I am sure going to miss having legs.

Discovered yet another bit of fuckery today. There is now an area on the left side of my left foreleg which is all messed up.

It’s discolored – a nice scalded pink with undertones of boiled lobster. It’s also smooth because for some reason it’s hairless. The muscle and flesh underneath is weirdly hard and tender to the touch. Burns.

No idea how long it’s been like that. It feels recent. Doesn’t make much of a difference,

And I know I should be upset about it and I should be making an appointment with my family doctor, Doctor Chao, so he can take a look at it. It seems pretty nasty, when I try to look at it objectively, and I should be taking it more seriously.

But I can’t. I am too tired, too stressed, too overwhelmed. All I can do is register it with a kin of dull apathy and ad it to the list of stuff I will deal with eventually. Probably. Maybe.

Clearly my legs aren’t going to be around much longer. There’s the lesions all over the left that have been there forever. A few on the right, too, I get all kind of random pains in them ever day. Burning. Electric zaps. Sudden cramps. Stabbing pains. And so on.

My feet too.

Guess this is what comes of rampant out of control diabetes combined with sitting on my ass all day. The circulation in my legs and feet must be all kind of fucked up and that is in turn causing neurological issues and well, here we are.

No idea what the deal with this new raw red patch is. But I have had some incidents of a burning sensation like I have been scalded yet there’s no sign on the skin lately.

So my best guess is that it’s lactic acid buildup. Again. They say it happens when you are repeatedly deprived of oxygen, and that’s my local definition of “sleep”.

I am sure there are treatments for that kind of thing. If I got an appointment with Doctor Chao, he could totally hook me up with that shit.

Maybe tomorrow. After my appointment with Doctor Caswell.

Speaking of whom, I have not heard anything about my new glucometer yet. The one the government will actually pay for.

And apparently I am seeing Doctor Caswell tomorrow morning, and not on the 29th like I thought. Makes me wonder if it’s worth the effort when I have so little to report.

I suppose I can cadge another sensor off of her. One that hopefully will not crap out after three days like the last one.

You’d think for $100 a pop retail, the goddamned things would at least be reliable.

Then again, why? They have us diabetics at their lack of mercy. We need glucometers in order to live.

So why not juice us for as much as possible like any smart gang of extortionists?

In summation, everything is fucked. Every part of my body is crashing and burning on some level and I don’t know if I will live to see another Christmas.

But enough about me. How are you doing?

---

Is darkness real?

Well, okay, I might make it to Christmas.

But Easter? Fuggedaboudid.

As you can no doubt tell, I have been really depressed lately. I really feel like the walls are closing in on me and soon this rickety little shack on the midnight tundra that is my only shelter will fall on me and doom me forever.

There is so much wrong with me. Fresh horrors emerge regularly. This scalded area on the inside of my left foreleg is proof of that.

My body is busily dreaming up new ways to destroy itself.

And I just can’t handle it. It’s all too much. I feel completely overwhelmed. I couldn’t handle real life back when I was fairly healthy.

I sure as fuck can’t handle it now that my life is on fire in ten different places all at once.

But what can I do? There’s nobody else to handle things for me. If I can’t handle it, nobody can, and I wish I was mentally and physically the sort of person whom that would galvanize into action but I am not.

Instead, it makes me want to lay down, give up, and die.

Die rather than take charge of your own life??

More like die rather than do the impossible.

Let me put it like this : gun to your head, could you fly? You have all the incentive in the world, so…. just flap your arms and fly.

It’s not that fucking simple, is it?

But of course, seeing as I am a licensed and registered^[1] crazy person, I have no idea how much of my feeling of doom is realistic. From a detached point of view, it might seem mostly probable that my mental illness is making things seem much worse than they are and I will still be here years from now.

And I can’t deny the influence of that part of me that wants to die. I had a particularly bad moment earlier today. One moment I was contently soaking up sun and fresh air by sticking my head out my bathroom mirror a bit, the next I was looking down at the ground and wondering if I could fit through the window and how much it would hurt when I hit the ground and whether the fall would kill me, ^[2]

This is bad. That is beyond suicidal ideation and into suicidal thoughts. The difference, f course, is plans.

Ideation is just a moment of feeling like you could imagine jumping out that window. It passes without fuss because it’s just a passing thought.

But suicidal thoughts involve a strong urge to actually do the thing. A longing, a craving, a soul crying out for oblivion.

And a mind that starts figuring out the logistics.

This scares me. And I don’t know what to do about it. As far as I know, I don’t have the option of just going into an asylum because I am feeling death-y.

They make you do something much crazier before they let you in. Which tends to mean a crime or a suicide attempt.

I don’t wanna do either of those.

So I have emailed my therapist. Doctor Costin. I pasted my description of the incident into the email. Hopefully he will know what to do.

The fool has given me 24 hour access to him.

May God have mercy on his soul. 😛

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

In order to get better on a psychological level, I need to balance out my highly unstable personality by learning to act without the benefit of forethought sometimes.

And somehow be okay with that.

Be okay with acting on instinct, without any chance to think things through logically and select the best response. Be okay with going with my gut. Firing from the hip. Acting in an impromptu and extemporaneous manner.

Just uh…. going for it, basically.

I am getting the stunned and paralyzed anxiety sweat just thinking about it.

Because the prospect scares the hot buttery bejesus out of me. I can’t help but read it as total anarchy. I have extremely little experience with making decisions via instinct and emotion and everything in my soul says that doing so can only lead to chaos and disaster on a life-rending scale.

Because what the fuck do my instincts know, right? How can they possibly make intelligent decisions leading to positive outcomes without understanding the whole situation and picking the best option based on that understanding?

