Once more, we hit the angrily nihilistic phase of my long mood cycle.

AKA the “fuck everything forever” phase. Right now, I hate the world, hate life, hate people, hate things, and hate being alive, in no particular order.

Everything is stupid and pointless and it doesn’t matter and it doesn’t count. My life is an unfunny joke where the setup is that I am a genius who is also massively talented, charismatic, and lovable, and the punchline is that I am too damned mentally and physically ill to use any of it to better myself..

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Right now, I am angry at everything because everything hurts. Nothing seems good or pleasant or pure. I have a strong urge to just blindly lash out at everything.

I won’t. of course. That would be too much like being my late Dad.

And I would rather die.

But that’s the sort of mood I am in.

I would love to be able to actually get a life and start living it. Get a job, a boyfriend, my own place. Be self-sufficient for the first time in my crummy lousy life.

But I have all this suffering to do….

That’s really what it feels like to me. Like there is this enormous amount of pain and suffering inside me and while it is still there, I will keep not being able to get together the motivation for much of anything because dealing with it sucks up all the energy inside me, leaving me the limp receptacle you see before you.

I feel like such a failure.

I feel like I should have been able to get it together enough to solve my problems by now. Like I should have found the strength to concentrate and focus enough to keep trying to fix myself until something goddamned worked instead of wimping out for months or years at the slightest sign of difficulty.

But the truth is, I just didn’t care enough about myself. My own plight didn’t move me. It still doesn’t, for the most part.

It takes something as fucked up as what is happening to my legs to really motivate me to do something for myself.

At least SOMETHING can do it.

As it turns out, being unable to walk without excruciating pain did the trick.

Other than that, though, I am still on the same collision course trajectory to die a stupid, pointless, disgusting, horrible death in utter squalor and ignonimity. The final squalid and tragically untragic end to a life badly lived and largely wasted.

So much potential washed down the drain like yesterday’s dishwater. So many years stuffed down the disposal and shredded then flushes away. All this time spent just barely hanging on by playing video games all day.

I remember having a life. It was nice.

It wasn’t much, and it certainly didn’t include employment or relationships. But I at least did stuff outside the home sometimes, and got there and back on my own.

But even before my legs went wrong on me, I was a total recluse who only ever left the domicile for medical appointments and shopping plus Denny’s on Sunday.

Now I do my shopping online. So it’s just Denny’s.

I don’t want to die before I ever get a chance to live. I don’t want to disappear before I have even made a mark on life. I don’t want my death to be the final punchline to the long and incoherent joke that is my life.

But I feel like I am trapped on this path by my own gnawing weakness. It doesn’t matter what I want or need, this is all my fragile internal skeleton can bear.

There has to be a way out of this. There has to be. And if not, I will make one.

But this shit has got to end. I need to find ways to nourish my soul. I need to learn to find the happiness and joy in life.

And I need to get stronger.

More after the break.

---

The need to feed

Feed my spirit, that is.

Feeding the body is comparatively easy.

I have, admittedly, made a hash of it in the past.

When I think of all those chips, pretzels, and crackers (et. al.) I used to eat, my who endocrine system shudders. How did I even survive that?

Nature finds a way.

But right now I am doing fairly well. Not a lot of carbs in my diet. Plenty of healthy things like fruit, nuts, and veggies. No sugar, no starchy foods, no BS like dried fruit (except for raisins) which is basically candy in terms of nutritional content.

If only that, plus taking my meds, was all it took to control my diabetes.

But um, they kind of expect me to move around more too. Which is much harder for me to do given my aversion to my own adrenaline.

Plus, as we have discussed, the universe appears to be really against my getting exercise because it keeps making it harder.

I’m unhealthy in ways that keep me from getting exercise.

I got this unhealthy by not exercising at all.

You know what would fix that? The exercise I can’t do.

It’s a heck of a catch, that Catch-22.

Almost fell after leaving Denny’s tonight.. We were standing on the handicap access ramp saying out goodbyes and I tipped forward and would have had a nasty fall flat onto my front on a concrete stair but my friends were right there and caught me and held me up till I could get my footing.

It was, in retrospect, exactly like those times I feel after getting out of a cab. I just can’t stand on uneven ground any more. Even the gentle slope of a handicapped access ramp is far too much for my messed up body.

Why/ Because I can no longer make the little body adjustments a person would normally make to maintain balance in that situation. I’m far too stiff.

Oh well. Twas yet another reminder of how close to being a gimp I am.

Hope the hospital calls about that CT scan soon.

Maybe I will call them tomorrow just to check up on things. Make sure they actually have a req from Doctor Chao.

No, YOU are compulsively paranoid and controlling!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

We ARE here, right?

With the way I am feeling extra incoherent right now, I can’t be sure.

On the other hand, other than feeling half out of phase with reality, I am actually in a pretty good mood, so maybe coherence ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Like I have said before, I would rather be the happy kind of crazy. You know, the kind where you laugh all the time and play with your toes and have a great old time.

Not exactly a dignified lifestyle, but it beats the hell out of being the sad kind of crazy.

In theory, actual sanity would be better than both. But I am not sure I buy it.

Sanity just seems so limited to me.

But I suppose it would be nice to be mentally stable for a change.

I’ve heard good things.

Besides, being sane in no sense means being normal.

Thank goodness, because THAT is where I draw the line. You might convince me to BE sane, but I will be acting crazy to the day I die!

Because trying to fit my enormous, radiant and bountiful personality into that tiny little dry ol’ box called “normalcy” would damn near kill me.

I’m too big for that shit!

---

Of course, we all know that’s only partly true of me.

I mean sure, if you are using the cartoonish definition of “normal” as meaning stifling conformity and enforced dullness, it sounds pretty bad.

