I was pondering the question of why people find me hard to deal with, and I imagined myself saying, “What, is dealing with me like looking directly into the sun?”

Follower by : “Hmmm. That’s interesting. “

Because I think I’ve got something there. I think dealing with me can be a lot like looking into the heart of the sun, like Manfred Mann says.

Well, I’ve always been very bright. Painfully so, it seems.

And it’s true that I shine very hard by default. It’s just natural for me to put on a show when people are paying attention to me.

To a fault, really.

And I think I learned this early. When I was a wee tyke, a preschooler, my life, of course, revolved around my mother (before she went back to work as a teacher) and the best interactions with her were when she was teaching me something and I was picking it up really fast and I could tell this really pleased her.

So from a very early age, I learned to be an ideal student. Eager to learn, hanging on your every word, and very, very bright.

No wonder I related to the teachers and not my fellow students when I got to school. My primary maternal relationship took the form of being my mother’s pupil.

And to this day, I still relate to others that way. Sad, kinda. I am always doing my best to shine bright for people and be funny and entertaining and interesting in order to reward their paying attention to me and thus encourage it to continue.

Problem is, I shine so bright that it exhausts people. Wears them out. It drains people to be my audience, no matter how pleasant I make the experience.

And yet, I am not sure I know how to dial it back.

I am sure that I don’t want to. I like shining like a diamond. I love channeling my energies into a brilliant display. If anything, I want to shine even brighter, so bright that the whole world can see.

And I suppose that must mean that I am still looking for that sweet sweet approval like the kind I got from my mother when I was little.

I know that, deep down, I really want people to think I am extremely smart. I want them to be dazzled and impressed by my mind, and that one of the prerequisites for any boyfriend of mine was that they have to think I am brilliant. A genius. Amazing.

Also kind of sad. That’s a whopper of an unmet ego need, and not something I like about myself, but there it is.

I guess I identify with my outsized intellect to such a deep degree that to not recognize how special and amazing it is means you are completely invalidating me as a person.

Well being too bright for my own good (see what I did there?) is all I have ever known. It’s one of the first things I knew about myself. Ever since that day when I blew my babysitter Betty away by suddenly starting to read at an adult level when I was only three years old, this big big brain of mine has been what I am all about.

With the big big personality to go with it. On a good day. And if I wasn’t such a wounded little sparrow, that would all work in my favour.

But I am. So it doesn’t.

So what does this mean about how I relate to people?

Tune in after the break to find out!

---

And the answer is….

Oh, I dunno.

OK, not really.

What it means about how I relate to people is that it is now clear to me that I just GOT to shine. Turning down the amplitude is not an option for me, at least not right now.

If I ever get to a place where I can put all that megawatt glow into something creative and discharge the energy that way, maybe I will be able to turn it off during personal time and maybe make myself a little easier to be around.

But for now, I am overflowing with the electricity of charisma, and I have to blast that out into the cosmos every chance I get.

So forget hiding my light under a bushel. Not an option. Not gonna happen.

Ergo, I have to go the other way. I gotta turn that motherfucker up. Radiate on all frequencies until I find some kind of groove for myself. A niche where I can put all this blessed radiance to good use.

And I have to remember my charisma. That bright light will be a lot more tolerable if the warmth of my personality comes with it.

Unfortunately, I have to get the fuck over myself first.

Luckily, I have chemical assistance with that now.

Speaking of which, I ended up not going out to do my usual shopping and McD’s tonight. I have developed a dry cough and my lungs hurt so I am thinking it was not the best time to be sitting in a parking lot with an open window in winter.

Sure hope it ain’t Covid. Covid scares the crap out of me. I am not sure I could survive three weeks on a ventilator with my sanity intact.

It would be one hell of a psychological acid test. It could make or break me.

This is two nights out I have missed in a row. I hate that. And it makes me question whether I have really been sick or whether my tendency towards psychosomatic illness has merely upped its game.

So unless I am in the hospital, I am going out Tuesday night, god damn it. I can’t afford to let social anxiety take the last form of socialization outside the home I have got.

And I know that if I don’t do something about it, it will all just vanish like a sand castle smashed by the incoming tide.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Okay, so I lied. I guess I’m going to make list of what I want for Xmas this year after all.

What the hell. At the very least, it will give me a better idea of what I want to buy myself for Xmas this year.

Got my Xmas mp3’s playing. Have a pleasant drink to drink. Let’s do this.

1. Back massage. Absolutely anything to help relax my poor tortured back muscles, or really, any muscles. My life would be so much easier and more comfortable if I wasn’t a tangle of knots all the damned time. So a massager of some sort, or a special seat cover, or a relaxing lotion or tea, or a gift certificate to a (legit) massage therapy place, or anything else you can think of.
2. Steam gift card. It’s where I get my games. And it would help me get over the sticker shock on the latest and greatest AAA games.
3. Cleaning. Done by you or by professionals or a gang of suspiciously well behaved monkeys or whatever. My room is so dirty now that I am thoroughly intimidated by the prospect of cleaning it myself. Plus, there are intricate psychological issues involved. So what I could really use is for someone to clean the whole place from top to bottom and basically reset the whole system so that from that point on, I just have to keep it clean. That, I think, would make me feel a whole lot better about life, and make me healthier too, I think.
4. Sugar free sweet treats. Always welcome. Candy, cakes, cookies, chocolates, you name it. But not anything with maraschino cherries or fruit filling. Not fond.
5. A new computer chair. Out of most people’s price range but what the hell. Could definitely use something more ergonomic than my current model. It’s a pretty standard computer chair, but I have been using it for so long that it’s not nearly as comfy as it used to be.
6. A nice little vacation. You know. When those become a thing again. Doesn’t have to be anywhere fancy. A B&B would be fine. Just need some time away from my current life to rest and relax and reset in some nice place with clean bedding and soft beds and peace and quiet and a pleasant setting. The old joke is true : when you are unemployed, there’s no vacation. I need a break.

