I wonder what it’s like to think clearly.

As patient readers know, I live my life in a mental fog. It varies in thickness and obscurity, but it’s always there. To get any thinking done, I have to push against it. As a consequence, every little thought has to push through some resistance just to be thought. This is especially true, of course, for complex thought. Especially if it involves heavy use my executive function. ^[1]

This fog is the main reason I am so absentminded and clueless despite my stratospheric IQ. Things I should remember and things I should be aware of in my environment get lost in the fog, and I end up fogging things up.

Ha ha ha.

And the fog is always crowding in, taking over whatever parts of my mind it can, trying to crowd me out of my own headspace. My greatest fear is that one day it will win, and I will be lost in the fog of my own mind forever, unable to find my way back to the real world and helpless against my inner demons.

But in a strange way, I think it has also made me mentally stronger. All that pushing against resistance is like calisthenics for the mind. Add in my unslakeable thirst for mental exercise and it’s no wonder I have such powerful mental muscles.

It’s also what makes my mind such a restless wanderer, always looking for answers and insights. Those lovely moments of clarity when I figure something out are so precious to me because they make me feel like I am seeing clearly, if only for a moment.

As a result, while my outer vision is quite terrible, my inner vision – that inner sight that brings insights – is quite powerful and well-developed. I suppose when you live in a fog you have to learn to make the most of what you can see. And that involves collating and integrating everything you know.

I have talked before aboyt how it’s like the contents of my mind are under constant pressure to assume the smallest shape they can. When I have my insights, it’s like things suddenly fitting together and that mass of info in my mind gets smaller, which feels absolutely sublime.

Call it the Philosopher’s High.

And it just occurred to me that I actually have had times of relative mental clarity. Times when the fog was gone and I was pretty healthy and I felt like I could, at last, really face the world as it was.

They scared the crap out of me.

They also felt good. Exhilirating, even. But the feeling of exposure was profound. That old “naked in the tundra” feeling, or perhaps “naked in the Serengeti” would be more apt because it made me feel like I was surrounded by predators on an open field with no cover and way too many directions danger can come from.

So that fog is there for a reason. It keps me from seeing too much of reality for me to endure and remain calm. It might be a burden but it’s also a security blanket, a suit of armor, and the anesthetic I use to cope with the pain of life.

Of course, my life would be a lot less painful without it. Assuming I could get used to the higher physical stimulation levels without succumbing to panicked mania this time.

It’s really a remarkable feeling. Like being strapped to the hood of an out of control train. You’re enjoying it and scared out of your wits at the same time.

Hmmm. This buggering off shortly after I get to 600 words is becoming a habit.

So essentially, the fog = my depression. Or at least, that’s how I currently concieve of it. As much as I might rail against it, it is not going to go away any time soon because I still need it. I need its numbing effect and its cooling touch and above all, its ability to keep me from being overstimulated into terror by the real world.

Until I overcome those problems, this icy fog of mine will cling to me like a foul smelling glue. And as long as it is there, I will never achieve the mental clarity I have sought for as long as I have been familiar with the concept.

And no wonder, given what I was working with.

The source of the fog is obvious. My primary trauma – being raped by a stranger at the age of four. When I took my mind away and never truly came back to reality – not fully – it was this fog of mine that kept me on ice and kept those traumatic memories on ice for all these years.

I am picturing the fog as the sort that flows out of a canister of liquid CO2 when you open it now. Cold and deadly and very dangerous.

But also very, very cool.

Ba dum tish.

Of course, starting from that prime trauma, the fog become very good at simply locking bad memories and emotions away, so that subjectively, it felt like I was making those emotions disappear forever.

Not possible, of course. The only way to get rid of an emotion is to express it. Everything else just delays the process and drags your suffering out further.

Mostg of us are walking around with a huge burden of unresolved emotions. For most people. it’s not a heavy enough burden to make them ill.

That’s because, lacking the mental resources of the truly intelligent, they have no choice but to actually feel their emotions and act on them, in realtime.

Luckily, I am far too smart fvor that kind oif weak and feebleminded sanity.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well I dune messed up again, mother. It’s official. Your son is a goof.

Got up a bit before noon and got in the cab to go to therapy around 12:15. Got to therapy at around :12:40. Late, but not too late. Or so I thought.

Got there and asked the receptionist if the doc had been asking about me yet. She said no, and in fact he was not in the office yet.

Uh oh. Here comes that sinking feeling.

So I sit to wait, and the sinking feeling increases because a little voice in the back of my head is saying that my appointment was actually yesterday.

