I really can’t,
But not for the usual reason. I’m not sick and I’m not having a “sleepy day”, despite the fact that I haven’t had any Diet Coke in a couple of days and therefore have been kind of expecting one.
No, I can’t stay out of bed because it’s the only place where I am freaking warm.
It’s an extremely blustery, windy day out there in the real world and as usual, that means it’s pretty dang cold here in my little cubbyhole.
Hopefully what I just did will fix that. I inspected the windows in my bedroom here and one of them was open just the tiniest bit, letting in a significant draft.
I closed it as firmly as I could, but the blinds are still shaking a tiny bit with each gust of wind, so it’s not a total solution yet.
What I want is to seal the windows like my Dad used to seal the windows back home, when I was a kid. Thermal caulking to fill the gaps and thermal tape on top of it.
If you apply that solution wih vigor and thoroughness, you can have a draft free home that is cozy and neat and cheap to heat.
But I don’t have that stuff on hand.
Maybe I will order some once I get my next purchasable Mastercard.
That should happen this Sunday. Yeah, it’s a pain to have to buy a new card whenever the old one runs dry. And then have to go update the credit card info on various websites I do business with.
But in order to make my latest card reloadable, I have to know my bank account’s PAC, and if I have one of those, I dunno it.
I’m sure I will figure it out though.
This coldness can’t be good for me. After all, I am immunosuppressed, and just not that healthy in general, and I should be keeping warm.
Maybe I need to get one of those wearable blankets. I mean, what’s more important, my health, or my dignity and self-respect?
Or maybe I will get myself a space heater for days like this. I miss my old one. Not because it was especially good. It was, in fact, quite cheap.
But when something makes me warm when I was cold, I grow attached.
That’s probably deeply sad on some level. Not enough hugs, etc.
I keep having attacks of free-floating anxiety lately. I will find myself stressing out and being really anxious about the most obscure, meaningless, stupid stuff.
Clearly, my energies are blocked and can only manifest themselves as this anxiety. It’s like having a blocked pipe backing up and flooding your basement.
So I need to start thinking in terms of finding outlets for my energies. Need to keep reminding myself that effort is not the enemy, being stifled and pent up is.
I don’t need more naps. I need to run myself ragged. I need to start running and keep on running till I freaking drop.
But that seems like so much work.
I have so much to unlearn.
More after the break,
What I am missing
Like a lot of people, I feel like there is something terrible wrong with me.
Like I am missing some vital aspect of humanity that normal people take for granted. That this deficit marks me as alien and alienates my fellow humans so much that a more or less permanent gulf lies between them and I.
And it’s made worse by the fact that I don’t do any obviously alien things. In manner and style, I am just like a lot of other big bearish fat dudes. Sure, I have an advanced vocabulary, but so do a lot of other people. Plus, on the surface, I am warmly charismatic and charming and witty. And yet…
…there’s still something wrong. My responses are strange . My affect is chilly underneath the surface. There something chillingly alien and “off” about me. But it’s har to figure out what, exact, is missing.
My best guess is that I lack what I will call “social empathy”. I am not tuned in to the group instincts that allow herds to move as one and flocks to flock together.
It’s what drives normal humans to always want to be “with” the group. To want to fit in, to want to be like the other kids. To worry about standing out or seeming “weird”.
I have never in my life wanted to be like the other kids. I have wanted to be with them having fun instead of all by myself. I have wanted to have friends. I have wanted to know what it was like to be “inside”.
But the idea of changing myself in any way in order to achieve that is alien to me.
And that is pretty weird. Most people have at least some urge to conform. But as far as I can tell, I’ve never had any.
And I think people can sense that. Not consciously, of course, but on a deep level. They can tell that no matter how innocuous my behaviour, deep down I am just plain not like them. I don’t hear the social music and that makes me both alien to them and unable to take my cues from said music and therefore always out of step with the others.
I am one strange little monkey.
And so I leave people shaking their heads and wondering what the hey just happened. It seemed like things were going well but my responses were so odd that it left them feeling cold and detached.
And yet there was nothing obviously wrong about them. I wasn’t rude or callous or cruel. I was perfectly pleasant, polite, and warm.
It’s just that the things I said are…. not what a normal person would say.
I have often wondered if I would be better off being more overtly strange. That way, people would have some warning about what they are in for.
But I can’t think of a way to do that which would feel natural to me.
And I gotta be me. No matter the consequences. I gotta be me.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.