I am sure there’s tons more but whatever. If I think of them before I finish blogging for the day, I will add them.

If I don’t, whatever, I am mostly doing this for myself anyhow.

It’s funny – Covid both giveth and taketh away this year.

The giveth : because of The ‘Vid, neither of my roomies will be going home to be with their families for Xmas, so I will not be all alone all Xmas this year! Huzzah!

The taketh away : By the same token, I will not be going over to Joe’s parents’ place for Xmas dinner this year. Boo!

As a result, I am going to try to put together a nice Xmas for us here in Fanhattan. Get one of those pre-cooked turkeys, maybe some Stove Top Stuffing, instant mashed potatoes, a real low effort Yule feast.

Also get some liquor and candy, because Xmas day is the one day of the year than I lwr myself eat and drink whatever the fuck I want.

We’d better get our stuff soon before the real last minute Xmas rush kicks in.

Maybe when I do my shopping tomorrow night, we will hunt up that turkey.

More after the break.

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A weird warning

This is for Felicity and Julian, in case I forget to mention this tomorrow night.

As you both know (because I wrote about it here), I got me some of those fast-acting anti-anxiety meds from Doc Costin.

And I have not tried them yet. I was going to try one of them Friday night but then I was too sick to go out, so now I will be trying one out tomorrow night.

See, according to Doctor Costin, it’s best to try these things out when the system is “under load” – in other words, when I am experiencing some social anxiety.

But he also said to start small. So I figured, the lowest level of social anxiety I experience on a regular basis is when we are hanging out outside of McD’s.

I am not super stressed in that situation, but my social anxiety is there. It’s awake. It’s ready to pounce if things get out of hand.

So it seems like a good test case.

And now, a warning.

See, both of these pills have some potential side effects my friends should know about.

The first is sleepiness. Some people respond to these pills by becoming extremely sleepy. Especially the first time you take it.

So there’s a chance that after taking it, I will get very sleepy. Hopefully, this will happen before we leave, but if it doesn’t kick in until we are on the road, I will just switch places with Julian and lay down in the back seat for a nice long snooze.

Honestly, if it’s decent quality sleep, it might just do me a world of good.

More worrisome is the other side effect, known medically as “disinhibition” and known by some people I know who have taken these drugs as “it makes me silly“.

This is a logical outcome. Anxiety is the main enforcement mechanism of our sense of what is socially appropriate, and so when it is gone, well….. silliness might occur.

In my case, this effect scares me because for one, I know there is a loud, obnoxious, rude, heedless asshole deep inside me who finds himself hilariously funny and who has NO IDEA HOW LOUD HE IS TALKING NO YOU SHUT UP HA HA HA FUCK OFF!!

I know this guy because I’ve met him when I am drunk.

Okay, I have been him when I am drunk.

For another. I know what sort of pressure has built up behind the dykes of my social anxiety, and when that dam bursts all that pressure will be released I might just go a wee bit insane for a bit.

I hope not. Probably not. But it’s a possibility.

And while a dam burst like that might also do me a hell of a lot of good in the long run. in the short and medium run, I would probably end up in jail.

Oh well. At least then, I would get some full time psychological treatment.

Anyhow, consider yourselves warned.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Finally getting at least part way into the Xmas spirit.

Working on some cards for my family via Postmates. They let you buy and fill out actual, real physical greeting cards which they then post for you.

Like some kind of mate.

They won’t get there before Xmas. Whatever. It has taken me a very long time to even get this far. I just don’t have much Xmas spirit this year.

But I am not too worried. Their stuff doesn’t get to me before Xmas either. Whatever.

This is the first year where I have officially given up on making an Xmas list of things people can get me, though.

Nobody pays attention to the damned thing, so why bother? Nobody considers me worth shopping for, it seems.

Or we’re all too old and tired to give a shit.

Well, everyone but me, anyhow. I still want to know what people want for Xmas and to get it for them if I can.

I have always really enjoyed giving gifts. I enjoy it more than getting gifts, to be honest.

I am such a consumerist heretic.

Giving gifts lets me express my love and care for the people I love and care about. That’s very important to me. I live in my icy castle on its own little island most of the time, so when I get a chance to express how I feel to those I love, it becomes a very urgent need to do so because who knows when I will get another chance.

Just like Walter from Fringe. I identify with that guy on pretty much every level. Except people recognized his genius as, ya know, valuable, and invested time and energy in helping him develop it, and actually told him it was a good thing.

Me, I just got amazing marks and nobody noticed or cared. Maybe I was part of the problem. Maybe because I didn’t take my marks seriously, nobody else did either.

Or maybe I was just such a drain to deal with that people kept all interactions with me to an absolute minimum and encouraging me went against that.

People don’t like being around pathetic people.

We depress them.

If I could send a message back in time to my self on that first day of Grade One, I would tell myself to be prepared to fight back when people mess with me, and stop being such a god damned wimp.

Wake up and get ready to fight, Champ. Life is not kind and you will get nowhere being a crybaby and a pussy.

But don’t worry, because you are strong as hell. Strong of mind, spirit, and soul.

And strong of body too if you just move more and eat less crap.

You have amazing superpowers, kid, and while they might not be as cool as Spider-Man’s, they can make you a superhero in the real world because you can do things nobody else can.

They can be your ticket to whatever life you want. High priced lawyer? Sure. Therapist? No problem. Writer? You got it. Entrepreneur? No sweat.

Whatever you want, you can have it. But only if you are willing to fight and work and suffer in order to get it.

So man up, stop taking your gifts for granted, and work like hell to expand your powers.