I might as well be making decisions base on coin tosses or dice rolls.

And yet I know that’s not true. My kind of thinking is quite rare and the world is full of (and run by) people who are way dumber than me and who therefore have no choice but to go with their gut most of the time.

And they do fine. Much better than I o, that’s for sure. They are out there leading rich, fulfilling, robust lives and I am stuck here rotting away in the doldrums of insanity.

Stupid is as stupid does. I does a lot of stupid.

So how is this possible? It must be that the more you rely on your instincts, the smarter they get. Mine are quite stupid because I have been labouring under this delusional pseudo-rationalist regime where I avoid situations where I have to make rapid, emotional decisions at any cost.

And that costs plenty. It costs so much that it has led to my current life where I am so deep down scared of the world that I am trapped in a jail with no locks

It is tragic beyond words when you are scared of your own adrenaline.

So I want to learn to relax and let things come to me in realtime some of the time. This is definitely the sort of thing where exposure is he only cure.

This also really fucking scares me. Exposure is one of my worst fears. That’s kind of what the whole avoidant personality disorder trip is all about : hiding.

Exposure is the opposite of hiding.

So it’s not going to be easy. I will have to force myself to go against all those self-denying instincts and turn directly towards the light and face the truth.

The real truth. The kin that is visceral, not intellectual. The kind that does not allow you to keep living life like it’s a game of chess.

Because it isn’t. Life is a sport and the ball is headed right for your head.

Whatcha gonna do?

More after the break.

---

Death upon rising

Well I finally twigged to the pattern :

I feel really, really terrible when I get out of bed.

Seems obvious in retrospect but here we are.

It happens even if I haven’t slept, although sleeping makes it ten times worse. I end up feeling absolutely wretched, with my head pounding and my breath short and a pain like a full body toothache.

It’s like I can feel my bone grinding against each other.

That can’t be good.

Things are just as bad if not worse on the emotional level. I become extremely depressed and feel very very low. Despair and misery flow through me in waves and it’s only by hard won internal discipline that I manage to remember that this too will pass and if I just hang in there, I will feel better.

One of these days I might not make it though.

I get so damned tired.

And it can last for hours. Hours of feeling terrible both physically and emotionally. Time spent just sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for the world to make sense again. Waiting for this choking miasma to relax its grip on me so I can resume living.

No rush. It’s not like I have anything worth doing to do.

So why do I feel so bad? I think part of it is that my sinuses and nose and Eustachian tubes get clogged up as I sleep or lay down. That would explain the headache and body ache. If so, I can tackle that just by remembering to clear my outlets when I wake.

But I think there is a large circulatory factor as well. My heart isn’t doing a very good job right now and I think that leads to blood pooling in various places when I lay down.

That’s very much a not good thing, because when I shift or get up, a whole lot of blood moves from one place to another very rapidly and my diabetes-ravaged circulatory system can’t handle that.

That’s how strokes and aneurisms happen, kids.

So I am trying to learn to move more slowly and gently so that the blood goes back to where it belongs in a calmer and more orderly fashion.

After all, there’s a chance I might actually live through all this.

Despite that, the feeling that the shadows are closing in on me continues to grow.

It’s very hard to determine how realistic they are. I have a lot of legitimate health issues but most of them aren’t fatal or even severe. I also have depression, which is well known to heavily bias one towards a more negative interpretation of events.

And of course, there is always the very sick and traitorous part of my min that wants to die, or at least end up in the hospital with all responsibility to be a grownup removed and nice people taking care of me 24/7.

i am such a prime candidate for Munchausen’s Syndrome.

Well time to lie down and doom myself again.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Feeling really spacey and out of it right now.

Like yesterday, but a little worse. Having trouble staying focused on the screen. Mind keeps wandering off as I get lost in my own thoughts and have to then gently but firmly remind myself that I am, like, doing something.

I keep getting really sleepy right before I would normally blog/eat. So then I have to take a nap instead of a meal. Then I wake up all groggy and messed up and poof, I gotta make the words when it feels like my head is full of ether soaked cotton balls,.

Gee, look at all them pretty colors.

Just kidding. I’m not the fun kind of crazy.

Still, I reserve the right to go full on wackadoodle if things get bad enough. Just forsake all attempts to stay in touch with reality and let imagination and reality merge and live entirely for my own entertainment and to hell with everything else.

Let other people handle that shit. Not fair or noble to make others deal with reality for me but fuck it.

Just stick me in a nice quiet rubber room somewhere and every couple of days turn me towards the light. I’ll be fine.

Honestly, the prospect of being in an asylum kind of appeals to me. All my basic needs taken care of, hot and cold running therapy, plenty of interesting fellow nutcases with whom I can socialize, and maybe try to help with my amateur therapist skills.

They probably wouldn’t let me have my computer, though. Which would be a mistake as with this here compu-box of mine, I would be a placid and complicit maniac.

I might even be very helpful in keeping the other crackpots calm and happy.

Take the computer away, though, and watch the fuck out. I would have to find other ways to keep this massive mind of mine occupied and few of those would, shall we say, align with the institutional goals of the facility.

I could be one disruptive loony if forced to entertain myself. You really don’t want a bored me loose in your facility. The combination of my incredible IQ, a penchant for mischief, and no sense of responsibility for the peace and quiet of the ward would make for quite the explosive cocktail.

Kind of like Brad Pitt from 13 Monkeys. But without the paranoia.

I’ve seen to the very bottom of paranoid schizophrenia. It always has been and always will be ultimately an empty intellectual exercise that pretends to offer deep insight into the true nature of things but is, in fact, mere mental masturbation.

Besides that, it seems like a lot of work. All that red string and corkboard and going through the trash at the DMV.

