Another Patrick Teahy video :

And anothner set of notes taken while watching it :

My signs of survival mode :

Tiredness and lethargy
Not thinking I am able to ask for help
Depression and anxiety
Brain fog – just getting through the day
Numbness and stuckness – so much stuckness
Active strategies : vidya games

What led me to survival mode : getting taken out of college

The key is to re build a sense of security. Daunting.

1.What is triggering survival mode? I am waiting for things to get better without actually thinking things will get better. What triggers me is hard to say because I am triggered more or less constantly.

2. Do something physical to release the trigger, Beat something up while voicing our pain to release it. Scared to do so. Maybe I can do it here.

3. Connect and talk about it – I find myself feeling that this would be pointless. Which suggests a lack of faith in Doctor Costin, I suppose. And/or humanity.

4. Come up with a reasonable plan (???).

Oh, the usual crap about goal setting. Goal setting requires hope. He wants me to come up with something like, “I will look for jobs on UpWork” or “I will try to meet new people online” or ‘I will clean my room”.

Yeah bullshit. No I won’t. I won’t do a god damned thing and it’s pointless to pretend otherwise. All that can lead to is disappointment and depression. I am stuck as fuck, like a bug trapped in amber.

As you can tell, I am not in the best of moods.

Let’s go through this bit by bit :

My signs of survival mode :

Tiredness and lethargy
Not thinking I am able to ask for help
Depression and anxiety
Brain fog – just getting through the day
Numbness and stuckness – so much stuckness
Active strategies : vidya games

Nothing revolutionary there, though seeing it all in one place like that is sobering.

What led me to survival mode : getting taken out of college

No duh. Happened more than 25 years ago and I am still fucked up by it. I managed to pull myself out of a total nervous and physical breakdown to get to the level of sanity I have now, and have gone no further.

The key is to re build a sense of security. Daunting.

Daunting indeed. But I don’t feel like it’s impossible. Safety is the truth, after all. I am safe, I am fine, there are no bullies in my life, everything is cool.

So it’s just a matter of convincing my scared little animal of that. Poor pet.

1.What is triggering survival mode? I am waiting for things to get better without actually thinking things will get better. What triggers me is hard to say because I am triggered more or less constantly.

Well that’s not true. I might be depressed all the time but I am not triggered all the time.

The one thing I can think of that triggers me is disappointment. That can send me on a downward spiral like nothing else.

So I try not to get my hopes up. But that’s toxic too. I need inspiration and enthusiasm. I smother under wet blankets.

The only other solution is to just get crushed enough to get used to it. To build my faith in my own ability to get right back up and keep fighting.

That seems doable.

2. Do something physical to release the trigger, Beat something up while voicing our pain to release it. Scared to do so. Maybe I can do it here.

I am gonna try this tomorrow night, when I have the apartment to myself. I will beat up some pillows and vent about my shitty upbringing.

I agree with Patrick about the kick starting thing. But I am still terrified of my own anger because there is so much of it and it is so volatile.

But if I have to go a little crazy with anger to become sane, it’s worth it.,

3. Connect and talk about it – I find myself feeling that this would be pointless. Which suggests a lack of faith in Doctor Costin, I suppose. And/or humanity.

It’s true. I have very little faith that connecting with someone and explaining my problems to them will be rewarding enough to be worth making myself vulnerable like that. All I expect from the world when I do that is terrified incomprehension.

Even from Doctor Costin. Even he can’t withstand the power of my darkness and I have never even shown twenty percent of it to him.

That’s why I vent here, alone, in nice safe words that are not amplified by my megawatt power of personality and projecting empathy.

There’s nobody to disappoint you if you’re talking to yourself.

Sorry for the format break :

4. Come up with a reasonable plan (???).

Oh, the usual crap about goal setting. Goal setting requires hope. He wants me to come up with something like, “I will look for jobs on UpWork” or “I will try to meet new people online” or ‘I will clean my room”.

Mostly covered it above. I don’t make promises to myself that I know that I can’t keep. Whether or not I have any motive power is a matter of chance. Neurochemical roulette. Most of the time, all I can do is hang on.

My main hobby is not killing myself.

Takes up a lot of my time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

---

The quest for the card

Whoa doggie, what a hassle a free gift can be!

So as I mentioned before, a very nice fur named Jaekob is donating his old graphics card (GPU) to me.

Turns out it’s an ” Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3080 ti”, whatever THAT means.

Well I caught him online today and it turned out he had already sent the card to me via UPS but it was stuck for some reason.

Turns out it was two reasons. The big one was that the import tax and duties had to be paid on it.

To the tune of $255. Yikes. Kinda makes me wish I knew someone in one of those towns near the Canadian border with BC so I could have had it shipped to them then got them to quietly smuggle it up here for like $100.

There was brief hope of not having to pay that because Jaekob recalled that you didn’t have to pay import fees on gifts.

That was quickly dashed when I looked up the regs and a) it would have to have been declared a gift when he shipped it, no changing it after, and b) it only covers gifts up to $60 CDN in value anyhow.

And as it turns out, when I looked up the “Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3080 ti” on Amazon, I learned that they go for between $1200 CDN and $1800 CDN .

So the decision to pay the dang fees was a pretty easy one. Holy crap.

Luckily, I had just barely enough money left on last month’s credit card to cover the fees, so that hurdle was cleared.

That left the other problem, namely that something had gone wrong with the address. They needed to have it updated.

This time I made extra special sure to give Jaekob my address properly, and he was able to relay it to the UPS person he was on the phone with.

So in theory, everything is green for go now.

But on this side of the border at least, I am still getting “address info needed”. So I can’t relax about it just yet.

Because of course I can’t. That would be too easy.

I am probably going to have to call the 1-800 line. And I don’t like phoning.

I like emailing. Way less socially stimulating.

