Just woke up, ergo I feel wretchedly horribly awful.

And you know what? I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve all the pain in my life from all my health issues. I have done the best I could to make it this far and it has not been easy. Whne you have depressiobn, every fucking day it battle just to stay sane and make it through the day without being a threat to yourself and/or others.

My sleep apnea makes waking up a treat, and is definitelycausing me harm. Smothering dozens of times every time you sleep can do that to a fella. CPAP didn’t work for me and my doctor doesn’t seem to think there are any alternatives (even thought I know there are) and so I guess I will just keep on suffering until one of these times I just plain don’t wake up.

Like The Gambler said, the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.

He probably assumed you’d be real old when it happened though.

The vascillations of my diabetes do a good jbo of making sure I stand no chance of experiencing emotional stability. Not to mention whatever damage it is doing to my organs. So if the sleep apnea doesn’t get me, the diabetes will.

And sooner rather than later.

Throw in my sinus issues, my Irritable Bowel Syndrome, my huge pores, and the entierly untreated umbilical hernia lurking in my gut, and it is a wonder that I function as well as I do. Most people, given my list of ailments, would simply collapse.

But oh no, not me. I am “smarter” than that, “tougher” than that. No matter what happens,. I just keep going.

I can’t afford to collapse. Not when I know there will be mobody to help me up again. When you were left to more or less raise yourself and have absolutely no faith that anyone will notice let alone care if you crash and burn, you don’t have the luxury of falling apart when things get to be too much.

Even if that would be the best thing for you. I would probably benefit from a total breakdown. I have been running this goddamned nonstop marathon for so long that I am falling apart and desperately need to perform important maintenance on mkyself, but that can only happen if I stop and rest and put myself in dry dock for a while.

And I just can’t. I can’t risk it. I have absolutely no faith in my ability to get started again when the repairs are done and I know damned well that there will be abolutely nobody to give me a push to get me going again, so I just can’t risk it.

Or so my depression tells me, anyhow, and at the moment I am too tired to argue,

I spend a lot of my time aggressively ginoring and filtering out a lot of pain. Pain in various forms and on various levels.

And I didn’t do a damned thing to deserve any of it.

Back after a nap. Back to feeling like crap. Lovely.

I am sleepy all he time lately. Especially during the day and ESPECIALLY especially in the afternoon. It’s very frustrating to be sleepy all the god damned time,.

Like even right now, when I woke up from my nap not more than five minutes ago,  I really really want to lay back down and sleep even more. It’s like it never stops.

The only time I feel truly awake is in those wee hours of the morning when everyone else is asleep and it’s just mke and the computer and my god damned video games.

My current addiction is Elder Scrolls Online, aka ESO. It is more or less the next game in the Elder Scrolls series of games and is thus a sort of sequel to Skyrim.

You remember Skyrim. The game that prompted me to fall into a deep dark hole due to its massive mod community which included all kinds of fun sextimes options?

I’d been feeling the urge to re-install it lately, which probably would have been Bad. SO it was good that this new game came along and offered me a free trial and got me hooked on IT instead.

It’s much safer for me (and a lot less fun, granted) because it does not have a massive modding community producing enormous quantitites of free content on a daily basis. It was designed specifically to prevent those kinds of the shenanigans.

Part of me hopes that the nerd hive mind cracks that problem and starts making free form mods for ESO, but that is highly unlikely because ESO, being an MMORPG, has a single persistent world and that requires a constant connection to the Internet, and that can be used to make sure you don’t go adding content without the company’s approval.

Plus, because it’s s shared world, it could be pretty confusing to have things exist in one person’s version of the shared world but not in everyone else’s.

So I am safe from Skyrim’s 80,000 mod universe, with nudity and humping and everything, for the time being at least.

The only things users can officially mod is the interface. as far as I can tell. I haven’t gotten around to installing any of those kind of mods yet, but I am going to do so soon becauise the limitations of the default interface are beginning to really irritate me.

It’s a far cry from the Bad Old Days but it is still fundamentally a really good game. Especially because a lot of the things I used to need a mod for have been integrated into the new game by default.

I have already paid $15 CDN  for the game itself. Eventually I will buy the expansion, Summerset, for $40 CDN, which more or less quadruples the size of the shared world.

But there is no rush for that. I have plenty to do in the default game yet.

And I am having a lot of fun.

Which is, in a way, the problem.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Didn’t mean to start blogging just yet, but I am waitging for Joe to comke tell me that supper is ready, and I am bored with Facebook and porn.

And I am not going to start playing a video game when I could be interrupted at any second. I can’t enjoy myself with that kind of thing hanging over me.

I hate being interrupted. Really, really hate it.

So here I wait, uncertainly. If I had done my usual thing and made my own supper, I would have eaten already and be like halfway through my blogging by now.

This is why people like me end up being loners and control freaks.

Back from dinner. Chicken burgers and rice. Classic.

But yeah. I really hate interruptions. They cause me a nearly physical kind of pain. Like I have suddenly been yanked from my comfortable groove into the cold cruel embrace of the unknown and therefore feared by default.

