So, yup, it’s Therapy Thursday.

It was a good session with Doc Costin because I got to unspool a lot of the things that have been on my mind lately about what a what a strange child I was and WTF was up with that and so on.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of my best session are ones where I do most of the talking, usually in a Tarantino-like state of agitation.

With maybe some Goldblum mixed in.

I just have so much I need to express.

Costin had this idea that action preceded emotion and that if I wanted to change the emotions I had to pick some action that ran contrary to my negative emotions and do that regularly and consistently in order to change the direction of my mood.

Or something like that. I was highly agitated at the time and not listening well.

Because what I heard was basically, “The solution to being out of gas is to drive to a gas station to get more!”.

As in, he was asking me to find the motivation to do this repeated action in order to solve my lack of motivation.

Or something like that. Again, agitated.

I was probably being difficult and unfair. I get that way when I am agitated and trying to genuinely seek answers to my questions but get nothing but sad smoke and weak wind from the world that just can’t handle my hurricane force self-expression.

On the other hand. still rocking the metaphors.

But I will always remember how meek and defeated he sounded. And that will haunt me. Both because I can’t help but feel bad for doing that to him (though I know I shouldn’t^[1]) but also because it emphasizes just how alone I am in the world.

Because nobody can handle me. Not even a therapist with 50 years of experience like Doc Costin can stand exposure to my real. unregulated emotions.

Which means I can never truly open up to and connect with anyone. I always have to be holding back so much of myself just to keep from stomping the Lilliputians.

Anyhow. I am still looking for some sort of diagnosis for what the heck was wrong with me as a kid. Why I was born so god damned different.

And can I ever hope to repair my ability to connect with others?

Or will I be a sad little robot for the rest of my life? Able to get people to like me, even love me, but unable to truly get close to anyone?

Maybe I should just go with it. Follow my bizarre inner pathways and to hell with whether the world understands me. Become twisted and avant-garde and alien like Jim Carrey mixed with Yoko Ono.

Sure, I still won’t be connecting with people, but at least I will be expressing myself.

One way or another, I need to make peace with who I really am.

But I am so unlike others that there’s nothing out there to model myself on. I am a weird combination of giant, god, alien, robot, and teddy bear.

There is no way for me to be small enough for this world.

Maybe I just have to create my own. As usual.

More after the break.

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The power imbalance

I don’t want to be more powerful than everyone else.

I don’t want to be Gulliver in Lilliput, carefully placing each foot with exaggerated slowness and care so that all the little Lilliputians can get out of the way in time.

I don’t want to be a giant among pygmies any more.

And yet, I want to be who I really am. Therein lies the conflict.

Thus it feels like the only morally acceptable way I could truly stretch my limbs and be myself is that if I wandered off into the metaphorical wilderness where there are no ordinary people for me to worry about harming.

The morally unacceptable way, of course, would be to say to hell with the little people and do exactly as I please and let them worry about not getting trod underfoot.

That would be wrong both for the obvious reasons (potential harm to others, lack of taking responsibility for my actions) but for the slightly less obvious reasons of letting loose a very ugly side of myself of which I am ashamed.

A part of me that is part Juggernaut (bitch), part Mister Hyde, and part Hannibal Lecter, who lives entirely for his own amusement and gratification and who ruthlessly uses the enormous power advantage he has over others to take what he wants and do what he wants and to hell with the consequences to anyone else.

Someone who leaves a trail of human wreckage behind him about which he either doesn’t care or is actively amused by because to him, it represents just how god damned clever and amazing he is for getting away with the loot without having to pay the price for it.

This is not a real person, though. Like with Jekyll and Hyde, this is my shadow self, made of all the pieces of id I have severed and smothered over the years and who would not exist in a healthier, more well rounded and integrated person.

So I am trying to negotiate my way to a more happy and whole me. But it’s very slow going because I still can’t accept the loss of (illusory) control involved in “letting myself go” to let emotion call the shots some of the time.

To me, that sort of thing still seems like madness and anarchy and the death of the person I think of as myself, and that’s not entirely wrong.

I would become a very different person if I loosened the hell up. I would finally let go of being a caterpillar and let myself become a butterfly.

The question, then, is if I would be happier that way.

If so, then maybe it’s fine if this version of myself dies.

It wasn’t working so good anyhow.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.