Oh sure, NOW you tell me. Where were you yesterday, when I had plenty of time and it would have been no problem to go to therapy then come home and relax?

So I asked the receptionist to call Doctor Costin, my shrink. He did not pick up. The receptionist said she didn’t think he was coming i today at all.

So ayup. It was yesterday. And he told me last time. But I forgot.

Now normally at this point, I would simply take the cab home again. But on the way in, I had noticed that it was a specacularly perfect summer day today, so after dithering about it for a little while, I decided I would walk to the bus stop four blocks away and take the bus home instead.

After all, the cringing scuttling weak voice inside me that would lead me to take the cab is exacftly the voice I am doing my best to kill.

Fuck you, pussy. I’m moving up and moving on. You are not me. I can be better.

So I walked. And it was truly gorgeous out. Skies a cloudless blue. warn golden sunshine on the lush green grass, the smell of hot pavement and singed soil bring back pleasant childhood memories of a time when an afternoon lasted forever and happiness was a lime green popsicle and a bag of penny candy.

Remember penny candy?

One small flaw in my plan : on my rush out the door, I grabbed my one long-sleeved T-shirt, and it was uncomfortably thermally efficient. Ideally I would have been wearing something breezier. But it was still very nice out.

Then I discovered that the buses that stop near my apartment don’t stop at the stop in question any more. Or if they do, it’s not listed at the stop any more. So after watching a few 410 buses go by, I got on the next one and it took me to the Skytrain stop a few blocks from here. And I walked home from there.

Standing room only on the bus, which sucked. But it wasn’t like when I was going to VFS and I couldn’t get a seat. That meant 25 minutes jammed together like sardines with no chance to sit and relieve the swelloing in my feet.

This was ten minutes tops,. and so it didn’t get anywhere near the excrutiating stage.

A couple of times during the walking portion of my journey, I sat down to rest. After all, I was in no rush any more and the weather was amazing, and I only overheat when I am moving. If I can sit still, I can adjust to anything.

Hence my love of lying on the beach despite being so prone to heat stroke. As long as I am lying still or at the very least not doing very much, and stay hydrated, I can just lie there and let the heat bake the toxins out of my skin.

Like a sauna. But with better scenery.

Well, it’s time for me to try for an afternoon nap despite the fan on my bed having died. Wish me luck.

Well, I have a few minutes before heading off to a Paragon meeting at the Hackery, so I might as well blog.

Lately, I have been re-examining the idea of take the parking brake off my writing and pretending every month is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo. pronounced “Nano ree mo”.) and just spending all day writing.

This idea was brought back into my mind by this video :

It’s about a fascinating fellow named Henry Darger. He spent his whole life working meni;l hospital jobs and spent all his free time writing and drawing these gradiose stories about super-perfect grils who fight evil and corruption in a great war with an evil empire, to varying success.

My theory as to the rampant nudity : to him, nudity meant purity. That’s not a new idea. Nude children have represented purity since medieval times. The image of very young and therefore not yet knowing of nudity as sin (as if they lived in Eden before the apple) children was considered especially potent.

That’s is – seriously – what all the cherubim and seraphim was all about.

At first, anyway.

As to why the random simple penises and testicles, I think the dullest answer is the most likely : he had no idea what girls had between their legs. None.

I mean, he was raised in stricti Catholicism. When would he have found out?

Anyhow, Henry’s example got me to thinking about him and his world. It didn’t matter to him that his jobs were so lowly because when the shift was over, he went back to his “real world”,. where he God AND a mighty general.

And yes, that’s definitely less than sane. Bit I can’t help but love it. I connect with it on a deep level, and truly think that there but for the grace of God and the less than total social isolation in my childhood go I.

And the idea of spending all my time creating has a certain appeal. Unlike Henry, I would show it to the world, but knowing me, I wouildn’t do it well.

Or much at all,. really.

I mean, the writing part of it is more or less what I did last November with my sprawling crazy novel. I wrote what I wanted to write. I stitched it together into a shared universe. In said universe, I could do what I want, which turned out to be writing about a gay romance between a man and a male cartoon bunny.

Seems obvious in retrospect.

And I admit, I am curious ot see what I could get out of doing a hell of a lot more writing on a psychological level. The more I write, the more of my hidden glacier of emotion gets melted and released. Writing a lot more might be the key to speeding up that process so that I might be sane before I die.

That’s the dream!

SO I will ponder some way of giving myself permission to write like a bastard every chance that I get, and hopefully. have that replace my video game addiction.

At least writing is creatively fulfilling.

And I am getting very very tired of wasting my time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.