But having been an “out there” kind of person all my life, I think I have gained enough perspective to see things another way.

From this point of view, normal just means “no longer being naked before the howling winds of insanity all the god damn time”.

It means having shelter from the storms within. Having solid ground to stand on instead of treading water all the time. It means having there be things I can rely on remaining the same in my head instead of the hell of eternal flux I live in.

It means finally, at long last, feeling safe.

My mind constantly changes in order to adapt to the needs of an ever changing mind. It’s like I am always struggling to catch up with myself.

It’s why I have such a strong need for autonomy. I can’t tolerate rules and restrictions that interfere with this fight to create some kind of fleeting sense of stability out of at least keeping up with the flux. .

After all, if my madness and I are going at the same speed and in the same direction, it’s kind of like we’re not moving at all!

As long as neither of us looks out the window, at least.

But I can’t help but wonder if I would be better off if I could somehow give up the chase. Let that crazy part of me run away from me and disappear over yonder horizon forevermore so I can finally stop running and go home and rest for a change.

That sounds so good. But I am not sure what it really means.

Part of me is definitely extremely afraid to stop. It knows we have not just been running to but running from and it is sure that if I stop something will catch up to us and GET us,

What that could be, I have no idea. Nothing literal, obviously. I can only assume that it’s something I don’t want to remember or have to deal with.

But at this point, who knows? Emotion has surpassed its object. Right now it’s just a massive wave of untethered fear threatening to engulf me.

It’s like trying to outrun a tsunami.

It’s like trying to tapdance during an earthquake.

It’s like running to stand still.

I guess that says it all for now.

---

Why I won’t use hallucinogens

Because I’m already crazy, man.

I mean, at any given moment I feel like I am hanging on to sanity by the barest of threads. I am hardly going to look kindly on an offer to scramble my brains on purpose.

I can only assume that those that do experiment with acid or shrooms or whatever see it as some kind of exciting adventure into another realm, or somesuch.

Or maybe they are really into the whole “expand the LIMITS of your MIND, maaaaan!: trip. Good for them. I don’t judge.

But one thing I know for sure is that they never doubt that they will make it back. That no matter what happens on their trip, they will be back home when it ends.

I have no such faith.

In fact, getting trapped in my own mind with no way back to reality is one of my worst fears of all time.

Because to me, it feels very very possible. My world is already far too cerebral for my own good. I spend very little time in direct contact with reality. I am always either consuming media (reading, playing a video game, etc) or asleep.

And in those rare times when I am not mentally entertaining myself, I am still here in this extremely familiar bedroom in this extremely familiar apartment, and therefore not getting any fresh stimulation from my environment at all.

This is not a coincidence. Like I touched on yesterday, my brilliant solution to anxiety was to rewire my entire life so that is provided as little physical stimulation as I could possibly get away with so that I might devote myself full time to media consumption.

Thus I sealed myself off from the world. And that is where I have been for my whole adult life up until this very day.

Pretty sad, I know.

So it’s no wonder I fear falling forever into the depths of my own mind.

I am already most of the way there!

I am dangling by my fingertips over the maw of madness. One slip, and down its gullet I go, never to know reality again.

Or at least, that’s how it feels.

That could all be bullshit for all I know.

But I am stuck dealing with it either way,.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Imagine if the people behind “Everybody Poops” followed it up with “Everybody Masturbates”. With colorful pictures of how various animals masturbate.

I’d be all for it, myself. After all, it’s true, and you would be starting the little ones off with a healthy understanding of their own sexuality.

And some valuable hints as to how to do it themselves, of course.

But I bet even Scandinavian countries would balk at THAT. More’s the pity.

After all, I started masturbating at that age, and I turned out FINE.

Some people make it to college without having figured it out! Can you imagine? All that time wasted when they could have been having fun.

Get them started right, I say.

Such tragedies could easily be prevented.

---

I wonder if, to someone from a region where they use chopstick, watching us Westerners eat with our forks, knives, and spoons looks like some sort bizarre and elaborate magic act.

Or does it look more like an industrial job? Like we’re eating with carpentry tools.

And as an ignorant Westerner, I must confess that a little part of me wants to know if they ever think, “You know, that looks a heck of a lot easier. Why am I eating with sticks? And how is that restricting my diet without me even knowing?”.

Myself, like I said here before, I am a Level 1 chopsticks user. I can get the sushi rolls into my mouth and on a good day same with the teriyaki.

But eating rice with chopsticks is beyond me.

Now I am imagining some young Asian on a trip to America having eaten their first meal with Western utensils, sitting there questioning everything.

This leading to them drunk on a rooftop screaming, “WHY DO WE EAT WITH STICKS!?!” until the cops show up.

I have a fun mind.

---

I’ve been listening to a lot of Patton Oswalt standup lately, and so it follows naturally that I have also been analyzing it.

It’s not like I have a choice. I analyze everything, all the time. But ESPECIALLY comedy.

So I have been honing in on exactly what his gift is. Because he’s hilarious and totally unique and that fascinates me.

And I think his gift is bitterness. But a really refined and carefully applied bitterness.

It’s like he has laser focused in on the exact kind of bitterness that makes people laugh. It’s like Seinfeld’s observational comedy only instead of powered by Seinfeld’s obsessive nature, it’s powered by Oswalt’s deep well of bitterness at the world that made him this tiny weird looking fat dude.

And I can dig it. I have loads of bitterness too, though obviously not about being small.

I’m freaking huuuuuuuge.

Of course, all the bitterness in the world won’t make you funny without the verbal and performing skills to make it work, and I think Patton Oswalt’s other secret is his gift for phrasing things in the exact right way to connect with the bitterness in all of us.

