Another big question : why have I been content (ish) to live the same lifestyle for the last 25 years, AKA my entire adult life?
Why hasn’t any force, interior or exterior, roused me from this stasis and forced me to go out into the world and find a new, better home?
Why haven’t I gotten royally sick of this shit until quite recently? And why hasn’t this growing discontent stirred me to action yet?
What is this perplexing holding pattern that has held me down and held me back for 25 god damned years and what makes its sinister magnetism so hypnotic?
I guess it all boils down to safety.
When you are super scared on the inside all the time due to a severe trauma in the past, you prioritize safety above all else. To the point where any move in the direction of less safety – in other words, towards risk – becomes unthinkable.
The very idea fills you with paralytic panic.
And so you fixate on what pleasures you have. In my case, video games, with a minor in snack food. You bury yourself in them so deep that you can’t feel the outside world at all any more and thus they become your reality and your shelter from reality.
Maybe somewhere in me are the instincts that would normally lead an adult to go seek their fortune and try to find a place for themselves in this great big busy world. Maybe part of my heart yearns for new pastures and greater challenge and a chance to prove to the world just how astoundingly awesome I am.
Maybe part of me wants to leave fear behind and finally grow the fuck up.
But that part of me is surrounded by the thick fog of paralysis and layer upon layer of cold dark fear and thus stands no chance of actually motivating me to do anything.
Almost nothing can move me to act. My inertia is gargantuan.
So I hunker in my bunker and let the days go by while I get older and sicker and depression eats away at my soul and all my gifts go to waste.
It’s not what I want. I don’t know what I want, to be honest, but this life ain’t it. I’d much rather have a job and a husband and my own place. The ability and opportunity to earn instead of sponging off the government would do me a universe of good.
Or maybe I will go back to school. At least then I would be doing something with my life. And I would be in a place where I excel.
The question is, what would I study? Something practical, that’s for sure. Something that isn’t anyone’s dream job and therefore I would not be competing with a thousand other starry eyed losers for every position.
Maybe I would study being a network admin of some sort. Or train for some low level, non coding job in video game production.
Whatever it is, it will aimed directly at future employment. None of this academic bullshit. And it will be a quality education at a place that actually impresses potential employers when they see it on my resume.
I’m gifted as fuck and I deserve a high level education.
The kind that will get me a job.
More after the break,
Not another excoriation!
Well, time to rake myself over the coals again. I don’t want to do it, but I will feel a whole lot better once it’s done.
The precis : I done fucked up again.
You know that pleasant little dream I had of going back to school earlier today?
Right there, above the line?
Well it didn’t live very long because as I was taking a shower today, I suddenly remembered that I have been ignoring the student loan people and their increasingly aggressive demands for many years now and they are unlikely to front me another student loan any time soon.
So, no education for me, unless I can wrangle a full ride scholarship somehow.
There goes that hope. And like the man said (don’t ask me who), despair is easy, it’s the hope that kills you.
So here’s a list of things this realization made feel like doing (but won’t)
- Gouge my heart out with a rusty grapefruit spoon
- Find a nice quiet grave to crawl into and die for a while
- Beat my head against the wall until a subdural hemotoma brings on sweet oblivion
- Set myself on fire and leap screaming into the void (so visual!)
- Run naked through the streets cackling madly and groping everyone I meet
- Punch Mitch McDonnell in the dick (so, business as usual)
- Weep softly in a corner. Look, it can’t all be flaming void leaps
- Embark upon an aggressive campaign to land me a sugar daddy (or mommy, what the hell) who can refuse me nothing and get them to pay for my schooling
- Finally yodel the secret yodel that will tell my alien brothers it’s time to invade
insert your own colorfully nihilistic thoughts here.
But don’t worry, folks. Like I said above, I’m not going to do any of those crazy things, or anything like them. I just like writing them down because it makes me feel better.
Plus, it’s fun.
I will get over this, of course. Writing my self-annihilating thoughts down helps speed that along. The initial burn of imploding self-loathing is pretty intense but I know that if I just hang in there, it will end, and I will move on.
So whatever. Pissed off at my own stupidity, but it’s nothing new.
Technically, I should have taken care of the whole thing years ago when I was told that it was fine to not make student loan payments as long as I was on social assistance PROVIDED that I go through this whole complicated and confusing rigmarole every month to remind them that I am still on social assistance and therefore they are legally required to refrain from taking a bite out of my big juicy jugular for another month.
Well I tried to jump through the flaming rolling hoops provided me, got hopelessly confused, and (this is the bad part) gave up.
I figured they wouldn’t get my money either way, so why bother with the administrivia?
So I have completely ignored the student loan people ever since, never thinking that I might want another student loan some day.
Oh well. There is still hope. I might be able to work my hapless charm and get them to forgive me. I might get a scholarship and/or bursary package together that would pay for my education someplace.
And who knows, someday I might even apply for TV writing jobs.
What a radical idea.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.