A question I have asked myself many times before.

So Julian made a discovery : the Cranberry Canada Dry I drank a liter of last night was not Diet, it was the regular sugary shit.

I clearly was not paying attention when I grabbed it off the shelf.

And by all logic, that should have damned near killed me. But here I am, alive and not in the ER or nothin’, and what’s more, I didn’t even have any symptoms.

Part of that can be explained by the fact that I mixed it with some red Gatorade Zero so it was not at full strength.

But that’s like saying, “I think what kept me from getting hurt when that Mack truck ran me over was my parka. ”

I mean, yeah, that probably helped a little, but you still should be dead.

But it seems to me that the panic attack I am having right now is hurting me more than half a liter of sugar water did.

This makes no sense.

Though I have a theory. Maybe I walk around with such a sky high blood glucose level normally that more makes little difference.

Either way, it’s rated “Still way too much!!!!”

That’s probably too good to me true though. Wishful thinking, in a sense.

Thanks to Julian’s alertness, I am at least spared from drinking the other half of that bottle of death.

I mean, sugar water is what they give you if they have to raise your blood sugar really fast because you’re on the verge of hypoglycemic shock.

Which I… was not.

---

It’s a date

Oh well, what the hell, I am going to try online dating again.

Gonna sign back up with OKCupid. I thought I already had an account but apparently expired because the password no longer works.

Oh well. Just means I’ve got to answer a fuckton of questions again.

As patient readers know, I have not had good experiences with online dating. I rarely find a profile that stirs my interest at all – all these dudes seem so bland and dull.

Whereas my own profile never gets any interest because I fill it with so much verve and personality that it freaks people out.

Either that or they hate fat dudes. Probably a little of both.

Personals style sites are worse. So many dudes thinking with their dicks and talking about what they are “into” and I seriously don’t fucking care.

What I want to know is if you test positive for a brain and a personality.

I will admit that a big part of the problem is me. I am extremely fussy about with whom I associate. The fraction of humanity with whom I am compatible is depressingly small.

Part of the price paid for this sky-high IQ of mine. I wish I had the social and emotional agility to get along with anyone regardless of their level of smarts, but the truth is that while I don’t consider dumber people lesser than me in a moral sense, the bitter truth is that I can only truly connect with those who can “get” me.

And for me, there is no affection without connection.

Everyone else is free to enjoy the ambiance and free food but they’re not getting into the club. Sorry.

More after the break.

---

The Second Date

Yup, More on dating and me.

I haven’t done it much. Been on maybe a half dozen dates in my life. Eight tops.

It’s a very tough thing when you are Avoidant like me. Facing strangers in any form is rough for me…. but a single stranger? One on one? One who is going to be evaluating me and judging me and deciding if I am good enough for them?

In a word : yikes.

The only worse situation for the likes of me is a job interview. Which it resembles

But the thing is, I know I can do it. I know as a solid fact that I can be very charming, lovable, engaging, witty, and fun.

After all, I do it all the time as Fruvous.

In fact, you could say I have been using being Fruvous to hone my wit and charm and appeal and all that for almost 25 years now.

So in a way I have developed social skills.

But only for a very specific environment. After all, I’m a hothouse flower, remember? I’m not exactly rugged and well adapted to many climates.

I do modestly well in one very specific microclimate and wither and die anywhere else.

Anyhow, back to dating.

Because I do much better online than in real life, online dating seems ideal for me.

Or at least, the least horrible option till my psychic matchmaking service takes off.

We guarantee that we will travel the astral realm and find the spirit most compatible to yours before uniting you in cosmic bliss or your money back.

Honestly, I really need a man. And not just for sex, otherwise I would “cruise” or use a hookup app or whatever.

I have absolutely no interest in “hooking up”, thank you. Not judging anyone else but personally the idea disgusts me.

I fuck people. Not parts.

What I want is a husband. I ache to settle down and make a home with the man I love. Create a safe space for us freaky people and fill it with good people and create our own little Tales of the City situation.

But more homey.

I’m not looking for the high life. Life in the fast line seems like a nightmare to me. I don’t give a fuck about glamour, status. fame, or luxury.

Well okay. Maybe luxury. But the real kind, as judged by me, not this bullshit “luxury” which is about what using the product says about YOU.

Yeah, fuck that. It either gives me the happy sensations or it doesn’t.

But otherwise, all I truly want is domestic bliss.

A house, pets, comfy furniture, a lovely yard, maybe a garden (mostly veggies but with flowers for borders), good HVAC, fun home entertainment stuff, oh, and of course, the best, most comfortable, and coziest goddamned bed we can afford.

With bedding so soft you could spread it on toast.

Look, I don’t judge YOUR fantasies.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well it’s been four days and my eyes are not “adjusting” to the new glasses yet.

So I have to face the prospect of there being something wrong with the glasses.

God, that would suck. I was so happy to finally being able to see again. And the new glasses definitely help…. up to a point.

But my fine vision is crap. If the text on the screen is below a certain size, it’s a total smear to me. Above that, I can make it out, but it looks like it’s underwater. It has to be pretty god damned big for it to seem clear.

Like, large-print edition of Reader’s Digest big.

In summations, I am not sure having them on is a net gain in vision. And that’s kind of the entire point of glasses.

I keep finding myself looking over the top of them to actually see something clearly.

That kinda screams FAIL.

I’m not sure what could have gone wrong. I am positive I entered my prescription properly. I triple checked it.

So maybe it’s the manufacturer’s problem. Maybe they gave me the wrong lenses, or the lenses have a flaw in them, or the like.

There’s one more possibility, and I wish I hadn’t thought of it : maybe in the months between the eye appointment and my realizing I could buy glasses online now, my prescription changed and so the problem is in my eyeballs, in that sense.

That would suck because I’d have to pay for another eye appointment AND another pair of glasses to fix it.

Plus it would make me feel stupid.

