonder whether what you say about the outside world is the whole picture, or even true, as long as you have the upper hand with fear, as long as they are too scared to go find out for themselves, your regime is safe.

And if they start to get out of line, you have a well developed arsenal of torture techniques, as well as a crack team of brutal enforcers and cold-blooded propagandists, to punish and punish and punish until your will reigns supreme.

( Now exiting metaphor. )

So torturing myself over my failure to embrace any of the millions of different ways I could be attempting to fulfill my ambitions is just another technique which, despite its apparent intentions, is actually just there to keep me in my sad little place of darkness and depression.

Every time I look at my synthesizer, or tablet, or a piece of creativity software like the kind I use for video or music, or a link to a place that accepts submissions from people like me (like motherfucking Cracked.com), or even just try to think about ways to improve my life, the oppressive regime makes me feel really guilty that I am not doing any of those things, and the pain of my guilt makes me develop yet another aversion, and it is that very guilt-aversion reaction that keeps me from being able to follow my ambitions in the first place.

I am always fleeing the feeling of guilt and despair I feel when I think about the tools of my ambitions, and that, of course, makes it impossible to approach said tools and maybe even use them to get somewhere.

And maybe that’s the point of it all. No matter how much “me the people” want to get out into the world and learn and grow and experience things, the inner regime wants to maintain the status quo and uses this guilt-aversion system to keep things the same. We’re not keeping you down, we’re keeping you safe!

Well I don’t feel safe. I feel like I am trapped in a cell with a madman. There has to be a way out.

Perhaps the first step is to stop thinking of all these possibilities I have accumulated (and I know how to acquire so very many more) as burdens of guilt that just make me feel like a giant loser who has wasted his entire life. That is, to put it very mildly, hella counterproductive.

I have spent a long time punishing myself for every little thing. Fuck that. Time to try to learn to be nice to myself.

Instead of burdens, I should see all those possibilities as gifts I have acquired over time, valuable possessions that I should be glad to own, each to be treasured and valued and adored without feeling the need to do something with them.

They are mine, to do with as I please. They are not, I repeat, NOT a gaggle of accusing fingers all pointed at me and singing a song of failure and loserdom. Maybe they are just not the right tool for me at the moment. Maybe they are things that meant something once but I have moved on since then. Maybe they are just fragments of the shell I outgrew and molted off.

Maybe I am way past do for another molting.

If I can complete this exercise of psychological spin control, then I can remove a major blockage within me and maybe, just maybe, rest a little easier in this old skin of mine.

I keep trying to get to a place where I can just accept my life how it is and stop hating myself for what it’s not. A place where I can just live my life for my own enjoyment and not be haunted by all these demons of ambition that tell me that I could totally be kicking the world’s ass right now and because I don’t, I’m a way bigger loser than someone without all my gifts living the exact same life.

But I think I have a long road ahead of me before I can get to that safe calm place. I think I need to wear my demons out before they are tired enough to be put to bed. I think I need to find some way to release all that crazy energy inside me that drives the frenzied inner workings of the neurotic mind.

Only when I can release all this latent energy will I be able to get a good feeling for who I truly am, underneath all that mental activity that shines so much light that it bedazzles and bemuses me onto the sidelines.

You have to empty the pool before you can find out what is underneath it all.

See you tomorrow, folks.

Had a pretty bad attack of “i hate my life/why do I do anything/ I mean what is the fucking point/fuck everybody including me” spot rage after waking up from a nap earlier, and so I figure it is time for another negativity dump.

Sorry about this folks. I promise to be more entertaining tomorrow. But today, I vent.

Sometimes I just can’t see the point of life. My life, anyways. I feel like absolutely nothing I do matters, like I am just ticking off days till obesity kills me. My life just slips through my fingers like grains of sand and time is running out a little bit every day.

But still, the stasis remains. I truly feel like I am paralyzed somewhere deep inside. Some overactive and maladaptive defense mechanism I developed as a young child just keeps shooting my willpower and even by basic desires full of ice cold Novocaine and so every day, every week, and every year ends up being the same old thing : me wasting my life just fucking around and entertaining myself all the time.