Still, I have wondered if my deep commitment to a pragmatic, no-nonsense, sensible view of the world based on logic and science is, at its core, a way of keeping myself sane despite the chaos of my inner world.

My grip on reality might be slim due to how much time I spend in virtual life, but that slim grip is very, very strong.

More after the break.

---

The last of the good days

I’ve had this concept in my head ever since I was a neurotic worrywart of a kid : “This could be the last of the good days. “

In other words, these moments we are experiencing right now could be the moments we look back on as the good old days after some horrible tragedy makes life much, much worse, so much so that it will make today seem like paradise.

Well that’s about how I feel right now. With my health problems piling up and shadows gathering throughout the land and slowly closing in, I feel like this time I am living in right now might be as good as it gets for a very long time.

It only gets worse – so much worse – from here.

I get dizzy a lot lately. Pretty much every time I stand up, I am going to be dizzy for a while. Tonight, when I did my shopping at the Ironwood Sav-on Foods, I was dizzy when I got out of the car and I just kept right on being dizzy through most of my shopping too.

In fact, I still feel a little dizzy. I’m starting to feel like it’s my default state now. My grandmother, may she rest in peace, had severe vertigo before she died.

Diabetes too, come to think of it.

And I have been getting these burning feelings in patches on my legs. It feels like the skin has been scalded, but there is no discoloration or anything. Just the feeling.

I am worried that I have toxic lactic acid levels again and it’s starting to eat away at my muscles – I am literally burning from the inside.

Plus there have been all kinds of weird pains and other sensations all over my legs. I am starting to think I might quite literally be on my last legs. Sooner or later, these poor abused legs of mine are going to go byebye.

I’ll miss them when they’re gone.

I really feel like the sun is setting on my life. I am still going to do what I can to become healthier but it is feeling more and more like a losing game lately.

And I feel so tired sometimes. Like all I want to do is just give up and go to bed and sleep till the world is a nicer place for me to be in.

‘Cause right now it suckity suck suck SUCKs.

I wish I could go check myself into a hospital and have them take care of me until I have my heart surgery and recover from it.

Just show up and say “I am clearly incapable of running my own life, so I hereby surrender control of it to you until such time I am deemed fit to self-govern, ”

That would buy me some time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Don’t really feel like writing right now.

As often is the case, I would rather still be in bed, sleeping. Having another of my sleepy days, I guess.

And when I am sleepy like this, it makes it hard to focus my mind enough to write. As I type this, I am having to keep leading my mind back to the words on the screen after they wander off like stray sheep along some long forgotten path.

And that’s, like, irritating.

Oh well. I will get through it. I always do. Writing whether I feel like it or not is one of my only stable bits of self-discipline in my life, and I treasure it.

Besides, even when I really don’t feel like writing, I know that it is something I need to do. Having this outlet for my thoughts and emotions is a key part of how I cope with life no matter how hard making the words happen gets.

And right now it’s a distinctly uphill battle.

---

I guess I am otherwise feeling okay right now.

Maybe my depression is just asleep. I dunno. But I feel good. I can feel a bit of sunshine in my soul and it feels good.

Thaw me out, you darling little sunbeam. Defrost this freezer burned flesh of mine so it can start to heal.

I don’t care that it will hurt. Pain is better than numbness.

If you’re in pain, you’re alive. Numbness is death.

And I want to live, god damn it. I want to feel wholesome and healthy and strong. I want to feel awake and alive and aware instead of sleepwalking through life in a fog.

Fuck this fog, Sure, it hides what I can’t handle (i.e., practically everything) from me but that only keeps me dependent on it.

I would (and will) be far better off if I threw away my shield of intellectualism and gave up on the illusion of control and just experiences life directly and openly without the safety of this tiny bunker I have dug in my soul.

Life life in realtime for once. Act based on my feelings like I did as a child. Let my heart be my guide and see the world as a place of unfolding wonder instead of the heartless gulag I see it as now.

My world would be a nice place if I didn’t hide from it all the time. If I stayed in the world and dealt with things and fixed my issues, I wouldn’t feel the need to flee it so much.

But I am not there yet. I might not get there until after my triple bypass. I still have too much pain to process. Too much of me is still dead asleep.

So when I try to turn and face things, the fear and pain overwhelms me and smothers whatever tiny flame I had managed to ignite and that feels a bit too much like dying.

Well I will die a million deaths a day in order to find my way back to the world of the living once again.

More after the break.

---

The Paralysis Paradox

I admit, that title is a bit cute even for me.

Anyhow, what it refers to is the devil’s bargain of depression wherein the depression takes the pain away, but extracts a very heavy price for it.

It’s all about numbness. The depression starts as a react against enormous pain. So enormous, in fact, that it could destroy one’s mind, or at least cripple it.

So it starts as the opposite reaction, countering pain with numbness. This is akin to how the body produces pain-killing endorphins in response to injury.

And that would be a perfectly sound reaction for trauma up to certain level of intensity. The kind the mind can heal from on its own. The numbness handles and manages the pain level while the mind recovers from the trauma, and goes away when the injury has finally been healed.

But some psychic injuries, like some physical injuries, are far too severe to be able to simply heal over time.

Such as, say, being raped by a stranger at the age of 4.

To pick a random example.

Thus, that numbness never goes away. And its icy grip can seem like blessed relief or soul destroying hoarfrost depending on the context.

Because the numbness is essentially paralysis. Sure, it takes the pain away but it does so by taking everything away. All feelings, good, bad, or indifferent.

And the thing is, your mind knows what feelings should be present. And it responds to a lack of certain inputs with a silent scream, whether it’s a missing limb or an inability to feel certain kinds of emotional pain.