Plus there is a backing of cheerfulness behind the bitterness. He never seems particularly mad or depressed about these things. In fact, he uses a tone of sarcastic cheerfulness that really makes the whole thing work.

And that’s how Patton Oswalt works. The End.

More after the break,.

---

Let me make one thing clear

I’m not the one skipping supper so he doesn’t have to walk to the kitchen and back because getting water from the en suite damn near killed him^[1], you are!

And while we’re at it, you really need to clean up around here.

This place makes a long neglected pigsty look clean and tidy.

---

‘Did the appointment with Doctor Chao today.

It went…. okay, I guess.

He did a cursory amount of examination then sent in a req to the CAT scan unit at the Hospital for me to get a CAT scan of my lower spine and back to see if my problems stem from something going fuckwise on the neuro-spinal level.

So that’s progress, I suppose. Things are moving forward. The Hospital will call me soon in order to book an appointment for the scan.

This is old hat to me now. I’ve already had at least half a dozen of the things during various trips to the ER now, so they are no big deal.

I already know that I don’t react strongly to the tracer dye they inject. I get, at most, a very mild warming sensation and that’s it.

And the “tunnel” of the scanner is not long or closed in enough to trigger my claustrophobia, knock on wood, so no need for an Atavan.

One might have been nice, of course. The effects of the ones they gave me for my eye operations and heart procedures were fairly pleasant.

Although that one time, the withdrawal made me SUCH a dick. It was after the stents were put in and I in my incoherent fog and with the memory of being in a lovely warm place with no anxiety fresh in my now headaching mind, I became convinced that something injurious to my health was going to happen and I berated the dear sweet (and hyper-competent) nurse over it.

I feel pretty bad about that, but I was not myself.

Anyhow, so yeah, glad I will be getting the CAT scan.

But pissed off at myself for forgetting the all-important step of asking Doctor Chao if he could give me something for the pain.

Not looking to get rid of all the pain because that’s an important message from my body and I don’t want to be able to totally ignore it and walk too far and bust something.

But a little something to dull the pain would have been nice.

Oh well. The “funny” thing about my problem is that most of the time, it is no big deal.

It’s only when I walk that it becomes clear how much trouble I am in.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I had to skip Wound Care again. Dammit.

I was lying in my bed, attempting sleep (and failing), when at almost exactly 7 am (happened to look at the time) I got this awful feeling.

It’s hard to describe. Like this sinking feeling in my gut accompanied by a hot wind straight from the depth of a fetid swamp blowing through my soul.

And after that, I felt just terrible. The most prominent symptom was fever, or at least the feeling of it. ^[1] Like there was a roaring fireplace at the core of my being and the heat from it was radiating out through my skin.

Jupiters, I was hot.

Along with that miserable sensation came a grinding headache, a floaty feverish feeling like I am a barely heavier than air balloon. mild nausea, and coughing.

Clearly I could not subject the people at the Community Care Clnic to this.

So I had to call up and cancel at around 8 am. Hated to do it so soon after having done it before, but I had no choice.

Went to sleep after I got off the phone and I felt somewhat better. I still feel the heat coming from deep inside me, but it’s not nearly as intense.

The rest is still there, though. Le sigh.

And it’s making it hard to concentrate, which is making it hard to blog. What I really want to do right now, no surprise, is lie down with my head in the fan and rest,

This is the sort of state where even watching/listening to a YouTube vid seems impossible. Let alone something high-brain intensive as blogging.

At least, it’s high-brain intensive the way I do it.

So fuck it. I am going back down. Check ya later.

---

And I am back. Still not feeling very good but pretty sure I can at least come up with the 200 or so words I need to do to complete Part 1.

Managed to get a little fitful, feverish sleep. Welcome back to Afternoons Are Hell, it seems, otherwise known to mortals as “summer”.

I am going to look into getting one of those portable water-cooled AC units that are all the rage online. They seem to be reasonably priced and I really don’t need to be making my fragile health deal with constant overheating on top of everything else.

I wonder if I could get the Province of BC to buy me air conditioning as a medical expense. It would definitely improve my outcomes.

Still feeling pretty incoherent. Going to have to make sure to hydrate aggressively. Don’t want to end up withj heatstroke un top of all my other issues.

I wish I could just check myself in to the hospital already. I know that’s shamefully weak of me, but that’s just who I am, I guess.

I just want to surrender myself to the care of competent professionals and take a nice long restful vacation from having to be a grownup for a while.

Fuck it. I was never any good at it anyway. Time to stop pretending I can do this and start looking for something I will do better.

Like maybe I could be an aardvark. Or a telephone pole. Or a bassinet.

I would make an excellent can of creamed corn.

More after the break.

---

Prisoner of gravity

Feeling pretty down at the moment.

Getting out of bed after my latest nap was very hard, and not just because of the semi-busted state of my legs.

Because I really didn’t want to get out of bed. I wanted to stay there where it is soft and quiet and warm and dark rather than raise my overall stimulation level by getting out of bed and facing the world.

I’ve been feeling like that a lot lately. Like I just want to hide from this terrible world until it goes away and leaves me alone.

Things don’t work like that, of course,. The only real way to make your problems go away is to deal with them.

But tell that to the scared little animal inside me,

It’s okay, little pet. The danger is gone. You can come home and rest.

What would really help is the higher stimulation tolerance that can only come from prolonged exposure to an uncomfortably high stimulation level.

But I am too scared to do that.

When I contemplate something like that, all I can see is my getting trapped in a terrible panic attack as the higher stimulation level overwhelms me and I end up in a very, very bad mental state where I am panicking so hard that I can’t even think at all.

