Been pondering my profound mistrust of life today.

Because I realized that on some level and in some way, my mind is constantly working hard to see problems coming so I can control outcomes and keep all the bad things of the world from hurting me.

On paper, that sounds relatively normal. But when you add just how deep my mistrust of the world goes, it quickly jumps the rails into complete and utter madness.

Because without some kind of baseline of trust, there is no limit as to the scope and depth of my paranoia. There is no point at which I can say “beyond this point, I don’t have to worry”. I worry about everything all the time, or rather, I worry about everything I can think of all the time.

And then I worry that I can’t think of enough things and the ones I am not covering are the ones that are going to get me.

Most of this is subconscious. If I think about it, I am aware that it is happening, and on a good day, I might even be able to influence the process and apply the only solution that works – hard logic – in order to create breathing space for myself.

But for the most part, it all happens under the hood, on its own, and the only part that is conscious is the constant anxiety and concern I feel even when I am home, in my room, typing away on my computer.

And that’s as safe as it gets in my life.

Fundamentally, this is a very diseased way to live. All that computation drains my mental resources and saps my motivation. It’s a very “expensive” program to leave running all the time in my subsurface consciousness, and yet I literally cannot imagine life without it there.

As absurd and costly as it is, it is the only thing that I know of that can give me the feeling of control over events that I need because of anxiety it itself creates.

Rather efficient, that.

If I could, I would turn the whole thing off. But I would have to address my fundamental profound lack of trust in the world and that is trickier even than it sounds.

This “permanently unsafe” thing has roots deep, deep into my mind. It’s been a constant ever since I was raped by a stranger at the age of 4 and no amount of reasonable reasoning is going to fix it.

I don’t know how to make that scared little animal inside me feel safe. It wants there to be someone warm and strong and trustworthy for it to follow, but it is so afrad of getting hurt again that it doubts such a person actually exists.

This is what happens when you had a deeply emotionally neglected childhood where you also happen to be smarter than most of the people trying to help you.

I have never known a greater power than myself who was smart enough and strong enough to make me feel like they could do all the worrying for me and I could trust enough to relax and stop worrying.

And kids need there to be someone like that. And usually there is in the form of teachers and parents and so on who are smarter than the kid, know more about the world than the kid, and have that reassuring strength that makes the kid feel like everything is going to be okay.

I have never in my life felt like everything was going to be okay. I know too much, I see too much, and I am all too familiar with the darkness of the world to think that I could ever reach a state where I have any kind of faith that things will work out for the best.

On what would such faith even be based? I have no omnipotent father figure to trust with my fate. There is certainly no human being who could or would take charge of my destiny and my wellbeing so I could finally relax and feel safe.

I don’t think I am capable of even one tenth of that level of trust.

I don’t even trust the people I know love me and want the absolute best for me. Not that I think they are all plotting against me or anything, or that nobody actually loves me.

But they don’t see things the way I do. With the best intentions in the world, I know they will miss things I see coming a mile away, and in general not be as good at looking out for me as I am.

That’s a terrible thing because it means I am all alone in this world. There is nobody I would even trust to have my back in an emergency, and that’s just plain wrong.

Nobody currently in my life has done anything to warrant such distrust. They don’t have to. This is not about reasonable emotions.

This is about out of control madness, the kind that comes from deep inside your mind and floods all the spaces where input from reality should go.

So please don’t take this mistrust personally, loved ones. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with my own diseased mind.

You can see now how an inability to trust others coupled with a total lack of religion and a deep feeling that the universe is a cold and hostiles place can create a person who is deeply parnoid at all times.

And the worst part is that no matter how smart I am and no matter how paranoid I get, bad shit will happen anyway. Because there is always a limit to how much you can control outcomes. That’s the real limit to paranoia.

Then you have to ask how much this prevention program costs versus how much good it actually does me. Cost/benefit analysis, in other words.

And I am pretty sure the cost vastly outstrips the benefit.

But the question remains : how the hell do I shut it down?

I don’t have the answer. But I know one thing.

The answer will be in the form of emotion – not words.

So it might just take me a long time to find.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well, it’s Saturday night, I’m blogging, I got food on the way, I got the fan pointed at my fever’d brow, and all is right in the world.

More or less.

Tonight’s title refers to experience I just had dealing with my own compulsions.

See, I was all set to get my beloved Lamb Rogan Josh from the Tandoori King Cafe when I got to the end of the process and saw that ordering $15 worth of food was going to cost me $27.