Or pleasure, for that matter.

So the numbness hurts. You would be better off without it.

But you are also totally dependent on it.

Because you still have a massive mental wound you can’t heal. And the numbness is still the only thing keeping it from overwhelming you. And so you have to keep paying for this rather expensive treatment no matter what it is costing you.

Even if it is costing you nearly your entire life force and leaves you unable to do anything but write blog entries and play video games all day.

Again, just to take a random example.

And so the paradox reveals itself. In order to survive, someone like me has to feed most of his soul to this demon of annihilation within. The very thing that is killing you is also the thing keeping you alive.

The only solution is to heal that original trauma. No wound, no numbness. And that’s what therapy is for.

It’s also what this blog is for. I release the pain a little at a time as I put it into words, and hopefully some day I will be healthy enough to heal the rest.

I wish there was a way to hurry it along. But sick people heal really slowly.

And there is so much healing left to do,

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Today was Therapy Thursday Plus One.

Why? Because Therapy Friday doesn’t alliterate, dammit.

Due to scheduling issues regarding an upcoming vacation, my therapist had to do my therapy today rather than the usual Thursday.

No therapy next Thursday either. We won’t be talking again till the 39th, which is after my Very Busy Period.

It was a good session. I told him about feeling hopeless and powerless lately due to all my goddamned medical issues.

The future does not look good for me. With everything that is wrong with me, all I can see in my future is a steep decline into an even crappier existence.

My knees hurt a lot lately. One or both are probably going to pop soon.

That should be fun.

But Doctor Chao told me that there was absolutely nothing that could be done to fix cartilage damage. Not a single thing. They can replace your heart, give people brand new hips that work just like the originals, even make medications customized to your very own personal genome, but cartilage?

Might as well be living in the paleolithic era.

Which is total bullshjt. I bet if I was a superstar athlete they could fix my fucking knees. Somehow, medical science would find a way to do it.

It’s a fucking miracle.

So I should really go see Doctor Chao about it. Get yet another medical issue making its way through the medical maze. That way I will at least be able to say I did what I could if the system once again decides I am not worth saving.

Probably not gonna call any time soon though. I have too much happening in the next couple of weeks as is.

My therapist Doctor Costin did something amazing near the end of the session. I was talking about how I had money saved and had no idea what to do with it, and that I couldn’t even imagine what would make my life a happier one.

Then I mumbled something about winning the lottery.

And he said “Wait, what would you do with the money? ”

I said “I dunno, Probably buy real estate.

“Why? What for?”

“To live in it, I guess. “

“Really? In what kind of place?”

“I dunno. Somewhere comfortable and pleasant and cozy and clean. “

“THAT’s IT! You should hire people to clean your room!”

And he’s right, god damn it. That would definitely do a lot to make my life better and it is fully within my ability to make happen.

Crap. Now what do I do?

Kidding. I am going to arrange it. It might take a while for me to get started on it, but it is going to happen. I now know that there is no reason not to do it and that it will definitely make things a whole lot better for me, so I am officially looking forward to it now.

I just have to overcome my usual resistance to actually doing things and the nameless fear that comes with it.

That might take a while. But I am on final approach. I am going to get there

More after the break.

---

Here to clean up this town

Haven’t contacted Molly Maid yet, but it’s coming. Maybe tomorrow.

One factor I need to handle is shame. This room is a more than just dusty. There are blood stains and “other” stains and all the signs of someone really, really not coping with life as we know it.

That’s why I figure it’s going to cost me as much as a full apartment job. Because between the bedroom and the en suite, there is def an apartment’s worth of cleaning.

And then some, probably.

And I am going to want this whole little world of mine sanitized. Top to bottom, wall to wall, every surface, clean them all.

And once everything is spic and/or span, I will keep it that way. Possibly obsessively, seeing as I tend to go from one extreme to another.

Oh well, I am perfectly willing to risk becoming a tad OCD if it means I stop living like an incontinent hobo junkie.

Heck, I might even pony up for a regular maid service some day. The classic “lady (or laddie) who comes in twice a week” type deal.

That will make more sense when I am a well paid and important writer.

After all, I can’t waste my precious creative energies on HOUSEWORK!

Not strictly true. I can. I just don’t wanna.

I’ve often fantasized about living the life of a pampered author. Living in a hotel room. Unlimited room service budget. Living space kept clean and neat and tidy without my having to lift a finger. Excellent air conditioning. Comfortable.

And, of course, a top flight gaming computer for recreation. Even I can’t write all the time. I would need both games and naps.

And the occasional rentable companion. Rawr.

All that in place, I could be one hell of a writer. I have scads of creative energy waiting to be tapped. I’ve never even glimpsed the limits of it.

My time in VFS showed that I can do creative work in half an hour that is better than what most people can do in an entire day.

I can totally imagine myself making fat stacks o’ cash as a high level freelancer. You need it tomorrow? No problem, I’m your guy. You need a full treatment by Monday? I will have it to for your approval on Saturday.

There’s got to be a lot of money in being able to do good work fast.

Whether or not it’s also cheap depends on where I am in my career.

Just starting out? sure. Well known as a genius and a miracle worker? Not on your life.

Miracles ain’t cheap, kid.

First I would have to get over my issues and go back to UpWork. Or find another similar site. I had this freelance thing going at one point, and I can do it again dammit.

My massive talents cry out to be used!

And quite frankly, it’s been getting on my nerves.

I will talk to you nice people tomorrow.

Went to see Doctor Vaezi this morning.

Appointment was at 8:10 am, which is a tad early for me. I am normally asleep then.

But it was totally worth it because I whipped through the usual testing in the space of ten minutes max. It was quite nice.