The world can be yours…. if you are strong enough to take it.

More after the break.

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An old joke

Life is but a stage, and we are all players, trying to complete it.

gamer shakespeare

Wrote that one ages ago and I think it’s pretty darn good.

But enough jollity. Back to depressing stuff about depression.

Will I make it?

That’s really the existential question for me right now.

Will I manage to escape my depression before it ends up killing me via my diabetes?

Will I ever escape my icy prison and get to walk in the sun as a real live emotionally present healthy adult human?

Will the wizard ever escape the dank and dingy dungeon he built to keep people out but now only keeps him in?

Will the world ever benefit from his fantastic powers?

Will he fulfill his destiny and become Something Pretty Great Overall?

Or will the perils of the dungeon do him in first?

You know, that would make a pretty good premise for a video game. A wizard builds a deadly dungeon to protect against his enemies but then, woops, drops the all important key all the way down to the bottom of the dungeon and now has to fight his own creations in order to escape.

Could be funny having a running joke where he comments on his own ingenuity.

“Blast! I forgot I added the fireballs!”
“Oh right, the spinning blades. You know, even for me, that was a pretty inspired… eep! *ducks under said blades”.
“I should have included a way to skip these damned villain monologues. YES, I know you’re a Prince of Hell and you’re going to eat my soul. I WROTE THAT SPEECH.”

Could be a good way to meta-comment on game design too.

“For the life of me, I cannot remember where I put the gold and treasure on these wolves. Actually, maybe I don’t want to know. “
“Oh please. Of course you’re shifting into a second form. Like anyone would think beating you was that easy. What was I thinking?”
“Mental note : when I get control back, splash a little paint around this place. All this gret stone and brown wood is getting downright depressing. “

You know, I am one funny motherfucker. It’s weird how I have to keep re-discovering that. I guess the depression keeps erasing it from my mind.

But I got superpowers, man. I just have to get my shit together enough to go out into the world and use them to my benefit.

And the benefit of others, of course. But first, I need a wage and my own place and a comfortable kind of life.

You know, the stuff people usually do in their 20’s.

I have a lot of catching up to do.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

So today, I took the thing on my foot to the ER.

Young^[1] Doctor Jenssen took a look at my foot and the funny area thereupon. Did an ultrasound of it. Consulted with a considerably more decisive colleague.

“You know, I think I will consult with a colleague about the best course of action. “

Comes back with a tough looking Asian chick, who takes one look at my errant food and says “Don’t cut it.”

He then has to pretend not to be thrown off by how quick and decisive that was and kind of roll with it.

“A-hah, well, I guess I will consider this further… ” he says as he leads her away again.

I must admit, I found that pretty funny.

And I am sympathetic to both sides. I can easily see myself as the somewhat nervous young doctor presented with a case that doesn’t quite fit anything he learned about in school who needs a consultation and/or confidence boost from a colleague.

And I can definitely imagine myself as the person who bluntly, correctly, and immediately gives the right answer but who might need to consider how to maintain a professional atmosphere in the future.

Like her, I wouldn’t WANT to have to slow down and play along, but I WOULD.

The end result of my time in the ER was….. nothing, technically. Young Docter Jenssen ended up going with his colleague and doing no intervention at all.

But I am still glad I went. Especially because the waiting room was almost empty and so I got through the preliminary stages of admitting super fast.

I must admit, I was a little disappointed that nothing (in a sense) happened. I think I grasp why doctors invented placebos now. When you go to your local medicine man with a painful problem, you kind of want there to be an intervention of some sort that is equal in power to the pain and/or scariness of the problem.

It’s primitive, but then again, so are we.

The doctor did tell me I need to see my GP ASAP. I told him that my GP is on vacation. He reminded me that when doctors go on vacation, they usually have someone sub for them with their patients.

Well derp goes the fox. I knew that!

He also wants me to see a podiatrist. And he is going to refer me to a wound care specialist. The in-house one, I think, rather than the clinic across the street.

If so. I hope that it’s the same one who helped me with the infection on my leg. She was super nice and seemed like a pretty cool chick.

And I don’t call a woman a chick lightly. It’s an earned title. You have to meet a minimum coolness standard to be a chick in my book.

It is most definition not a term of derision when it is coming from me.

More after the break.

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Medicine Part Deux

I also peed in a cup for science.

In other words, I got lab work done. Went to the LifeLabs near 3 Road and Ackroyd.

Sadness : even just walking from the parking lot in the back to the elevator made me feel so tired I felt sick to my stomach.

That’s just not right. Really have to talk to my GP about that. Again.

When I got to the second floor lab, the line was pretty long. I sighed and joined it. Then like six more people showed up and joined the line behind me.

I went from being at the end of the line to being in the middle. Weird.

I guess that, relatively speaking, the lineup when I showed up was not THAT long.

Eventually got to the front. Handed my form in to the receptionist. She asks a few questions then tells me the rest will be handled “on the other side”.

Well, there’s three desks and a person behind each, and I was at the right hand position, so I went to the person at the left hand position.

Only to have all three of them impatiently tell me it was the guy in the middle position who would be handling things for me.

Look, don’t yell at me because of your crappy directions. You said the other side, logically, that meant the opposite side.

So fuck you, assholes. And take your negative energy back. I’m full up.

After that, though, it was simple enough. The lab req was just for two urine tests so allI had to do was pee in the bottle and stick it in the lab fridge and I was out of there.

Some gal named Pam

Laura Ze Pam, to be specific, and her buddy Al Prazolam.

During therapy today, I was talking about my social anxiety and how it cut me off from others because it filled my head with so much panic when dealing with the public that there was precious little room left to deal with what was going on OUTSIDE my head.