Update : Found the email address. Yay!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

---

Really? But it was Thursday like a week ago!

Did the Therapy Thursday thang. Like the pair of old dudes we are, we spent half the session talking about medical stuff.

Ya know, my cardio issues, my trying to hook myself up with a working glucometer, and so forth and so on.

In the course of that, he told me about a place in town called Garrett Wellness Center where they specialize in helping people with serious medical conditions find ways to exercise that are safe for them and will help them get better.

That sounds fantastic to me. I want some way to get moving that doesn’t risk my fragile health. Not only do I want to be able to actively contribute to my own rehabilitation, but I also want some way to burn off all this nervous energy that I accumulate due to all the mental stimulation I consume.

I know for a rock solid fact that I am a much calmer, less anxious, and overall happier person when I can discharge that overload. That was one of the big lessons I took away from my Million Word Project.

To refresh your memories, the year was 2011 and I wanted to kick start myself into developing my writing abilities, which were entirely latent at the time.

So I came up with the positively bonkers plan to write a million words in a year. A little quick calculator work showed that this meant writing around 2,739 words a day for a year, and this, to me, seemed doable.

You’ll recognize that as a bit less than triple my current output.

And you know what? Those times after I had done my words for the day were some of the happiest times I can remember in my adult life. Gone was all that tension and anxiety and I felt relaxed, confident, and ready for anything.

And as it turned out, I finished my million words in early December, a month early.

That’s when I moved to doing 1K words a day instead. But looking back, I kind wish I had just kept going.

Try convincing my depression to go back to that now, though. Damn it.

Still, I hop to find a new “thing” to burn up my excess electricity one way. A safe form of exercise would fit the bill. So would a new crazy creative project like the Million Words to inspire me with its sheer lunacy.

I’ve pondered trying “enter one writing contest a day” but so far I have lacked the guts to pull the trigger on it.

The forces of “never do anything” inside me, that aberration of the parasympathetic nervous system that has me locked forever in “freeze” mode (as in fight, flight, or freeze), are still too strong.

I need to wrestle that bullshit into place instead of letting it run (and ruin) my entire fucking life before I will be able to summon up the wherewithal to embark on another crazy project like that.

More after the break.

---

That sleep thing

Slept when I should have been eating and blogging again. Ergo I am here doing so at frigging 10:30 PM when I will be eating again at midight.

Might have to delay my debut in the living room to watch stuff with Joe and Julian till 1 am instead of the usual midnight to space the meals out a bit more.

Meanwhile, I am brain fried from intense sleep and honestly kind of want to just go right back to bed.

But kind of don’t want to go back to bed too, because sleep just fucked me up and I am a tiny bit afraid of it now.

So it goes.

Writing is an uphill battle when I am like this. My sautéed cerebellum really does not want to focus on the screen and come up with words and such, and therefore I am doing the all too familiar dance of having to shepherd my errant sheep of a mind back to the task at hand over and over again.

It’s rather annoying.

In other news, bought Cyberpunk 2077 but I might have to return it because it freezes on a black screen whenever it tries to load a save game.

The music keeps playing, though, which is cool because the sound track is quite good. Lots of dark, moody synths, very appropriate for a cyberpunk setting.

But I didn’t pay around $35 to listen to music, dammit.

I have found potential solutions to my problem online and I will try them out. But I will do so as quickly as possible because I am already over the 2 hour limit for returns.

Stupid excessively long intro!

I hope I don’t have to return it. I haven’t even really gotten to play yet, I’ve just made it through the damned intro.

I want to be let loose to seek my fortune in Night City, the game’s setting. Lots and lots of neon, of course, plus futuristic cars driving about.

So far, so good.

No Man’s Sky continues to be kind of slow. But better since I more or less gave myself permission to just wander around and see what I can find.

I mean, I am supposed to be finding copper to mine, and I do keep looking for it, but I also just wander hither and yon while looking for it.

Make the game a lot more exciting and a lot less frustrating. So what if I can’t find the fucking copper? I’ve found ancient alien monuments, a crashed space cruiser, blueprintsw for upgrades to my gear, and so much more.

The copper is probably way back where I landed on the planet. I was just, as usual, looking in the wrong direction.

By now, I have wandered so far from my landing site that I have no clue where it was and no way to find out since I moved my ship.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Oh well, hope that’s not it, then. Hopefully I actually WILL stumble across some god damned copper so I can make whatever doodad the game wants next.

Wandering is fun and all, but I can only keep my need to make progress towards a defined goal at bay for so long.

And with that… so long, everyone!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

A bit more on that hurt child turning away from the world that lives in my head.

It’s the main thing that cripples me. It’s what sucks the energy out of me when I try to get things done. It’s the terrible wound deep in my center that makes it so the spine of my spirit can’t bear any weight, and my life goes absolutely nowhere.

It’s what makes it so hard for me to cope with anything at all. It’s what leaves me so weak despite a mind and a soul that are very very strong. It’s what leaves me feeling so helpless and lost despite all my power.

Sometimes I feel like a mad sad bad god of some sort.

Dunno what my divine portfolio is, but it’s probably not doing too good.

And like I said before, I want to heal this mighty Wound of mine, but I am not sure how to do it. And it seems like such a dauntingly massive undertaking.

Luckily, I don’t have to do it all at once. I just have to keep hammering away at the problem until something gives. I’ve made a lot of progress in opening up my emotions and expanding my sense of self into this new and exciting space, and my process of learning to express more and more in every word is going gangbusters right now.

But there’s still so much more to do. I have an awful lot of work to do in order to reach, activate, and integrate all these id-connected parts of myself that having been languishing in starvation all these years.

And I need to find the energy they need to stay alive. I want to expand out of my strictly introverted tendency to want to generate all my own energy so that I can get energy from my environment at least some of the time.