Helps that I am totally used to the tests and they don’t have to spend time laboriously explaining stuff to me, too.

Chin on the chinrest, look straight ahead, focus on the hot air balloon, flash, easy.

Doctor Vaezi told me what I already know : the left eye is still borked. Surprisingly, the right eye is fine. It’s just a little blurry because it’s doing more of the work.

And as I thought, he stuck a needle in my eye. That anti-inflammation stuff he put in that eye before the surgery. Feels nice and cool in there, so I assume it’s working.

One little problem : this time, I felt it.

Dunno why. Between him and his assistant, they put a ton of the freezing stuff in there. Must have been like 20 drops.

I can only assume that somehow, the stuff didn’t reach the injection site. So I got stabbed in the eye and it felt like it.

Not nearly as bad as it would have been without the numbing, I assume.

It was “Ouch! Hey that hurt!”, not “AAAH MY EYE! MY FUCKING EYE! AAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAH! OH, WHAT A WORLD!”.

Hopefully, the anti-inflammatory will work its wonder and at the very least make it so both my eyes are equally wonky.

In a good way.

Please don’t make the right eye as bad as the left.

---

Otherwise I have felt relatively relaxed and groovy today, at least compared to the crushing existential hellzone of yesterday.

Not that those are all bad either.

I get shit done.

Luckily, I didn’t have therapy today. I don’t exactly have a lot of spoons on my best of days and having more than one “thing” in a day would have been very stressful.

Which is sad.

But it’s the reality I have to live in.

---

Doing my best to stay pissed off about my lousy life situation.

Because anger is good when it comes to change, at least for me. It’s when I am mad that I gain courage and resolve and a willingness to do what it takes to succeed.

It cuts through my usual flaccid ennui and wakes me up inside.

Sadly, it burns hot but not for long. The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and all that. Eventually I will burn up all my reserve fuel and go back to being darkly depressed and unable to act again.

But I will stay angry for as long as I can, anyhow.

Doing so even improves my self-worth. Being mad about my life means I think I deserve better, and that means I value myself and my well-being.

Which makes for a nice change.

Normally I care as little about myself as everyone else does.

More after the break.

---

My fragile heart

I have to admit that my having a heart defect really works on a metaphorical level.

Almost too well, really. If I was writing the story of my life, I would be very embarrassed to have put something so “on the nose” in it.

But seriously, I have been accusing myself of being weak of heart for years, though not in those exact words.

For years now, though, I have known that my main problem is not being able to get my engine into gear, so to speak.

All engine, no drive.

Turns out that might have been a very positive adaptation that has kept me from having a heart attack or a stroke so far.

After all, if I never really engage my warp drive and keep puttering around on impulse power, the warp nacelles never blow up, right?

Nerdiest metaphors online!

Makes me wonder how long my heart has been this bad and I just didn’t know it because my lifestyle is so sedentary.

No really, that was a health strategy this whole time! Honest!

If my physically weak heart really is a major factor in my emotionally weak psychological condition, then I really want that operation ASAP.

But the fact that Doctor Nuen has “triaged” me to first one surgeon then the other doesn’t fill me with hope.

Instead, it triggers the hell out of my feeling that nobody wants to deal with me and nobody values me and people consider me a worthless burden and are about as eager to care for me as if I was a violently incontinent puppy.

That is probably just my own rampant mental illness talking but it is how I feel right now. Like the medical system doesn’t consider my case important or urgent at all despite the fact that there’s 90 percent blockage in three places in my heart and 80 percent in another place, and 50 percent in a few others.

Apparently, my “ticking time bomb” is their “Meh, whatev. ”

Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Hopefully my feelings on this matter are entirely baseless and insane and it’s perfectly normal to have open-heart surgery treated like hand-me-down clothing.

Trust me. I was the youngest of four children in the Seventies. I know of what I speak.

Never bothered me though. Clothes is clothes.

Hopefully, when my heart is repaired, I will gain a whole new lease on life, with built-in insurance and an option to renew.

If the end of all this is my having an engine that works, it will all be worth it.

Though ironically, after the operation, I will have four to six days of recovery in the hospital and three months of mandatory taking it easy.

Oh well. It’s not like I was looking to pole vault. It’s the emotional effect I seek. I want to feel strong and capable instead of always wimping out when my weak fuses blow.

I want to be able to wield all this power I possess, dammit!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I do not feel like blogging right now.

I feel tired and sleepy and ill an a little cranky and all I want to do is go back to bed.

But I gotta eat, at least. Bad things happen when I miss meals. And if I am sitting here eating, I might as well blog.

So here I am.

But um, lower your expectations accordingly.

Save me, oh Diet Coke!

---

I guess I am having a sleepy day. Those are always irritating.

But what the fuck. This too shall pass. I will eventually get caught up on sleep and things will go back to my marginally preferable “normal”.

I’m still feeling pretty tired and depressed. My days seem long and pointless. I keep telling myself that the solution is to work on something meaningful, like making music or a podcast or something, but so far I lack the energy to make the jump.

One of these days, though, the stars will align and I will level up and start doing more to express myself creatively and dissipate more of my overflowing mental energy.

And that, in turn, will make me a calmer, happier Fru.

But something in me has to die first. And it’s taking forever to do it.

Oh well, that’s what my moping about depressed is for. I am confident that I am processing a lot of old emotion right now, and the only way to get rid of suppressed emotion is to feel it, so here I am, feeling it.

So I guess I am doing something productive after all.

I’m sitting around feeling miserable!

My mother would be so proud.

---

I feel so forlorn lately.

Like I am abandoned and adrift and alone, left to rot in some obscure and meaningless place that most people don’t even know exists.