I have been there. It is very bad. The kind of bad that creates a very strong aversion towards anything that make make it happen again.

That’s the thing about phobias. At first you’re afraid of the thing. But after that, you are afraid of the fear you felt last time you encountered the thing.

So that’s the sort of trial by fire I would have to go through to get this higher stimulation tolerance, and so far, I just haven’t had the guts.

Just like the rest of the world, I don’t know how to handle me. I suppose there is a connection there somewhere. I never had any effective discipline applied to me after I started school and so I never had anything to internalize.

All I had was my own severely underdeveloped self-control. And that was enough to keep me going to school and getting the usual high marks, but it’s pretty useless when there is no school to give me structure and purpose.

Maybe if I manage to get out of this debacle with my legs with some kind of functional existence, I should just go back to school.

And this time, with a life in academia firmly in mind.

Because I would make an amazing professor.

And that sounds a lot better than actually getting a life.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Or so I have been told.

Mine good days are, at best, semiprecious stones. Relatively suffering free. Comparatively low on misery, Somewhat pleasant, considering.

Oh right. Swift medical update : I will be seeing Doc Chao in person Friday at 9:30 am.

The phone appointment went… okay. He at least seemed to basically grasp the seriousness of my condition.

On the plus side, I didn’t lose my shit on him. Though that’s still an option.

On the other hand, I still went away unsatisfied. So now I have to ask myself what exactly I was looking for.

Rescue, basically. Both physical and emotional. I wanted him to swoop in and reassure me that he knew what was wrong with me and he had it all under control now and everything was going to be okay.

This whole degeneration has been extremely painful and scary and depressing and has left me feeling like I am barely surviving The Blitz a lot of the time, and I could really use some high quality hand holding and reassurance right about now.

But no. As usual, I have to deal with everything all alone. I am doomed to forever be the baby left to cry, with nobody to come to my rescue when I am in pain.

How much of that is people not being there and how much is me not being able to see the ones that ARE there, or let them in, is a matter for debate.

Certainly, on the most basic level, a strong tendency to respond to trauma by withdrawing into oneself does not exactly send strong “help me!” signals.

I mean, the whole point of withdrawing is to NOT be noticed. To disappear from public view so you can safely turn inward and curl up into a ball around your wound.

Because that’s the only way you know how to heal.

Healing that involves other people has never seemed like an option to you. The idea of going to someone with your problems died in you a very long time ago.

You tried that. Nobody gave a shit. They just wanted you to leave them alone.

Even back then, when you were in elementary school, people just did not want to deal with you. So obviously, they were not going to spend any more time with me than they were absolutely forced to, and so the game was clearly to get rid of me as quickly and cleanly as possible.

Parents, teachers, siblings, didn’t matter who. Something about dealing with me gave people an overwhelming desire to escape.

Had they actually offered me comfort and support, like they were supposed to, that would have meant not only extending their time with me but actually,… shudder… inviting me to get closer to them,

Eww eww eww. Not gonna happen. Nobody wants someone like me to be in their lives at all. Letting me get close enough to talk is more than they can take.

Now some of this is on me and my inconsistent relationship with hygiene. Sometimes I am, quite plainly, pretty damned gross.

But gross people need love too, god damn it.

Then again, maybe the fact that it pushes people away from me is why it keeps being a habit despite the real social penalties.

Maybe on the scared little animal level, I feel like it keeps me safe. Tells people to back the fuck off. Like a skunk.

Wouldn’t that be pathetic?

More after the break.

---

These are the voyages

Still really sick of every trip to the toilet or the kitchen being an epic journey.

Just got back from the kitchen, and boy are my arms tired.

I mean legs. My legs are tired. So’s the rest of me, come to think of it. These little trips involve more than just pain in my legs.

They also tire me out unreasonably. I mean, I know I have never been very fit and getting old has made that a lot worse, but I should still not be this tired after just going to the kitchen and grabbing a few things from the fridge and refilling my water.

Something’s coming for me. I can feel it.

---

I find it amusing how this recent downturn in my health is reinforcing my tendency toward sloth and idleness even more than the pandemic did.

It’s like the universe is really against my getting exercise.

It’s not that I don’t want to exercise, exactly. But my depression/anxiety makes me afraid of any kind of effort that might raise my adrenaline level.

Because of course, that might lead to an anxiety attack.

Talk about maladaptive. What an overcorrection! Either anxious or depressed. No chance of spending quality time in the happy middle.

Well I am sick of it. I hereby unstick the middle. I want the pendulum of life to spend time in the middle, and if that means I have to let it swing freely, so be it.

It’s not like being constantly mildly depressed (dysthymia) has done me any good. Maybe introducing some swing to my mood dance is just what I need. .

Maybe normal people experience highs and lows all the time, at least compared to life in my deep freeze of a soul.

And it’s no big deal to them because for them it’s normal.

They are unwitting wise enough not to try to make their mood stay in one place. All that does is make you one of the living dead because that’s not how life for the living works.

Living things are dynamic and fluid, constantly changing as they partake of the flux of the universe. And that is how natural, healthy, robust life lives.

Like I have said here before :

When we seek to stop the wheel’s spin, we only delay our own renewal

someone smart in some book of quotes

So maybe what I really need to do is take the emergency brake off, ease up on brake pedal, and find out what it’s like to really roll.

Beats the hell out of driving around at half a mile an hour to the sounds of squealing metal and the smell of burning brake pads, wondering why I am not getting anywhere.

At least in theory.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

OK. Here we are. Meant to write about this yesterday but then stuff happened.

I think I get the whole “just concentrate on being yourself” thing I have been hearing my whole life. It just needed a little more context.