I mean, there has to be some way to bring enough warmth and light into my soul to let me finally bloom. I know that if I could warm up inside, everything else would become so much easier. I just need to will myself alive first.

And that means forsaking cold comfort for a while. That chilly numbing anesthetic my brain produces in such quantity is very addictive for its pain killing properties, and if I am going to kick the habit that means putting up with a LOT of deferred pain.

But I don’t mind. I can take it. I am no longer trapped by a fear of pain and suffering. Bring it on, if that’s what it takes to get healthy.

I will eat it all up and ask for more.

It’s not like I have anything better to do, anyhow.

And at least when I am suffering I feel alive.

And I want to feel alive. I am very tired of being frozen and dead inside. I want ot feel like a real live adult type human being, with warm blood and working muscles and all those other marvelously organic and true things.

And I don’t care if it seems weird at first.

Everything is weird at first.

But the good stuff is worth it.

More after the break.

---

There and back again

Just got back from my epic journey to get a head and chest CT scan.

Epic for me, anyhow. With my recent cardiovascular decline, the world is an even bigger place for me than before.

Hence my having to rest twice on the way from the Emergency Room entrance^[1] to Medical Imaging. Which is closer to the Main Entrance than it is to Emerge.

That’s what everyone at Richmond General calls the Emergency Room. Emerge, Makes it sound like a brand new drug they only advertise on CNN.

“Ask your doctor if Emerge is right for you. “
(offscreen voice, elderly) WHAT?
“I SAID, ASK YOUR DOCTOR IF EMERGE IS RIGHT FOR YOU!”

Either that, or it’s someone’s interpretive dance routine where they are born out of an egg or whatever.

Anyhow, I made it to Medical Imaging, got checked in, sat in the waiting area while I fill out the usual form. Then the door to CT opens and my MRT^[2] called my name.

She was, it turned out, a tall skinny Kiwi. As in New Zealander. And I absolutely love New Zealanders. They are such a good natured and friendly people.

They’re like chill Aussies.

The procedure went fine. Was a head and chest CT. Whatever.

They can CT my entire body if they like. It would honestly make me feel better.

When the contrast dye went in, I really felt the noted “warm” sensation flushing through me. That’s because for this procedure, they had to inject the dye quite fast.

I think I know what a hot flash feels like now. Wild.

I know the tech noticed how chill I was about the whole thing because she told me at the end that I had done “VERY well!”.

This was not my first rodeo. This has to be like my tenth CT at RGH. And IVs don’t bother me. Not with how many times I have been through the IV Antibiotics program plus all the time on IVs when I was in hospital.

Plus it’s just my nature to not resist something I have decided to do. I wasn’t dragged kicking and screaming into MI and I am not some child who is going to make things difficult on the nice nurses and techs.

And I am just a naturally helpful and agreeable person.

Then came the ride home. And for some reason, the admitting nurse for MI pointed me in the opposite direction as ER.

I followed her directions and ended up outside. I had exited via the entrance that is roughly in the middle of the hospital, no doubt left over from when RGH was smaller.

And I was a tad miffed till I realized that this route was actually much shorter than the indoor one. So it turns out she knew best.

I still needed a couple of rests. And it was a little nippy out. But with my weak constitution, shorter distance trumps all.

At this rate, it won’t be long before I have to get a wheelchair,

Hopefully these CTs will shed some light on WTF is going on.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

\

So after months of my usual dithering, where I buy a game and try it out then return it out of panic when the deadline draws near, I finally made a commitment.

Because I serious issues with making a decision and sticking with it.

Well I am sick of it. I have bought a new game and I am NOT going to be returning it to Steam no matter what!

Because I am steadfast, I am determined, and I bought it via a third party vendor so I can’t return it anyway.

The game is the notorious No Man’s Sky. Notorious because after many long years of escalating hype caused by this mind meltingly awesome trailer :

…when the game was finally released it was a buggy piece o’ crap that did not include most of the really cool features people had been promised.

What a clusterfuck!

I think it was the first AAA game to have this kind of difficult birth. Nowadays, it is all too fucking common for top of the line games to come out and be basically beta versions.

Because why spend precious money testing the game properly when you can get the players to do it via bug reporting!

Makes me sick.

Anyhow, No Man’s Sky came out in 2016 so they have had seven years to patch things and make them actually work, and word on the Net is that it’s actually a fantastic game that is well worth playing and actually quite a good game now.

And I really crave a space exploration game with maybe a hint of space empire thrown in, and No Man’s Sky fits the bill. Now.

So I bought it, I downloaded it, and I will try it after I take a bit of a rest.

Lord, let it work on my computer.

’cause I am kinda stuck with it now.

More after the break.

---

Well I feel good because I took care of making an appointment to see Doctor Caswell so I can get her to fill out a Special Authority form so I can get my sensors for the Freestyle Libre 2 glucometer and finally control my frigging diabetes!

Except, of course, there was a complication. Since it has been almost a year since I darkened Doctor Caswell’s door, her office needs a fresh referral from Doctor Chao, my GP, in order to be able to bill properly.

So Doctor Caswell’s people are sending a referral request to Doctor Chau’s people. But they also wanted me to call Doctor Chao’s office myself.

No prob. So I called and told Doc Chao’s secretary to expect a referral request soon and that I would appreciate it if Doc Chao would fulfill it.

It took some time but the secretary slowly pierced together what I meant. She is going to call me when the referral goes through.

Then Doctor Caswell’s office will call me with the appointment.

My, my social calendar is full lately. Not only do I have that stuff going on, but I had Wound Care this morning and tomorrow night I have a chest CT at RGH.

The same chest CT I would have gotten after my visit with Doctor Teal at the Stroke Prevention Clinic last week if it hadn’t been for ramps.

I am proud that I handled all that, random complications and all, long enough to get it done instead of falling apart at the first unexpected event.