By design, I think. After all, as horrible as the panic is, it does reduce the social stimulation. So it might well be a VERY maladaptive defense mechanism.

Anyhow, I took this opportunity to broach the idea of him giving me a small amount of one of those fast acting anti-anxiety meds they give out like candy in the States.

He agreed, so now I have 5 Alprazolam and 5 Lorezepam to try out.

He gave me 5 of each so I could figure out which one worked better for me.

The idea is that if one of these pills can knock out my anxiety for a while, I can have some positive social experiences without the anxiety interfering and start to overwrite those bad tapes from my childhood.

That’s the theory, anyhow. I really hope it works.

Hell, it would be nice just to have a vacation from the fucking anxiety once in a while.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Today’s fresh hell : a big black lesion on my right foot. Discovered it last night when I noticed some fairly bad pain on that foot and lo and behold, nastiness.

It’s jet black, around the size of a quarter, dry, slightly recessed into the flesh, hard, and somewhat tender to the touch.

Lesion might not be the right word, but something’s seriously fucked.

Which means I am probably going to have to go to the ER for it. My GP Doctor Chao is not doing any more in-person office hours this year and call me old-fashioned but I just can’t make myself believe that he can do much for me if he can’t see the damned thing.

And true, there’s walk-in clinics, but I have absolutely no faith in them. Every time I have gone to one, I’ve received lousy care. Not gonna do it.

So the ER it is. I should go right away, but I am too tired today. After last night’s misadventure, I need some serious recharge time.

Oh right. Last night’s misadventure.

I got to the hospital and did the CT scan no problem. The tech was very nice and the procedure was quite easy.

They had to put in an IV to give me the tracer dye that would really make my organs “pop” on the CT scan. No sweat, whatever.

It had been so long since my last CT scan that I had forgotten, and got to delightedly re-experience, what an awesomely science fiction experience it is.

Because you have this mysterious ring around you that slowly spins up with cool mechanical acceleration sounds like they are spinning up the warp core.

The ring is behind translucent blue plastic, which only makes it more surreal.

Anyhow, procedure complete, everybody was lovely, could not have enjoyed having my internal organs scanned with a powerful electromagnet more.

I then needed to call Joe to come pick me up. Simple, n’est-ce pas?

Just go to the Medical Imaging receptionist and give her Joe’s cell number and she will take care of the rest. Right?

But I had a mental malfunction and misremembered Joe’s number. So instead we bothered some poor random dude. Twice.

Distraught, I wandered over to the main entrance area. By the time I got there, I realized my error, and I was planning to ask the very nice Information Desk lady I had met on the way in if I can use her phone.

She was gone. Fuck. Now what?

I decided to go outside and see if I could see where Joe had parked. I looked around both lots, no dice. I then decided to go back inside so I could swallow my pride and go back to Medical Imaging and confess my error and get in touch with Joe using the correct phone number this time.

Tends to speed things up.

But uh oh…. the door had locked behind me. Turns out that the Information Desk lady had buzzed me in without my knowing when I came in the first time, and now that she was gone, there was nobody to let me in.

So I was stuck outside in the cold. Lovely.

After an embarrassingly long period of dithering in the cold and standing at the door hoping SOMEONE was monitoring it (because, ya know, sick people), it finally occurred to me to walk over to the Emergency entrance and ask to use a phone there.

Turns out, miracle of miracles, there’s an ancient artifact there known as a “pay phone” and I was able to contact Joe that way.

The whole thing was exactly the sort of comedy of errors to which I am prone, and I am so goddamned tired of my own bullshit.

I try so hard to keep it together and not trip over my own dick all the time and yet it happens over and over again.

And I’d like to be cheerfully fatalistic about it and say “Oh well, it always turns out okay in the end after all, so no big deal, right?”, but I can’t.

I just don’t have that in me, at least, not yet.

And one of these times it won’t turn out okay.

And then I will be seriously fucked.

More after the break.

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A lighter shade of pain

UPDATE : The thing on my right foot is not, as it turns out, black. That was just something that got stuck to it, apparently.

But it remains hard, dry, sore, and so on. So some time tomorrow afternoon, Joe and Julian will be nice enough to take me out to

1. Cash my monthly check – it’s a week early because Xmas
2. Pee in a cup at the medical lab re : my abdominal issues, then
3. (sigh) Drop me off at the ER.

I don’t want to go to the ER. A previous, less sensible and responsible version of myself would have just ignored the problem hoping it would go away on its own.

But that would be real real dumb. Foot problems in diabetics can turn deadly in a heartbeat, so if I want my own heart to keep beating (and I mostly do), I had better get this looked at right away.

I just have to suppress the socially anxious voice in my head that keeps asking, “But what if it turns out to be nothing? We’ll be SO EMBARRASED!!”

First off, it ain’t nothing. The pain is quite real, as is the hard spot on my foot. It may or may not be something serious, but it’s definitely something.

But even it wasn’t anything, it would still be the right decision to have it checked out.

Like my mama always used to say, better a little embarrassment than septic death.

So I will schlep through the ER and triage and all of that. I might be there awhile.

Pretty sure “I have this thing on my foot” is relatively low on the triage priority list compared to “there’s a ski pole protruding from my chest” and “pretty sure I am supposed to be breathing”.

I will, of course, keep you lucky people up to date on all my horrible health problems.

And I will talk to you nice people tomorrow.

Going for the CT scan of my lower right abdomen tonight.

This is what passes for excitement in my life.

Hell, this is what passes for adventure.

Anyhow, yeah, I said tonight. Got a phone call yesterday asking if I could come into Medical Imaging at Richmond Hospital at 8 pm tonight and I said yes, even though that will be disruptive to our usual plans.

Better a little disruption than to have them say, “Can’t make it? Well the next open spot is in FEBRUARY. ”

So what the hell. Go in there, get’r done.