I am just not geared for rapid transition. My initial reaction to sudden change is blind panic. And not the ‘crouching in a dark corner freaking out’ kind of panic.

More the ‘huge dude goes berserk’ scenario of my nightmares. It’s hard to tell from the outside, but walk the sharp and narrow edge of madness pretty much all the time. I am keenly aware of the potentially explosive nature of my contents and know that it would be very dangerous to let them get overheated or punctured.

So I can easily see myself in those scenes from movies and TV where the big huge biker dude is freaking out and it takes like five cops (or orderlies, or whatever) to even try to control him.

That could easily be me.

I first realized this in an appropriate place : on a plane.

Patient readers know that I have a problem with air travel that has absolutely nothing to do with fear of flying^[1]. It has to do with the inherent incompatability between being huge and being claustrophobic when trying to travel by air in an era when the seats are getting smaller all the time.

I mean, my last flight was a decade ago and I barely made it without going full “bull in a china shop” as it was. And that flight was only from Toronto to Vancouver, which is around three hours.

I could never make it these days. Seats are even smaller. It would be first class or I can’t go. If I ever had a globe trotting career, I would either end up spending a lot of money on seat upgrades or getting REALLY familiar with Xanax.

Anyhow, it was on that flight that, as I was freaking out from the levels of confinement, I realized that I could totally end up as one of those raging fat dudes. All it would take would be something bad enough to overwhelm my usual psychological defenses and tip over the giant bubbling cauldron of pain, fear, and rage at my core.

Once that happend, all bets are off, because that wouldn’t even be me at the controls any more. It would be some animalistic lunatic version of myself with all the coolness and restraint of Evil Kirk.

With great evil comes the bold use of eyeliner

And the worst part would be, well,. what do they do with giant sized lunatics on a rampage? They restrain them, of course.

And that would only make things much, much worse. If I was freaking out from claustrophobia, putting me in handcuffs or the like would only kick my panic into a whole new gear and who knows what I would do in such a state.

And what would the end result be?

Me waking up in a cell somewhere. I would finally regain my senses only to find myself locked in a cage.

And that might set me off AGAIN.

I should stop talking about this. I am just freaking myself out.

But it does make me keenly aware that the difference between a law abiding citizen and a dangerous lunatic can be as small as whether or not the person made their bus.

My point is..,.. I really hate being interrupted?

Sure, let’s go with that.

Hating interruptions naturally leads to a need for control. After all, the only defense against random interruptions is predictability. And the only way to guarantee predictability is to control things.

Or at least, that’s how a Taurus sees it.

But I am aware of the more efficient solution : getting used to it. It’s far less expensive in the long run to be capable of handling surprises than to have to put in all the energy and forethought it takes to prevent them.

But a solution is only superior if it is implementable, and I am not sure I could pull that one off. I might get better at handling certain kinds of situations but I don’t know that I am capable of shifting my basic temperament to one better suited to the sudden.

So planning, predicting, and paranoia it is.

Still, the people in my life, at least, know that springing something on me suddenly pretty much guarantees that I will say no to it. And if they don’t take the hint and keep pressuring me to do it, “no” will turn into “fuck off and leave me alone!” pretty fast.

Freaking out can turn into lashing out pretty fast.

And I am no growling puppy, harmless and even adorable due to how small the threat is and how ferocious the actor.

I’m a big huge fat dude with a lot of issues.

And even in a state of primal rage, I would still be hella smart (or ‘cunning’) and that would make me far more dangerous and unpredictable than some out of control drunken hillbilly of a redneck.

Then again, maybe this is all just stories I tell myself to justify my suppressing myself so hard and so thoroughly.

But can I really take that chance?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Here we go. Affirmation time.

Right now, I feel terrible. I just woke up around `20 minutes ago, ergo I feel like used shit. My stomach feels like it’s full of rocks, my head is pounding to the kind of savage jungle beat that means the white hero is in VERY big trouble, I have an ache in my balls feels like they have been stepped on by an elephant, and I feel woozy and dizzy and thorough discombobulated, deranged, and depressed.

And just how am I supposed to get myself combobulated, ranged, and pressed at a price I can afford on a Sunday?

But here is the thing. This is the affirmation part : I am still an awesome dude. 

Nothing intrinsic to me has changed. I am still the same ol’ wonderful Fru as ever. Feeling bad does not make me bad. My identiyu remains the same.

And it’s a pretty good one.

Patient readers know that this is where I am, psychologically. I am at the point where it is time to establish a solid and unchanging identity that is immune to the wild vascillations of my inner maelstorm.

The storm may rage but the real me is safe inside the solid brick edifice that is my new sense of identity. no matter what is going on on the outside, who I truly am does not change, and I can sit in front of my big bay window in my dressing gown with a cup of hot cocoa and a cat to pet and look out at all that chaos and laugh to think that I once thought that had anything to do with me.

What a silly notion. Fuck the chaos. No matter how I feel, I am still one amazing dude, and that is what really matter. I am smart, funny, sweet, creative, insightful, imaginative, and downright adorable, and I am never going to forget that again.

That settles THAT.

Now the question is : how goes one go about being a sick awesome person?

