I have the urge to dig deep into my psyche’s dead flesh and find myself a truly deep and painful bit of shrapnel to painfully excise and expel.
I crave the pain. And the fear, and the confusion, and the resistance, and all the other forms of suffering such surgeries can provide.
I’ve reached the point where I will welcome pain as a blessed relief from the silent savage scream of silence that is my numbness.
Fuck you, paralytic paranoia : I want to live.
So let’s see what painful issues I have lying around, waiting to be exploited.
Well, there’s always….
A question of character
Today was Therapy Thursday.
I talked about my lack of character, as I saw it. Doc Costin, of course, reflexively argued against this negative characterization of myself. which was annoying as always.
But I understand. He’s trying to keep me from tearing myself down. I still don’t want him arguing with me when I am trying to pour out my soul to him, but I understand.
The negative prerogatives of depression are not so easily usurped.
Anyhow, it got me thinking further on the subject. Why this lack of character (or grit or backbone or whatever)? Why have I always been so weak and timid?
At the moment, my best theory is a lack of a suitable father figure.
I mean, I had my Dad and in his way he tried to help me man up. He took my brother and me target shooting, We went to hockey games. He got us Playboy subscriptions.
But he was always too angry and impatient to be a real guiding figure in my life. I needed a lot more patience and hand-holding and guidance than he was capable of giving. And like everyone else, he ignored me most of the time.
And I was fine with that because he scared me. And you just can’t have a warm, close, loving relationship with your kids if they are terrified of you
Without a proper father figure, I had nobody to encourage me to take risks. Explore boundaries. Expand my little world. Teach me that getting a little hurt is not the end of the world and that life’s better when you can bounce back from things.
Hence, I was the classic “mama’s boy”. That’s the nugget of truth in that hoary old idea. Science has confirmed this. Without a proper father (or someone who can fill that role), a child grows up cowardly and afraid of the world because they never got the message that some risks are no big deal and learning to take risks makes life way better.
So there’s nothing to counter the natural fear that the “maternal” parent who puts the child’s safety above everything ends up instilling.
Both are necessary. Sure, a lack of a “paternal” figure makes the child cowardly. but the lack of a “maternal” figure makes them reckless.
As in all things, balance is the key.
The other, secondary factor is whatever complex concatenation of visual and physical (possibly even neurological) issues made me so clumsy.
Actually, clumsy isn’t strong enough a term. Even “physically uncoordinated” doesn’t seem to cut it. It’s a system wide disconnect between my brain and my body, and it’s always been there keeping my body from doing what I want it to do.
Some of called it “motor dyslexia”. Which is a terrible term for it, but it’s nevertheless the best one I have come across.
I never knew why I was like this, but recently I came across a clue. A YouTube commenter mentioned that she thought her absolutely lack of coordination came from nobody having played games like catch and tag with her in her early childhood, and therefore those important neural pathways were never primed and activated.
And that never happened to me, either. I don’t remember ever playing that way. I don’t remember anyone even trying.
That’s where this gets tricky, though, because as far as I can recall, I never liked that kind of play. Was that because I was bad at it from the very start? In that case, it’s something I was born with, not something that is a result of neglect.
I certainly remember being very frustrated by certain physical tasks as a wee one.
So I dunno. Maybe was born with some kind of neurological defect that stunted my neurophysical development right from the very start.
Maybe that’s what put me on the path of developing the abstract reasoning parts of my brain to such an extent that I became a little smarty pants precocious kid.
That would explain a lot.
Wasn’t I like, doing something?
Well it seems I have, predictably enough, strayed very far from my original intent to dig up a truly heinous bit of shrapnel.
Oh well. I rarely end up at my original destination, but I usually end up somewhere worth going, at any rate.
I guess I’ve always operated in a kind of mental fog, too. I suppose that’s part of the depression, or maybe it’s part of my messed up neurology, I don’t know.
Actually, now that I am thinking about it, I am sure it mostly has to do with that profound retreat into my own mind that took place when I was raped.
I fled deep into the forests of my mind to escape that rape while it was happening, and like a WWII soldier who doesn’t know the war is over, I’ve stayed there ever since.
And I really can’t imagine ever coming out again. There’s my weighty hunk of mental shrapnel. I closed my eyes on the real world when I was raped when I was four, and ever since then this dense forest has been my home. My world. My fog.
This fog does more than cloud my mind. It obscures the real world enough for me to be able to function, inasmuch as I do.
This means the fog won’t go away until I no longer need its numbing chill and thick obscuring mists to keep my all encompassing fear of reality at bay.
Until then, this foggy forest of mine will remain my home.
And it’s not so bad….is it?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.