At least it’s at Richmond Hospital. I am quite comfortable there. I was there a lot when I was going through their psychiatric outpatient “Core” program, which went for five days a week for ten weeks. And I have been there now and then via the ER since.

Including that period where I was going there every other day to get the dressing changed on my wound when I had that big infection on my left knee.

Wound is still there, by the way. Even though the doctor at the wound care clinic told me it would heal on its own and I didn’t need to go there any more.

But in her defense, there was a procedure she really wanted to do on another patient and giving me proper health care would have interfered with that.

The choice was clear.

My point (and I do have one) is that Richmond Hospital is a familiar place to me, and thus will not put as much strain on my social anxiety as an entirely new place.

And I have had CT scans before. That’s the one with the big white ring and the metal slab you lie on that moves back and forth through the ring.

The ring’s a little scary when you know it’s a crazy strong electromagnet. And I don’t care what anyone says, I can feel things like that.

My nervous system is like an antenna and that antenna picks up a lot of things, most of which I filter out, but when I am around strong electromagnetic fields, I can feel a pull almost like gravity on every nerve in my body.

It’s the same feeling I used to get when I passed by a big electrical substation on my way to high school. The kind with a lot of exposed wires that hum faintly.

Sometimes I would lean against the fence looking in and just let that electromagnetic flux wash over me, enjoying the freaky sensations of it all.

But not for long, because before too long some seriously unsane thoughts would start tugging at my mind and make me need to GTFO pronto.

I can totally see how some people become convinced that some form of electromagnetic waves are screwing with their minds.

Seems to me like insanity would find it easy to crystallize around something so freaky and real as electromagnetism’s effect on the human nervous system.

Thank goodness I never went there.

I credit my solidly rationalist mindset for keeping me sane. It shuts the crazier thought right down with cold hard logic.

Still, scientifically speaking, I am quite curious as to what it is like inside a Faraday cage. Would I feel any different? Maybe a little more relaxed, a bit more calm? Like I was in a truly quiet room for the first time in my life?

Probably not. But I would love to find out.

More after the break.

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A few milliliters of freedom

Patient readers know I have compulsions.

And not the usual kind, the kind where you might be tortured by pain most people can’t imagine but at least your apartment is clean.

Very, very clean.

No, mine are more a forest sub-major compulsions that never got it together enough to become a diagnosable disability or even a serious issue in my life.

Instead, they just nag and hound me and bend me to their will by sheer persistence.

And to be honest, most of the time, I am still their bitch. I do what they tell me to do both because the stakes are so low that it doesn’t seem worth the effort to deny them and because they make an excellent substitute for having to decide things myself.

That is both pathetic and sad. But it’s my reality.

But lately I occasionally have the will and the timing to defy them. And when I do, it can be confusing, but ultimately very freeing.

For example, when I have the courage to “waste” something.

By far, my biggest compulsion cluster those having to do with resource conservation and its evil nemesis, “waste”.

This set of compulsions demands that I never “waste” anything, even in situations where nothing is actually being wasted and the urge is clearly insane.

For example, if I load a bunch of songs into Winamp, and then I step out of the room and miss one, I feel intense guilt because I “wasted” the playing of the song.

Like I said : clearly insane. Nothing was wasted. The MP3 is still there. I can play it any time I want, as many times as I want. There is not less of anything as a result.

No important numeral was decremented.

You get the idea.

This brings us to the little bit of Diet Coke that was left in the bottom of my glass when I wanted to fill said glass with water to drink.

My compulsion demanded that I drink that last little bit of diet cola in order not to “waste” it. Even though I neither needed nor wanted it.

Okay, said my compulsions, we’re prepared to be reasonable. You could also go find a container in which to preserve this tiny amount of liquid for later.

You know, some later time when only 2 ml of Diet Coke will hit the spot.

But I said no to both those reasonable ideas and poured the Diet Coke down the god damned drain instead.

And even though my compulsions screamed like I had just emptied my canteen into the sand while I was crossing the Sahara, I did not listen to that devil’s choir.

And it felt good.

It felt, in fact, like freedom.

Freedom won a milliliter at a time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Tried to ask a friend for help today. Got yelled at instead.

I wanted her help in selecting a new monitor to purchase. I want a new one mostly for higher resolution gaming but also to see if it might fix my Facebook issue.

Said issue is basically that ever since Facebook’s last reformat, I have not been able to access my Notifications. When I click the icon for them, they show up offscreen, with only their left edge actually showing up on the right side of my screen.

This fucking sucks. I need my notifications! Otherwise, how will I know when people reply to all the hilarious and/or brilliantly insightful things I say?

So I figured a higher resolution screen would have more visual real estate and therefore all of Facebook might fit on the screen then.

The following is NOT VERBATIM. But it gets the idea across.

---

I mentioned this to my friend as part of why I wanted a new monitor, and she flipped out.

What? Why do you need a new monitor?

Because mine only goes up to 1920×1080, and because…

70 percent of the monitors in the world only go up that far!

Pretty sure that’s not the case, and anyhow…. this Facebook thing…

That’s a software problem! A new monitor won’t fix that!

Well it might. Anyhow, I wanted your help in choosing a monitor because I don’t understand the technobabble about them any more, and../.

Look, I am just trying to keep you from wasting money on a new monitor. But clearly you don’t want my help. So goodbye.

And then she logged off.

---

Whiskey tango foxtrot was that?

And the thing is, this has happened to me many times before in my life. I go to someone for help and instead they freak out and start yelling at me and I am left shellshocked and feeling really confused and betrayed.

Heck, it’s happened with Joe, and he’s one cool, level headed dude.

So what the hell is going on? Somehow, when I go to people asking for help, there is a chance it will raise the emotional stakes somehow and the person will panic and said panic will be expressed by getting mad at me.