Under the stairs somewhere, or in a broom closet the janitor doesn’t even use any more. Or maybe left on the doorstep of a defunct shipping company, or stuck to the understand of a jetty that is rotting away quietly on a man-made lake next to a failed holiday resort from the Fifties.

Hey look, they had paddle boats.

I feel so powerless to control or even affect my own fate. The power just won’t come. I have this vast amount of energy latent in this incredible mind of mine and yet I can’t use any of it to actually get me anywhere.

Not with all that nameless fear choking off the pathways between the energy and action.

But every day, the fires within grow, and I get closer to freedom. Soon I will have burned away all the garbage in my mind and melted the walls of this ice palace and I will finally be able to defeat the final boss and be free.

Until then, I have the frustration of thwarted ambition to contend with.

I am not capable of just relaxing and waiting to convalesce. I’m too restless for that. Part of me will always be a tiger in a cage, pacing back and forth looking for a way out even though it knows there will never be one.

Finding more things to do with my energies seems like the only escape.

If only I could.

More after the break,

---

Nothing I can do

This feeling of being helpless to improve my situation is started to really piss me off.

I mean, what’s WITH this bullshit? I have a truly incredible mind. I’m not even sure HOW incredible because I have never found its limit. It’s a one in a billion gift^[1] and it means that I have vast powers at my command and enormous strength at my fingertips.

So how DARE something as weak and pathetic as mental illness hold me back?

I AM A TITAN, GOD DAMN IT.

An angry one, in fact. Angry because he’s so goddamned sick and tired of living a life of groveling, sniveling cowardice when I should be in the intellectual upper upper crust wowing the world with what my amazing mind can do.

Where’s my fucking TED talk?

It is an outrage that life has left me to rot like it has. If the world was fair, I would be rich, famous, and beloved. I’d spend my days making great art and my nights among lively, interesting, intelligent people who are great conversationalists.

Some of whom I would fuck!

I’d be the kind of person the media comes to for reactions to things because no matter what the event or issue is, they know I will have something unique and interesting that really stirs the pot to say about it.

Maybe I would even have a highly influential blog, or YouTube channel, or whatever.

I certainly should not be living this cramped up little life. At the very least, I deserve a modest middle-class standard of living. Enough income to be comfortably ensconced in a nice house in a nice family neighborhood with a car and a back yard and a heck of a lot of pets.

Or at the very least, three or four cats.

Point is, I deserve a lot better than this life of treading water in the doldrums and gnawing on my wounds. It pisses me off solid that I ended up in a psychological cul de sac that has robbed me of the first 25+ years of my adulthood.

And counting, god damn it.

But just you wait. One of these days I am going to harness the power of my towering rage and bust right out of this place. I’m going to hit this world like the wrath of an avenging angel and nothing will ever be the same afterward.

I’ve been hoarding power for a long time. High time I spent it.

Old philosophy : Via daily writings, I shall probe my psyche and express my pain so that, via incremental progress, I shall one day be somewhat sane.

New philosophy : HULK SMASH!!!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,.

I’ve not had any medical appointments for the last two weeks or so.

But that’s about to chain because I have a ton of them between the 21st and the 30th.

I’m going to cut n’ paste them here both as a record of this time in my life and so that Julian gets a heads up about where he will be driving me.

---

July 15, at 8:10 AM : My opthamologist, Doctor Vaezi – REaaaaally lookinf forward to this one because I am reaaaaally hoping he can fix my eyes. Things are so goddamned blurry. I can’t read from a paperback at all. Everything more than a few feet away from me is a blur. I can read the computer screen but it’s a struggle.

I really hope I haven’t fucked things up permanently.

July 23rd, 11:30 am : Back to IRIS. AKA the people who sold me the glasses I no longer wear. I am going to go back to see them in order to get new lenses to match my new post-cataract surgery eyeballs. Would be nice to be able to see again. Then again, if the visit to Doctor Vaezi goes well, I might not need glasses any more.

To be honest, I have no preference at this point. Having to wear glasses again would be no biggie, seeing as I wore them my entire life until like six weeks ago. But having my new eyeballs just plain work without them would be cool too.

July 25th, 8:15 AM : My cardiologist, Doctor Ebtia. – Presumably, we will discuss the results of my heart ultrasound and such. Seems kind of redundant seeing as I am already in the pipeline for heart surgery. But she’s the one who got the ball rolling with the tests she ordered so I suppose it’s still her show.

July 25th, 12:45 PM at Kwantlen: My second injection (!!!). Finally! So glad I won’t have to wait till the middle of September like I was originally told. Apparently the four month between shot delay was them being properly cautious. But the initial round of shots went so darn well that they were able to advance their timetable and now I am going to finally be fully vaxxed and be able to relax about this shit.

July 27, 7:15 am : Heart ultrasound at St Paul’s. Another trip to St. Paul’s. Also seems a tad redundant seeing as I am already en route to heart surgery. But my current surgeon (my third or fourth) Doctor Lichtenstein told me that he wants to see the results of that before he books my surgery. So whatev.

July 29, 11:40 : My sleep and diabetes specialist, Doctor Caswell. Yay,I get to see Sherri again. She’s so nice.

Hopefully I will have my new paid for by the government glucometer by then. It’s been frustrating to be unable to get a blood sugar reading because that fucking sensor died on me and so I can’t do my insulin.

I was so close to getting my level into the healthy zone too. Lowest was 11.7 and for a diabetic like me, anything under 10 is considered good.

Oh well, Guess I’ll just let high blood sugar ravage my organs for a while longer.

---

I think that’s it. It’s going to be a busy time for me.

I’m so in demand! Just what IS a boy to do?

More after the break.