Not fair, I know, but that’s depression for ya.

But I haven’t given up quite yet. I will keep wearing them till Friday and see if things get any better for these poor eyes of mine.

I hope they do.

---

Speaking of depression (how rare!), I’ve been pondering how it changes the way the whole world feels for me.

It’s most noticeable when I have just woken up. It’s like there is this undeclared sense organ between my sensorium and reality and depression alters and distorts that and that has a subtle but extremely profound effect on my mood and view of reality.

And it’s unstable. Fluctuations in those pesky neurotransmitter levels in my brain can completely change my reality in seconds.

And that, in turn, makes my world a scary and untrustworthy place, which is pretty damned depressing and makes me reluctant to add complications to my life like, say, going outside or dealing with people in real life because I never know what sort of reality I will have to contend with.

It’s like this effect is a chaos multiplier. Like I am always seeing a million reflections and hearing a million echoes of everything and so the slightest increase in stimulation is amplified to cacophonous and catastrophic levels.

No wonder I live this bomb shelter life.

I wonder how I get rid of all that amplification though. It’s the root cause of my issues and life would be so much better without it.

I don’t even know where it comes from. Some sort of feedback loop in my brain? Seems plausible. But then, how to turn it the fuck off?

Perhaps what is needed is desensitization. Force myself to stay in an overstimulating environment long enough to get used to it and realize I didn’t die.

Maybe that’s why I liked those times sitting outside on the way home from VFS so much. I got to actually adjust and adapt for once, instead of avoiding.

I avoid things so much it’s my goddamned diagnosis.

Unrelatedly, I am going to go lay down.

More after the break.

---

No need to feel safe

This is a mindwarping concept for me but I am going to give it a try.

This constant need for safety has dominated my life. I was a timid and fearful child and it’s only gotten worse as an adult. The world is a very scary place to me and I respond to that by hiding from it to the maximum of my ability.

There’s days when even getting out of bed feels like walking a tightrope.

Now obviously, every animal needs to feel safe. That’s basic. It only becomes pathological when that need grows well beyond what is necessary and balanced and instead makes it nearly impossible for the likes of me to life a normal, healthy, happy life like all the other critters.

And that’s the quagmire (giggity) I find myself in.

But what if I didn’t need to feel so safe any more?

What if I could handle risk? Danger? Exposure? And all those other things I have been running from my whole life?

What if I could say, “Yeah, it’s unsafe. So what?”

What if I could face all that fear with a kind of kamikaze courage and buoyant bravado that laughs in the face of all the ghosts and ghoulies of the imagination that my diseased mind can conjure and tells them to fuck off right to their face.

I’m not talking about having no fear. That would be stupid, and possibly fatal.

I’m talking about still having all that fear and just not giving a shit.

Ride the wave instead. Trade terror for exhilaration. Turn into the skid. Turn that loose adrenaline into something a lot more fun that general anxiety.

It’s a scary thought. Duh. But an exciting one as well. Might be a nice change to unflatten my aspect and emotionally engage in the world, with all that entails, instead of hiding in my inner bunker from the big bad world.

Which only got so big and bad because I was ignoring it. Shutting it out. If I could turn and face the strain and give my scared little animal a big warm hug and pet him until he falls asleep in my arms, I might just be able to live again.

Of course, this is all purely theoretical.

But everything starts with a dream….

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I am very, very sick and tired of dreading things I know I will enjoy.

Take tonight, for example. It’s Sunday, and I love Sunday nights. First we go to the Sav-on at Ironwood so I can do my weekly shopping, then it’s off to Denny’s to break bread with my friends and enjoy one another’s company and conversation.

And I love that. It’s the highlight of my week. And I know without the shadow of a doubt that I will enjoy it.

And yet there’s a big part of me that, right now, with a little under four hours till we leave, is dreading that fateful hour like t’s the hour of my execution.

And this happens every single fucking time.

Same with other, less fun but far less than terrible things, like my wound care appointments or going to see the doctor.

No matter what it is, as the time approaches, I will begin to feel panicky and trapped and want to run away and hide until its over. The dread will only intensify over time and so something I, again, know I will enjoy becomes a source of fear and pain.

And that’s the bullshit I have to overcome every single time I get my ass out the door.

And I’m fucking sick of it. It is so goddamned hard being me. I walk around with a head full of pain and fear all the goddamned time and it makes me feel so helpless and depressed because that’s how any animal reacts to pain it can’t escape and can’t get used to and that can come at any time.

It responds with despair.

And in nature, that’s fine. The pain is probably coming from being wounded, and so when despair makes the animal hide, lay down, and stop moving, it is doing what it can to make sure it can use all its resources to heal.

But in people, as always, shit gets complicated.

And why do I get this attack of fear and dread? The Trog.

That’s the side of myself that views doing anything outside my pint sized comfort zone to be like a giant hand is coming down from the sky to drag it, kicking and screaming, from its warm safe hole and force it into the cold hard overstimulating world.

And that is my base level programming. So no matter how much my higher mind may know better, that’s the emotional reaction I am going to have whether I like it or not.

For the record : not.

No wonder it is so hard for me to do anything to get out of this goddamned trap. I have to crawl through a field of broken glass and expired blood plasma just to meet my minimal social commitments.

Anything more than that – like, say, applying for freelance jobs on UpWork – is beyond my overtaxed and underwhelming capacities.

So I slowly rot to death instead.

But boy, do I get a lot of video games played!

My life is pathetic.

More after the break.

Going further under

Under the weather, that is.

Swmmin’ pools. Movie stars.

Anyhow, add +1 to my Worry stat because I feel like I am getting sicker. Like I started off at the level of that recurring infection like thing but it’s only gotten worse since then.

Bad Sign #1 is that my appetite is slowly vanishing. It’s been days since I felt any actual hunger beside the baseline feeling that my stomach aches in that certain way.