By staying positive, I think. Like the wise philosopher Honey Bear says :

Even when I feel like crying
And I can’t find the sun
Still I know it’s always shining
And I’ll feel it when the rain is done

Now that’s a kind of faith I can get behind. Simple, undemanding, reassuring, life affirming, and scientifically accurate.

I mean, the sun really does shine all the time, whether we can feel it at the moment or not. It’s a star, they don’t have an off switch and they are certainly not subject to anyone’s mood swings.

There’s sunshine in my heart. It’s always there.
And it makes me a sweet, sweet honey….. fox.

<———————————->

Something interesting has been developing lately : I seem to be naturally progressing towards eating half as much twice and often.

You know, eating every three hours instead of six without increasing total food intake? It is something that is recommended both for diabetes and good health in general. The idea is that our bodies are not designed for large binge meals.

Our primate ancestors, after all, were opportunistic snackers, not intermittent feasters.

And lately, I have been getting full before my deal is done. So I end up with leftovers, and then a few hours later, I am hungry again, and eat the leftovers.

This is a fairly radical change for me as I have been a ‘clean plate’ type all my life. And so I am struggling to ignore  that imperative (EAT IT ALL)  and listen to what my body tells me it actually wants.

Needed me a nap.

God, do I get tired of being tired. Depression is such a drag. I mean, here I am, brain the size of a planet….

I wantg to put that on a T-shirt and wear it. I am pretty sure that whoever owns Douglas Adams’ estate right now would not sue me for borrowing one of Marvin the Paranoid Android’s catchphrases. And it reallty does express how I feel a lot of the time.

Especially now that I am permanently awesome. Here I am, this amazing guy with amazing talents, and due to depression slash anxiety (anxession? depriety?), all I use my massive talents on is video games and writing this blog.

Not to knock this blog or anything. As patient readers know, this blog is my lifeline and without it, my emotions would have no outlet and I would be a far, far more depressed person. At least with the blog and my commitment to it, some of that massive massy burden of social damage I keep talking about gets aired out and melted every day.

But writinjg these little messages in a a bottle of mine and setting themt to float out on the evening tide is not getting me any closer to that candy colored dream of actual employment in my chosen field9s0.

Or hell, employment period. Right now, I would take damned near any job that I thought I was physically capable of doing.

For example,. I would love to be a cashier/clerk in a small business again. I enjoyed that work except when there were no customers. I like interacting with the customers and I loved having people need things from me that I could actually supply.

You have no idea how much that means to me. I am so used to thinking I am useless that it was a real shot in the arm to have a job where I can successfully do things for people, even if it’s just taking their money and making change.

The point is, it is frustrating to know that I have all this awesomeness stored up inside me and know that I can’t use it to get what I want from life because of stupid lousy depression slash anxiety.

If only I knew the sort of people who would see my potential and push me to use it and do things like show my work to people who might want to hire me.

Or even just say ‘attaboy’.

I really need some encouragement.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

…it is exhausting.

Seriously though, I have been doing well at remembering that I am a pretty awesome dude even when I feel utterly terrible.

Like I said before, this takes energy. As horrible as mistaking one’s mood for one’s worth is,. I have to admit that it sure does simplify things.

What cogitive dissonance?

And even as I take my frist trembling wobbly steps into the world of actually liking myself, I can feel a voice inside me tugging in the opposite direction.

Let’s go back to hating ourselves, it says. It was so much easier. And easier is always best, right? RIGHT!?!

Wrong. Whne it comes to personal energy, I have a surplus, not a deficit. Doing things the hard way would probably do me a lot of good. Video games drain some of the surplus energy away, but only some forms of it, and the rest just ends up jacking up my background tension level. till I am a tightly wound spring with no release.

And I keep wanting to become more active. but I am scared. Scared of what happens when I leave my cozy corrupt killer coccoon and enter the big bad world out there where stuff happens that I can’t anticipate and/or control and which therefore will stimulate me and that means i will be anxious and not even be able to take a nap to fix it!

What could possibly be worse/

Oh right, dying without having done anything with my life. Unfulfilled. never having escaped this filthy fucking cage of mine.

This life is NOT okay.

At least I am now keenly aware of the miles and miles ofsocial damage inside me and the way it has of vetoing practically anything I want to do with that tell tale cluitch of fear that says ‘no. ‘

And the result is paralysis. The intention freezes in place. And sooner or later, the mind needs that circuit and so all it can do is clear the intention without fulfilling it.

And that is very painful and sad, in an icy cold life-destroying way.

Enough of that and you end up not even starting to intend to do things because it is just too damned painful to have one’s healthy desire for action get flash frozen to death over and over and over again.

Damn do I want to go to sleep right now. But I must blog,. I blog, thereofre I am.

Where was I? Oh right, feeling the damage. And now that I can feel the damage and give it a sort of location in my mind, I can begin the process of learning to recognize when it’s the damage doing the talking and therefore that voice can be safely ignored because, as we have firmly established, it has no idea what it’s talking about.

Guys selling tips outside horse tracks have a higher hit ratio than my depression/.

Being able to feel the edges of the damage also improves my sense that this is a finite problem that can be conquered with long term effort on my part.

