Yup, still talking about my public speaking superpower.

At this point, I have to ask myself if I am finally losing my grip on reality. And not just because the claims I am making about myself seem outlandish in the extreme.

But because delusions of grandeur scratching away at my sanity and trying to get out since I was a teenager. It’s something I have to deal with often. There is a part of me that wants to remove all restraint and let my ego soar off into the sky, clutching the last remaining fragments of my sanity in its bony claws.

It’s gotten better as I have gotten better. It’s no longer quite the desperate struggle it used to me. It used to feel like that great eagle of total lunacy was trying to tear me away from reality and I had to cling to the ground as hard as I possibly could or it would fly me and my sanity to Mount Doom and drop us in.

That’s the kind of quality imagery you get here on whatever this is.

Now, the eagle and I have a better relationship. Now and then, when I am pondering my low self esteem and trying to imagine things being different, the eagle will show up, eye me wearily, and say “you remember that thing where I try to tear you away from reality and take you to the opposite extreme of low self worth?”.

And, guardedly, I say, “Yeah. I do. ”

The eagle nods. “I could still do that, you know. ”

“Uh huh. ” I reply. “I believe you. ”

Then it looks at me for a few seconds, then shrugs and says “Cool. ” then leaves.

Honestly, I don’t know where I’d be without my imaginary talking bird to keep me sane.

Anyhow, the point is that my worries that I am finally losing my grip and letting my nascent messiah complex and megalomania and delusions of grandeur run the asylum are not unfounded.

But I keep going over and over it in my mind and all the evidence suggests that I do have some kind of extraordinary rapport with audiences.

The things that have happened to me that prove this just plain don’t happen to most people. People don’t get standing ovations after improvising an RPG session very often. It’s not the kind of thing that happens.

And yet, it happened to me.

So I can’t talk myself out of thinking I have this gift.

And just think, those things happened when I didn’t even know I had the gift. They just flowed naturally from me.

Imagine what I could do if I was using this ability actively, and attempting to control it for maximum effect. Heck, imagine what I could do once I had practiced it for a while.

Suddenly I feel like a new student at Xavier’s School For Gifted Students.

Xavier : We can teach you to control your gifts, and strengthen them, and use them to help people in need.

And now I will use my mutant powers to burn a thick black line through time itself!

---

Ah, and here we are again. So glad you made it through the transition.

Not everyone does, you know. But those that don’t disappear from time forever, so it kind of takes care of its.

Now where was I? Oh yeah, my mutant superpowers.

It seems odd to me that I might have an ability far more powerful than my high IQ. I have thought of myself as a genius looking for an outlet for so long. I have identified with this bigass brain of mine for so long that I often forget that I can contribute to the world. Or worse, that there’s anything else in me at all.

After all, I have evidence for the big IQ. Loads of it, in the form of high grades acheived with very little effort on my part.

The rest is less…. quantifiable/.

But of course, there is so much more of me than this supercomputer in my head. I am, after all, as full and real and valid and important human being as any else. Not even the frigid wastelands of my icy kingdom of intellect can change the fact that I am as human as anyone in the world, no matter how unreal I feel sometimes.

Reality is such a commitment.

I have spent so much time hiding from the world in my icy palace far up the mountain from anything even remotely resembling civilization. I have used the numbing effects of the cold to treat my pain and my fear. I have calmed my seething social wounds by reassuring myself that nothing living could survive here and therefore I am safely alone from all who would judge or hurt or misconstrue me.

Nothing could survive this cold. Except….. me?

The Blood Weasel never ever wants to be touched again. It only can relax – and then only a little – if it is sure it is completely alone. Nobody is allowed to come anywhere near it. That’s why it lives so far away from everything.

You know you have some serious issues when you need to be surrounded by hundreds of miles of taiga in all directions before you can feel safe.

Metaphorically speaking. Obviously.

I use the cold to treat my pain but it’s the cold that is killing me. I am covered in flesh pockmarked by frostbite and made wrinkled and ragged by the snow melting against my still warm flesh.

And it’s a hell of a thing to realize that the thing you want most of all – warm human connection with others – is also the thing you can tolerate the least.

It’s almost like those two things are related. People who can’t keep food down can get very, very hungry, I am told.

I refuse to believe that I cannot be resurrected, however. I am, this day,, far more alive than I was a year ago and the thawing and reviving will continute until one bright day I will realize that I am fully alive again.

On that day, I will walk in the sun once again.

That will be, for me, the first day of spring.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.