Ya know, I am much stronger, more competent, and a lot more resilient than I have usually given myself credit for. I really want to erase those old tapes in my head and learn to remember that I can get shit done. I don’t always have to surrender and get someone else to do it.

Take that, ghost of my siblings past!

---

Why the fog

Basically, the purpose of the omnipresent fog in my mind is to hide reality.

It’s how my mind copes with how overstimulating and overwhelming reality can be. The fog acts like a filter to turn the volume down on life.

Healthy people just get used to it, I suppose.

But I ain’t healthy.

The fact that overstimulation keeps coming up in my self-examinations adds weight to the notion that I have Asperger’s.

Just because I don’t respond to bad stimuli by rolling on the floor squealing and pawing at my ears doesn’t mean that I don’t have that Aspie relationship with my senses.

In fact I can easily imagine scenarios in which a bad stimulus makes it so I have to leave the room to get away from it before I really do have a deep down freakout.

The kind so strong you don’t remember anything about them after.

The fact that this has yet to happen in my life is largely due to I have spent my entire adult life in front of a computer in a bedroom somewhere.

All very quiet and controlled environments, perfect for delicate hothouse flowers who can’t bear the hubbub of ordinary life like me.

And for extra protection, I got the brain fog.

Yes folks, my brain is all fogged up.

And it protects me, but at such a price! It’s why I am always becoming so confused and lost and a big part of why I am do clumsy.

Because that fog ain’t water. It’s liquid anesthetic that numbs what it touches.

So I go around numb and it keeps me from thinking things through or knowing exactly where I am or really having any solid realtime relationship with my surroundings.

No wonder I am so awkward and clumsy. I only experience my surroundings in little glimpses before disappearing back into the bunker of my mind.

I really should execute my plan to spend time outside, sans tablet, just soaking in the fresh air and relaxing as I come into harmony with my environs.

It seemed to help me a lot when I would do it on the way home from VFS, way back when. I would come away from it feeling more at peace and chill.

But I am so unhealthy now. The ship may have sailed on that. Now it’s all I can do to make it to the car and back now and then.

And it’s January, so it’s not exactly nice out.

I will ponder the problem and see if I can clever up a solution,.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

More stuff I wrote on YouTube!

All forms of art are plagued by the popular crap. There will always be the ones who figure out that lowest common denominator formula and churn out the worst kind of dreck and get very rich doing it. This is, to an actual consumer of said art form, such a galling and egregious violation of artistic meritocracy that it can make you want to quit the scene you love so much. But hold fast, good person, and stand back for a moment, and realize that the art you love is still there, unchanged. And the like minded people with whom you commune about your tastes are also still there. The dreck does not delete the gold, merely eclipses it in the eyes of the masses. As far as I can tell, all we sophisticates can do is lock the door to our own little realms and ignore the popular manure of the day. Keep the gatekeeping to a minimum…. after all, we only found the things we love because someone else let US in. And remember that at the end of the day, the good stays golden, and the crap merely gets flushed. 🙂

not bad, eh?

93

And this is the video I was replying to, offered purely for reference as it’s over an hour long and largely about classical music.

So yeah. Popular culture will always produce the occasional prodigy of crap now and then. They will always be with us, and railing against one does nothing to prevent the rise of another to take their place.

We sophisticates aren’t entirely helpless. We comedy types and other assorted wits can always resort to mockery. A few particularly deadly quips at the expense of the unjustly successful can be a wonderful balm for the wounded artistic soul.

And if you absolutely must go do battle with the forces of ghastliness in art, humour is your best weapon there too.

But step very, very carefully : you don’t want to seem like you are trying to take away the public’s new favorite diversion. That will just make his or her fans all the more determined to close ranks and defend them.

Instead, you have to avoid any sort of direct confrontation and instead hone in on a mannerism or verbal tic that they have and make gentle fun of IT.

Even better if you can distill the reasons you loathe this person down into an easy to understand and self-evidently accurate observation about this person.

The late Norm Macdonald was great at that.

But in the long run, you’re probably better off simply ignoring them,. After all, it’s not like they are appealing to you and your fellow sophisticates. There’s no chance of that.

So who cares what a bunch of common boors wastes their money on?

True art is not a money meritocracy anyhow. Yeah the money is great and it’s great to have an audience, but the real measure of artistic success is whether or not you appeal to the people who know a lot about that kind of thing.

And, of course, whether or not you, the artist, like what you make.

More after the break.

---

On the turning away

Let’s talk about my not being able to face reality.

I’ve spoken before about how when I try to do things to improve my situation, it’s like the place where the energy to do that is supposed to go has a leak in it so the energy just drains right back out again and nothing gets done.

At least I think I talked about this before. Whatever.

And when this terrible draining out of energy happens, it feels like some part of me, a scared and hurt little boy perhaps, is saying “no” and turning away from reality rather than face their fears.

And I don’t know what to do about that. It takes place on an extremely deep level of my mind and thus is nearly impossible to grapple with via my overpowered intellect.

So the direct route is out. Can’t solve it with my go-to default response of applying overwhelming intellectual force to the problem.

’cause I’m the Juggernaut, bitch., But that’s not helpful here.

The word that keeps coming to mind is “healing”. That part of my mind needs to be healed of its terrible Wound before that scared little boy will be able to feel safe enough to not just face the world but embrace it.

I belong out there, in the world, in the sun and having fun. This cloistered existence is killing me. Killing my soul, my spirit, my esprit.

I am desperate to be born already. But I have to heal first.

And that’s going to take something seriously spiritual. Something far more powerful than my poor mind and all its tricks and illusions. Something powerful enough to reach my wounded core and soothe its pains and draw the ancient poison out then wash my poisoned heart clean with pure waters.

It’s like when I was raped, an icicle dagger was thrust into my heart, and I am not going to be able to heal and go forward until I remove it.