After all, as huge as my pile of unresolved emotions has gotten, it’s still finite. As long as I keep shoveling the snow off my sidewalk and into the street, my yard will evebntually be clear, and I will finally have that long awaited springtime of the soul.

But it won’t be like Genever walking through a doorway into the bring, warm, wonderful world of summer and dreams.

It will be a long flat comfortable corridor that gets slowly brighter and sunnier as I go, until one day I will suddenly realize that I am outside, and have been for some time.

Damn. Gonna lie down for a bit. Good thing I can set an alarm. BBIAB!

Stupid unstable waking state.

Feeling fitfully horny lately. Still have trouble ‘getting there’ when I masturbate. Stupid antidepressants and aging and everything else.

I try to be more nonlinear about the whole deal. After all, ejaculation is wonderful and all but just making myself feel real good for a bit without blastoff is a good thing too, right?

Nevertheless, it is frustrating. I don’t know what it is like for chicks, but for men, there is definitely a direction to sex and that direction is towards the happy squirting. Everything is driving towards that magic moment. And when you have to stop without getting there, part of you wants to roar like a sexually frustrated lion and then go beat the crap out of someone lower than you in the social hiearchy.

Look, I didn’t say it was a noble feeling.

The real frustration, though, is knowing that I can never have the kind of sex I really want,. The kind that truly matches my sexual orientation.

It’s not safe to be any more specific than that, but those who know me can probably figure it out. The kind of sex I really crave is illegal even in the most progressive countries of the world and considered extremely immoral by nearly everybody.

Even really open minded people who are into and/or accepting of some really crazy, gross, or downright disturbing variations on human sexuality have accepted the message that the kind of sex I really want is inherently very evil and would violently reject me if they knew I even liked that kind of porn, let alone wanted very much to do it in the real world.

It’s not like I chose to be this way. Who would? Who would choose to belong to the most hated sexual minority in the world? I would change it if I could. It’s basically a curse.

And to know that I am that way because of what was done to me by someone who was like that makes the whole thing far worse.

I have to believe that it is possible to get the sort of sex I want morally. At least in theory. And hold out the hope, however dim, that I might find myself in a situation where I truly can have what I really want.

Only this time, without anyone getting hurt.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

It reallt sucks to be able to see the disaster coming and not be able to do a thing to stop it. It especially sucks when it’s hard to explain why you can’t do anything about it.

And it’s the square root of the cube of the suck when it involves your health.

I’m pretty close to being out of my diabetes meds. Oops.  I really should have made a doctor’s appointment to get them refilled when I first realized this problem was looming on the horizon.

And I first realized it last Sunday. It’s Friday today.

And every day this week, I told myself I was going to call to make the appointment. And each time, I could not make myself do it.

Phone calls are tricky for me and my social anxiety. They require me to enter the real time social arena instead of hiding behind video games and the internet all the time. I have to talk to someone I don’t know and what’s worse, I have to ask for something.

The fact that it’s a perfectly normal thing to ask for and there is no chance my doctor’s receptionist will get mad at me and/or refuse me or reject me is irrelevent.

These anxieties were installed way before I developed my current rather muscular powers of reason. The fear happens before I even have a chance to think about it. And it operates on the deep animal level.

It’s not a reasoned response to environmental stimuli.

It’s jungle terror.

So as a result of these anxieties of mine, I am going to run out of diabetes meds for an indeterminate period of time and that’s bad.

Actually, I just checked, and it turns out that it’s only yhe Glyburide that I am about to run out of. Which is weird. Because they should all be in sync.

Anyhow, the point stands. My depression and/or anxiety is making my diabetes worse and will likely end up making me extra miserable as I fall victim to the Demon Hunger for at least a few days.

And trust me, that’s enough to drive anyone crazy.

And it’s just not fair, ya know? My problems ganging up on me like this. I try so hard to keep it together but no matter what I do, things fall apart anyhow.

Maybe I should stop trying so hard and just let everything fall apart so I can give that part of me a rest and recovery period. Then pull myself together again without all the strain on my nerves and mental resources.

Or maybe that’s just what my depression wants me to think. After all, the last time I fell apart like that, it was when I feel deep into the Skyrim hole, and I still haven’t fully recovered from that.

It’s so hard to keep myself together though. As patient readers know, it takes a constant input of energy for me to retain my shape. Part of me always longs to abandon all structure and revert to liquid form and go hide from the world for a while.

Morseso than usual, I mean.

I am finding my experiments with actually valuing myself very interesting.

Because the thing is, if I am valuable, then this life of mine is a tragedy and an injustice. And in general, I am the sort of person who does his best to prevent tragedies and right wrongs and make things better for people.

And I’m people.

But I dunno. Valuing myself seems like so much work. I mean, if I am truly as gifted as I think I am, then I really should be doing all kinds of things to make sure I get the most out of my considerable abilities.

Things like job hunting, for instance. Scary thought.

Scary because, like, what if I actually got one? Then I would have to leave this fetid womb of mine for many hours at a time. I would lose my precious ability to nap whenever the hell I wanted and I would have to take the electronic teat that feeds me video games and the internet out of my mouth and learn to actually deal with reality.