But emotionally speaking, my appetite has disappeared like a ghost at dawn.

Plus I feel like I have a low-grade fever, in that I feel kind of hot all the time. Not alarmingly hot or even seriously hot. But too darn hot, that’s for sure.

Bad Sign #3 is possibly (probably) related to #2 in that I have this accidentally transcendental kind of trippy feeling nibbling at the edges of my sense of reality. I feel kind of like I am floating in the air like it is the sea and I am a buoy.

As opposed to a guirl.

And it feels like the world is pulsing in and out with my heartbeat. Plus I have one of those headaches that makes me feel crazy.

Dunno if I can explain that. It’s the sort of headache I imagine a character having in an old radio drama right before their other personality emerges and reveals that they arem in fact, the killer.

So I migraine, kinda, but with way more subtext.

This all adds up to my being in a state of low-key paranoia right now. I feel like something bad is lurking in my head, waiting for its moment to pounce and plunge me into darkness and terror and pain.

Sure hope that’s just my depression talking and not something… more.

But I am monitoring my situation closely and if things get any worse, I will call my GP Doctor Chao and make an appointment.

Of course, if they get WAY worse, I will go to the ER. Again. Sigh.

A fella could get really sick of that place. Especially after multiple “turns out it was no big deal” type visits.

Thanks. I mean, that’s good news by any measure. technically.

But couldn’t you have told me that four hours ago?

Because an entirely irrational part of me feels ripped off. All that time spent waiting patiently like a good boy only to be told it was nothing?

What a waste of time!

Plus there is the embarrassing feeling of having wasted everyone else’s time for what turned out to be nothing.

I tell myself it was worth it to check out a potentially dangerous thing, regardless of outcome, and that helps, but my social anxiety / Avoidant Personality Syndrome still gives me hell about it.

I really wish hospitals had someone whose duties included telling people with my type of diagnosis that they are glad we came in and it was the right thing to do.

That would make things so much better.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

There’s two possible results when a creative person sets out to make art : good art, or good practice.

michael bertrand, fruvousfox@gmail.com

Once upon a..

Narrator : NO! No worldbuilding!

Me : So what are you trying to tell me, Inner Saboteur (IS)?

IS : That I HATE you. I HATE you. I’ve suffered so much in life and it is all YOUR FAULT.

Me : Care to explain?

IS : Gladly. It’s your weakness, indecision, and cowardice that got us bullied, kept you from standing up to our parents when they took us out of UPEI, made the teachers hate us at VFS so they wouldn’t recommend us to anyone, and has kept us stuck in this STUPID… FUCKING…. LIFE… and robbed us of any chance to be a grownup for the entire time we’ve been an adult… and we’re 48. That’s why I hate you so much, you sniveling overgrown TURD.

Me : And that’s what makes you constantly attack and punish and destroy me from within, and keep me from taking take of myself properly?

IS : YES! You’re going to pay for being so pathetic. Pay until you DIE!

Me : But I am only that way because you keep sabotaging me. I’d be strong and healthy if it wasn’t for you. If anything, you should be mad at yourself.

IS : Yeah well… you still deserve it!

Me : Moving on, what could I do to make you leave me alone?

IS : You could DIE.

Me : (sigh) Besides that?

IS : Grow a pair. Stand up for yourself. Focus for once. Do any of the millions of things that would improve our life. Hell, take a fucking BATH.

Me : But again, the only reason I can’t or don’t do those things is YOU. I would be fine if it wasn’t for YOU.

IS : Debatable. But anyhow, it’s not like I can stop.

Me : I beg your pardon?

IS : Tell me, what would happen if I totally stopped attacking you?

Me : Are you kidding? I would feel so much better. I would finally be healthy and strong and free to walk in the sunlight without shame or self-pity! Everything would be great!

IS : Maybe. But tell me this : where would all your anger go then? Face it, bullshit aside, the real reason I exist is to transmit your anger and frustration into self-punishment because that’s better than taking it out on others… like Dad did.

Me : Well… that’s true…

IS : And that’s why you will always be my bitch. To escape me you would have to choose an external target for all that rage, and we both know you’re too weak and indecisive and diffuse to do anything remotely like that.

Me : But that’s your fault too…. I think…

IS : Does it really matter? The point is that you will never escape me until you choose some victims and pass the rage on to others.

Me : I will never do that. I’d rather die.

IS : And I’d rather kill you. And I will, trust me. All I have to do is keep you from taking care of your sleep apnea and your diabetes and you will get sicker and sicker until one of these days you just plain DROP DEAD. And I will have my final revenge.

Me : For the pain you inflicted on yourself.

IS : YES. For that, and so much more.

Me : Just remember that when I die, you die too.

IS : Oh, I know. And it is TOTALLY worth it.

---

That felt productive. Maybe not as productive as I was hoping, but these experimental explorations of myself are highly unpredictable and hard to control.

Like all my writing, they take on a life of their own fairly quickly, and that makes writing them like trying to give a large dog (or a small child) a bath.

You might start off with big ambitious but at the end you’re happy to have made it out alive with SOME of the soap ending up on the dog/kid.

Well, time for me to lay down yet again.

More after the break.

---

Oh yeah, more words

Right. Still got three hundred plus words to write.

Today’s been a bit surreal. The energy drain from fighting off this infection thing yet again tends to have that effect.

It makes my waking hours unpredictable and my dream life more powerful and mystical.

Still not remembering my dreams, though, so that’s just an intuition.

I get the feeling that on that deep lever where our inner wildness lies, I am afraid of my dreams, and that’s why they get vigorously scrubbed from my consciousness when I wake up from deep sleep.

Which suggests I had one hell of a nightmare at one point. Something so bad that my higher mind said “Well, that’s it for remembering dreams!” in order to protect me.

And hey man… thanks.

But being the rapaciously curious critter that I am, I kinda want to know what it was.

Typical fox… more curiosity than sense.