It makes me feel like I am not even really here. The existential reality of my existence is so threadbare and fake. It’s all just mindless mental stimulation whose only purpose is to distract me from my crumbling, decaying life.

Like a junkie, like any addict, the addiction causes my life to fall apart while also shielding me from the emotions that would bring about some kind of change. My addictions are food, sleep, video games, and the Internet, but the basic principal is the same.

I can always count on my addictions to save me from the horrors they create. Or rather, the horror.

And I can’t even figure out how much of this is my fault. I know the proper thing would be to just say to myself that I am a seriously ill person who will recover at his own pace and I just have to be patient and make it through the day however I can.

That is totally the emotional state to be desired. But I am SO not there yet. A deep part of me really wants to go out into the world, seeking experience and engagement and, most of all, solid freaking reality. My world is far, far too virtual, and the thing about virtual experiences is that they do not make you feel more real. Instead, they reinforce my feeling of unreality. Real life has inputs for all five senses and, best of all, is still there, solid and real and waiting, whether or not you keep believing in it.

It doesn’t require a constant investment of mental energy like a product of my imagination does. I don’t have to worry that I will forget something and it will stop existing, or that without constant mental vigilance, the slender cord that connects me to reality will snap and I will be lost forever in the dark and burning hell of my own mind.

The world is real. And I am part of the world. I partake of its reality, no less so than the stones of the ground or the birds in the trees. I am real. I am REAL.

I think that is something I need to remind myself of nearly every waking moment. No matter what my fucked up life and my fucked up brain chemistry tells me, I am just as real as the stars in the skies or the people in my life. I can’t let my terror of disconnection twist me into thinking I am in danger in a way that makes no rational sense whatsoever.

I mean, no matter what happens in my head, I will still be here. In reality. The Real World. Solid, dependable reality.

And as of my realizing that my demons are my employees, I know that I can leave the paralysis behind and walk away from my cell any time I want. And that is real progress, and I treasure it.

But it didn’t make things any easier for me, not yet anyhow. Now I have to decide when I will stick my head out of my burrow and sniff the wind, maybe even set a paw or two outside.

I keep telling myself that it is not like I have to leave it all behind for good. This is not an “all or nothing” kind of situation. It can be like the classic exposure therapy for the treatment of phobias. I can expose myself to the world (so to speak) a little bit at a time, and only increase the dosage when I am fully acclimated.

That makes all the sense in the world. But that is just not how it works around here.

I guess my desire to go roam has been frustrated by my inner jailers for so long that when I imagine leaving my cell, it is for good. I want to not just leave the prison, I want to burn it the fuck down so I can never, ever go back.

This precludes a moderate, measured solution. At least, for now it does. I have these fantasies of just leaving my life behind and never coming back. Just… pack my bags and take off in a random direction and not stop going till I find a friendly place where nobody knows me and I can start my life all over again.

But that would be horribly unfair and cruel to the people who know me in this version of my life. Leave them without a clue as to what happened to me? That would be worse than faking my own death.

So that’s not an option. And I know there are a million moderate rational options in between “doing absolutely nothing” and “disappearing act”, but none of them appeal to me.

I don’t want to be rational and sensible any more.

I want to be free.

And maybe, for once, alone in my own mind.

Talk to you tomorrow, folks!

Got a few things to talk about tonight. One is “vampire therapy”, which I will get to later,.

But first, we talk about Sword Art Online, an anime series I just started watching today and which is really sparking my imagination.

It’s set in a future where the VR dream is finally a reality in the form of an MMPORPG-type game called Sword Art Online that uses a brand new technology called NerveCenter to make it feel like you are Really There.

Now, what are the two rules of virtual reality movies? What are the two things you know will happen?

1. Someone will get trapped in it, and
2. If you die there, you die in real life!

And sure enough, that’s true here. The clearly insane inventor of the technology has rigged it so that there is no exit command, and if someone tries to take the VR helmet off you, it fries your brain. Ditto if you die in the game. So all the thousands of people who tried the game out on its first day of release are stuck in there now.