---

We, the wretched

We, the wretched
The worthless and discarded
The charitably tolerated
The broken and the doomed
We say this prayer

We, the useless
The barely born burdens that bear down upon the backs and legs of the good and noble and strong people of the world because we are unable to support ourselves

It’s not even malicious. We’re too tired for that.

We the heavy brothers and weak sisters who are so lacking in value and validity that they call us invalids

We the toxic and confused
The fractures and contused
The beat down and abused
The mirthlessly amused

We offer these poor words as our prayers

We who dwell in poverty’s shower because it’s all that we deserve.

So sayeth society. So sayeth us all.

More than we deserve, really, because we are useless to the great machines and therefore worse than useless to the society that, out of the greatest of kindnesses, permits us to skulk in the shadows of worthier things

We exist so that people can reassure themselves that they are merciful.

You’re welcome, by the way

Instead, we gaze out at the busy productive world and wonder what it is like to be useful and worthy and good.

We wonder if any of those people out there, with their jobs and their lives and their involvements, ever stop and appreciate what a gift having purpose can be.

Probably not. After all, who thanks the air?

We the wretched beseech you, spare a thought for those who dwell in the dark now and then, and take this the only gift that is ours to give : our suffering.

It may not look like much, but it means a lot to us

And we want you to have it

---

Hmmm, poetry. A tad pompous and pretentious, I suppose, but there’s good stuff in there somewhere, I am sure

The imagery, as always, is top notch.

I’m an imagistic writer. They’re my specialty.

---

I’ve been peeing a lot lately. That’s not a good sign.

And as usual when I go through one of these phases, I am sure that output vastly exceeds input. I cannot possibly be drinking enough pee this much.

If this keeps up, I will dehydrate to the point of becoming a powder.

And I have been feeling very tired and depressed today. Right now, all I really want to do is turn out all the lights and go to bed. Forever.

And yet, I know there’s a chance I will suddenly reverse polarity and be uncomfortably energetic and twitchy.

I just can’t win. No matter how the variables shift, the equation still equals misery.

Oh well, Time to rend myself unto the darkness.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

What is the point of this wretched life of mine?

What is the point? What is it FOR? Why am I goddamned HERE?

And what I am I supposed to do with all this TIME? One of the main reasons I have become so deeply addicted to video games is so that I never have to wonder what to do with myself. I’m always going to be doing the exact same thing : playing video games.

Thus I avoid having to deal with the gaping, screaming, icy-toothed void that opens ahead of me when I try to confront the question of what I should or even want to do.

It’s the fear that causes it. Fear of choosing the “wrong” thing and being punished by the universe with pain and fear and regret for it.

The Infinite Hallway of Infinite Doors is only a nightmare because I feel like most of those doors lead to Hell and there is no way of knowing what the “right” one is before opening a door and committing myself, so the only “safety” is staying in the corridor and rotting away slowly till I die.

This is not rational in the slightest. There are lots of ways to know something about what is behind some of those doors. It’s pretty unlikely that deciding to go get a Slurpee will lead to my being hit by a falling satellite, for instance.

But meh. They only have one sugar free flavour and I am sick of it.

This feeling that life is like a game of Russian Roulette with five of the six chambers loaded is really holding me back. Holding me down. Keeping me stuck in a life I hate because it is so dull and unfulfilling and frustratingly limited that when I think about it, I want to smash everything in sight out of sheer dissatisfaction.

What has become of me is a goddamned outrage. I deserve so much better than this life of emotional paralysis and undignified decay. I have so much that I could contribute to the world if given a chance. All my wonderous talents and abilities yearn to be used to make the world a happier place (while also making me mad cash, of course.)

But it’s all locked away in this dungeon of fear with me. I have a mind the size of outer space but it’s useless to me as long as my soul is trapped in this disgusting cell.

But this is not my final fate. The rage in me grows stronger every day and some day soon I will burst free from this private hell and go rampaging through this world like some kind of horny Godzilla.

Until then, I will continue stoking my rage and frustrating and dissatisfaction with my stupid fucking life. My escape plan involves building up the fires of the id until they are hot enough to melt this petty little ice palace of mine and bust me out of here.

Some day I will be strong enough to walk free.

And then, watch the fuck out.

More after the break.

---

Big Green Machine

I like the “growing into Godzilla” idea. Very good id imagery. Kind of like turning into The Hulk or Mister Hyde, but with more big green peen.

Because it’s not just my rage that’s been locked in a cage for far too long. My lust is pawing at the door and whining to get out and get some fucking cock too.

If I ever come into a whole lot of money very suddenly, I am going to order myself a whole bevy of big-dicked male prostitutes and we are going to party.

I got an itch to scratch and it needs to be scratched HARD and for a LONG TIME.

Meanwhile, back in reality (sorta). after talking with my buddy Maelkoth about the fun he’s having in Elder Scrolls Online right now, I decided I want to re-install it and have some fun too.

It’s an Elder Scrolls themed MMORPG, and it’s the only one out of all the MMORPGs out there that managed to capture my interest beyond an initial trial phase.

Captured it pretty hard, in fact. More on that later.

So I went to reinstall it via Steam and discovered that it’s now 100 gig. Oy. Not entirely unexpected but still a bit of a shock.

Oh well. I will just set it to download and ignore it for a while. Should take like 12 hours.

But of course, it’s not that easy. Steam’s been doing this thing lately where a download will just pause part way through without even telling you.

It just displays “update needed”. Like, what the everlasting fuck? How can a game I’m in the middle of downloading need an update? Shouldn’t I be getting the latest version already? Or is it Steam that needs updating? If so, why can’t it tell me that?

So the download ended up taking closer to 24 hours because it would stop and I would have to notice that it had stopped and then go click a thing so it could resume.