I have always identified with the stupidly curious character in movies and TV. The ones who hear the horrible screams of the monster and go TOWARDS them. The ones who absolutely HAVE to check out that weird noise and get chomped by the baddie who has used the noise to lure someone out there alone. The ones who volunteer to stay overnight in the spooky haunted house because they MUST know if there really is such a thing as a ghost.

Yes there is. And it just ate your soul.

Anyhow, I do miss remembering dreams. It used to happen once or twice a week, with occasional surges after especially emotional events and/or an extended period of sleep deprivation or hyposomnia ending.

Speaking of which : still can’t work up the nerve to take one of my sleeping pills so I can get caught up on deep sleep.

Because before that makes things better, it will make them so much worse. LAst time I feel like I barely made it out of it alive.

And given my health problems, that might not be far from the truth.

The brutal truth is that sleeping pills make sleep apnea so much worse. Combine that and the toll it takes on me to dream with that post-deprivation intensity and it’s no wonder I get the shivering shakes even contemplating taking a pill.

I guess I better seek alternative solutions, then.

Anyone know a good muscle relaxant that isn’t liquor?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Somewhere in the world, there’s a better place for me
A place where I can spread my wings, leap skyward, and be free
Climb high to where I’m meant to shine for all the world to see
And do a dance of joy and love – ceremonially

Somewhere in the world, there is a place where things are good
A place where life unfolds exactly as it should
A place where I can grow and change in a way I never could
Before I found this piece of ground – my native neighborhood

Somewhere in the world, there is my proper habitat
A place where I can thrive and grow and never worry that
I’ll end up lonely and alone again, starving, cold, and sad
Where I was lost and typhoon toss’d back when things were bad

Somewhere in the world, there is my place in the sun
Where I’ll be healthy, strong, and good, and smile at everyone
Where I can finally relax, find safety, and have fun
And sleep in blessed peace and calm when the day is done

Somewhere in the world, there is a place that’s pure and right
Where every day is sunny, and the moon shines every night
Where the sun bids you good morning, and the stars kiss you goodnight
And everybody gets along, and no one ever fights

---

I should let my happy thoughts out more often. That was lovely.

Unfortunately, writing it used up all my brain calories and now I gotta sleep.

Coming soon : an ending??

---

Lil bit worried

Bit worried that I am coming down with something. Just had a mild coughing fit and I have felt strangely tired all day.

Plus I got that scratchy throat thing going on.

So I guess my “maybe a cold?” is back again. Call it MACS for “Maybe A Cold Syndrome”. If the pattern holds, I will feel like this for a couple of days then it will vanish as mysteriously as it arrived.

My current theory is that it’s an infection that my compromised immune system can just barely handle and only after a protracted battle, and cannot quite totally defeat.

Probably should do something about that, but my inner traitor won’t let me. I feel like my own mind is holding me hostage and torturing me and will not relent until I am dead or permanently hospitalized or otherwise punished “enough”.

Assuming there IS such a thing as “enough”.

It’s up to me to save myself from myself. I don’t really want to die. I don’t want to end up in the hospital full of tubes. I don’t want to have even the fairly minimal amount of dignity and happiness I have now taken away from me.

I don’t want the darkness to eat me. Please don’t let the darkness eat me. I promise I will be a good boy.

Ah, who am I kidding? I’ll probably just keep fucking around till I die.

It’s possible to be too crazy to live.

I’m living proof of it.

But not for long.

More after the break.

---

A chat with the Devil

(A small but well appointed room in a medieval castle. A heavyset man, the MAGUS, sits behind a desk heavily inlaid with mystical runes and figures. A dragon the size of a large housecat patrols the room. As the scene opens, the MAGUS is deep in dark, brooding thought, occasionally interrupted by his stopping to pet the dragon.

Suddenly the dragon pauses its patrol and glares sharply at the door, and growls softly.)

Magus : Easy, Clopidigrel.

(The door bursts open and a PALACE GUARD dumps ATOMA, tightly chained up and gagged, on to the floor of the chamber. )

Guard : This is the one we’ve been seeking, Magus. The saboteur.

(The Magus nods to the Palace Guard. )

Magus : Remove the gag, please.

Palace Guard (alarmed) : But Magus! He is a very powerful wizard! He could be….

(The Guard trails off when he realizes who he’s talking to.)

Magus (kindly but firmly) : …a threat? To ME? Is that what you were going to say?

(The Guard, red-faced, only nods as he removes the gag. Atoma glares at the Magus, shooting daggers of pure unbridled hate at him. )

(The Magus rises and moves to stand over Atoma, smiling down at him in a predatory but not entirely unkind way. )

Magus : So, you’re the one that’s been causing me all this trouble, eh? Sabotaging the works of this castle. Releasing termites in the undercroft. Poisoning the wells. Scaring my servants with your tricks and illusions. Preventing them from making repairs. It’s your fault this place is always on the verge of falling apart. To what end, eh?

Atoma : To hurt you, obviously, you fucking pig. To make you suffer. To make you pay for all you have done. To crippled you. To hobble you. And eventually, to kill you. But it doesn’t matter if you live or die. All that matters is that you FALL.

(The Magus chuckles, amused and a little taken aback.)

Magus : Oh, is that all? Sure you don’t want to stomp on my daisies while you’re at it? Now what could I have done to warrant such retribution?

Atoma : DONE? DONE? Oh, it has nothing to do with anything you’ve DONE. Because you don’t actually DO anything, do you? You just sit here in your castle and write long scrolls only a few scholars will ever read and contemplate your cavernous navel while all around you things are falling apart!

Magus : Isn’t that your fault?

Atoma : What? No, not here in the castle, you ball of dung, in your kingdom! Everywhere there is chaos and disarray. The population is restless and without hope. The fields produce barely enough food to feed them. Our neighbors mock and pity us. Hopelessness and helplessness rule everywhere. And every day, things get worse.