That is all a fairly well worn path by now, but the interesting part is the fact that it is set in a modern MMPORPG, and so there is this whole business with people being able to bring up menus and send messages and be able to teleport here and there, and so on, and so it all has this aspect of magical realism that I find very interesting.

It plays with the conventions of video games in an interesting way, and uses its imagery and its assumptions as quite excellent dramatic tools for telling fairly classic heroic type stories.

One thing bothers me : they make it clear in the second episode that people have been trapped in the game for months, and yet they have not explained why the hell they haven’t all died of thirst and hunger. I can only assume that all of their physical bodies are in hospitals all over the world, being treated like coma patients.

But I would still prefer the show to actually say that. But no, actual reality is never seen after the first episode.

Still, I love the premise. What would someone do if their favorite MMORPG suddenly became all too real, and they had to not just play it but live it? How would you cope if life became a game with no reset and no revive? Would you become incredibly cautious and never leave the first town, or would you join those willing to risk their lives in order to make it to the top of the tower and free everyone from the game and return them to reality?

I am both cautious and combative, so I am not sure how I would react. The sensible part of me would tell me to stay in the towns and hence never risk death at all. I could use my skills to open a tavern or a store or something. Just to get by. And I am sure I could make friends, have great conversations, and live a good life, all without risking death.

But the other side of me would go crazy knowing there was true glory and adventure out there and I was too big of a pussy to go out there and get it. That part would want to fight like a demon until I died or we won. Victory or death!

Probably, I would listen to the voice in the middle, where I would join the fight, but as a scientist. I would spend all my time exploring the game environment, looking for clues on how to reduce the risk to people and speed them to victory.

Anyhow, let’s talk about “vampire therapy” now.

In a turn of events right out of a 19th century science fiction story, it turns out that something as simple as giving old people transfusions of young blood can reverse some aspects of the aging process.

It turns out there is a protein called GDF11 (or as I like to think of it, Gandalf Eleven) which is present in abundance in young people but the older you get, the less of it you have.

It is believed to be responsible for keeping your muscles and organs supple and strong, which sounds good to me. There is other research indicating that young blood is also good for the brain, and might even be able to reverse Alzheimer’s.

Pretty amazing stuff, and I am not just saying that because I am almost 41 and want my young blood back.

First, let’s deal with the ghoulish aspects : this will not lead to armies of old people abducting youth off the streets in the dead of night to force them to give up their life-extending youth juice. Nor will it lead to some system where young people are forced by law to donate.

Instead, I see it as becoming a way to facilitate intergenerational wealth transfer. People can donate a certain amount of blood without much harm. Young, poor people could get paid to donate by old rich people and everyone comes out a winner.

But even that won’t likely be necessary, as I imagine that once we figure how this GDF11 stuff works, Big Pharma will simply mass produce it and make it available to health care systems worldwide.

After all, it will be better for all concerned if the many health problems of aging are simply prevented instead of having to be treated with expensive and invasive treatments.

Who knows… the secret of immortality might be as simple as taking your protein cocktail every day. A little GDF11, a little brain building protein, a little of the protein that protects your telomeres, and you just plain don’t age any more.

It has been my dream, as it has been the dream of millions since the dawn of modern medicine, that I will live long enough to see aging and debility conquered.

I hope I live long enough to live forever!

See you tomorrow, my faithful friends.

Attorneys at law.

I had other ideas for tonight’s blog entry, more ambitious ideas, but the sun is shining and the sky is blue and I am feeling fat and lazy. Well okay, I usually feel fat and lazy. But this time, it’s in a good way.

So tonight, I guess I will just gab a bit. I will get around to writing another short story some time this week. I got the idea worked out in my head. It’s just a matter of putting in the effort.

Finished Into The Abyss. I won’t say too much more about it as I bored you all with my ramblings about it last night.

But wow. I can’t believe how perfect a documentary it is. It’s a powerful story simply told, in the words of the people involved. It captures so much of America and the conflicts inherent in its ways of doing things that it is like literature.

And yet it was made by a German. Sometimes, outsiders can see things more clearly than those in the thick of things.

