This is going to be a good one. I can already feel the ice on my heart.

I’ve been feeling proud lately. Not a lot and not often, but some. I type a funny comment on something I am viewing online, and I congratulate myself on being such a hilarious motherfucker. I do something super cute and sweet as Fruvous, and for a moment or two I marvel at what a magical person I am.

My usual mental processing produces a particularly revelatory insight and I feel lucky to be so gosh darned smart.

This is good. This is progress. For far too long. the Great Schism inside me has kept me from deriving nearly any ego benefits from my extraordinary abilities. I have gifts most people would envy and yet they have brought me precious little joy.

I’m not saying they make me better than everyone else. Ick. Perish the thought.

But I should at least get a healthy self-worth out of it. Some degree of pride, of positive self-regard. Some solid basis for building a healthy sense of self.

One with solid boundaries so that I don’t feel so naked and vulnerable all the time.

My soul needs warm clothing, god damn it. Fuck this midnight tundra bullshit. I want warm clothes, a nice home, and a decent array of healthy snacks.

And soup. There must be soup.

So I keep circulating back to remembering my blessings. My gifts. The things that have always been there, but my depression kept me from appreciating them,

Patient readers know the list. Never had to study in school ’cause I am super smart. Very funny, according to many people. Brilliant writer, obviously. Enormously creatively talented in general.

All that and a heck of a nice fella, too. And cute. Charming. Charismatic. Etc.

And yet, just from typing all that, I can feel my relentless inner prosecutor firing up the engine of self-destruction to destroy any chance of self-esteem.

“Yeah, but what do you DO with it all? ” it sneers. “Nothing! All that power and potential at your fingertips and all you do is rot away in a filthy bedroom playing video games and waiting to die! Why? Because you’re pathetic and weak!”.

Yeah, because of you, asshole. I mean, what’s your end game here? What can your prosecution possibly accomplish? Because if you can’t answer that question – and you can’t – then you have to admit it’s just mindless sadism. Rage directed inward.

Would it be so wrong if I just loved and accepted myself unconditionally? Maybe that will lead me out of this maze of madness and out into the warmth of the sun. Maybe it won’t. Maybe that’s not the point at all.

It’s not like all this harsh self-judgment will lead me to great performance. That’s a toxic lie and always has been. It leads to the exact opposite, an inability to act at all.

So why not try the opposite approach? Love myself no matter what, without any need for justification. Be happy for no reason. Shine alone in the dark, just for myself.

What the hell, let’s try a different brand of crazy.

More after the break.

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The silent approach of a shadow

Oooh, spooky and mysterious.

I really should give poetry a try.

Back from doing McD’s with Le Gang. The weather was inclement, so we implemented Felicity’s brilliant plan to go park in a nearby covered parking structure attached to a Sobey’s that didn’t quite make it.

That still sort of blows my mind. Sobey’s is huge back home. Monolithic, even. So a failed Sobey’s to me is like a failed Starbucks.

Logically, they must exist, but emotionally, wow.

Conditions were far comfier in the parking structure, and we were able to have our usual fascinating intellectual conversation in peace and comfort.

Well, except that an older couple with a yappy little dog came through. The dog was cute enough – some fluffy little white thing – but the barking was quite annoying.

And we had to put up with it twice – once when they went out and once when they came back. So, yay that.

We got to talking about why nerds (in general) don’t like sports.

My theory is that there is a vital social component to sports that we nerds, being poorly endowed in the social antenna department, just don’t get.

The whole idea of rooting for a team along with all the other fans experiencing the same thing doesn’t make sense without the vital ingredient of collective socialization.

It’s a sheep thing. Not that I am dissing sheep just because I am not one.

Often, I envy their sense of normalcy and predictability. It might be crowded in that there sheep pen but it’s also a lot warmer and more secure than freezing my ass off out here on the oh so edgy fringes of society.

But I know that peace can never be mine. Conformity is simply not an option. As far as I can tell, I was born stubborn and independent, and that’s not going to change no matter how long I stare into the window at all those happy, strong people in their warm, loving homes where everyone is pretty much okay most of the time.

I can look, and long for what they have, but that world is not open to me. If I want to have what they have, I will have to find (or build) it myself, according to my own needs and my own nature, not theirs.

Wolves can’t live in the sheep enclosure, no matter how hard they try.

That goes double for us foxes. Wolves at least have packs.

Us foxes are loners by default. Maybe we den up and raise a family eventually, but that’s it. We don’t have a social unit larger than “family”.

And me, I know I can’t “belong”. Because I cannot and/or will not change in order to fit in. I am me, period, no negotiation, no compromise.

And right or wrong, that’s just who I am. The only person I can be.

So I might as well be who I am as hard as I can.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.