Magus : And this is all my fault, is it?

Atoma : YES! Who else? Here you are with power to rival the gods themselves and your people live in wretched poverty simply because you refuse to act. What, did you think doing nothing meant you were doing nothing wrong?

(The Magus shakes his head. )

Magus : Oh no. Never that. I am fully aware that I have failed this kingdom miserably and that my people suffer do to my inability to act.

Atoma : Then for the gods’ sake, why don’t you DO something?

Magus : Because it’s not that simple. It’s not that easy. It never is.

Atoma : That makes no sense. You are a MAGUS. You have the power to destroy entire armies at your fingertips. How hard could it be to just fix things around here?

Magus : Oh, not hard at all. Barely an eyeblink. But… what things? When? How? Which ones first? I cannot decide. So I just… abide.

Atoma : Are you seriously telling me that peasants are resorting to eating the chaff from their fields just because you can’t make up your bloody mind?

Magus : Yes. No. It’s hard to say.

Atoma : You stupid bastard! The whole kingdom is going into the midden and all your can say is “It’s hard to say”? Gods damn it, then abdicate. Let someone else rule.

Magus : That’s not such a bad idea.

Atoma : I’m sorry, what?

Magus : Maybe someone else SHOULD rule. Gods know I have done a terrible job of it. I would love to hand the reins of power over to someone more ambitious and confident. But I can’t see anybody wanting the job.

Atoma : Don’t be so sure. Do you seriously want someone else to rule this kingdom?

Magus : Well, yes, I suppose I am.

Atoma : Then why not me? I have already proven that I am cunning, resourceful, powerful, cunning, and capable of doing a lot with few resources. I know exactly what needs to be done to fix things kingdom of yours. So why not me?

Magus : Oh, I don’t know. How do I know your first act as the new Magus won’t be to have me boiled in my own blood?

Atoma : You don’t. But the alternative is to just keep failing your people until they depose you in a rage, so why not give me a try?

Magus : Well…. okay. Tell you what. I will give you a single duchy to start with, and we will see how you do with that. Fair?

Atoma : Fair? It’s magnificent. Offer accepted.

Magus : Splendid. Now what will you need before you start?

Atoma : Well, first I’ll need to get out of these chains!

(Everybody laughs, the end. )

---

Well that sucked.

Once more, I start out with a clear intention and end up going in a completely different direction and am bewildered when I end up somewhere totally different.

My original tension was to use the device of the Magus and the Saboteur to enable me to explore my Traitor Within and ask it important questions but instead I wrote that generic lump o’ crap up there.

Maybe I will try again some time, this time with NO worldbuilding at all.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

My glasses finally arrived today! Yay!

But my eyes have been glasses free for ten months, so there is definitely going to be an adjustment phase where my eyes get used to being able to focus again. Boo!

So it’s a little hard to focus on text well enough to read it right now. Not impossible, thank goodness, or the only way I could write this blog entry would be by faith alone.

Or maybe The Force.

Hopefully, this will clear up once my eyes get used to focusing actually being an option again and I will once again be able to see, period.

Everything else besides text is SO MUCH CLEARER now.

Feels good to be a four eyed geek again too.

I’m not saying you’re not a nerd WITHOUT glasses, but they are the badge of my people. I felt naked without them!

And not in a fun way, either.

Like I said before, I went ten months without glasses because it took me way too long to put together that :

1. I have the prescription for a new set of glasses
2. You can buy glasses online now as long as you have your prescription
3. I have money

I got there eventually. It’s all water under the bridge now.

Hopefully^[1],, my eyes will adjust just fine. I think they will because the letters keep going in and out of focus like someone is messing with the autofocus dial on my brain’s camcorder, and that indicates it’s a focusing problem, not a lens problem.

Phew! I’d hate to think my optometrist got my prescription wrong. Or that someone went wrong in the glasses factory.

Unrelatedly, gave the orange creme flavoured variety of my fave sugar free wafer cookies to see if I liked them any better now, and nope.

The orange flavour is still way too fucking strong. And I usually like both strong flavours and the citrus group of flavours, so this is a rare and strange thing.

This was the last in a triptych of experiments to see if I liked flavours I had “gone off”.

The first was strawberry. Success! They are yummy to me again. For a long time they were too sweet for me. Lesson learned : pace myself. Never buy them two weeks in a row. Minimize risk of overload.

Then came chocolate. Mild success. They still are very boring. They’re the worst kind of chocolate – that flat cocoa-y kind with zero creaminess to it. Ugh.

But it wasn’t as bad as I remembered. And it’s possible that combined with something else, they could be good.

Not peanut butter, though. Tried that. Just made the peanut butter taste bitter. Gack.

But the orange is a total fail. It’s still super gross.

“Orange Creme” my ass. There’s nothing “creme-y” about them. I was hoping for something like a Creamsicle, not this bargain basement Tang tasting crap.

More after the break.

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Post Thursday Roundup

Today was Therapy Thursday.

It’s funny how I have been doing an hour a week with Doctor Costin for almost a decade now (sigh) and most of the week I wish I could talk to him all the time but about three hours before my appointment I start dreading it and wishing it was over already and hoping he’s late so there will be less of it I have to “go through”.

Then when it ends, I wish it hadn’t.

I am a complicated critter.

Anyhow, we started off with the subject I wanted to tackle, which is the fact that part of me wants to die and is trying to kill me.

The sick part of my mind not only wants to “escape” life (death is the ultimate escape), it also hates me with a brutality and totality that puts rabid Nazis to shame.

For other than the obvious reasons.

It’s a dark, stark feeling to face your own very literally self-destructive tendencies. To realize that there is a mortal enemy in your head and it’s you.

Part of me, anyhow.

And I can’t just kick it out. It’s like a midbrain tumour. You would do so much damage getting to it that the patient would die before you got even halfway there.

