They call it evening but you never see it even.

Anyhow, I just woke up so I feel like crap. Nevertheless, I must blog now , as I will be busy in the evening hanging with my friends, and that got me to thinking.

The inevitable future scholars of this august publication will no doubt note that there is a distinct difference between the entries written while I eat lunch having only recently awoken^[1] and the ones written as I eat supper and have been awake for a while.

There’s certainly a big difference to me.

Whether said difference would truly be detectable on a literary level is debatable. For all I know, it’s the same deathless prose no matter when I write it.

But writing it fully awake and raring to go is sure as heck a lot easier then trying to cudgel my brain for words when I am barely awake and feel like crap.

Oh well. Like Mikey says, I’m not happy about it, but I’d rather feel like shit than be full of shit.

Damn I love that song. Even though Mikey looks like a cross between Axl Rose and Bobcat Goldthwait in that screenshot.

The song speaks to me. I feel like that is how I would have turned out if someone had cared enough to try to control me.

Instead, I had to raise myself, knowing there was absolutely nobody out there trying to keep me from hurting myself (and some eager to hurt me themselves) and absolutely nobody to pick me up if I fall (and someone all to eager to make it happen then laugh at me while I bled).

It’s hard to describe just how profoundly damaging that is. No discipline to internalize, no rules to protect me, no opposing will to test myself against and learn from, no social group to fit into, no faith to lean on, and absolutely nobody to kiss it better.

Just a sad little boy with a big, big brain.

Sometimes it seems weird that nobody could see how miserable I was. But then I remember that I was very good at hiding it. I still am.

When people are paying attention to me, I am all smiles and jokes and such. To let them see my sadness and loneliness would be the opposite of that. I want them to keep paying attention to me. Making them sad via empathy will make them go away.

Or at least, that’s what my bad programming tells me.

And because I have had so little nurturing in my life, when I do open up to people I tend to go to the opposite extreme and dump everything on them.

I suppose I am also testing them by doing that. I want to see if they will abandon me when I become too much for them to take and therefore more effort then I am worth.

That’s what I expect of the world. That people will abandon me when they get close enough to me to get beneath the song and dance on the surface and start having to deal with my sorrow and pain.

And it’s not entirely irrational for me to feel that way,. It has happened in my life. My contents can be quite toxic to those without a lot of experience in dealing with depressed people. Even those who have that kind of experience can find me hard to take because of all the negative vibes I contain and conceal.

I mean, I even hold back when I am with my therapist because I don’t want to end up destroying him with my pain. Even with him, there have been times when I have seen that “lost at sea” look in his eyes when I am truly unloading my pain.

I don’t think he will abandon me. Not really.

But I don’t want to break the poor man either,.

Maybe I am not giving him enough credit, though. Maybe I could go supernova right in front of him and he would be fine.

But I can’t take that risk. And I always have to worry about scaring people because of my size. A therapist can totally abandon you if he or she feels like you are a threat.

Ain’t that a kick in the nuts. I didn’t ask to be a big bear of a dude. I have the same emotions and needs as anyone else. If you prick me, do I not bleed?

And yet, I have to worry about  scaring people away when I express my emotions in the exact same way everyone else does.

Being a gentle giant ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

So even with my therapist, I hold back. Nobody gets to the real me, unshielded and unfiltered, in all my radioactive glory, pain and sadness and rage and bitterness emitting from every inch of skin, naked and wretched and toxic as hell.

That would kill most people. Not physically, of course, but psychologically. People cant handle exposue to that kind of pain. It would dissolve the walls that they have and I don’t, the ones that keep them sane, the ones that they have and I don’t.

Oh no, not me. I am He Who Walks Through Walls. I am the magical dude who sees that social reality is optional and consentual and therefore I can take it or leave it as I see fit. I am the Other, the one who is outside the normal rules and who can use that detached vantage point to see things more clearly than any of the rest of you zombies.

Lucky me. Despite my rationalist materialistic mindset, I am a powerful mystic. And I have mjy own kind of magic, though I don’t always know when I am using it. I know secrets about how things really work that would blow most people’s minds.

And that would be great if I was content to being that dangerous weirdo lurking around the edges of society, tempting the young ones into my web with forbidden knowledge.

But I want love.

I want someone to care for me.

I want to live my life.