And it’s in there deep. And so much scar tissue surrounds it from all the decades it’s been there. My whole psyche has been warped around it to protect it.

But it’s got to go and fuck the damage. Fuck the pain, too. I am ready to grab this ting by the handle and pull with all my might to get it the fuck out of me.

And I don’t care if it turns out to be Excalibur and I am now the rightful king of England (Sorry, Charles!), I am yeeting that fucking thing over yon horizon as hard as I can.

I am well sick and tired of this sad, pathetic life of mine. I’m ready to leave it all behind to so in search of greener pastures.

But I have to get better first.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

That’s the video I watched this morning that brought so many important things to the surface of my psyche.

And here’s the notes I took while watching it :

I was named and shamed for being alive and for not being able to learn things instantly the first time and for clumsiness over which I had no control.

My father was duplicitous in being one person in public and a worse one in private.

My psyche is preoccupied with not ending up like my father, rageful and impatient. And I know for a fact that shit is inside me ready to come out.

I have shame that stems from being abandoned to do things myself. Like buy clothes.

Those times I tried to ask for help were key shaming incidents.

Rewrite shame scenarios into what would have happened with a healthy parent.

---

This is some very heavy, very powerful stuff. I have approached this topic before but never have I seen how truly wracked with shame I am, and how big a factor that is in my inability to emerge from my own shadow.

In fact, this is so huge that I kind of feel dwarfed by it. I am having trouble figuring out how I am going to address it. It’s so biiiiiig.

But I refuse to allow myself to be intimidated. Let’s press on.

Like I said, I was made to feel bad for even being alive. I was not valued in my own family and everybody treated me as an afterthought at best. I was unplanned and hence unwanted and unwelcome and I grew up trying to deny my very existence.

Hence their total lack of patience when trying to teach me a task. They would start to teach me, and I for some reason would be clumsy and hesitant.

Almost as if I was afraid someone was about to angrily take the task away while saying they might as well do it themselves and making me feel horrible for that.

Which is what happened, of course.

And I would not have been so clumsy if someone had taken the time to play with me in the appropriate way for developing motor skills.

I wasn’t ashamed of my father’s two faced nature but it definitely hurt. Seeing him being this amazingly charming, charismatic, personable guy to strangers when he was such a miserable, irritable, abusive prick at home really made me feel like shit.

Why couldn’t THAT guy have been my dad?

Hence my not wanting to become him, and yes, I can feel his voice inside me trying to come out sometimes. It would manifest slightly differently – more sarcasm, less aggression – but that would make it oh so much worse.

And like I mentioned once long ago, I was abandoned to do my own clothes shopping when I was only 9 or 10 years old. They just handed me my money from the monthly Baby Bonus check (AKA Family Allowance) and sent me on my way.

Those trips were nightmares. Just one long anxiety attack. I had no idea what I needed or how to buy it but everything was so expensive that I knew the money would not buy very much at all.

And what an act of callous contempt.

“Here, take the money we get only because you’re alive and buy all your clothes with it. This way we don’t have to invest any of our own time OR money in you., ”

No wonder I am so broken.

More after the break.

---

Why do I always feel like the alarm clock starts ticking the moment I get out of bed? What if I am sitting at the computer being social and having fun? Why run off?

---

And now, the homework : rewriting the bad scenarios with better parenting.

Hence my emphasizing the times I tried to tell my parents about all the bullying I was subject to in school, only to be dismissed and made to feel bad for bothering them with my problems without them even listening to me at all.

Those incidents fucking crushed me.

Competent parents who actually loved their youngest would have listened with great concern as I told them about the horrors I endured on a daily basis, and would have been very upset that such things were happening to their beloved child.

They would have asked me what I wanted them to do about it, and I would have told them I wanted them to make the school stop the bullying.

And my mother would have done what her mother did for her : storm down to the principal’s office and raised holy hell until she was sure they had gotten the point that their neglect was unacceptable and they were gonna protect me or ELSE.

And I would have been safe. Which means I would eventually stop being in a constant state of low grade panic any time I was outside the classroom but inside the school.

I might not even have started hanging out in the library all the time.

Books always make me feel safe.

And when as a wee one I wanted to learn to do all the chores my older siblings did, my parents would have been kind and patient with me and accepted that I was not going to get it the first time and they would have encouraged me to keep trying till I got it.

And my father would never have said “stop attracting attention to yourself” and I would have been made to feel warmly welcome to the family and my siblings would have accepted me as one of them and my brother David never would have cut me down out of jealousy and I would have grown up loved and accepted.

And I would never have been depressed.

---

I don’t think I did that right. Because that did not make me feel better. It just made my heart ache with longing for the childhood I should have had, and made me feel the terrible wrongness of my childhood all the more keenly.

Perhaps I was not supposed to phrase it as a theoretical. Theoretical scenarios can’t overwrite the bad tapes in my mind.

But I can’t lie. I can’t say things happened in a way I know they did not, not even for a purely theoretical exercise that’s for my own good, like this.

Too realistic for my own damned good again.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

---

I’ve confirmed it : taking two Gabapentin before going to bed REALLY helps me sleep.

Because I just had another (for me) MASSIVE four hour nap. What’s more,
I definitely feel like I slept well,.

I’d like to get back to it, to be honest.

Because I am still kinda sleepy. If there wasn’t blogging (and eating) to do, I probably would have just gone right back to sleep after answering the phone and emptying my rather full bladder.

Not that those two were related.

The phone was my grocery order. I did it a day early because the cookie levels in my bloodstream were getting dangerously low.

Well I guess I better go get some actual food instead of just scrounging a meal from the stuff I keep here in my room with me,.

Here I go!

---

And I’m back. My groceries are sitting out in the living room. Normally my wondrous roomies would have put them away by now but Joe’s in a meeting.

He attends this Toastmaster science fiction club meeting via Zoom every Saturday. So does Felicity. They gently exhort me to join them every now and then, but so far, social anxiety has kept me away.

