For some dang reason that song has been stuck in my head today.
Oh wait, I know, it’s because I am always fucking cold.
At least when I am not in bed under the covers. There, I can actually feel warm. Patient readers know that’s actually an improvement from before, when even under the covers I was cold as hell.
Then I turned the heat up in my room, and things got better… under the covers.
But I have the heat cranked all the way up right now and I am still frickin’ cold as I sit here in front of Mister Computer.
In fact, the second I get up and out from under the covers, I am losing heat, and I will get colder and colder until I go back to bed.
I can think of two reasons for this.
First, there’s the fact that my computer desk is directly in front of a great big window. And windows are drafty.
Normally, this is a minor problem because it doesn’t get that cold around here. Historically, temperatures below freezing are a rarity around here and if we get any “real winter” it’s only for a couple of days, and quite mild.
But this is the year that all changes, I think. Thanks to the global climate disaster, everything is changing, and right now that means Old Man Winter has settled in for a good long stay on the formerly Wet Coast.
And that means my big old window radiates cold right now.
So I am going to order me some thermal insulation tape and get Joe and Julian to help me tape up all the cracks and seams in that big old window and hopefully make this dirty old box I live in just a little more livable.
The other cause is my poor circulation.
It really feels like my body just isn’t heating up my blood and circulating it well enough to keep me warm.
I keep waiting for my body’s “polar bear mode” to kick in and warm me up. Usually, feeling subzero temperatures on my skin is enough to knock the dust off my inner furnace and start it up, but that does not seem to be in the cards now.
Back home in the Maritimes, every year I would be cold in late fall until I was outside feeling the cold (usually because I wasn’t wearing a jacket yet) and then I swear I could feel my metabolism shift gears and start making a lot more heat.
Well I am still waiting this year. Might be that due to my poor health that mode is just not available any more.
As a result of all this, plus the darkness of this time of year, my mood is taking a beating. The cold makes me feel feeble and weak and insecure and vulnerable.
And those feelings do not need that kind of help.
Even worse, I feel a storm of irritability rising underneath the pall of despair. I have had a number of “fuck my life” or “I hate my life” moments lately and that is never good.
At least I see this problem coming and can be ready to apply extra restraint and self-control if I feel a case of the crankies coming on.
More after the break.
Got no sun up in the sky
Song #2 that’s stuck in my head today :
Gaaaah her voice is so incredible it’s almost painful. I listen to her sing and it flips my lid. It’s like my senses can’t believe anything can be that good.
And she’s singing one of the greatest sad songs of all time.
*yoink* said the music loving fox.
It’s a song I can relate to, except there’s no missing man in my life.
Well, not a specific one, anyhow.
For me, love is something that happens to other people, like most of life. I am not consciously lonely in a romantic sense because I have no idea what I am missing.
I’ve never been in a romantic relationship. I have been hidden away from life by my mental illness for my entire adult life.
And clever trickster that I am, I not only hide from life, I hide the fact that I am hiding from life. Many who have met me are shocked when I tell them I suffer from depression because I don’t “act” depressed.
My personal demeanor is always warm and upbeat. I smile, I make silly little jokes, I radiate my own brand of gentle charisma. I always seem like the opposite of depressed.
And that’s not fake. I am not some completely different person stifled by a mask they feel compelled to wear.
But there is a lot of talk “unmasking” on TikTok lately. In that case, they are talking about autistic people learning to just be themselves instead of wearing the social mask they have had to learn to wear to “fit in”, but it got me thinking.
I am well aware of my social mask. My problem is that I prefer the mask to myself. I would rather be that guy than be me.
Ergo unmasking is almost unthinkable to me. When I try to imagine it, I get right up to the point of truly visualizing it and just stop. My mind refuses to go any further.
That doesn’t mean there is nothing behind the mask. That’s absurd.
There’s just nothing that wants to be seen or known beneath the mask. So it cloaks itself in darkness and fear, and thus hides itself from itself.
Nothing to see here, move along, no metaconsciousness allowed.
As a result, I have absolutely no concept of who I am sans mask. My sense of self and the mask are as one. As far as my basic consciousness knows, I really am that friendly, cheerful, waggy fox type person.
That’s certainly who I WANT to be. Who I would RATHER be.
But I know that’s not true. There is the realest me, the maker and wearer of masks, the unseen figure lurking in the shadows and pulling the strings.
And I strongly intuit that getting to know THAT fellow is key to my recovery because that’s the only way I can create a whole and fully integrated sense of self.
Until then, all I am really doing is costume changes.
And those don’t really change a thing, do they?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.