You should just concentrate on being the yourself because that’s something you can actually control. The alternative is to do like I have done and try to control outcomes by anticipating and understanding and controlling literally all possibilities, with very little room to forgive myself for failure to do so, and that is a dangerously foolish idea.

Nobody can do that, no matter how smart they are. The universe is too damned big and there is always so much that is utterly beyond our control that trying to process and assimilate all that is like an ant trying to lift a mountain.

It’s not how to see how this tragic attitude arises in one such as me, though. I have a very powerful mind. It truly can conquer and control many things, including things that for others have to remain a mystery. I have been doing astounding things with this magical mind of mine for my entire life.

What’s more is that because I have this extremely powerful mind, my whole primary approach to life has been to handle everything by applying overwhelming intellectual force to it.

When all you have is a hammer, and all that.

But it’s a fundamentally futile approach to life. I can’t possibly even know, let alone handle, all I would need to know about the world in order to process it like that.

I have to accept that, mental magic or no, I am still just one tiny jumped up monkey in a massive world too big for even my brain to handle and that past a certain point there it little choice but to have something approaching faith.

Or trust. They’re…. similar.

Because what else can handle the truly unknown and unknowable? The random and arbitrary whims of fate? What else can allow you to act when you know and accept all that you cannot control?

Call it hope, maybe. The hope that things will go well for you. Hope that nothing really terrible will happen. Hope that if tragedy does strike, you will be able to handle it.

Or maybe all that is really necessary is to look out over the vast void of all that you do not and cannot know and say, “Fine. Then I will just do what I FEEL like doing, then. ”

It is impossible to live via logic and reason alone. There has to be more. There has to be something within you that can act without sufficient information. Something that can handle things when you are scared and confused and can’t think straight. Something that extends beyond the limits of the rational mind and can therefore fill in all the little gaps in our comprehension that will otherwise leave us flat on our faces.

I am a foolish man who makes poor life choices.

I am a stupid man who goes about things the wrong way consistently.

I am an unwise man who has spent far too long hating himself for his inability to do that which is patently impossible.

And it’s high time I got down of my intellectual high horse, admittedly to myself I am merely mortal after all, and went to play with the other kids.

More after the break.

---

Locus of control, take 2?

Once more, I started off on topic than galloped off in all directions.

My original point, and I did (and do) have one, was that by concentrating on being yourself, you are reducing the challenge of life from you versus the universe to something far more doable.

It also means that you will be continuously reinforcing your sense of self and, ultimately, maybe even your self worth because you will be constantly re-investing your energies into your sense of self. ^[1]

At least, in theory. It does, sadly, presume that you don’t have a brutally self-destructive mind that will tear your sense of self into tiny pieces if you focus on it too long.

So it might be wise to learn to love yourself first.

I..am getting there.

Self-destruction is a hard habit to break because in order to stop taking your rage out on yourself you have to find it another target and that’s a very hard thing for me to do.

Which is why I keep ending up at this exact crossroads time and time again. Who even deserves my wrath?

Because as I say every time we are here, taking it out on others like an abuser (like my late father) is not an option.

I will not victimize.

But what does that leave? Well I could vent it in online discussions (comment threads, subReddits, that kind of thing) like the rest of the world.

That feels dirty and unworthy but there is, broadly speaking, nothing actually wrong with it as long as I keep my own contributions civil and on point.

Things do not need to get personal.

I can piss people off just fine without fighting dirty.

But I suppose the main reason I never actually do that is just the same ol reluctance to leave my microscopic safety zone as always.

It’s nice to think about, but to actually implement this idea would most definitely activate my social anxiety as well as my more general anxiety and that makes it a no-go.

Or at least it would under the old regime. I am slowly warming up to the idea that the only way to escape my sad fate is to openly defy my anxiety’s goddamned rules.

Be scared and do it anyway. That’s the true meaning of courage.

And I know that my anxiety and/or depression has enormous power but not much stamina, so if I can face the storm of emotions it/they unleash and just hang in there without quitting for long enough, the storm will subside, its energies spent.

So this could be doable.

Then again, so could a lot of things I also don’t do.

I will think about it while I lay in bed. Meanwhile…

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

But first, let’s talk about a “fun” thing that just happened.

First, the setup : This has been a very aggravating afternoon.

It started when I decided I was sick of buying a new one of these PayPower secured VISA cards every month and I wanted to make my latest one reloadable.

This has been possible for the whole time I have been using these frigging things, but I had tried to hook myself up with it before and had been stymied by a demand for my bank account’s PAC.

What the fuck is a PAC?

Whatever it was, I didn’t have it, and getting it would mean calling the bank (oh sorry, ‘credit union’) and I assumed that would end up being a huge hassle so I put it off.

Well man, was I right. It was a MEGA huge hassle. The very nice lady on the phone did not know what the hell a PAC was either.

My gut says it is something they used to use ages ago, before the modern era of online banking, and the people at Power Pay haven’t updated their bank interface layer for Van City in way too long a time.

Anyhow, what followed was two hours on the phone resetting my online banking password because that was the closest thing we could think of to this PAC thing.

It took that long because of how (justifiably) paranoid banks are about security these days. So I had to answer a lot of questions.

But then came two-factor authentication. And my blood ran cold! My lack of cell phone has made that impossible for me before.

That’s the whole reason I haven’t been on Facebook in two years!

Luckily, they had an option to do it by landline.

So that got squared away, even though I doubt it will solve the original problem. Then the nice lady on the phone starts telling me about Vancity’s “secured VISA” program, where I give them a deposit of $500 and after that I can use it like a normal VISA.

Sounds faboo. Especially once I get direct deposit going. Would be way better than buyi a new Power Pay card every month.