Some day, though, dammit.

Because they seem likie a really great group of people and the meetings seem like the would be a lot of fun.

But when I imagine going the fear rises like an interposing wraith and pushes me back into my cage.

Man am I sick of that shit.

Because what the fuck am I even afraid of? I’m charming, I’m witty, I have charisma on camera. And these are science fiction people. My kind of people Nerds!

So it’s just this mindless phobia holding me back. A stupid and unjustified reflexive shying away from exposure like roaches fleeing the light.

I was originally going to say “like rats fleeing the light” but rats are cute.

So I ask myself, how do I resist, then? Because I am certain that if I can kind the will and the wherewithal, I can overcome these petty restraints and break free.

But do I really want to be free?

That’s what it really boils down to in the end. I could free myself any tie I want but there’s this big part of me that takes comfort in these four stone walls because they shield me from having to face that big bad world out there with all its chaos and overstimulation and the crushing burden of infinite options.

Still working on that.

While I am so very divided on this issue, nothing can happen, which is perhaps the point. Deadlock means my depression wins by default.

So I need to make peace with the fact that the freedom I supposedly crave comes at the cost of having to face that big bad world out there and truly grow up.

And that will mean something tender and delicate in me will have to die. There is no two ways about it.

They say that in order to be free, you have to give up a little part of yourself.

Well I think I’ve found mine.

More after the break.

---

A thing called innocence

That little part of me mentioned above is something I would have to call my innocence.

And I realize now that I have been protecting it for a really long time. It’s the part of me that fled into the deepest parts of my mind and set up an impenetrable fortress there, one where nobody could EVER touch me EVER AGAIN.

And that’s where I still live today, 45 years later.

It’s the part of me I am protecting by refusing to become a harder, colder version of myself. Which sounds noble on paper until you realize that means never growing up.

For as long as I can remember, life’s been trying to make me “toughen up” and I have steadfastly refused. I instinctively felt that toughening up would cost me something very precious and dear, and I refused to give that up, so I stayed weak instead.

The rape probably figures strongly in this. It ripped away most of my innocence, shattering me, and I have been clinging to the last remaining shred of it and protecting it with my life ever since.

Iin doing so, I was unknowingly fighting the very force that could have made me as strong and tough as I needed to be to survive : adaptation.

Had I not fought it tooth and nail, I would have adapted to my life circumstances and life would have gotten a hell of a lot easier for me.

Gone would be the bristling hypervigilant paranoia it takes to protect yourself when you are so weak and vulnerable. With strength and toughness comes security because you know you can handle whatever comes up.

Right now, I have no faith in my ability to handle anything. Except maybe an argument on the internet.

And even then I might fuck up and take things too far.

I’ve felt weak and incapable and incompetent and unfit for survival my whole life, An d yet I have also fiercely fought the very thing that could have cured me of that.

Maybe that’s part of the problem. I’m afraid to change, A strong, capable, able to handle anything version of me seems so alien to who I am right now.

But that’s not a good reason not to become him., Butterflies must seem pretty weird to caterpillars, and like I have said before, to transform into one must seem like death.

But its only the death of the caterpillar form, not the being itself. We have all radically changed form from a baby to an adult and yet here we are, still alive, still a part of the cosmos, and still answering to the same name.

So if to grow up, my current form has to (metaphorically) die, so be it.

Only the inessential aspects of myself will be lost. That which has been the real me for my whole life with remain, and grow.

Time to shed my skin so I can grow bigger.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Doing the blogging (and the lunching) a little early today.

See, I just got back from my appointment with the Stroke Prevention Clinic with Doctor Teal, and I tried to make myself eat breakfast before we left at 10:30 am for my appointment at 11:30 am, but as usual when I am in a state of anticipation and/or agitation, I was too excited to eat.

Rather pesky little eccentricity of mine, that one.

So I picked up a Hungryman Sub (I know some of those) from 7-11 (with Julian’s help, of course) on the way back. Got here at around 2:20 pm and figured there was no point in staying hungry for another 40 minutes just to meet my usual schedule, so here I am.

I mean, what the hell, it’s not like Doctor Teal gave a shit about my schedule either.

My appointment was for 11:30 am and I didn’t see him till almost 1 pm!

Motherfucker. I swear, doctors live in their own little world where all that matters is seeing patient after patient and the fact that on some level both distant and obscure times of day and their patients are somehow tangentially connected in a way that couldn’t possibly have any impact on THEM.

I mean, what do people expect them to do? HURRRY?

That’s for lesser beings.

And I’m just some unemployed schmuck with nothing better to do with my time. Imagine if I was a single mother with kids and a job and therefore nowhere near the flexibility of schedule to just hang out for an extra hour and a half.

Or if I was elderly and weak and spending my precious time between naps in order to be in a fit state to come to the doctor.

“Is he ready?”
“Nope. It’ll be at least an hour. “
“Then I hope you got a cot here, honey, otherwise I’m sleeping on the floor. “

Anyhow. the appointment happened. Nothing new seemed to come of it. He asked the obvious questions, gave me someneurological tests (the “follow the tip of my pen with your eyes” type), then ordered a chest CT to be done at the place across the street.

Fine. Whatever. His nurse-assistant made the call and she and I headed over there.

Everything was fine until we left the Diamond building and I saw that the place across the street was only accessible via either stairs or a long ramp.

In other words, not accessible by me.

Because I was half near dead just from the trip down the elevator from the eighth floor of the Diamond building.

And that brings me to the “wheels” portion of this blog entry, because I am having to seriously consider whether it’s time I bit the bullet and transitioned to a wheelchair.

Which poor Julian would then have to push.

But I was panting like a diesel locomotive that just ran up a flight of stairs and sweating like an ice sculpture in August just from an elevator ride and a push down some hallways, and that’s a very worrying sign.