Talk about sticker shock. And yet, I ordered the exact same dish at the exact same price before and had no problem with it.

So what changed?

Me, basically. See I have been ordering exclusively from places that offer free delivery on orders over $20 lately, and that has radically rearranged my since of how much I expect to get for my money.

So what was a perfectly acceptable price before is now too much.

Ahhhh, now it makes sense. Do you like my guru-style trickery?

So I ordered my usual from the Kingswood Pub instead. That consists of their beef dip sandwich (so good), with fries and gravy, plus their pita and vegetable platter.

It adds up to just over $20 and thus qualifies me for free delivery. Then I do my little bit of mathemagic to make it come out to $25 even, and a very nice meal is on its way.

The website said. “We received your order, but it’s going to take a litle more time than usual ” as usual.

Fine. I pretty much expect to wait $45 for whatever I order. It’s no big deal, I mean, I am busy blogging anyhow.

Just gives me more time to finish my blogging before the food comes.

I like to turn it into a little race, just for fun.

On the career front, I officially launched myself on Writer’s Work today. Unlikely anything will come of it – all it turned out to be was some kind of “Hello” message that goes… um. somewhere… and not the rebirthing/decloaking ceremony I had hoped for.

Now, I have the job listings open in another tab and I am in the process of building up the nerve (or gall, or wherewithal, or whatever) to dive in and start looking for work.

It’s harder than it sounds. I have to climb over a lot of rocky outcroppings of self-loathing , lack of confidence in myself, and the strong urge to flee in order to do it.

Every depressive fights a silent war every moment of every day. It might seem like we’re doing nothing, or wasting our lives playing video games (ahem), or whatever, but that’s only because our inner struggles take up so much of our energy and time that we have little left for such frivolities as actually dealing with the world outside our skulls.

It’s so much more than feeling sad.

So I know going into it that I will have to struggle to get past all the jobs that intimidate me and make me feel small and weak and pathetic because they are way beyond my capacities, and stay in the game long enough to find the kind of creative writing for which I am actually qualified and can actually do.

I am feeling fluttery and nervous just thinking about it.

But it WILL be done. I am determined to make that happen, and I am one stubborn motherfucker, so it will take much more than my usual psychological horrors to stop me.

I’m getting tired of their act anyhow. I know they are full of shit. They know they are full of shit. Their antics have grown stale and uninspired and I am more than ready to just leave the theater and get the fuck on with my life.

I just have to crawl over their corpses to do it. Fine by me.

Look, not all of my metaphors are cute.

Somewhere on that site, there is a job with my name on it. Something I can grab and run with and knock people’s socks off with how creative and fresh and inspired my approach to the task is and how delightful reading me can be.

Because I am an amazing writer. It’s (literally) crazy how often I have to remind myself of that. Many people over the years have told me how goddamned funny my writing is, and that has to be something you can take to the bank.

Speaking of which.

Get this : so I cashed my $520 check yesterday, and deposited $450 onto my reloadable visa for future spending online.

Fast forward to last night, where, on a whim, I decided I wanted to see that nice fat balance on my card, so I go to check it online.

Only to see there is only $10 on the card. Um, WTF???

Once the panic dulled down, I checked my checking account, and thank goodness, it shows the check cashing and the paying of the “bill” that is the $450 going to my reloadable visa card.

So I know that it didn’t disappear into a black hole or anything. There is a “paper trail” to follow. It’s just that for some reason, the money is hung up somewhere between my bank and my reloadable visa.

I suspect the weekend is part of it. As insane and inane as it sounds in this day and age, there are still banking transactions that, despite being entirely electronic. still can’t happen on the weekend.

So I am not freaking out. Not yet. I expect that this will all resolve itself on Monday.

But if it doesn’t, there better be a pretty damned good explanation or I am going to rain calm, polite Canadian hell on people till I get my goddamned money.

I don’t care whose fault it is. I don’t care that the reloadble visa is actually run by someone other than Vancity. I don’t care if my case is not someone’s job or if that is not their department. I don’t care if someone is having a bad day or “just can’t” right now.

I will lean on whoever I can get hold of and refuse to let up until they send me to someone who can actually help.

Because while I am not a materialistic person per se, I am a Taurus, and we have very strong deep feelings about our money.

And God, the Devil, and Vishnu’s older sister can’t save whoever thinks to deny it to us.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.