Or, “What am I waiting for? No seriously…. what?”.

Nothing in particular, I suppose. Waiting for life to start. Waiting for something to happen. Waiting for the starter’s gun. Waiting to be less crazy.

Waiting to finally grow the fuck up.

Waiting for all that frozen fear to go away.

Waiting because I literally have no idea what else I can do. There’s millions of things it seems like I could do but the fear gets in the way. I know lots of things I “could” do to get out of this rut and get ahead, only I can’t do them, because fear.

I’ve pondered going back to school for something more practical than TV writing. Something with computers, like network administration.

It’s hardly my dream job, but it would pay the bills and get me out of this hole I am in and give me the dignity of paid work.

People who have never been long term unemployed have no idea what it does to your self-worth. And that sucks, because low self-worth is a big reason why some seemingly able bodied people stay on the system.

They have lost the ability to believe they can work. Work now seems like an unobtainable higher realm full of people who are infinitely stronger, more worthy, and better than a lowly stinking jobless person.

Anyhow, I could go back to school for something or other. Heck, I could go back to Kwantlen and do the rest of my degree in psychology there.

Would only take me two more years. Yay being able to handle a heavy courseload!

Though honestly…. I could probably do better than Kwantlen. Like…. way, way better. Hell, one of my profs there told me so, which she totally should not have done.

I sure appreciated it, though.

If I went back to school. it would be with the knowledge that I am an academic superstar in mind. Not because I want to brag and make others feel bad but because I want to actually use that to get ahead instead of having it just be this thing about me that I neither exploit and enjoy.

It’s so hard to value something that comes so easily to you, but I am willing to try.

I think I would be more focused, too. And ambitious. I have always just kind of floated through life but if I went back to school, it would be with achievement in mind.

Starting with scholarships and other such things. And then other academic honors. Whatever I can find that suits my talents.

I’ve always been a high achiever without even really trying. Imagine what I might be able to do if I had the raging flames of ambition to fire me up and keep me focused.

I’d also work on making myself more likable and acceptable to my profs. So no more being a slob. I think my slobbiness is a big factor in why my teachers didn’t like me and didn’t want to have to deal with me or even think about me.

So I would make sure to at the bare minimum meet the standards of my peers.

Hmmm. This is seeming like a better and better idea. I think I might be talking myself into doing it.

But where the heck would I go?

More after the break.

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An Apt Description

A phrase popped into my head yesterday that I thought was particularly apt.

I was (am) an emotional orphan.

Sounds melodramatic but it’s true. For most of my childhood, I was utterly alone in the world. Sure, I had food, shelter, TV, and all the rest of a middle class childhood, but emotionally speaking I had absolutely nobody.

Nobody to talk to. Nobody to confide in. Nobody to offer guidance or help. Nobody to explain life to me. Nobody to hold my hand when I was sad or kiss my boo-boos when I got hurt. Nobody to calm my fears, smooth over my doubts, or soothe my insecurities.

And certainly nobody to ever, ever tell me everything was going to be all right.

So on that level, it was like being an orphan. Neither of my parents were of any use to me. My siblings lived in worlds that did not include me. The teachers at school could barely stand talking to me.

And my fellow students loathed me and wanted me to die.

I am very glad cyberbullying was not a thing back then.

So I was all alone in the world until Grade Six, when I at least managed to make sort of friends with Kevin and Trevor.

They were as likely to abuse me as accept me at any given moment, but at least I was no longer completely alone.

We bonded over heavy metal.

And I feel like I can never even measure the amount of damage that did to me. At a tender age, there was absolutely nothing to fight that inner tide dragging me deeper and deeper into my own mind and so I got in pretty damned deep.

And I mean, can you blame me? What in my life rewarded coming out of my shell? Nothing, that’s what. Reality was something one endured because they had no choice. Contact with it was so painful that it was to be minimized at all costs.

The only thing that made reality worthwhile at all was media. TV shows, books, video games, comics, whatever. That was my “real world” and the rest was just boredom, terror, and misery.

Something vital rotted away in me from that. Like an unused muscle in a bedridden patient, very important emotional machinery atrophied into uselessness.

And it’s still mostly dead.

Here I am, 46 year old superbrain, and the truth is what I really need is kindergarten. That’s how far I would have to go in order to undo all the damage my emotionally orphaned childhood did to me.

Something tells me that is no longer an option.

So here I float in outer space,
A great big brain without a face
Searching for a special place
Where bad childhoods can be erased

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.