It’s a lovely sunny summer day and I am feeling pretty good.
Which is a bit of a relief, to be honest, because when I woke up this morning, I was feeling quite feverish. I was pretty convinced that I was coming down with something.
I felt like I was radiating like a space heater from every surface. And to be honest, I still feel that way.
And yet, other than that, I feel fine. Which is weird.
So it might still be that my immune system is locked in deadly battle with a viral invader, in which case I hope it kicks that goddamned virus’ non-existent butt.
Kind of ironic that at the same time I am fighting off an infection, I am feeling better than I have in weeks.
That’s the sort of illness a fella could learn to live with.
Of course, the two might be unrelated and it’s the sunshine outside that has me feeling better. It’s certainly much more “summery” outside than it has been in a long time.
I’ve played around with the idea that I might have a solar powered mood before. All my happiest childhood memories took place on sunny days, and when I try to imagine my “happy place”, it’s definitely a place where the skies are blue and everything has a warm happy sunshine kind of glow.
In short, sunshine and happiness as strongly connected on every level in my mind.
Could be that my depression and my troglodyte existence are more interconnected than I thought, and that getting more sunshine would do more for my recovery than any antidepressant ever could.
The question, of course, is how.
Well the balcony is still there. I could still take naps out there, at least on days when the weather allows it. That would also give me nice fresh air to sleep in, which might help with the sleep apnea as well.
And it would, in general, help desensitize me to the outside world.
All that is keeping me from doing it is working up the gumption to extend my tiny little realm to include said balcony.
And that involves having the courage to do something new, and that’s hard. It seems silly on the face of it, but even a tiny change like that scares me. And it’s that fear that I have to wrestle with if I want to make any progress.
So I am going to start building up the energy to do it right away.
When it will actually happen is another story.
And you know what? I hate being this weak. I hate feeling so damned scared all the time. I hate that I have this disease called depression which hangs around my neck like an albatross and keeps me from having a real, full, satisfying life.
I deserve so much better than this. I am a good guy with plenty of wonderful things to contribute to the world. I am smart and creative and funny and nice. I don’t deserve to be stuck in this dead end existence.
But deserve don’t mean shit, I guess.
More after the break.
Not so well
It would be easy to blame my feeling rather ill right now on having eaten too much, too fast. And that is undoubtedly a factor.
But it can’t be the whole story because I eat too much too fast fairly often, and it’s only one time out of a hundred or more that it makes me ill.
More to the point, I ran out of my antihistamines around a week ago and I still haven’t asked Joe for more, so I am prone to allergy attacks, When i have one of those, it sets off a body wide inflammatory response, which is probably both why I feel so hot (subdermal inflammation) and why I don’t feel so hot (inflamed bowls).
In fact, right now, it kind of feels like steel doors slammed shut in my intestinal tract and this sudden crackdown is leaving a lot of what I have eaten recently stranded in between two suddenly very unyielding bulkheads.
Hopefully, my body will cancel its red alert and things will go back to normal sometime in the near future.
Honestly, all I really want to do right now is to lay down and sleep.
But blogging must come first, seeing as it’s 10:30 PM already.
On acting smart
Been pondering how to best forewarn people about myself lately.
I’ve talked here before about how my default mode being “enigmatic” doesn’t serve me well. By default, I just plain don’t give people information about myself.
I want people to have to get to know me and understand me before they even think of putting a label on me, so by default, I send out no definitive signals about myself.
And while by the standards of an individualistic society there is a kind of nihilistic nobility about that attitude, in truth, it serves me very poorly and in fact all but ensures that my social reactions will be awkward and strained as people try to figure me out so they know how to deal with me.
Meanwhile, I am sitting there being unconsciously unfathomable while I wonder how to deal with this nice person who only wants to connect with me the same way they connect with most of the people they know.
But I’m not most people.
That doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile to try to relate, though. It’s not like I don’t want to connect with people. I’d like nothing more, in fact.
But that means giving up on the enigma act and learning to signal something about myself to the world so that people are not starting from scratch when dealing with me.
And that means both overcoming the part of me that equates exposure with danger and dealing with the thorny question of how to warn people that they are dealing with a highly intelligent, eccentric, creative person who will have weird responses.
All I can think of is to go around in a propeller beanie and gingham overalls.
But that might be taking it too far.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.