So brute force is the wrong tool for the job. We have to use finesse. Technique. Analysis. Planning. Smarts.

I’m only good at some of that.

So let’s examine this deadly device. It’s powered by my annihilation level self-loathing and that is, in turn, powered by internalized anger.

Which powers itself in a terrible way. Because where does rage come from? Pain.

What does internalized rage make me do? Hurt myself.

Anyhow, as patient readers know, anger is one of my biggest issues, if not THE biggest, and I struggle with the issue of how to release it without hurting anyone quite often.

Maybe I just need to channel it into sex. That seems a lot more fun than rage and way more likely to help me make new friends too..

Oh right, I’m a social cripple. Dang.

And it’s not like I can just climb a mountain and open my chest at the top and let all this radioactive rancor radiate harmlessly into space.

Our emotions are not that simple. Anger needs a target, even if that target is just an idea or memory or imaginary enemy.

And the clock is ticking. I get unhealthier by the day and that trend will not change until I can somehow neutralize the saboteur within.

Which means I have to let that anger out. But I can’t live with myself iif I victimize someone in order to do it.

My father took his anger out on us, his family.

I would rather die than do that to someone else.

There has to be some solution to this apparent paradox. Some way to let out the anger and the rest of my stifled passions without hurting anybody.

Any way to turn them into energy and ambition?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I’ve been meaning to express my thoughts on this subject for a long time but it was only yesterday that they crystallized into a form I felt I could express.

First : definition. A neckbeard is a male nerd who wears a trenchcoat and a fedora in public, is an angry atheist, lives in his parents’ basement, rarely bathes, is often an “incel” or at least has a lot of anger towards women, is massively intellectually pretentious, and is often drawn into libertarian-like right wing political circles.

That’s just a rough sketch. And this may seem like nothing but a cruel caricature of nerds in general, but trust me, these people exist by the millions.

And that fascinates me because….. how can there be so many people ending up with such a high degree of similarity?

It’s the same question I had when I first met fellow nerds in junior high. How is it that all these people who grew up separately ended up so alike? How is it that if someone is into D&D, they are probably also into video games, heavy metal, and Doctor Who?

We take these things for granted in nerdly circles but really… WTF?

Neckbeards are the same thing in the next generation. It’s the same phenomenon but with the internet being there your entire life.

And it’s not a pretty picture, sadly.

And I am not unsympathetic to these guys. How could I be? We are so alike. So much so that I feel oddly responsible for them. So much so that it almost feels like they are my children. Something my generation created, somehow.

Obviously I’m no angry atheist, Ayn Rand libertarian, or misogynistic incel (for one, I’m gay), but still, I get where all that comes from.

I have felt that incredible frustration that comes from growing up nerdy in a mundane world that treats you like shit, does all it can to destroy your self-worth, defines “undatable and unfuckable” as “people like you”, and is run by people who clearly have no fucking idea what they are doing, thus leaving to subject to the whim of the herd and the “leadership” of idiots.

Trust me guys, I get it.

And while your attitudes and politics and behaviours sadden me, I do not hold myself as superior to you at all.

There but for the grace of God and being a gay furry go I. I feel so bad for straight nerds. They have so much more to deal with than I ever have.

So I suppose, like their metaphorical parent, I love them and care about them despite how badly they turned out and how upset the ways they act make me.

Somehow, we, Generation X, failed these guys miserably.

But the world is rapidly getting better for us geeky folk. Nerd bashing has never been more harshly socially punished, thanks in part to shows like Big Bang Theory. We have a whole generation of people who identify as nerds, rightly or wrongly. Bullying still happens, but society has made it clear it no longer approves.

Trust me, that’s a huge step up.

So maybe the neckbeards are the last generation of post-traumatic nerds like me.

Maybe being a nerd won’t even be a big thing in the future. Maybe we will be able to live as we are, just a group of people with a certain cluster of characteristics in common.

I hope I live to see that.

More after the break.

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The winds of change

I’m not feeling so good right now.

An arctic chill – midnight tundra – is blowing through my soul and making my heart ache like a cramp in a phantom limb. I shiver deep inside and huddle into myself, ironically withdrawing further into myself and away from the light and the warmth of the world.

Yeah, I am wired up all backwards. All my instincts are self-destructive. None of he voices in my head can be trusted. even the ones that seem nice.

The self-loathing runs too deep. I’m out to get me.

Part of me wishes I could just crack my heart open and bleed all over the ice. Smear my filthy and polluted blood all over the blessedly cold surface of my freezing and frozen prison and finally wipe away the gunk and sewage and other nasty stuff from my heart’s tender tissues like a dog “scooting” over a white shag carpet, knowing he’s going to get in huge trouble but not caring because it feels soooo good.

Or maybe I would stick my finger down my soul’s throat and finally regurgitate all the indigestible toxins that clog my intestines and keep my injuries recirculating in my bloodstream to hurt me again and again like a bad case of heavy metal poisoning.

One good flush and they’re gone forever. Wouldn’t that be nice.

Or maybe I could throw myself into the fires of creation so that they might burn all that is impure, unworthy, and weak away, leaving only hard, supple, powerful muscles and bones as hard as the heart of a mountain behind. Then, having been cleansed in holy flame, I could rise anew as the perfected version of myself and face the world with confidence, clarity, and an open heart.

Then I would face the sunrise, and sing :

Child of Earth, humming to the Moon
The notes may change, but they’re always in tune
The Moon will rise, higher than in June
And guide us to our warm beds very soon

Child of Moon, smiling down on me
Fill my eyes, allowing me to see
You stroke the tides, wrinkling the sea
And light the fires hiding in the trees

And when the night is over
And the sun opens its eyes
All the bad things will be banished
By the shine of fresh-washed skies

Child of Sun, sitting by my side
Your heart is pure, so open it up wide
Let the world see the light you try to hide
And reveal the truth : the world abides.

children of the soul

But I can’t crack, or purge, or burn. The real world is alas not that kind. Only the world of image and poetry can be so clean.

