Very very frightening, me.

While I was putting my lunch together, Julian was watching Jimmy Kimmel on the TV and apparently, recently the unthinkable happened in LA : it rained.

But of course, mere precipitation is not nearly as big or visual enough for Tinsel Town, so this rain came with absolutely spectacular thunder and lightning.

As in, lightning so intense and widespread and complex that you half expect Raiden from Mortal Kombat to show up.

And that reminded me of an incident from my childhood that I wanted to write down.

And lucky you, you get to read it! *hearty, ragged cheer*

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What happened was that Prince Edward Island got hit by its own super storm.

This is extremely rare. Due to PEI being a narrow-ish strip of land. big storms tend to miss us, and so we only get the edges of them. Even when they get close enough for direct strikes ^[1], they never hit us with the sort of megaton force that is routine for people who live on the Prairies or in the Tropics

Except that one time…

On a sweltering summer night, I was awoken from a deep and dreamless sleep by the nerve-shattering sound of what I was sure was an explosion. It was so loud it shook the whole house like it had been struck by the first of an angry god. All the glass fixtures were left ringing after and dust was billowing down out of cracks in the ceiling.

The cats were quietly freaking out under my parents’ bed, I discovered later.

I was still reeling from this sensory onslaught when it happened again, and I learned the almost incomprehensible truth :

That had been thunder, and it was going to just keep happening.

Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Prince Edward Island is remarkably free of extreme weather. No hurricanes, or earthquakes, or tornado, or plagues, or anything else on that Biblical scale.

Furthermore, I had no idea thunder could even BE that loud.

I’d never seen anything like that on TV!

And at first, I was like, whoa, cool! But that did not last.

I am very sensitive to sound, and having my poor little ears assaulted by hammers made of loudness shattered my tender nerves.

And each successive blast was worse because I had nowhere near enough time to recover from each one before the next happened.

So before long I was a total wreck. What followed was an hour and a half of pure hell. No escape was possible from a sound that loud. It was just hammer blow after hammer blow to my embattled nerves.

When it finally ended I felt directly to sleep. No transition at all. Just dropped directly from extreme nervous agitation to the deepest blackest hardest and most complete sleep this side of the grave.

Next morning I awake to find that the rest of the family slept right through it. Nobody remembered anything unusual about the previous night at all.

And that just proves life isn’t fair, folks.

Because I’m the heaviest sleeper in my family (although my mom is close). If something woke ME up, logically, it should have woken everyone else up too.

I mean, I’ve slept through earthquakes, for fuck’s sake!

But no, the universe was cheerfully willing to make absolutely no sense whatsoever in order to make sure I was forever alone in one of the worst experiences of my life.

It’s hard not to take that kind of thing personally, universe.

More after the break.

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I’m not really here

Haven’t done this topic for a while.

So let’s take another crack at why I feel like I am not really here.

At the moment, the root cause seems to me to be fear.

Fear of existing. Fear of being noticed. Safety in invisibility.

I learned to blend in with the woodwork as a defense mechanism primary against my bullies but also, to a lesser degree, my father.

But this is about a lot more than merely hiding, It’s even a lot more than merely not wanting to be noticed.

Deep down, it’s about want not to exist. Or rather, to hide all existence from my fellow naked beach monkeys. To mask the very deep. fundamental signal that we subconsciously give out that tells other humans we are there.

Combine this instinct to hide from danger with low self esteem and a poor sense of self like in me, and the need to hide can become unnaturally strong, to the point where it suppresses your very sense of your own existence.

Of course I don’t exist. I’m too scared to.

And it’s a pretty bleak thought to realize that the avoidant personality disorder is so strong in you that you’re afraid to even exist out loud.

So that’s the heart of it, more or less. So what do I do about it?

Because this constant pressure to conceal everything about myself has got to go. A stable sense of self can’t even begin to grow if I am scared to even exist, let alone be a living breathing human being with needs and desires and even like…. rights.

But how do I get at that deep down fear that fuels it all? It’s definitely too deep a part of my programming for me to merely think my way out of it.

This is microsurgery. The crude metal hands of “reason” are not suited to the task.

I suppose we can start with affirmations : I am safe. No danger lurks in the darkness waiting for me to drop my guard. I can exist bold and loud and no harm will befall me.

I hereby declare myself equal to all my monkeys, with no shame, no holding back, no hesitation, and with the full expectation of being treated as an equal.

And if I’m not, there will be hell to pay.

Because I am here and I am real and I deserve – and demand – my fair share of all the good things in life like love, acceptance, and money that everyone else gets.

I’m here whether you like it or not, world, and for your own sake you had better get used to the idea really fucking quick.

Because I am never going to disappear again.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.