She almost had me totally sold on the thing when she casually mentioned that they would be holding on to that $500 for TEN FREAKING MONTHS before giving it back ot letting me spend it.

I can’t do that! I can’t tie up $500 of my money for most of a year!

And what the fuck is the point of that, anyhow? What do they think might happen in those ten months? Are they waiting to see if my money hatches?

So that ended that. Then it was time for my groceries to arrive.

The guy calls like they always do presumably to say he will be here in 5 mins.

I say “presumably” because his voice was so faint I could barely tell he was saying anything, let alone what he was saying.

Ten minutes later the phone rings, and it’s the delivery dude, telling me that the intercom phone ain’t working.

Highly plausible. That thing is an atrocious piece of crap.

So then I have to send Julian down to get my stuff. He did, and it turns out they didn’t have any of the pop I ordered, and subbed a few other things.

Great. This day just gets better and better.

Then, at like 5:30 pm, I am finally free to have “lunch”.

That’s what kind of day it’s been. Not managing to have lunch until suppertime.

I go and get my food together, and come back, and then the “fun” thing happens.

I put down my drink and by some bizarre neurological magic that signals my knee to buckle under me and boom down on my butt I go once again.

At least I got to put the drink down first!

More after the break.

---

---

Million dollar app idea : an app that lets you “slam” your cellphone.

It would simulate the sound of an old-school landline call being ended via a firm slamming of the handset down into the receiver cradle.

And then pump that through the cellphone, natch.

Probably an obsolete idea though. Who makes actual calls any more?

---

On my sudden collapse

That incident where I put my drink down and my knees gave out, almost as if I had set my cup down on the power switch for me legs, has me freaked out. 

Because that came out of nowhere. Sure, my legs were sore from having been on my feet, but not exceptionally so. In fact, I felt if anything a little better than usual. 

Then bang, down on my butt then onto the floor. And I lay there a way and not just because my legs are always weak after one of these incidents. 

To the point that it was a struggle just go get from the floor to the bed, and that’s not exactly a long trip. 

No, I was also pondering my fate.

Because now I feel like it could happen at any time. 

Which means it’s not safe to walk ever. So far I have been overcoming this shit by being wary when I walk and carefully spending as little time on my feet as possible. 

It’s very unpleasant, and times hideously painful, but it’s still manageable. 

But if at any second I could go down like I’d been shot, there’s nothing I can do about that and yet, until I get those crutches, I have no choice but to keep walking. 

So I dunno. It’s up to fate whether I die from a fall or not, I guess. 

At least I am talking to Doctor Chao on the phone tomorrow at 1 pm. Hopefully that will at least move things forward re : what de fug is wrong with my legs. 

I am holding the option ofjust going to the ER in reserve. Or Urgent Care, maybe, but this is a pretty serious fucking problem. 

If only Doctor Chao saw it that way. 

Not that I’m bitter. 

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow. 

 

 

So I get my leftover Subway sandwich out of the fridge to have with my (late, sigh) lunch. Sit down to eat. Take a big bite.

It’s frozen. A most unpleasant shock.

This is less than inexplicable. Our fridge has this spot on the top of the fridge compartment where by some odd fluke the freezer above it leaks through and occasionally this leads to incidents such as these.

Usually it’s just something as harmless as finding one of my bottles of pop is semi-frozen, and that can be downright pleasant.

Like having a custom Slurpee of one of my favorite sodas! Damn good on a hot day.

But anyhow, yeah, another of life’s fun little surprises.

Eating my “lunch” at fresking 5:30 pm because of another attack of sleeping when I should be eating. Totally planned to eat at 3 pm like usual. But when I stop gaming at 3, I am hit with a wave of intense sleepiness, and really have no choice but to lay down and have a snooze.

I’m going to have to figure out a way top restructure things to eliminate the assumption that I will be able to go on to blog n’ eat AFTER I do something else, like play games.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that this is no longer possilble. I just don’t have the endurance to do it.

Especially not since I quit caffeine. Dammit.

I used to have a liter of diet cola with lunch and one with supper, and those are my two big blogging meals as well.

Not a coincidence. I figured the caffeine would help me stay alert while writing.

After all, we writers love our coffee for a reason, right?

And I do crave it. I’ve been getting caffeine free Diet Coke as a substitute after the marvelous miss Felicity assured me it tasted way better than it used to (and it does), and that goes a surprisingly long way towards scratching the itch.

I honestly think that because it tastes so much like normal Diet Coke, my body is fooled into thinking it’s getting the caffeine too.

I won’t tell it if you don’t!

Been sleeping a lot today. And that’s cool. Pretty sure I am sleeping out of genuine need and not just a depressive desire to flee reality as far as possible without dying.

Sleep is death without the commitment, after all.

I won’t lie, the urge to flee life has been hitting me now and then. Kinda comes with all the pain and scary health prospects.

Depression doesn’t like those. Or rather, it does if it can use them to further suppress you and make you its bitch.

Sick confession : there was a very unhealthy part of me that was disappointed that I got over my first big attack of “the cramp”.

It was looking forward to “finally” living the invalid lifestyle of its dreams. One where people “have to” look after me and take care of me and give me all that nurturing and TLC I never got as wee child and all I have to do is be charming and lovable and nice and I never have to face the horrors of being responsible for myself again!

So pretty much the closest non-fetish way of actually becoming a kid again. It would (will?) be a lifestyle remarkably like that I had before being raped at the afe of 4.

Back then, before school was a part of my life, all I did was play and do what I was told and charm the socks off of whatever adults were around.

And the sick part of me is hoping for a return to those glory days.

As opposed to going the other way and actually growing up and becoming a fully functional adult who contributes to society.