So all I can do is the next best thing :

Write weird poetry.

It might not be as dramatic, but it kinda gets the job done. Kinda.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I

 

Time to get more specific.

If I had as high an opinion of myself as my abilities warrant, what would change?

Well I guess I would stop hating myself. At least on some levels. For a while.

And that IS the whole point of the exercise : to solve my tragically low self-worth by applying the high worth of my talents to it.

I mean, surely it’s possible. Surely being a genius can help soothe my nearly fatally wounded ego and help me get to some kind of healthy equilibrium instead of being this bizarre and contradictory combination of self-loathing and total confidence.

I keep telling myself what a great guy I am, a truly amazing creature, and it helps for a while but then the chemical imbalance reasserts itself and I lose the distinction between feeling bad and being bad.

“But I’m awesome!” squeaked my ego.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP. ” said my imbalance.

Still, my ego gets a little stronger every day.

Besides, what good is being awesome if you’re still unhappy? If you still hate your stupid dignity free life but feel (despite how it looks) helpless to improve it? If no matter what you do, the darkness returns?

Anyhow, back to the damned ego thing.

How would I feel I went around thinking about what a great guy I am, a real wizard?

Nauseous. That’s how I’d feel. I’d sicken myself.

Not saying that’s a healthy reaction, but it’s what I’ve got to work with.

More seriously, I can imagine being happy with myself, at least. In theory. In practice, it’s kind of hard to imagine life without that constant gnawing self-doubt devouring me down in the bowels of my soul.

Jesus that’s depressing.

I think the problem is that I need proof. I need accomplishments, victories, things I can look back on and verify as evidence of my worth to society.

Being a genius sounds great but depression has no problem turning that into a negative to use against me too.

I mean, here I am, brain the size of a planet, with all these natural gifts, and all I do is squander them by playing video games all day.

I’m clearly not living up to my potential.

Well fuck you, it’s my potential and I’ll do what I want with it.

But that’s a very unhealthy view and I am vying to change it. I should be seeing my gifts as being like money in the bank just waiting for me to spend it, not as merely something that makes my life even more of an obscene farce.

Perhaps one of the things blocking the expansion of my ego is the feeling that if I believed in myself, I might feel compelled to, ya know, do stuff.

Ambitious stuff. Scary stuff. Outside my microscopic comfort zone stuff. Stuff that might truly wake me up inside to face the blaring blazing overstimulating real world that feels like it might shatter my mind with its intensity.

Presumably I’d get used to it eventually, if I manages to stick with it and not immediately go right back into my shell.

I dunno. Time for me to go down for a nap.

Maybe I will actually answer the question in the second half.

It’s proving to be quite slippery.

More after the break.

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Just keep hacking away

The fact that I keep trying to grasp the subject of me and a potential big ego and it just keeps slipping through my fingers like a soapy ice cube is beginning to piss me off.

Which is good because it means I will stubbornly keep trying.

It may not be pretty, but sheer bloody-mindedness gets shit done.

So what’s making me shy away? How come I keep approaching the subject but then threadjacking myself into some other avenue of consideration?

Clearly it’s a very tender subject for me. Emphasis on the “very” because normally, when I find something I really don’t want to talk about, I have no problem honing right in on it and looting it of it therapeutic gold.

But when I try to tackle the really rough subjects like anger and self-worth, suddenly it’s soapy ice cube time.

How do I get around that? Asked and answered : sheer bloody-mindedness.

In other words, keep on trying.

One angle to look at is the conflict between what I want to get, a strong and healthy self-worth, and what I want to keep, which is my being an awfully nice fellow.

Like I said in a post recently, I love being nice. Can’t imagine being any other way.

And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that Big Ego Me would be a sarcastic jerk. And I am not sure why I feel that way. Those two things are not logically connected. There is no reason a big ego means being a big asshole.

Perhaps I am worried that unlocking the ego’s cage will inevitably let loose the sarcastic jerk that has been lurking inside me all this time.

I do have a hell of a lot of suppressed anger and a severely suppressed id.

Here comes Mister Hyde again. The Big Bad Bear. Shadow Fru.

But I learned from The Hulk and Doctor Jekyll and the Two Kirks. The only way to beat your dark side is to embrace it. Own it. Love it. Bring it back into the light and let it know that it can stay. Then sit down and listen to what it has been trying to tell you.

Rejection only strengthens it. As per Jung, It is made of all the things we do not accept about ourselves. Only through accepting that this, too, is a good and vital part of you that deserves to be heard can you defeat it.

So what is my dark side trying to express? Anger, obviously, from all the pain I have been through and all the loneliness and isolation I have endured.

Affection, too, both the need to get and to give it. Lust – so much lust. I have done almost nothing in my life to see that my sexual needs are met.

Only masturbation, and that only goes so far.

Passion, in all its forms. Ultimately that is what it’s all about. At some point, possibly when I was raped, I clamped down so hard on all possible passions because my intellectual outlook mistrusted them severely.

After all, who knows where they will lead? And with no faith in myself or the world, how can I possibly trust something I can’t verify intellectually?

If the answer to, “Where is this going?” is “I don’t know”, I’m not going.

And that is so goddamned limiting. So much of life requires you to take risks. Risks most people thankfully have no idea they are taking.

But boy, do I know.

When you never set foot on a road unless you know where it leads, you end up not going anywhere at all.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Put this into the comments on this video after watching it.