And any process that starts with me noticing something is already doomed.

So finally I get the fucking thing downloaded, and run it, and it hangs.

Does not even get past the first loading screen. Motherfucking son of a sideways cunt.

Its inability to run is especially galling because according to Steam, I have played Elder Scrolls Online for a total of 1,612 hours.

This would seem to suggest that this machine of mine can. indeed, play the game.

It can play the fuck out of it.

So I have been poking and Googling about looking for a solution. But so far, all I have found is the usual useless bullshit. Solutions that tell me to go to menu options that are just plain not there. Extremely generic solutions that don’t address my particular problem. Extremely specific solutions for hardware I don’t own.

So I am feeling rather glum about that.

Even in the future nothin’ works.

I will keep trying, for a while at least. I want to play the goddamned thing. It’s an awesome game. I am sure they have added a bunch of cool shit in the last three or four years since I played.

Oh, and get this : when I went to ask someone on the official forum for ESO – it was GONE. The whole frigging thing is down. All I get is a blank screen.

I suppose I should try to figure out who I need to tell about THAT.

So I am feeling irritated and frustrated and a little depressed right now.

I wish I could just hire someone to fix my ESO issues for me.

Anyone out there up for the job?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,.

I’m actually a lot sicker than anyone knows.

I got problems I haven’t even gotten around to showing anyone or addressing yet.

:Like my feet and ankles have been cold and/or numb and/or tingling for a very long time now. I’ve never talked with anyone about it, not even my podiatrist.

Why? The bitter truth is that I have become used to it. It’s my normal now. It doesn’t even occur to me that it is a problem most of the time.

I am too goddamned adaptable.

Seems to be spreading up my legs, too. I suppose eventually I will be paralyzed and that will force me to deal with it.

I’d really rather not end up in a wheelchair or on crutches. Or a “scooter”.

Then there’s the fact that my nose has been running nonstop for the last year to year and a half. It really messes with my paranasal sinuses.

Honestly should get those checked out too. Pretty sure they are fucked up somehow. I might have a deviated septum, or something even worse.

My mother told me once that her dad, my Pepe, had serious sinus issues until he got an operation to fix them and then he felt a million times better.

Sounds good to me.

But that’s become part of my normal too. Sniffles, blowing my nose. sinus headaches, feeling like my head is being squeezed in the fist of a giant.

Bone grinding against bone. Feeling like my teeth are going to pop out because of the pressure. Constant ache in my jaw.

That’s normal, right?

Speaking of teeth, my dental situation is presumably beyond nightmarish because I never brush or floss. It’s been decades since I did.

Hard to fit it into my busy schedule of wasting my fucking life.

And it hurts, and makes me bleed extensively, and those are powerful disincentives. Specially when depression already makes a lot of simple things nearly impossible.

I honestly feel like I have no power to change things sometimes. Like I am locked into a life where it seems like I am in control. but in reality I am just a helpless spectator to me own slow pathetic demise.

Gee, that brick wall sure is coming up fast. Guess it won’t be long till I crash into it and die in a flaming wreck.

Sure wish I could like, steer, or something. I guess.

But that would too much responsibility for me.

And you know I don’t want to be like this. I want to be strong and masterful and in command of my life and my destiny. I want to have the strength and confidence to truly be free to make my mark on the world and get the kind of life I deserve.

But instead, I sit, and I rot, and watch myself slowly fall apart, know that this decay will eventually kill me but too numb to feel the fear that should make me care.

The knowledge that I should care and that my life is an increasingly deadly slow-burning crisis just increases the pressure that is keeping me paralyzed in the first place.

So really, I’m ultimately going to die of some kind of motivational logjam. All my healthy impulses are trapped behind one mother of a bottleneck in my mind and so nothing gets through and all I can do is let the days go by while I die.

Here comes the waterfall.

Anyone seen my paddle?

More after the break.

---

What I leave behind

These words, mostly.

For the most part, when I die all I leave behind is all these words I’ve written. I am a dedicated diarist, though a tad lacking in focus for that role.

That’s because I have a lot of things I have to say and talking about the weather or news events of the day does not rate amongst them.

I’m not looking to capture my times. God knows, in this modern world, there is no chance that future historians will have to wonder what it was like back now.

Just read the millions of words written about it every goddamned day.

No, my writing is extremely personal. It comes from deep within me, and expresses the thoughts, feelings, and ideas that mean the most to me.

Granted, that tends to be stuff about my depression.

The reason for that should be obvious.

That’s why this blog has no format. Neither does it have a topic. This blog exists for me to express whatever needs to be expressed when I sit down and write, and that’s impossible to the point of absurdity to predict beforehand.

So I make shit up as I go. I improvise. There is never a plan or a script or even an outline. I just sit down and write.

Sounds crazy, and it is.

Even crazier is the fact that I pull it off. Day after day, week after week, year after year. I write in this thing twice a day and have done so for almost a decade now.

And every single time, I write something that you’d swear was the result of a lot of time and energy and perfectionistic effort.

Nope. I just do it. It’s all intuition. All the perfecting and balancing and whatnot happens during the act of creation,

It just comes out of the oven that way.

The closest thing to editing I do is I rephrase things as I am typing. I will be constructing a sentence and intuit that something seems off, and then fix that thing on the fly.

After that, though, I just keep going. By all common sense and logic, that should not work, These words should come out as a sloppy pile of incoherent notions strung together haphazardly into no particular shape at all.

And I am not saying that is not what happens. It is.

It’s just that my incomprehensible goop is much more polished and perfected than most people’s hard-won final rafts.

Story of my life, really. I outperform the hardworking keeners without even trying.

And boy, does that piss them off.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.