In short, I would have to actually grow up.

“It’s about time!” says one part of me.

“Oh god no!” says another.

What can I say. i’m a complicated man and noone understands me.

I really do want to exit this cage I have built for myself. It would be wonderful to be free of the burden of having to figure out what to do with myself all the time. Having purposeful labour would also do me a lot of good, as would having someplace I can show off just how fucking amazing I am and get kudos.

I loves me some kudos.

I keep thinking that I need to start something on my own, or dedicate myself to Paragon, or some other kind of big deal project like that which can generate its own momentum to a certain extent.

But I don’t feel like I have it in me right now. As we have discussed recently, I could be wrong about that. Depression is a total non-predictor when it comes to that kind of thing. It could be that if I threw myself into something big, it would inspire me and I would find I had plenty of energy to get shit done.

But right now,. that seems unlikely. Maybe after it cools off in the fall, I will be able to find the energy for that all important initial spark, but I don’t have it right now.

The idea of a job appeals to me, though. Imagine actually knowing what I will be doing with myself day after day! Imagine having a place where they value what I do enough to give me money for it! Imagine a wonderland where I work with other people who are smart and funny and cool!

Could such a thing truly exist?

Could it even exist for someone…. like me?

Dare I even…. dream of it?

I do so dare.

And if I can dream it, I can do it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

“Greetings, Genever. I am the Demon of the Maze, and I am here to set you free. ”

Genever gaped at the crimson creatue. It took the shape of a tall, slender, handsome man clad head to foot in an exquisitely tailored red tuxedo. But it had horns on its head, a spathate tail that flicked to and fro easily, and the tuxedo only covered from the waist up and from the knees down.

“You’re who…. what? ” said Genever. A moment ago, it had been just another day in the maze. He’d fought some monsters, ate some meals, explored some passages, and written it all down in his journal. It was the same thing he had done every single day for as long as he could remember.

Then he had turned a corner that looked exactly like a million others and suddenly found himself in a strange room with translucent white walls and this absurd figure looming over him.

The Demon smiled a smile filled with warmth and compassion, and stepped a little closer to Genever, then said, in a voice brimming with benevolence,  “I said, my dear man… that I am the Demon of the Maze, and I am here to free you. ”

The Demon then gestured to a seemingly random section of wall and it slid open.

“Voila!” said the Demon. “The exit of the Maze. At long last, you are free to go. All you have to do is walk through that door and you will be free of the Maze forever. ”

“Forever?” said Genever dumbly.

The Demon nodded with great satisfaction. “Indeed. Step through that door and this terrible place will disappear in the blink of an eye, never to be seen again. It will be as though it never existed. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Um, yeah…. sure. ‘ said Genever as he stared at the opening, not moving a muscle. .

“Well then what are you waiting for? ” said the Demon kindly. “This is what you have been working towards for all these years. Your long, dark journey is finally at an end. You win. You outlasted the Maze. And here is your prize : your freedom. All you have to do is walk through this door and claim it. So what are you waiting for?”

Genever’s thoughts were a blur. The Demon was right. He’d been working hard to reach this goal for a very long time and here it was. He hated the Maze, hated being trapped in it, hated all it had taken away from him, hated who it had forced him to become.

Every day was a struggle to escape this accursed place, and he had made a lot of progress lately. Escape had seemed more possible than ever before.

So why was he more scared of that door than he had ever been in his entire life?

The Demon seemed to understand this. “This isn’t a trick, Genever. Come closer and you will see. ”

With great hesitancy, he took a few steps closer to the door.

“You see?” said the Demon. “This really is the exit. Look through the door.  Isn’t it exactly how you always imagined it would be?”

Genever looked, and it was.

Blue sky with lazy fluffy cloud floating serenely though them. A friendly yellow sun shining down on green grass shot through with flowering vines. A brown dirt road stretching off into the distance, suggesting all kinds of possibilities.

It was a perfect match to the image of freedom that had pulled him through the most difficult times in the Maze. The times when it had seemed like the Maze stretched out infinitely in all directions and escape was impossible and he would be stuck in his own personal Hell forever.

It was that image, in fact, that had gotten him this far.

And yet, here it was, and he was terrified of it.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it? ” asked the Demon.

“I guess so. ” said Genever. ‘I guess I just didn’t expect it so… soon. ‘

“What difference does that make?” asked the Demon. “Here it is, the thing you want most in life. Getting it with less work and wait that you thought is a good thing, right?”

“I guess so. ‘ said Genever. “I mean, that makes sense. ‘

“So what’s stopping you?”:

Genever didn’t know. He desperately tried to remember what his life had been like before he had been thrown into the maze by an evil magician.

He remembered sunshine, and laughter, and kind people who made him feel safe. He remembered being on the water of a river in a great big boat with the rest of his family. He remembered food, and parties, and getting into trouble with his brothers.

He remembered being happy.

Could life really be that good again? He could barely relate to it. It was almost like that life belonged to someone else. Someone who had never followed that beautiful voice into that dark cave where the evil magician lurked.

That innocent child was dead, and had been for a very long time. Or so Genever had thought. But the sight of all that sunlight and green was awakening something within Genever, something both utterly alien and inimately familiar.