It must have something to do with how I activate the “clueless but sweet” nurturing area of people’s brains

The Baby Yoda Region, to use the scientific term.

Mostly, this works to my benefit, but occasionally it overloads people’s circuits and things get muddled in their minds and they end up mad at me instead.

No wonder I have such a hard time asking for help. Sheesh.

It’s happened with my parents, my siblings, my teachers, my friends, even one time with the receptionist at Doctor Robinson’s^[1] office for Christ’s sake.

And perpetual innocent that I am, it always comes as a very painful and upsetting surprise. That’s the last thing I expect when I go to someone for help.

I really need to understand and own all my powers. I really have no idea what effect I have on people. I’ve had this pose of innocence for so long, where I freeze and wait for someone to explain things to me, that it is hard to imagine being any other way

But it’s not the right attitude for a grownup, and that is what I want to be. Finally.

I need to get the fuck over myself.

And I will.

Just as soon as I find the way.

More after the break.

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Doctors and me

I’ve had the same problem with every doctor I have ever had, and when the same shit keeps happening to you over and over, the odds are very high that the problem is you.

After all, you’re the only common factor.

The problem is complex and therefore rather hard to put into words, but it all boils down to assertiveness. Specifically, the ability to speak up for myself in the doctor’s office and tell them what my problems are.

When I am in front of my doctor, I tend to panic at being put on the spot by an authority figure, and when one panics all one cares about is escape and so suddenly I can’t think of a single thing to complain about.

I assume this is exactly like those people I have heard about who study hard for the test but then the second the test is in front of them, their minds go blank.

Adrenaline has amazing powers to clear the mind. And suppress one’s higher reasoning functions. Like, say, complex recall.

Anyhow, I panic and my mind goes blank. But I am very good at hiding that. As far as the world can see, I’m smiling happy Fru and everything is just fine, thanks.

Sad to think of how I got that way. It’s the selfsame need to escape. Because of early experiences with people not really wanting to hear about my problems, I learned to just give people what they wanted, which was obviously for me to say everything was A-OK, two thumbs up chief!

This allowed them to sink gratefully back into completely forgetting I exist.

Their gratitude gratified me. Especially because it meant they went away.

And I am still that way. It’s only with my recent downturn in health that I have gained the courage to bring my legit, distinct, definitely not hypochondria problems to my GP.

It’s not impossible that the net effect of my getting sicker will be my ending up better than before because I am finally getting these problems addressed.

That would be adorably ironic, don’t you think?

I just feel bad about all the time I wasted being angry with my various GPs for, essentially, not being mind readers or somehow dragging my problems out of me like the Spanish Inquisition.

---

Cardinal Richlieu : Confess, sinner!
Me : Never! My innocence will save my soul… and damn yours!
Cardinal Richlieu : Very well….BRING OUT THE ADS WITH GLARING LOGIC MISTAKES AND MISUSE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!
Me : No no, I’ll talk…. I have these painful welts on my right foot, and…
Richlieu sternly adds things to my patient history.

---

That line about my innocence is pretty damned good. I should use it somewhere.

Anyhow, to sum up, the problem isn’t doctors. It’s me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Not really. Not in a way that counts.

Oh sure, it might seem like I am here. I reflect light, I displace air, I produce the usual set of organic odors appropriate to a live human being.

But don’t be fooled because it’s all a lie. A trick of the light, a facsimile of meaning, the deliberate confusion of similar ideas.

A bad joke taken too far but with nowhere left to die.

I don’t blame you for being confused, though, as I have gone to great lengths to convince the world of my existence.

Really, this entire illusion called “Michael John Bertrand” is a masterstroke that could only come from the truly brilliant (but non-existent) mind of one such as me.

I mean, sure, anyone who actually exists could do it. But to pull it off without the benefit of existence can only be the work of a real genius.

A brief but heartfelt round of applause would be appropriate. Thank you.

You see, back when I did, in the strictest sense of the word, exist, I found being a real love human being to be such a bore. All that existing all the time. All the annoying little tasks like eating and drinking and breathing and metabolizing glucose and such really got to be a pain in the ass.

The pooping alone was such a chore.

And besides, reality was such a commitment, I can’t even. Stuck in this one life, being this one person, with one set of bullshit random factors like body mass, place of origin, phenotype, and even gender (what a bore!), and only one brief lifetime to explore the possibilities of that limited little life, even.

Christ, what a load of crap.

Clearly, the most efficient and elegant solution was to simply stop existing, and so that is what I did.

Oh, not by the messy and time-consuming method of death, of course. Perish the thought. Death is far too much of a commitment too, and very limiting.

And funerals are so damned expensive, too. It really isn’t fair.

Plus death is like, really fucking gross.

There’s bugs and worms and body fluids EVERYwhere.

Hardly seems worth it, really.

No, mere death was nowhere good enough for me. Too messy, too mundane, to obvious. Entirely unsuitable for a magnificent unprecedented unique genius like me.

You don’t stick a brilliant spinning shining iridescent twenty four dimensional gemstone like me in a dirty little box, darling.

No, I simply willed myself out of existence. It’s easy when you’re a demigod. I filled my mind with a total picture of my entire being in all its wholeness and then simply erased all the lines that define me.

Now, I am mere protean pre-existence, as is proper. An intricate lattice of potential without probability or presence.

With no more substance than the reflection of a shadow and no more importance than an idle thought in the mind of an idiot child in some long forgotten Eastern European orphanage buried deep in the Urals.

Yes. This is how it should be. This is…. right.

Thank goodness you don’t need to exist to blog!

More after the break.

---

That went unexpectedly well

For something that started off as pseudo-suicidal nihilism, my little piece about not existing turned out to be quite whimsical and silly.