Because honestly, that seems like a lot more work.

More after the break.

---

Already dreading tomorrow

Just got back from Denny’s, and once more getting from car to computer chair was a brutal fucking ordeal.

Hell, getting from our customary booth to the car was bad enough.

Living on the razor’s edge like this sucks. Every time I have to get up and go more than a foot or two, I wonder, “Is this it? Is this the trip where I break down entirely and just plain can’t make it and have to yell for help? And therefore have to admit to myself and the world that I am a helpless cripple now? ”

So tomorrow I am def gonna call Doctor Chao’s office and try to get at least a phone appointment with him.

Because we gotta talk. NOW.

I am on the verge of losing my ability to walk entirely. I will be lucky if I retain enough mobility to make it to the crapper and back. I am looking at life in a wheelchair here.

And that strikes me as the sort of thing doctors are supposed to prevent.

But I have no sense that Doctor Chao sees it that way at all. At the end of the last visit, he just glanced at my file, said “Well, we don’t have x-rays of your knees yet. So, you go do that now. ”

In other words, instead of his job, all he did was look for an excuse to get me to leave and then pounce on it.

And it’s going to be hard to talk to him without breaking down and dumping all of this on him all at once.

And I don’t want to do that…. unless it’s justified.

Trust me, if it seems like he is ignoring, belittling, or minimizing what I am saying, or otherwise gives me the impression that I am going to lose my legs and he don’t care, he will incur the Wrath of the Fru in one of its most pure and devastating forms : the Emotional Volcanic Eruption.

That’s when all the emotions that have been building up inside me come out all at once in a hot torrent of accusation, prosecution, and bitterness.

All still focused by my enormous verbal skills, by the way.

It could lay waste to nations.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Warning, fairly detailed poop talk ahead.

I probably shouldn’t talking about this in public but the phenomenon is so bizarre that I absolutely have to tell someone or I will lose my shit.

Pun absolutely intended.

This has happened three times now : I sit down on the bowl and take a perfectly normal shit. Straining, pushing, plopping, the whole defecation sensorium occurs.

Everything is fine till I stand up and go to flush only to discover….

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN THE BOWL.

Nothing. Not even the slightest of brown dots. I have somehow had what seems like a totally normal everyday excretory experience but it was ALL A LIE.

I have taken a phantom shit.

I have had a rectal hallucination.

I have been made a fool of by the poop goblins again.

Or something even more outlandish and obscure.

I seriously cannot figure out what the hell is happening. I don’t see how it is possible. I swear I recall the sensation of fecal matter exiting my body in the usual way, and yet obviously that never happened.

So did my mind just fill it what it expected to feel?

Next time I poop I am going to be paying very close attention, as absurd as that sounds. I will mentally document the whole process. I will examine it from every possible angle. I will probe the matter deeply and descend into the very bowels of hell till I get to the bottom of this bizarre mystery.

OK, I am done now.

Wait…. I won’t stop till I am pooped!

OK, I think that’s all of it. For now.

I suppose this is technically a medical issue, but I am hardly going to bother a medical person with it. Not when the only part of me that is suffering is my curiosity.

But I simply have to know what the fuck is up with my butt.

It and I go back a really long way!

---

On breaking even

Well I don’t seem to have gotten any worse, anyhow.

That’s the exciting, action-packed update, The “cramp” has stayed away for the most part and so all I have to deal with is the by now routine excruciating leg pain when I stand up and walk around.

Doing wound care on Monday should be “fun”. Pretty sure I am going to break down and get myself some (fucking) crutches soon without waiting for Doctor Chao to chime in on whether it’s a good idea.

Must remember to call and annoy him Monday. Hey, remember me? The guy who could lose his ability to walk at any second?

If that happens and his negligence is a factor, I will sue the bejesus out of him.

I don’t care how cute he is! (answer : very. )

I keep thinking about braces instead of crutches. I guess because on some level they seem a lot easier than crutches.

Reminder : I fucking hate crutches.

But that is rapidly being tempered by the tantalizing prospect of being able to walk without agonizing leg pain.

Instead, I will walk with agonizing ARMPIT pain.

Well, a change is as good as a rest, so they say.

More after the break.

---

A massive revelation

I just figured something out.

The mystery of those shows with massive ratings even though nobody admits to liking them is really no mystery at all.

Because you don’t need to like a show to watch it. You don’t even have to admit to YOURSELF that you like a show to watch it.

If you wanted to be a dick about it, you could ask people, “We know you don’t like the show…. but do you ever WATCH it?”

And if they are being honest, they will admit that they do.

That’s the dark miracle of this kind of content. These shows know how to appeal to subconscious mind enough to get you to tune in.

They don’t give a shit if you admit it to anybody.

Thus, I invent a new term : shamewatching. You shamewatch a show if you watch it and even enjoy it but you would just DIE if your peer group caught you at it.

“My wife caught me shamewatching ‘Is it cake?’ last night. I tried to convince her that I had just been channel zapping, but then she found the t-shirt. Man, I am never going to live THIS one down. ”

You get the idea.

---

Bodies are dumb

My mission : get my Subway order from the door.

Mission status : complete, but it was pretty damned close.

Mission debrief : Started off strong but The Pain caught up to me pretty fast. So the trip back from Mission Objective was much harder than the trip there. By the time I got back to the computer, I was sweating like a summer ham and felt like I was going to pass out. Right at the last second, just as I was sitting down. my ankle buckled and I almost fell.

Can’t help but see that as fate giving me a warning shot.

“Take heed, fat boy, because next time, I won’t miss. ”

This once more reminds me that I am basically a cripple and for my own safety probably should not be left all alone in the apartment any more.