“Maybe you’re not ready for this yet. ‘ said the Demon. ‘If you want, I could send you to some other part of the Maze and let you go back to your ‘normal’ life. ‘

Genever was tempted. Suddenly, the Maze life he’d thought he hated more than anything else lseemed safe and comfortable and warm to him. It would be so easy to go back to what he knew and pretend this had never happened.

But Genever knew that was impossible.

Because he’d know. Know that he had been given his chance to escape and turned it down out of fear.

How could he go back to working towards the exit knowing that/

Before he could really think about it, Genever walked up to the door, and said ‘i am going to go through. ‘

The Demon beamed. “I am so glad to hear you say that. And let me just say that it has been a privilege and an honor to work for you. ”

“Work FOR me?” said Genever. “You work for me. ”

The Demon smiled. “We all do, Genever. All the creatures of the Maze, and the Maze itself as well. It was all for you, sir. Because you needed it. And now that you don’t need us any more, our purpose is fulfilled. All that is left is for us to fade away. when you walk through this door. ‘

Genever was touched. He shook the Demon’s hand. It was warm and perfectly smooth.

“Thank you for all you’ve done for me. ” he said, somewhat awkwardly.

“We were only too glad to help, sir. ” said the Demon. “Now I think you have a date with a door to get to. ‘

Genever nodded, squared his shoulders, shook the dust off his clothing, and strode confidently through that door and into the future.

Let’s tackle that nasty depressive anti-action bias, shall we?

It starts like this : Tonight, I actually put a more than minimal effort into making my supper, and that’s pretty revolutionary.

See, my normal diet is semi-terrible. Only semi, but still, not great.

My usual meal consists of a peanut butter sandwich, a soup bowl of whatever juink food I have around (chips, pretzels, cheesy poofs, or whatever), a piece of fruit (apple, banana, or orange) and some of whatever sugar free sweet things I have around (cookies, ice cream, lemon cake slices, etc. )

It’s not the worst diet in the world. It has protein from the peanut butter, vitamins and minerals from the fruit, and carbs from literallly everything else.

I eat WAY too many carbs.

Also, there is no calcium in my normal diet and no animal protein. That’s a problem and I have the total lack of Vitamin B12 in my bloodstream to prove it. I know that it is possible(in theory, at least)  to get all the B12 you need from vegetables and pulses and such, but I don’t eat those, either.

I should. But I don’t.

But the mqain thing about my usual semi-terrible diet is that it takes a minimal amount of work and involves absolutely no waiting.

The most complex and labor intense part of the whole operation is the making of the peanut butter sandwich, and it shames me to admit this but sometimes I am too lazy to even do that and just skip it.

My life is so sad!

But tonight, I bucked the trend and invested a non-minimal amount of effort into my meal. Tonight’s entree involved me microwaving hot dogs, making toast, then buttering that toast and putting cheese slices atop the slices of toast then adding the hoit dogs all sliced up and nuking the whole thing till it was melty.

That’s not much effort in the grand scheme of things. but compared to my usual “time away from the computer” minimizing ways, it’s a five course Cordon Blue feast.

And the thing is, and I am telling you this to tell it to myself,. I was not miserable. In fact, I enjoyed it, and enjoyed the tasty results of my labour as well.

And I have to tell myself this because that’s not what my depression predicts at all. My depression views all expenditures of effort with a ;laundiced eye and categorically rejects anything that strikes it as more effort than absolutely necessary.

To it, the fact that I could have gotten fed with less work is all the evidence it neecds to declare the whole thing a terrible idea that can only lead to misery.

And it’s wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong! The truth is, my depression doesn’t know what the fuck it’s talking about. Its predictions, like the predictions of conservative doomsayers, are never correct and only persist because the predictions make emotional sense, even if logically they are absurd on every single level.

My excuse is mental illness. Dunno what their excuse is. Same thing, maybe.

I know I keep coming back to this point, but it’s because it’s so hard to get it through my head. My depression is worse than useless when it comes to predicting the emotional outcome of a course of action. How I feel when I consider an action should and will be viewed as a total non-predictor, and I should instead try to use my skills of logic to counter the distortions of depression and try to figure out how it would REALLY go.

That would certainly require more effort and it would, hopefully, be a temporary measure to be abandoned once my negative bias has been sufficiently corrected.

That’s only part of the problem, though. Because under those negative predictions lies the real problem, which is that great mass of frozen sadness, grief, rage, bitterness, and pain at the center of my being that makes my intentions melt like summer snow as it turns its head to the wall and says “No. ”

That’s the real down dirty damage that makes my life so hard. The delusional negative predictions are merely a case of justifying the emotion. The deep truth is that I don’t want to do these things because I am scared. Scared of life, scared of exposure, scared of the world, scared of myself.

And behind that all is a feeling that, if all my damage got out of the way and I actually crossed the distance between myself and the world outside my jail cell, Something Terrible would happen.

And patient readers know that this feeling of dread don’t have and doesn’t need a specific prediction attached. What is this Something Terrible that will happen? I honestly do not know. Something so bad that my mind can’t contain how bad it is.

