Blogging because I don’t know what else to do with myself right now. I am too anxious and depressed to just eat my lunch and watch something on YouTube like I normally do on Therapy Thursdays, and there’s really only two things I do, and I refuse to eat and play video games at the same times because god damn it, there has to be SOME time in the day when I am not playing a fucking game, and eating is it for me.
That was technically a sentence.
Had a follow-up appointment with my ophthalmologist, Doctor Faezi, this morning. Only 11 days till they slice my eyeball open, scoop out the inside, and replace it with an artificial lens to get rid of my cataract(s).
The day started off poorly when I had a mental malfunction and thought the appointment was at 8:45 am not 9:45 am so when I woke up at 8:30 am I freaked out and got dressed and ready in a panic and rushed out to have Julian remind me that I was an hour off.
D’oh. I went back to my room, sat down in front of the computer, launched a game.
But my heart was still racing and I felt dizzy and tired like I had just walked a block. I feel sick to my stomach and kind of like the room is spinning very very slowly. And it does not seem to be going away.
Then the proper departure time comes around, Julian drives me to the office, I go up the elevator to the office, greet the receptionist, sit down in the waiting room, and realize I feel absolutely horrible.
As in, take how bad I felt in front of my computer and cube it. It was painful and confusing and so on, but mostly, it was scary as fuck.
I felt like I might die. And…. I might. It’s plausible. I might not last another year. My 48th birthday next month might be my last. My health issues are profound and pervasive. It may already be too late for medical science to save me.
And it’s freaking me out. I am so damned scared. I feel like I am minutes away from ending up in the dreaded “in the hospital bed full of tubes” position, or worse.
And you would think that such gut-wrenching terror would be enough to motivate me to take better care of myself better, but…. not so far.
Because there is a suicidal traitor in my mind who doesn’t want to live. It wants to escape the mess it’s made forever. It wants out. It wants to escape.
It wants things to finally be over.
And it is willing to block all attempts at progress in order to achieve that goal.
But you know what? I’m done with asking my demons for permission to love. I am not going to take that cold surge of fear in my stomach as an answer. There has to be more to life than the limits set by my ancient outdated fears.
Somehow, I am going to find or make the energy I need in order to live.
Or die trying.
More after the break.
Choose to believe
One of the things that’s on my mind lately is wiggle room.
Specifically, the wiggle room between different ways to interpret the same thing.
As patient readers know. I’m a recovering rationalist. I am keenly aware of the tragic limitations of my previous “logic and reason” bullshit mindset and how unsuited it is to be the sole operating system of a human psyche.
One of its limitations has recently become evident to me : it tricks you into thinking there is always only one “right” way to see things. The supposedly “objective” way things are in “reality” according to those selfsame faculties of “reason”.
What a load of crap. My reason is just as corrupt and diseased and unreliable as the rest of me. It lies to me all the fucking time. And it does it very well because it wears a reasonable and rational face while doing so when it is just as crazy as I am.
So to speak.
So my spiritual challenge right now is to transcend that limited point of view and expand my mind to encompass my full being, emotions and instincts and inspirations included.
That involves learning to, as my therapist said today, “turn my brain off” now and then.
He’s right. I would be better off if I could get this massive mind of mine to shut the fuck up now and then and just leave me alone.
Which means I can’t rely on it to generate my sense of reality any more. I will learn to look at the world with new eyes instead.
All that reason ever showed me was the illusion of reality anyhow. A mirror, nothing more. The real world still awaits me, over my shoulder.
But it’s not an easy transition to make. I’ve accepted my corrupted reason’s version of reality as the truth for a very long time and it’s going to be tough to, in a sense, start all over again, almost like being reborn.
I don’t mind being reborn. Who knows, maybe I will get it right this time.
I guess I’ve calmed down some now.
Maybe I am going to die soon. Maybe not. Maybe my true fate is to be just another obesity statistic. Another promising life cut down far too early by an epidemic of food addiction and bad genetics combining to make people into time bombs.
I really hope not. I want to live. I’m not ready to go yet.
But all I can do is whatever I can do to get healthy. Both physically and psychologically. I will float along the edges of my major disasters hoping to find a path between them that will lead me to something a lot like actual health.
Or at the very least, a non-painful, non-gross, non-scary form of debility.
That’s not too much to ask, is it?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.