Maybe this turning depression into comedy concept is more of a possibility for me than I first thought. In general, when my therapist has suggested I alchemize my suffering into guffaws, I have shrugged it off.

Just another thing that it looks like I “could” do, but in reality cannot.

But him repeatedly suggesting it did produce one vaguely helpful result : it got me to ask myself why it wasn’t possible for me.

And after a lot of digging around in the root cellar of my soul, I realized the problem was very simple : I just didn’t find my depression or the trauma that caused it funny.

I just can’t see the lighter side of my inner darkness. I wish I could – it would undoubtedly make me a far, far healthier person.

I think I could benefit from an enormous reduction in taking like seriously overall.

It’s only life, after all.

But for now, I just don’t see the funny side of being brutally raped at 4, thrown to the wolves on my first day of school, spending my childhood isolated and alone, and all the other awful things that happened to make me the shambling shibboleth I am today.

I know other comedians can do it. And I know there has never been a better time for that kind of bare-all confessional comedy. The market is there for it.

But I am not there yet. Right now, if I tried to write comedy about my depression, it would turn into utterly unhinged screaming and ranting and paranoia within seconds.

At best, it would be the sort of comedy that is scary, not funny.

“I spent my childhood feeling like an unwanted guest in my own home. ISN’T THAT HILARIOUS EVERYBODY? Laugh god damn you! “

And then I shoot a bullet into the ceiling.

So no, I don’t think I will be spinning my teardrops into teapots any time soon. Not until I find a way to vent enough of my simmering rage to calm down inside enough to maybe see the lighter side of things.

The other problem is that my misery has been quite boring. No suicide attempts, no acts of sudden and terrible violence, no time spent eating institutional food, no substance induced wacky hijinks.

Just me, miserable and alone, day after day. Alone at school, alone at home, alone in between. Alone watching TV. Alone playing video games. Alone lying in bed staring into the middle nothing because I can’t seem to pull myself together enough to get out of bed and go pee, even though my bladder is bursting.

Where is the comedy in a life that’s mostly nothing?

Let alone the deep shame I feel about my worthless life.

No, no comedy to be found there. I have nothing people could even relate to.

And there is nothing funny about that.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Because nothing does.

The angry apathy is strong in me right now. Everything seems stupid and pointless and pathetic and worthless. Especially myself.

I’ve lived a stupid, pointless life filled with stupid, pointless deeds and stupid, pointless days and soon it will reach its stupid, pointless end, and I am looking forward to it.

I can’t wait to be dead. I think I am really going to enjoy it.

---

The case for death

No more suffering, no more futility,
No more lacking all utility

No more frustration, no more cringing
No more evil thoughts impinging

No more depression, or existential pain
No more knowing I’m insane

No more weakness, lack of will
No more midnight tundra chill

No more fear. No more dread.
No more demons in my head

No more filth. No more lies.
No more paper thin disguise.

No more loathing. No more rage.
No more locked inside a cage

No more failure. No more ennui.
No more wishing just to be

No more friendship. No more love.
No more sun shining above

No more hope. No more fun.
No more charming everyone.

No more joy. No more grief.
No more deeds beyond belief

No more discovery. No new understanding.
No more consciousness expanding

No more being cute or clever
Just the cold of night forever

This eternal isolation
Doesn’t sound like my salvation

So though I’ve nothing left to give
What the hell, I guess I’ll live

---

Well that happened. One of my rare attacks of poetry.

Felt good to write it, though, which is worth noting. I think the extra challenge of it made it more fun to write, but it goes way deeper than that

Sometimes about putting my thoughts into that form makes them feel more… expressed. And that’s kind of the whole point of this blog, so that’s a good thing.

So that’s something to ponder. Maybe I should write more poetry. Or at least, wander into more challenging territory more often.

I burn with the need to express myself as deeply and thoroughly and gloriously as possible. I want to dig down deep and bring my darkest truth up into the light of day where it can be cleansed by sunlight. I want to excrete all my vilest toxins and then flush my system of the dregs so that I might finally be empty and clean.

I want to rid myself of all these words swarming over one another in my head and turning my mind into an overburdened prison ship cast adrift on the sea.

I want to unleash all my demons and let them romp and play in the light of day till they calm down enough to tell me what they have to say.

I want to vent pressure like an orgasmic geyser and throw all my excess heat into the cool blue sky until I am calm enough to be human again.

I want to get rid of everything that is not me.

Then maybe I can finally figure out who I really am.

And maybe just….. be that guy for a while.

Wow, am I poetic today.

More after the break,

---

Up from the depths

https://youtu.be/tVZLAbu6qIw

Feeling somewhat better than before.

---

A tickle in the chest

Just in time for a new health wrinkle! I’ve been coughing.

Pretty sure it’s just that blasted prenasal drip. That’s when nasal fluid, instead of exiting via the nose like a normal disgusting body secretion, instead goes through my eustachian tubes and down into my throat.

I know. Ewwwww.

Some of this fluid goes the wrong way sometimes and end up in my lungs, and that is when the coughing starts.

Like I said, I am pretty sure that’s all this is. My nose has been running despite my having taken my Reactine “Complete” (yeah right) and I have felt the substance in question in my throat (eww eww eww!) so that’s what it probably is.

But obviously, in this time of plague, we’re all just a wee bit paranoid about The Covid, so you can bet your big brown biscuit I am going to be keeping a close eye on this.

Including occasionally stopping to smell something.

We all do that now, right? Just to be sure?

---

Curse you to Hades

Me and Hades have a problem.

I’ve really been enjoying the game. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a roguelike, which these days means when you die, that’s it, start over, but along the way you level up, and so on.

And I am down with that. Up to a point. Past that point, though, there has to be some chance of substantial progress or the whole thing seems pointless to me.