There was one part I saw that I have to relate because it was so extraordinary. Werner interviewed a man who was the captain of the death house that executed one of the two killers, Michael Perry. This man had overseen, and actively participated in, over 125 executions. He was one of the guys strapping prisoners down and then unstrapping them once they are dead. He was also the guy who spent eight to ten hours with the prisoners before they died, getting them their Last Meal, making sure they are comfortable, taking them to the chaplain if they want to go.

So he would get to know these people really well, and then help kill them. He said he tried not to think about it, and just did his job like anyone else.

But he is not a heartless man, and something had to give, and what set it off was the first time he had to assist in the execution of a female prisoner. That was the last straw. That day he started sweating profusely and shaking like a leaf and having trouble breathing, especially after she thanked him for all he had done for her.

That’s when the left work, and went home, and his wife asked him what was wrong with him, and he told her he didn’t know, but he figured he had to talk to someone. So he called up the prison chaplain, and the chaplain came over, and he told the chaplain that he just couldn’t do it any more. He couldn’t go back to the death house.

And that is how a man who assisted 125 executions had a total moral and spiritual breakdown and now is one hundred percent against the death penalty no matter what the law says. That is powerful stuff. Take it from one who knows!

He said nobody has the right to take a life. That’s how I have always seen it. Murder is murder, whether it comes from a gun or a needle in your arm, and a murderer is a murderer whether the State gives them permission to kill or not. To me, killing the killing simply means there are now two crimes where there was once only one.

And the executioner should be the next to die. I mean, we kill killers, right? Well, the executioner just killed someone!

Human beings have the right to life no matter what they do and no matter how angry are with them and how badly we want to kill them for what they have done. Emotions do not justify violence, that is practically the entire message of the law. We know you want to do wrong things, and we are saying don’t do them. And we won’t do them for you, either.

Let’s see. What else. Well, my knee has not gotten any better. In fact, it has gotten a little worse. I now get a burning sensation in the muscle of the knee even when I am putting no weight on it at all. So I will definitely be making an appointment to see my GP, Doctor Chao, after therapy this Friday.

I have my wracking my mind to try to remember if I injured the knee somehow, but I am drawing a total blank. I do not remember stumbling or falling and landing on my feet or any of that.

The damn thing just blew out on its own. Welcome to being old, I guess. Shit just fails on you.

I am worried that it has something to do with the lack of calcium in my diet. I just don’t get very much dairy at all. I fell out of the habit of drinking milk when I was a teen (which is like, the worst time for that), and I have never been someone who ate a lot of cheese. Don’t get me wrong, I like cheese, I just don’t eat it that often.

And while I would love to eat ice cream all the time, the sugar free stuff is too expensive.

And sure, I know that there are other dietary sources of calcium. Most of them are leafy green vegetables that are not exactly tasty, and I don’t care for blackstrap molasses.

So that leaves me with nuts. Almonds in particular. I tried to get a big bag of almonds from Safeway yesterday, but of course, they didn’t have them. I swear, they hide the things I am looking for just to piss me off.

My idea was to treat the almonds like a tasty nutritional supplement and have, like, ten with every meal. But instead, all I could do was buy some trail mix with almonds in it, and go from there.

I do not want to resort to a calcium supplement. I already take too many damned pills and I would much rather eat something tasty than take more.

I guess that’s all from me tonight. See you tomorrow, folks!

This isn’t exactly a review of the documentary Into the Abyss. For one thing, I am only a bit over halfway through it. And for another, it’s not the sort of thing that lends itself to review.

The basic idea is that legendary awesome German person Werner Herzog interviews the people involved with a triple homicide that took place in Conroe, Texas back in the early 2000’s. He talks to the killers, the families of the victims, the police officers who investigated the crime, and others.

The interviews are extraordinary. They are candid, honest, brutal, stark, succinct, and very human. I have no idea what magic Herzog uses to get such perfect footage. I literally cannot imagine how it could be better in terms of the demands of the documentary he was making.

The story could not be more bleak. Two teenage boys decided they wanted to steal a red Camaro (what is it about rednecks and Camaros?). First, they were going to con their way into the home of the person who owned the car and steal the keys and drive off. (Criminal masterminds, they were not. )

But that didn’t work, so they decided they would just kill the person instead. The person being a middle aged housewife who was in the middle of making cookies when she died.