And that’s going to take a lot of work,

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Still fine tuning this whole “I’m always awesome” thing.

The fear keeps coming back. The fear of choosing from all the possibilities in my head. The fear of getting into something I can’t get out of if I start freaking out. The fear of creating expectations in peoples minds that I can’t live up to. The fear of getting into a situation that requires a constant input of energy when mine is intermittent at best.

The fear of change.

The fear of the unknown.

And biggest of all, the fear of growing up.

But that’s all to be expected. All that fear is just the existing systems resisting change. I have been a very scared person ruled by fear for a very long time. This self-worth thing is brand new. It’s bound to be incompatible with the legacy systems.

The secret is to just keep pushing. Nothing can stop me now. However long it takes, I will grind my way through all my obstacles and reach the real world and finally be a full and valid person and not just a partial portrait of a potential genius.

And if all the old fears keep getting in the way,. they will just plain have to go.

I think, on some level. depression makes you cling to your fears. After all. as horrible as it is to have a panic attack and as soul-crushing as a life made far too small by anxiety can be, those fears also protect the depressive from having to deal with the real world by throwing up a big wall of fear any time depression’s reign is even questioned.

It’s like what I have talked about regarding excuses. Only more so. The thing about fear and the other kinds of negative emotions that depression uses to enforce its dominence is that they take advantage of a kind of loophole in the human meta-consciousness that causes us to trust negative emotions more than positive ones.

After all, a negative emotional response immediately bypasses the first filter of meta-consciousness, which is “am I just doing this to make myself happy?”.

Well obviously not, because it’s making me UNhappy. So it must be legit!

It takes a particularly robust meta-conscious mind – like mine – to be able to look past the immediate emotional response and think, “yes, but what does this reaction ACCOMPLISH? What is really happening hear?”.

And the answer is that depression is getting its way because while you are scared out of your freaking mind, the last thing you looking to do is challenge depression’s rule. In fact, in the future, you will be even less likely to struggle against your depression precisely because of how this fear response punished you for it.

And the more important thing is that the larger fear stimulus – the fear of change and the unknown – goes away. The negative emotion swamps it out. It floods your mind and pushes out whatever thing was making your depression feel threatened.

So on one level, you are terrified.

But on another, you are relieved. At least you are “safe” now. Safe from having to face that yawning existential void called “facing reality”. Safe from having to grow up. Safe from exposure to the cold harsh world.

Safety in you tiny little prison cell.

Fuck that. Fuck my fears. I am not going to let them run my life any more. In fact, I am not even going to fight them any more.

Instead, I am going to invite them in for drinks and ask them what they are trying to ttell me and what all they feel the need to say.

The rest of their energy and power can arc across the sky of my mind like lightning – and to the same effect.

I just don’t give a shit any more. Beat me, hurt me, call me names. Cause me pain. Make me lame. It means nothing to me any more. No matter the consequences. I remain in control of myself and I am more powerful than any transient emotion can ever hope to restrain.

The worst depression’s enforcers can do to me is make me wait out the storm.

And when the sky is clear again, I will continue on my journey without pausing or looking back, because where I am going is so much more important than where I have been. And even more important than where I am going is THAT I am going.

Forward. Always moving forward. Eternal momentum. Remember that.

So hello, fear, my old friend. You and I have been through a lot together, haven’t we? And I could say that it is all your fault that I am 45 years old and lost at sea without having even gotten a start in life, and that would be mostly true, but…

It’s also true that I chose to listen to you. I accept that now. I accept that because that is the price I have to pay in order to have the power to choose to ignore you now.

You were there for a reason. In your own crazy way, you were protecting me. That is what fear is for, after all. Keeping you out of danger.

But now I am done with you. You got too big and too strong and started attacking me like some kind of autoimmune disorder. And now I am shoving you side so that I can finally get on with my life.

I know I womn’t shake you right away. In fact, I am pretty sure you will be with me for a long long time. I have no delusions of a fear free life.

The only difference will be that I am not letting you call all the shots any more. I am going to strengthen my will and my spirit and my wherewithal to the point there pushing you aside is so easy it’s not even a thing any more, and then you will wither on the vine, dry up, and blow away, because I am not feeding you any more.

So thanks for the help, fear.

Now get the fuck out. 

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.