And that made me realize that there is a much bigger challenge than possible life in a wheelchair on the road ahead of me

How on Earth would I adjust to having another person around me all the time?!?

I have been a hardcore loner for a long long time now and of necessity I adapted to being all alone and now it’s the only way I know how to operate.

Having another person always in my mindspace would drive me buggy. I can totally imagine that triggering my metamorphosis into a wild-eyed curmudgeon, cranky all the time and rather hard for a potential caretaker to deal with.

Hopefully I would learn to just ignore them and forget they are there. And hopefully they would be okay with that and would cooperate by being unobtrusive and quiet.

I’m getting the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.

Hopefully it won’t come to that any time soon.

Even though technically, it should be there right now.

I guess I will have to keep living a life of pulse-pounding adventure until I figure something out on this score.

I refuse to ask Joe and/or Julian to do it.

That pretty much leaves “the province paying a stranger to babysit me” as the only option. Farewell the tiny bit of dignity I am surprised to find I had left.

Never forget : things can always get worse.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Feeling kinda mentally wiped right now, dunno why. Kind of like I just completed a fairly rigorous exam on an empty stomach.

I have been sleeping a bunch, maybe that did it. I decided I was going to make a conscious effort to catch up on sleep. So I have been deliberately going right back to sleep after I get up to pee.

Normally I don’t like doing it. I prefer to stay up for a while so I can “dry out” from my usual sweaty, troubled, semi-drowning kind of sleep and get back to something more closely resembling normal before jumping back into the pool.

Because frankly, my sleep is so tormented that I am kind of afraid to go back.

But I know from experience that I am better off in the long term getting right back to sleep. That helps compensate for the fact that I can’t sleep for more than two and a half hours at a time by letting me get right back to REM sleep.

It’s that damned REM sleep that is the bane of my existence. Both my damnation and my saviour, it is my inability to get enough of the very deep REM sleep in which the brain finalizes the transfer of memories from medium term (daily) storage to long term storage that messes with my mental state.

Meaning I always have a lot of half-processed memories floating around in the undercroft of my mind, taking up space and slowing me down.

Explains a lot, dunnit?

I would be way better off if I could sleep for a minimum of three and a half hours at a time. That’s how long it usually takes people to get to the truly deep phase of REM.

But between my psychological issues, my constant intake of fluids leading to frequently waking to pee, and oh yeah, my smothering dozens of times an hour in my sleep, being able to sleep for that long seems almost impossible.

I tried to compensate with sleeping pills. Took me far too long to realize that they would either not work or work but make my sleep apnea way way worse, resulting me in waking up feeling like I had been lucky to wake up at all.

And that’s pretty fucking scary, So, no more of that.

Doc Costin says that I should try a half-dose and see how that works. Might get the good without the bad that way,

But I am scared of the pills now. So, I have yet to do so.

Right now, the prospect of a nice long coma is appealing. Get conked out for six months. Wake up refreshed and alert, REM backlog finally cleared. Get to start over with a fresh and stable psyche,

Kind of like this :

Sounds good to me. Maybe the world would even be a saner place by then.

Hey, it could happen.

Still haven’t heard from Doc Chao about my x-rays. Really should have called and made an appointment today but I was too busy sleeping.

Monday it will be, then.

Oh. And the “cramp” has mostly left me alone today. Knock on wood.

Could end at any second and never go away again, but I am nevertheless grateful for having some time with only my usual level of slow acting agony when I walk.

Funny how sickness can make you grateful for what you once took for granted.

More after the break.

---

Up and down

As patient readers have no doubt deduced by now. I spend most of my days either sitting here at my computer (up) or laying in bed (down).

It just struck me that this is, uh….. not enough.

It’s too limited a life. Even sedentary office workers move a heck of a lot more than I do just by moving around the office getting files, making copies, and so on.

No wonder my spirit is so weak. I never feed it! The spiritual strength I crave has to come from the body and the body doesn’t get stronger without being put to work.

This fear of effort I have is extremely toxic. It is life-destroying, or whatever the opposite of life-affirming might be. It makes me shy away from all that is good and pure and bright and wholesome and right like I’m Dracula and it’s sunlight.

Maybe deep down, I feel like I don’t deserve it. That I am such a horribly toxic monstosity that contact between me and the goodness of the world would result in me poisoning it and destroying it rather than it purifying me in any way.

There’s no such thing as a clean turd, after all.

In another way, it’s also about a vastly maladaptive response to my anxiety. My system is hostile to its own adrenaline, and clamps down hard with an antisympathetic response that goes way beyond merely scrubbing the adrenaline from the anxiety from my bloodstream but all the rest of it too, leaving me cold and lifeless.

Honestly, nine times out of ten, I would rather be anxious. At least then I would feel alive, instead of like one of the walking dead.

I would love to know what it is like to be fully alive. To view life with open-armed enthusiasm and see each new day as an exciting opportunity to have fun and do great things, as opposed to my current deathmarch mindset which sees life as a long painful grind that only ends in death.

When I was talking with Doc Costin today, it came to me that almost never look for happiness. In fact I rarely think about making myself happy at all.

Instead I am stuck in this bunker mentality where all that matters is safety and survival and such frivolous concerns as happiness or enjoying life are wasteful and heretical and can only lead to utter ruin.

Like I said to Costin, it’s like I am trying to survive a long dark winter.

But there is no winter. No famine. No cruel deprivation. I am safe and warm and housed and have plenty food and water and other necessities of life. This absurd austerity is completely unjustified by my actual circumstances. I could stop any time and be fine.

“That’s just what they want you to think so they can GET you!” insists the paranoid lunatic that lives in my head.

God damn it, the war ended decades ago. Come home already.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,