Then then wrapped her in a sheet and dumped her in a lake. But oh no, when they drove back to the gated community where she lived, the gate was locked and they couldn’t get in.

So they murdered her son (and his friend) for the clicker to get the gate to open.

This could not possibly be a better example of the hard cold reality of the banality of brutality. There is absolutely nothing to admire or respect in the crime, nothing glamorous or daring or even intelligent.

It’s just two dumb boys with terrible backgrounds who decided they wanted that red Camaro.

And what do you know, they were between the ages of 18 and 25. (Want to know the real cause of crime? Males age 18-25. )

In every interview segment, you can just feel the bleakness of life in Conroe. This is a place where men going to jail is a regular occurrence. People treat it like it’s just one of those things that can happen to people. So is violence. One guy told of getting stabbed with a screwdriver all the way to the handle and not even bothering to go to the hospital after because he had to get to work.

And he talked about it in such a casual way, too. Like it’s just one of those things.

It is pretty much exactly what happens in the inner cities of the USA, except it’s in small town America.

You know… Real America.

I come from a place not entirely unlike Conroe. Summerside had its share of young men without futures because their chances of employment were so damned slim and their unstable upbringings have made them ill-prepared for life and full of anger at absent fathers and negligent mothers anyhow, so when they get jobs, they can’t keep them.

There’s not nearly as much violence and death, but then again, we’re not Americans. We’re not that crazy. My home town averages one murder per decade.

Honestly, most people just plain don’t have the ambition.

So I feel like I at least partially get Conroe and its residents. I know how that kind of life drives young men crazy. How they get stuck in this state of arrested development, never able to become real men because they can’t support themselves and the humiliation of that drives them into excesses of drugs, drinking, spousal abuse, child abuse, and all the other consequences of “working class” life.

It’s tough to be a working class person in a place with no work.

As you can tell, this is a very dark, depressing subject, and the documentary is certainly taking an emotional toll on me. And yet, I have to admit, I am really enjoying it.

And that’s…. not exactly normal. Part of it is simply my fascinating with crime and its roots. There is so much I want to know about this senseless act. What drives someone to say “Well then, we’ll just go kill her.”? And why these guys? What is it about them that made them capable of something so senseless for so petty a reason? There are a lot of alienated young men who are out of control in the world, but most of them wouldn’t kill anybody in cold blood like that.

But they wanted that shiny red Camaro. I am sure that in their minds, they felt that once they had such an awesome car, everything would be great. That is how young people think. Once you have a car like that, you will be invincible in your awesomeness. All your peers will be impressed, you will get girls, and life will be sweet.

So there is my fascination with crime. And in general, I am attracted to the dark like a reverse moth. I feel like I am the sort of person who can go to the dark places and do what needs to be done. Think the thoughts that need to be thought but that most people would rather not think. Examine the darkness and learn its ways so I can protect people from it. Etcetera.

But also, I think I find things like this documentary cathartic, and hence almost soothing. Something about going deep into the heart of darkness and dealing with the world’s pain and suffering helps me to externalize my own inner blackness.

Art can do that. It can express your inner thoughts for you so that you don’t have to remove that thorn from your side yourself. The natural desire to avoid things that are depressing or sad might just keep you from an experience that will really help you in the end.

Anyhow, that’s my ramble through the brambles for today. Seeya tomorrow folks!@

Tonight, I am going to talk about the movie District 9, but first a few notes.

First, to make this an official Tardy Review, the movie came out in 2009, so this review is 5 years tardy. TR = 5.

Also, as the movie is five years old, I am not going to worry about spoilers. So if you have not seen the movie and do not want anything spoiled for you, spin on.

That business taken care of, let’s get down to the review.

I loved it. It’s a great movie. It kept me glued to the screen the whole time. And that’s not accident, the movie is brilliantly written and produced to be both a very cool (if fairly obvious) science fiction allegory about how we treat refugees and other minorities (damn thing is set in South Africa, for crying loud) and a pretty bitchin’ science fiction action flick with an everyman hero of the “Avatar/Dances with Wolves/a million other movies” type.