The world is full of both good and bad, and who can say there’s more of one than the other? The world has unlimited amounts of whatever you need to counter your unwanted emotions. You just have to go look. Feel sad? Watch the sun set. Feeling lonely? Zoom a friend. Worried about your own death? Watch cat videos. This does not invalidate your emotions. Whatever has made you sad is just as sad whether you suffer or not. So why suffer? Sure there’s war. And there’s love. There’s callousness. And compassion. There’s Covid. And there’s hot chocolate. Do not let a bad taste in your mouth sour you on the world. It too is fleeting if you refuse to fixate on it. Both optimism and pessimism are equally irrational but the optimists are much happier. Be like them. How can you know enough about reality or “life” to judge it good or bad? Remember that when it comes to life, you’ve only lived one – your own. Don’t presume to be able to judge all of life based on one example. Remember that things are not always as they feel. If you burn your hands, the world does not suddenly change to become painful to the touch. The world has not changed at all, you have.. Learn to tell the difference and that alone will make you wiser than most. Don’t say “Life stinks.” Say “my life stinks right now. How are you?”

me, talking strangely, feb 28 2022

I think I may have just written my Desiderata.

Not quite sure why it came out in that particular tone, though.

But it works.

---

A. That sex-change surgeon is such a womanizer.
B. Yeah, but he really made a man out of me

---

Wisdom from nowhere

I really don’t know where all that stuff in my Fuzziderata (working title) up there came from. It all just started spilling out of me.

And there’s probably a lot more I could add. I just stopped when the flow ceased long enough for me to escape, more or less. But I could probably start it again.

Needs editing, of course. Proofreading, rewriting for brevity and clarity, some structural work. Not much – that’s the great thing about aphoristic listicles.

They have no structure! Woohoo!

Or does that mean they have the most sophisticated structure of all? Hmmm?

Anyhow, I have copied it into my notes file so I can work on it whenever I like. It will pretty much always be there, to be added to if and when the whim strikes me.

I think my writing is entering an interesting new phase.

---

Trouble staying…. um… staying…. uh…. SQUIRREL!

Having trouble staying focused lately.

For the most part, I am fine playing games. They are stimulating enough to be able to hold my attention, I guess.

But when I am blogging my mind keeps wandering off and I keep having to drag it back to what I am doing.

As is often the case when dealing with my overpowered talents, I feel like I am trying to walk a very large and powerful dog.

Which I have done, by the way. With Zane, the white GSD.

Boy did my arms get sore!

Anyhow, sometimes you walk the dog, sometimes the dog walks you, and sometimes you just hang on for dear life and try not to get dragged to your doom.

Perhaps the secret is to get better at keeping up.

Now where are those roller skates….

More after the break.

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If my ego was as big as my brain

Or something like that.

OK, time to limber up my imagination and take on another chunk of the question of how to make my self-worth match my abilities.

Or at least represent a larger portion thereof.

Until now, I have let my depression fool me into thinking it’s impossible to bring those two into alignment because my abilities are so outrageously potent that no mortal mind could handle the reality of them without shattering like an opera singer’s champagne glass, leading to one of my worst nightmares : being trapped within the labyrinth of my own mind forever. No way out. Self-entombed.

But now that strikes me as silly.

Pretty sure the human mind can’t break itself that easily. Trauma from outside can break it, but on its own, the mind keeps itself basically together just fine.

Still, it’s hard to shake the image of myself as some kind of cackling egotist ranting about how you’re all less than the fleas on a black bear’s nutsack compared to me out of my mind.

So let’s deconstruct that. Yes, I am a hell of a lot smarter than your average bear. And that’s no small thing.

It’s huge. It tempts me to think of most of the adult population of the planet as idiot children. And I don’t want that at all.

Who wants to live in a world ruled by children? Every banker, every politician, every surgeon, every executive, everyone with any level of power over the fate of millions, including me, nothing more than teething toddlers.

Thank god that’s only a relative truth. Compared to me, they are dullards.

But compared to the rest of the kiddies, they are fine. I guess.

See, these are the ugly thoughts I have been avoiding. But the time for such cowardice is over. Time for me to finally grow into that outsized brain of mine.

And if that means I have to pass through the valley of being a total asshole, so be it.

I will try to spend as little them there as necessary.

Let’s get into the meat of this : say I had that enormous ego.

No really. Go on. Say it. I can wait.

See? I knew you could do it. Well done.

If I had an ego like that, it would be so hard to relate to others. I think that’s my real fear.

I already have enough trouble connecting with my fellow Earthlings humans. If I let my ego soar that high, it feels like I would lose sight of them entirely and end up in some deeply abstract mental state incomprehensible to most of humanity.

And to the human part of me as well. Sigh.

But this is all about intellect, and intellect isn’t everything. Not by far.

I might be smarter by far than most people but the average persons is stronger, saner, more successful, more respected, more loved, and way happier than me.

Yay, I won the IQ race. What’s the prize? A stupid fucking life due to crippling mental and physical health issues? Whoopee.

Can I ask what the prize for second place was?

And yet, this brain of mine is not useless. It is, in fact, massively powerful and worth a hell of a lot on the open market if I could just get myself sane enough to use it for something other than goddamned video games.

The real problem, then, is that I am afraid of reality. Too scared to approach it directly. When things get too real, I get anxious.

Especially when I am getting personally involved.

It’s like it all turns into this enormously overstimulating feedback loop, where all the inputs feed back into themselves and overload my poor consciousness.

I need to somehow break out of that loop. Or at least take out the amplifier.

Ctrl-C! Ctrl-Break! Ctrl-Alt-Delete! Mayday, mayday! SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Yet, I know that the loop serves the same function as the rest of my depression’s bag of tricks : to insulate me from reality. To act as a barrier for me to hide behind so I don’t have to deal with the harshness of the real world at all.

When I was raped as a child, I turned away from the world that I could no longer handle. I became a creature of mirrors and illusions, and learned to simulate being here so well that I often forget I am not. Not really.

No wonder nobody has ever truly gotten close to me.

No wonder I am all alone in this airless void of mine.

No wonder my soul has been on a bare subsistence diet for as long as I can remember.

These thick walls don’t let in much light.

And I don’t even know how to feed myself.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.