And that is where I am with Hades now. I finally beat the first boss, Megaera, only to find that means absolutely nothing.

I didn’t get a massive powerup. It didn’t open a portal to where she is so I can start over there. I didn’t even get a new weapon.

My situation is exactly as it was before I beat her. I still have to go through all of Tartarus in every run, up to and including fighting her, before I can get to the part I unlocked by beating her. The part that is actually new to me.

And I really did not expect this. Other roguelikes avoid that shit with portals or powerups or literally anything except having to do the exact same shit over and over forever.

I really, really need a sense of permanent progress in a game. A sense of having accomplished something substantial.

Otherwise, what’s the fucking point? I cannot stress this enough : beating Meg made absolutely no difference in my game.

And considering how hard and long I worked to get to that point, that’s just plain wrong. At the very least, beating her should have meant never having to fight her again.

That’s a rule of video games so basic I didn’t know it existed till they violated it.

Kill monster. Monster dead. Monster gone now. No fight monster no more.

So this might be it for me and the game. I am too proud to turn down the difficulty and having to start at the bottom of the mountain every time would undo me.

And it’s such a good game otherwise.

I am seriously pissed off about this.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I freaking hate Cephalexin.

That’s the antibiotic my dermatologist put me on yesterday, and I hate it because it kills my appetite like a bullet to its forebrain.

Specifically, it makes me feel like i have a gut full of cold gravy. Just this big football shaped mass of glutinous gravy sitting there taking up space and radiating a dark kind of quiet menace, like a hidden void in space.

And that’s really irritating, because obviously, I’ve still gotta eat. And I generally take my pills with my meals. But that’s a tad complicated when one of those pills makes me feel like I swallowed a gallon of suet.

So now i have to plan my meals so that I take the pill when I am DONE eating. That way, loss of appetite is no big deal.

It is, in fact, mildly desirable.

I mean, you’re supposed to feel full when you’re done eating. Right?

Went to my biweekly appointment with Doctor Chao, my family doctor. Told him about that ache in my lower right abdomen that gets worse when I finish urinating.

He ordered a bunch of urine tests and a CT scan of the area. Apparently the ultrasound I got was good for things like my hernia but not good for detecting deeper things like appendicitis or diverticulitis.

Re : possible appendicitis, he told me to be sure to get my ass to the ER pronto if the pain gets way worse all of a sudden.

Probably didn’t need to be told that, but it helps nonetheless.

I am the sort of person who might well die of indecision. Having his voice telling me to go in my head might well save my life.

I’m glad I finally told him about that because it’s been getting worse and quite frankly has me worried. It’s a problem I have had for ages but at a very mild level – just a little twinge followed by soreness when I finished urinating.

But now it’s a hard pain and an aching soreness that makes me feel like I have a big rock sitting on my liver.

And that’s a possibility too – that it’s bladder stone. The whole male side of the Island side of my family tree has a history of stones – bladder, kidney, gall, etc.

And patient readers know that I once had a gall stone so bad that they had to take out my entire gall bladder – and it was almost bigger than the gall bladder itself.

So it being some kind of stone, probably a bladder stone, is my best guess right now. And hopefully, if that’s the case, it’s the kind of thing that can be taken care of by shattering it with ultrasound.

Handy stuff, that ultrasound.

But if surgery proves necessary, I hope I get a competent fucking surgeon this time and not one like that hack that took out my gall bladder.

He was so incompetent that what should have been a quick laproscopic job followed by a day or two in recovery turned into a three hour surgery where he split me up the middle like he was gutting a fish followed by eight days in recovery.

And the recovery was at Royal Columbian too, and that place sucks. I was mistreated by the staff on a daily basis. Left without pain meds, nobody willing to give me my desperately needed enema, I could go on and on.

Worst thing is, I was so incredibly depressed after the operation (because they never gave me my antidepressants when I was in there either) that when the surgeon summoned me to his office to discuss what had gone wrong, I just told him everything was cool and that I was not going to sue or everything.

I would not do that today.

I would take that motherfucker for everything.

Because I am through with being treated as less than human by the health care system because I’m I big fat ox.

Next time they try that shit, I am going to hit them like a lead missile to the forehead.

And they will pay.

More after the break.

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On the other side from you

Did the therapy thing today, eventually.

There were some logistical hiccups too boring to relate.

Started off in a jocular vein but pretty soon I was venting my despair. Talking about how I felt like I was doomed because I was not only too sick to help myself, I was too sick to keep myself from getting even sicker.

I mean, you don’t have to be Joseph Heller to see what a Catch-22 that is. The only future I see for myself is one where my involuntary self-neglect lets my diabetes continue to destroy me until I end up in the hospital for good before one day it all catches up to me big time and I die a stupid, pointless, messy, lonely death.

But ya know, I try to stay positive.

I say these terrible things because that’s exactly how I feel. But I also say them because I am trying to galvanize myself into action by hooking the electrodes to the parts of me that should be scared and upset and even mad at my situation then running a million volts through the wires.

But like I said to my useless therapist today, there’s no point running all that juice through dead flesh. It isn’t going to bring it back to life. I am never going to get the emotions I want that way.

Because deep down, I just don’t give a shit. Let death come for me, if it cares enough to bother. I’m done with living.

I was never any good at it anyway.

I will do what my doctors tell me. I will pro forma try to stay alive.

But my heart’s not in it. A big part of me is just waiting to die, like I was 77 instead of 47 and this is my hospice period.

Maybe it just hasn’t gotten scary and/or horrifying and/or painful and/or gross for me yet. Maybe if something bad enough occurs, it will wake up my survival instinct and I will have the will to fight to stay alive.

But if not, whatever.

Honestly, I could go either way.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.