So I have emailed Regency Pharmacy asking about wheelchair prices.

I suppose I should also ask whether the Ministry will help me pay for one. From what I have heard, they are pretty generous when you’re an actual cripple.

And I increasingly am.

More after the break.

---

The wheels keep turning

Regency replied to my basic inquiry :

Wheelchair Rental, deposit $120, 60 monthly and 25 weekly

To buy is Price range from $399.99 to $650.00

OK, good. That gives me a sense of what I am dealing with.

I have the cash saved up to buy if I need to. That would save money in the long run. On the other hand, I casn handle $60 monthly no problemo. And if I rent, I could try out different models, see what works best for me.

So I will probably rent first then eventually own.

It may not come to this. Today could have been a fluke. Might be that the next time I go to Wound Care, I will not find the trip up n’ down nearly as traumatic.

But I don’t think so. I think something’s up with me, and I am definitely going to talk to my family doctor, Doctor Chao, about it when I see him Monday.

I swear, every time I make an in-person appointment with him, other medical issues suddenly pop out of the woodwork, as if they were just waiting for their cue.

Like they un-suppress themselves.

Right now, it feels like the problem is in my lungs. But it could just as easily be my heart.

I say my lungs because even now, many hours after my ordeal, I am still wheezing a little. I can feel it in the pit of my lungs.

It’s the feeling I usually get after being outside in the cold. I wasn’t aware of being cold when I was out there, though.

Couldn’t have been under freezing, that’s for sure. I would have been able to see my breath. And we’ve had our five days of Actual Winter this year.

Whatever it is, it’s not good. Practical concerns aside, I hardly relish the prospect of further enfeeblement. The road to goober-hood seems very clear from there.

Seems sad to have gone to all this hassle with walkers only to go to a wheelchair. Well I would still be using a walker when I am home, methinks.

It’s only the travel arrangements that would change. Which would also be tragic given how much money and work Joe has put into my rollator.

Yeah that’s a real word. Look it up.

So my life continues to be full of fun surprises. Sigh. I had no idea how bad things had gotten until today.

I wonder if I need more work done on my heart. Or worse, something needs to be done with my lungs.

No way I can handle them sticking tubes into my lungs. That would trip my whole phobia of suffocation hard.

So anything they did, they would have to while I am either knocked out or REALLY tripping balls. To the point where the difference between that state and actually being fully unconscious is mostly academic.

Hopefully it won’t come to that.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I wrote these things on YouTube :

Shapiro reminds me of Bill O’Reilly in that he had that same furtive, nervous undertone in his voice when he approached this subject – like he knew he was talking absolute crap and was terrified he could get nailed on it at any second.

But he’s a right wing pundit, so it emphatically does not matter to him whether or not what he says is true. All that matters is whether his audience is convinced.

They come to him, after all, not for the truth but for words to soothe the voice of reason in their heads back to sleep by reassuring them that they don’t have to think or change, everything they already think just happens to be true, and they never have to grow up.

Your plea to theists was a waste of time, though, because none are watching. Literally everything about how you talk and act tells them you are NOT their friend and that you plan on trying to hurt them.

And, well, they’re not exactly wrong, are they?

1071

Proud of that bit o’ prose, I am!

Everything came together so crisply and snugly that it almost seems like I put a lot of effort into it.

We all know I didn’t, but still!

And I feel like I expressed things I have been trying to express for ages and expressed them better than I ever have before.

So apparently, I’ve leveled up!

Hooray for me!

---

That last point is an important one. In the REAL battle for hearts and minds, the one far beyond the verbal warfare we normally engage in, if you want to actually convince someone over to your side or at least closer to it, you have to know how you seem to them and what they see in you.

Lay down your swords, unstring your bows, and remember that very little in life is ever actually decided by argument. Stay your righteous wrath, remember mercy, and try to see the world through their eyes.

From their point of view. everyone who attacks their faith , even passively, is an enemy because attacking their faith hurts them. It hurts them on a very deep and intimate level and you are certainly not going to listen to anything someone like that says.

After all, they keep trying to hurt you!

And that’s how they are going to keep seeing you regardless of who is “right”. So if you have enough love in your heart to declare that you refuse to see anyone as an enemy and make peace with those at whom you have thrown stones, approach them unarmed and with open hands, and let them tell you how they see things.

You don’t have to agree.

You only have to understand.

---

Also did the Therapy Thursday thing today,

Weird : I didn’t have a session the last two weeks. From my point of view, he never called. Well from his point of view, he called!

So apparently he thought I was either not around or ignoring him. He should have known better – that would be incredibly unlike me and he knows me.

Like, when I went into the hospital last August, one of my primary concerns was that one of my roomies needed to call Doc Costin and tell him what’s what.

Still, I feel bad that he went through that. I knew I should have called him to see what’s what when he didn’t call, but my timidity convinced me otherwise.

Dang that timidity of mine.

---

The night shift

Well it’s night now and I’ve had several naps (natch) and the last one left me in a spooky frame of mind.

Yesterday’s “haunted” feeling has only deepened and right now I feel like a grave full of shadows, or maybe a dank fog rendered invisible by the lack of moonlight.

In other words, I’m feeling rather gothic. Like I have a wife I drove mad with my cruel indifference to her locked in the attack and it’s really getting to be time for me to go up and change her slop bucket and mop down her filth soaked orifices.

My imagination scares me sometimes.

Had a sort of crying jag earlier. Brief, sadly.

I say “sort of” because what started off as tears soon turned into some of the longest and most intense yawning I have ever experienced.

This has happened before. Apparently sometimes when one part of me is ready to finally part with some tears, another part jumps in to correct an oxygen imbalance.

Figures. Guess I’ll have to buy myself a big onion to cut.