You know, starts off with the same prejudices as the average Joe, circumstances force him to work with The Minority, he learns to see them as people and identify with their plight, and he becomes the hero that will save them from the Bad People.

This is always meant well, but it still comes across as slightly racist. Oh, we were all helpless victims until the Great White Hero, the only person in the world with agency, came to save us!

And these were, arguably, the most pitiful of all selected minorities because they are bug eyed aliens who look like the Predator’s uglier little brother. They clearly wanted to make them as visually alien as possible in order to force the audience to identify with their plight and their “humanity” without any visual assistance.

And I really respect that. It really appeals to my deep humanism. It is one thing to identify with the plight of the aliens in Avatar, who are more or less blue-skinned people.

It’s another to identify with the plight of freaky gross insect-ish aliens like this guy :

By the way, just an aside, the movie says there is inter-species prostitution in that world. Now I am a super freaky guy up for all kinds of things, but holy shit, who the hell wants to fuck THAT?

Anyhoo, it’s a great movie. The social commentary aspect is done very well, with a great attention to the details of what happens when people (be they human beings or an entymologist’s wet nightmare) are put in slum-camps, made to live in metal shacks, treated like they are all subhuman criminal scum, given absolutely no way to work for a living and improve themselves, and are expected to just do nothing all day and be glad they are not dead and not cause any trouble.

That just plain does not work. We need freedom, a place in society (besides the very bottom), meaningful employment of our time and energies, and above all, dignity.

When denied that, we react against the conditions of our lives. In other words, cause trouble.

So I quite liked the admittedly fairly heavy handed social commentary via science fiction allegory in the movie. If I agree with the message and it is handled with enough skill to not be TOO abrasive, I do not demand subtlety in my allegorical works. Writers don’t have to hide the message under five layers of obfuscation in order for me to feel like they are treating me like an adult. I am fine with “message” fiction.

Besides, I have a lot of ideas I want to get across in my own works and I might very well want to use fairly obvious allegories to do it. Burying them deep sounds like a lot of work.

How obvious is this movie? The bad guys are called MNU, which stands for Multi-National United. They might as well have just called it EGC…. Evil Greedy Corporation.

But besides being some fairly good allegorical science fiction, like I said, the movie is also a pretty damned good science fiction action flick. The villains are very villainous, the hero, despite being prejudiced at the beginning, is very relatable, and all the bad guys die satisfyingly horrible, gooey, gory deaths.

Damn I am getting bloodthirsty as I get older. It’s not good enough that the bad guys lose, they have to die, and they have to die really fucking hard. SPLAT.

Spoilers ahead! One thing that bugged me is that they never explained how a million buggy aliens with awe-inspiring technology came to be stranded, half-starved, in a mothership hovering over Johannesburg.

It can’t be that their ship malfunctioned, because the good guy alien and his kid start it up and leave at the end of the movie without any problems. Yet at the start of the movie, the aliens are all malnourished and weak and can’t even communicate to the Earthlings right below them. We have to go up there ourselves and cut our way in to find them.

Maybe something happened to their food supply. Having warp drive does not necessarily means they have replicator technology. Maybe they just plain ran out of food, and with the last of their strength, they programmed their ship to find the closest planet that could support their kind of life.

But then again, as the fabulous Felicity would say, I am probably putting more thought into it than the writer(s) did.

It occurs to me, though, that a lot of movies are being turned into television series these day, and I would love to see District 9 turned into a series. I really enjoyed the Alien Nation series. It is exactly my kind of science fiction, the kind that examines society and how it changes.

Admittedly, it would be hard to write one that takes place entirely inside an alien concentration camp. It would have to take place three years after the movie, when the good guy alien comes back from the home planet and Things Change.

Maybe there would have to be some kind of tense truce between the humans and the aliens from the home world, and our heroes would have to balance one alien faction’s desires for revenge on the humans who treated millions of them SO BADLY against the human beings who want to go to war no matter how suicidal that might be.

Yeah, I can see that working.

Anyone know how to pitch a series to HBO?