Something worse than anything else.

Something that will mean my death – the death of the fellow typing these words.

Something that would involve so much change that I would become someone my current self would not recognize, and to the primitive parts of my mind, that is the exact same thing as dying.

So instead, my mind generates complexities and nuances and uses them to create my personal labyrinth where I can feel like I am making real progress towards the exit without having to fear what happens if I make it.

No risk of that because there is always more maze. It never ends. It can never end. If it ends, the Terrible Thing will happen. So the same mind that is solving the maze is also generating more maze when I am not looking.

It’s not that there is no progress at all. I am a much saner person now than I have ever been and each day I get a little better.

But I don’t seem myself making any truly big leaps until I can shut down the maze machine and face life without the comfort of my labyrinth’s encloakment.

Then I will truly be abkle to walk naked in the sun.

And all my lands will burst into rowdy spring again.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

, what if I actually slowed down enough to write down the dialogue I write in my head? Guess it would go something like this.

They’d almost made it out the door of the Forest Pines Bar and Grill (“Let us cater your next barbecue!”) when Ernie’s voice froze them dead in their tracks,.

“Well hey there fellas. ” said Ernie, all casual and friendly like. “And just where are you boys going all dressed up like you was G. I. Joe?”

Roy and the Boys (Alvie, the Nickle, Big Steve, and Bobby the Bone) looked at each other then down at their camo outfits and “tactical” gear like this was the first time they had seen it in their lives.

“Oh that’s right!” Ernie said, smacking himself on the head and making a big deal of it. “You boys are off to save America from the gays and the black folk and the women, right? You boys still think the real problem in America is most of the people in it, right?”

“Whatever you say, Ernie. ” said Alvie.

“Thanks, Alvie. ” said Ernie. “That’s right, you “Freedom Armed MIlitia” boys are the last line of defense against the liberal hordes that are sure to be descending on our peaceful little town oh, any minute now, ain’t that right boys? ”

Rufus, Ernie’s boyfriend (“He’s not my boyfriend, he’s just a guy I fuck”) and laugh track, guffawed heartily at that.

“Well I sure do appreciate you boys savin’ American for all us sheeple every weekend. ” said Ernie. “That’s quite the important job you got there. I am sure that, seeing as the fate of the free world is on the line, you boys must spend all weekend doin’ nothing but training, exercising, drilling, prepping, and doing everything else you can in order to be ready for when Uncle Sam comes for your guns, right?”

“Jesus Christ, Ernie. ” said Roy.

Ernie ignored him, which is probably just as well. “I mean, with all them big black dicks and raging pedophiles coming to ravage this fair town of hours, I am sure dedicated patriots like you wouldn’t even dream of spending time fishing, or hunting, or just sitting around shooting the shit. ”

Ernie grinned wide. “Why, I bet when you real Americans go out there, you’re so busy saving the world that you don’t… even.. drink. ”

Rufus knew his cue and laughed hard at that one. Nobody else did, because by that point, all the other patrons had left.

“Because if all that weren’t true, then you and your ‘militia’ would just be another bunch of idiots who like to get drunk in the woods, wouldn’t you? Except most of them are smart enough to know they’re just a bunch of dumb rednecks who ain’t gonna save the world from jack shit. ”

Rufus was beside himself now. The Boys just kind of looked down at their feet, not looking Ernie in the eye. Waiting for permission to leave. LIke usual.

But just as Ernie was turning away,  all five feet of the Nickel spoke up.

“Now you listen here, you asshole…. ” said the Nickel.

“Don’t. It’s not worth it. ” said Big Steve.

“Oh, this ought to be good. ” said Ernie as he gave Rufus a nudge.

“…first off, everyone in town knows you can only talk to people like that ’cause your Dad owns this place and it’s the only bar in town. So don’t go pretending like you’re some kind of big man. You’re just an overgrown spoiled brat  with a big mouth. Got it?”

Rufus looked at Ernie in confusion. But Ernie just smiled and said “True. ”

“… and yeah, maybe me and the Boys spend more time drinking and shooting the shit than we do training out there. but that’s still a fuck of a lot more than you’ve ever done with your life. ”

Rufus looked like he was gonna shit himself sideways out of confusion as Ernie’s smile got even wider. “Hell yeah and amen. ”

“…and yeah, maybe the federal government ain’t coming to take our guns… ”

“Not with your boy in the White House. ” said Ernie.

The Nickel didn’t know how to reply to that, so he just kept going. “…but a lot of good people aren’t happy about what is going on in this country, and if we make just one of them sleep a little better at night, well then, it’s all worth it., ”

Rufus stared at Ernie so hard his eyes bugged out.

Ernie got up, down the rest of his beer, slammed the mug down, and said “FINALLY. ”

“Finally, one of you dumb motherfuckers decided to crawl up out of the mud and call me on all my bullshit. That’s all I ever wanted. I have been sitting in this pub and trying to get a rise out of you hillbillies for years, and it has finally paid off. ”

Smiling like a saint, Ernie clapped the Nickel on the shoulder and said “Words cannot describe how happy you have made me tonight, Nickel. In fact…. why don’t all you boys come join me at the bar tonight. Drinks are on me. ”

The Boys looked at Roy. Roy looked at the Nickel. The Nickel made a show of thinking it over real good.

