I feel a lot better today.

I am still blowing my nose fairly often and I don’t exactly feel 100 percent wonderful, but then again, do I ever? Only in my rare and elusive hypo-manic phases.

Still, it sucks to be my way, way less today than yesterday. The feeling of malaise has receded, and I feel more alive and vibrant than I have since before the convention.

Soon, I might have the energy to start poking shoots up through the crumbling concrete of my depression again. I have not done a lot of growing in the last week. No little sojourns into the outer world, no little life-expanding exercise back here at the home front. For this week, it is pretty much been all about survival.

But I feel that deep restlessness and boredom stirring within me, so who knows what the future will bring?

I just have to remember that putting a whole lot of pressure on myself – letting my depression go wild on me – accomplishes the opposite of its supposed intent. Instead of pushing me towards my goals, it pushes me away because then the goals become this hostile thing looming over me that I just want to avoid by any means possible.

True growth will come from a natural desire from within my soul , not some crazy amount of pressure from my messed up brain. It is in the spirit that my problems lie. A weakness of spirit and will has lead to a twisted and, to put it mildly, counterproductive frame of mind, and it will take a long time for me to heal from all those years of treading water in a sea of unprocessed emotion, desperately clinging to whatever I can find instead of letting go and learning to swim.

It is very hard to withhold judgment. I have let self-loathing crush me at its will for a very long time now. After all, that is what kept me safe, right? abuse yourself today and beat the bullies to the punch? Venting my inner hostility on myself might be insanely self-destructive, but at least I didn’t have to deal with other people.

It’s sad to think of how long I stayed in that mindset, not really knowing any better. I lived so long with what now seems like an understanding of life and awareness of the world so small it might as well have been two-dimensional.

Thank goodness I finally got into therapy.

Oh, and speaking of therapy, tomorrow’s going to be a busy day for me. Here’s why.

See, a long time ago, I made an appointment to see a surgeon about my knee and its busted minisces. Even as the appoibntment was made, I was terrified that I would forget it. This is not an unfounded fear. I have a long and shameful history of forgetting all about appointments if they are too far in the future, and I made this one at the end of August.

Fast forward to last weekend, during Vcon. Suddenly, in the midst of a panel, I suddenly remember that I had an important appointment some time in early October. Oh shit, I thought, I am probably going to miss it, and there is nothing I can do about it because I don’t have the surgeon’s number with me (it’s back home on the computer) and I don’t even remember his name. Doctor….. Kojac?

So I was greatly relieved to find no angry messages about missed appointments on the machine when we got home. And then… the whole thing slipped my mind again.

I know, I know…. bad patient. To be fair, I was very tired and somewhat ill at the time.

It was lucky, then, that I just happened to be idly browsing my files when I spotted the spot where I had taken down the doctor’s information and the date.

WHICH I MISSED. Holy fucksicles, this is loopy even for me. I just now realized, in telling you this tale, that I thought the 9th was Friday, even though I knew damned well that Monday was the sixth. So I totally missed this rather important appointment because I couldn’t figure a simple bit of calendar math.

Gaaaah this sucks. My reputation will only grow as a flaky patient after this. I really hope doctors don’t compare notes about this kind of thing.

I mean, they can’t outright refuse to heal me…. right?

Actually, in an ironic way, there might have been no damage done today… because I know damned well that I forgot to call to confirm on the 2nd, so they probably just erased the appointment then.

I don’t know what is wrong with me. It’s not like I lack the capacity to remind myself. There’s a ton of programs for Android whose sole purpose is to remind you of stuff. I could have just said to myself “Well, no way I will remember this by then, I had better set a reminder for myself to make the confirmation call on the day it’s due and another for the day before the appointment and the whole thing would have been taken care of.

But no, I forgot to do that too, and so I fucked up again.

Once again, I find myself thinking that I need some sort of minder. Someone whose job it is to help me keep all my marbles together and remember to do things. Someone who will jot down my sudden random thoughts and make sure I do things like take my insulin and do my testing and uses my CPAP machine.

I guess I need someone to watch over me.

Man, there has never been another voice like Ella. Her versions of songs don’t just sound good. They sound right.

But men don’t get those, do they? Women can always find a white knight if they really want one, but for us men, it is just not an option. It’s be strong or be a loser.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.