Talk to you tomorrow, folks!

Yesterday, Hitler. Today, fascism.

It’s not what you think.

Therapy day, good sessions, etc. But this time I really mean it. I think that today, my therapist and I managed to chase a main component of all my problems into a corner and get a really good look at it.

In a nutshell, the basic problem is that as bad as my interior government is, on some level I feel it keeps me safe. Those harsh barbs of cruel self-judgment, the incredibly restricted, near-invalid (or prisoner) lifestyle, the outsized fears and amplified anxieties, they are all part of the fascist inner system I developed as a child abandoned to the harsh cruel world of the playground when I was far too young to cope with it.

Despite how smart I was.

All of that self-torture is meant, at its root, to keep me safe. Because bad things happened to me when I was so young and because I had absolutely nobody to turn to who could or would help me, the system I developed was quite primitive and relied entirely on avoidance. No fight…. I was outnumbered and wimpy. No flight… I was fat and slow and anyone could outrun me.

That only left hiding, and so I hid. Oh, how I hid. The only safety lied in avoiding detection. You have to fade into your background like you don’t even exist.

And you get so good at it… you start feeling like it’s true. You really don’t exist. And that feeling can get so powerful that it completely blocks out reality and you feel like at any second, you could just disappear. The flame that is your life feels so weak that you worry that at any second it could go out.

Not rational. But still very real.

But it is your own demons who chase you into that deep dark hole you live in, and keep you there with their lashes of self-destructive discipline. They work for you. They are just doing the job you hired them to do, which is to keep you safe by scaring you away from doing anything risky, and punish you for stepping even an inch out of line.

Once you realize this (how did I end up in the second person?), you realize that you could make them stop. You could end this cruel and sadistic inner regime. But you won’t because… what then? You would have to face the world outside your cell without the restrictions imposed by your hyperactive superego. And they are all you know. By doing their job, your demons have kept you from experiencing enough of the world to have some sense of what is really out there.

Instead, you get their propaganda about how awful the world is and how you are better off locked away from it and all the bad, bad things it will do to you.

It’s like your entire existence is The Village.

And so there you are, getting a really good look at your demons for the first time. And for the first time, they are looking back at you. You now know that you are their employer and you can dismiss them any time you want. Even if you decide to keep them where they are for now, punishing and frightening you for your own supposed good, you will have chosen to do so.

Me, I am not sure I am ready to live without them yet. Deep down, I am still very sad and very hurt. Now that I can see my demons as mine, as me, I can see that they have been trying to protect that massive wound in my soul from the stimulus and hence the pain of the outside world.

They did more harm than good. But they meant well. And they were working for you the whole time.

It will take me a while to truly process this revelation, but I feel good about it. I feel that now, I have the option of just turning off the whole complicated machine and going out to find out what the world is REALLY like for myself.

I don’t know if I am ready yet. But I have the option.

On the more physical side of things, there is something up with my left knee. Every time I put weight on it, it hurts, and while the pain is not severe, it is very… worrying. (I am going mad with the ellipses lately. )

It feels very much like bone pain. Bone clicking against bone, bone grinding against bone. I have had broken bones in my life, so I know what bone pain is like, and this feels like it.

My other joints don’t feel right either, especially my knees and elbows. I am worried that I am finally developing the arthritis that is endemic to older fat people, and if so, what the heck I can do about it.

Orthopedic shoes would be a good start. I would do more walking if it didn’t hurt so much. Nothing quite like physical pain to make it hard to maintain your resolve. It is like the universe is conditioning you not to do that.

I have wondered what it would take to get me exercising. I would love to go to a gym with a good Universal (or similar) weight system for me to work out on, assuming it is not too late for that at my advancing age.

And what would it take for that to happen? A ride. At least, a ride there, I could probably bus back. Getting there has always been harder than getting back for me. The walk to school always seemed ten times longer than the walk back.

And the thing is, I might be able to get a ride. I am on full disability now, so I qualify for the HandyDart system of door to door busing for cripples like myself.

So the door is open there. I could totally do it.

I just don’t want to… yet.

Talk to you tomorrow folks!