“Well…. ” said the Nickel. “That’s a mighty interesting offer. Most fellas would jump at the chance to drink all night for free. But I am certain that I am speaking for all us Boys when I say this to you. ”

And then the Nickel got up all nice and close to Ernie, who wasn’t much taller, and when they were almost nose to nose, the Nickel said “FUCK. YOU. ”

And with that, Roy and the Boys turned and left the bar.

And Ernie just say there, smiling, and said, “Anyone know if the Nickel is, you know… seeing any body?”

Then he looked at Rufus, whose whole world was crumbling.

“And what the fuck are you looking at? ” he said to Rufus.

And somewhere in the distance, a big rid blew its brakes.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Even more so than I usually do when I wake up.

But here’s the thing : I know that I, as a person, have not changed. Or at least, I am beginning to know that.

And I am also beginning to see how believing that you are how you feel kind of simplifies things. In a horrible way.

It is actually easier – not better, just easier –  to believe that you feel horrible because you are horrible than it is to think of yourself as a perfectly good person who feels like crap because they are not well.

It takes a certain input of energy to maintain belief in one’s own worth and merit when you feel so bad. Or at least, after decades of depression, it does fore me.

For healthy people, I am sure it does not. Loving themselves is their default state, not some bizarre and alien state of mind that they can only maintain by sheer force of will.

Protip : never make plans that hinge on you being able to maintain such an artificial state of mind indefinitely.

You laugh, but that’s exactly what people do when they go on a diet or otherwise work to overcome a bad habit and never think about what they are going to do when they run out of willpower.

And then they do runout of willpower and relapse, and because they have been starved for pleasure for so long they relapse hard as their body races to restore the balance and doesn’t give them much of a say in it till the job is done.

And then they beat themselves up for their lack of willpower. By which they mean their finite quantity of the stuff.

You have to replace the pleasure, people!

Food is helping me to feel a tad more human. Ditto for my meds. Perhaps I need to remind myself to withhold judgment on the day, the world, and my own worth until I am full and medicated.

Low blood sugar alone is enough to make you hate the world. I can see why both my brother and my father were such grouches before they had eaten.

When my blood sugar is low, everything hurts. Every sound, every light, every action. The world is made of pain.

The difference, though, is that I take responsibility for my emotions instead of taking them out on others. As patient readers know, taking it out on others is something I will never ever do, even if the alternative is being destroyed by my own pain.

It dies in me. I will not dump my pain into others. I will not spread my sickness. I take responsibility for the pain I have received and know that it is within my power to either pass it on like everyone else or keep it contained within me.

And, like in the cinematic at the end for the original Diablo, I have chosen to keep the evil in me in order to protect the world from it.

It is a noble and thankless job.

But I refuse to ever bend, even if it means I will break.

Took a nap. Got up. Took a very long pee. Sat down. Still sleepy.

I have gone almost entirely nocturnal as a response to the heat. I am only truly awake and alert after the sun goes down. During the day, I am never more than two steps awake from sleep.

Three if I am drinking my Diet Coke.

And it sucks. It’s stressful to keep myself awake when my body wants to sleep. It takes a constant input of energy to fight the drowsiness, and I hate those.

I like things where a single, intense, brief input of energy is all that is needed.

I rock at those.

I suppose part of the problem is that I can’t accept being totally nocturnal. I don’t want to be asleep all day. I want to be awake and doing things. If I was to sleep all morning AND all afternoon, I would feel a huge sense of loss and something sort of like guilt.

But not the moral kind of guilt. The personal kind, where you feel like you have failed yourself or done something dumb.

So I sturbbornly refuse to listen to the urgings of Mister Sandman to get into bed with him and surrender to his embrace.

Great, now I am eroticizing sleep. Whatever.

The thing is, that Sandman asshole is an abusive lover. I often feel a lot worse after having gone to bed with him. He cuts off my air supply  over and over all the time I am with him, and nothing can stop it.

And the sad truth is that this only makes me spend even more time with him because the sleep I get is of such poor quality that I need a lot of it just to function.

Man, that guy’s an asshole.

Sorry, got lost in one of my own metaphors again. Where was I?

Right, not sleeping in the afternoon. Well, honestly, I usually end up sleeping half the time anyway, in naps. I don’t want to do it, but I have little choice.

Every now and then I ponder trying to kick the napping habit. Traditional sleep science says that napping too much screws up your sleep schedule and can mean you do not get enough of the all important deep REM sleep.

So it’s distinctly possible that if I could resist the urge to nap all day and only sleep in one long session at night, my circadian rhythmns would finally be able to match up with the actual day and night and I would be able to get eight hours a night and wake up feeling refreshed and ready to go.

But as patient readers know, I use sleep to regulate my mood. Without them, my background anxiety level builds up past the point where the meds can hold my anxiety back and then I end up in any one of dozens of possible negative mind states.

Maybe if I stuck with it, I would get over that. I dunno.

What i do know is that I need to get some more sleep.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.