I told Doc Costin about my feeling that I might have Asperger’s, He said that he thought maybe I had a sort of side branch of it, as I had a lot of the symptoms but was missing some major ones like the need for strict routine and extreme predictability, and the fact that I have zero problem understanding people and why they do what they do.

In fact, I’m so good at it it can be spooky.

And he’s right. And that might be enough to disqualify my diagnosis. And yet there is so much in the symptomology of Asperger’s that resonates with me.

I guess I am back to being unable to explain myself. I am my very own custom built strain of weirdo after all. A sad little robot boy.

Astroboy…. I understand it now…

Around and around. Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and all that manure. Oh, the tragedy of all this wasted potential.

Maybe somewhere out there in the annals of psychology is a more accurate diagnosis for whatever the fuck has been wrong with me since the day I was born.

I was such a strange child. Oddly calm and detached and self-controlled. Never interested in any normal child activities. Never ran around, or played with toys, or had friends to socialize with, or any of that.

The friends thing really hurt me, I think. There is so much you are supposed to get from your friends and they from you. But nope.

Them deciding I didn’t “need” kindergarten really fucked me over.

No wonder I am socially retarded.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Turns out good things can happen even to urban hermits like me!

I was hanging with the fuzzies on Tapestries and we were talking about VR games. I said that I was eager to try home VR but that I would have to upgrade my PC’s GPU (graphics card) first.

Then a fur named Jaekob said that he was about to upgrade his PC, and that I could have his old GPU if I wanted it!!!!(!!!)!

Um, HELL yeah.

And I don’t know him all that well. I mean, we hang out in the same place a lot, but we’ve never been close. We exchange greetings and that’s about it.

Guess he’s just a sweetie!

So I messaged him my shipping details and I guess he’s gonna do it. Don’t know when, but it gives me something big to look forward to and that’s the important thing.

Those sorts of things do a great deal to help my mood. Often I am going through life in a thick grey fog of frozen despair, with no vision of my future besides doom.

Not necessary a specific doom. Sometimes just a general sense of things getting worse until I finally die.

There are, of course, pesky details to look after. The power supply in my PC might not be powerful enough.

Big deal. I can buy a beefier one.

Probably end up buying it from whatever computer shop I will be paying to install it. My acquaintance Tsuna (who is not a fish) tried to convince me that I could install it myself without any trouble, and sent me a link to a YouTube tutorial.

I just smiled and thanked them knowing there was absolutely no chance I would be doing that. I don’t deal with the insides of the computer. Like, ever.

Call it a phobia. I know that things are not that complicated in there and that putting a PC together these days is no more complex than assembling a component stereo, and I have done that before.

Nevertheless, I feel like the second I try to insert something like a GPU into my computer, my spazzy clumsiness will kick in and I’ll end up jamming it in upside down and then bending it in half.

You laugh but that is literally what I am imagining when I think about it.

So I will happily pay someone to do it. Heck, I will use some of the money I have been saving up to buy a new PC to do it.

Might get myself a snazzy new monitor too. Though I should probably upgrade the main CPU first. Priorities and all.

I will get a new PC by degrees!

So yeah. Good things can come even to people like me whose mental illness drives them to hide from the world in order to stay out of its way and not be noticed.

I’m the sort of person to shout, “Hey everybody, look at me!” and then when everyone looks at me go “eek!” and disappear down a manhole.

What I’m saying is I’m complicated.

More after the break.

One little oops

Published after writing only the first half. Oops. Sorry, folks!

Look at it as getting two mini-entries for the price of one!

---

The long grey dawn

In a sleepy phase. My world is soft and hazy and dopey right now.

And that’s okay, I guess. Just means I got more sleeping to do once I finish with my blogging and noshing.

Bloshing? Eh, nah.

Of course, I will eventually get restless and want to fight the sleepiness. This is an inevitable part of the process for me. No point in trying to fight it.

And this is a problem of my own engineer because I tried an experiment : taking two Gabapentin before going to bed.

Seems to have worked quite well. I slept for around four solid hours this morning,

Boffo. I’ve been down to, at best, one and a half hours of sleep per “nap” – are they still naps when they are the only form of sleep you get?

Regardless, four hours is progress. I have buried my shovel into the backlog of REM sleep and starter to shovel it into my brain’s incinerator/engine.

Wow. Just went on a five minute mental meander. Totally lost focus on the fact that I was doing something. Now I am back.

Unsurprisingly, all I really wanne do is have some fun go back to sleep. But I have many words to go before then – 257 or so, in fact.

Well here we go.

Not much going on besides a generous gift from a fuzzy acquaintance. My sleepy days tend to be even lower on event content than my usual dull days of dreary doldrum.

Man, my head feels like I am on a slow moving but VERY heavy merry go round and I can only get some blogging done when I am grasping the brass ring.

So, not that often. It’s growing tiresome.

I know it’s pointless top try to nail my consciousness to one spot when it’s like this though. This wheel is not mine to stop. This is a process that is going to continue whether I approve of it or not.

Beats me what it accomplishes. But I trust that my body and brain know.

Returned another game. Dammit. I have got to break this cycle of purchase, trial, and return. It’s grating on my nerves.

Every single time, I get around 90 minutes of playtime in and the doubts seize me as the deadline for return goes near.

And to my fear soaked mind, returning the game for a refund seems like the “safer” alternative because it escapes commitment.

I have seriously been trying to spend the same $60 on steam for like a month.

I tell myself that the right game will “grab” me and there will be no doubt as to whether or not I want to keep it.

And that’s been true in the past. But it sounds a tad romantic, doesn’t it? Like I am trying to justify a spate of serial monogamy.

“Sure I’ve been through a lot of relationships lately, but I am positive that when the right man comes along he’ll sweep me off my feet and take me away with him and I won’t have the urge to wander ever again!”

Like I said, it’s been true in the past.

But seems like a shaky thing to tie one’s hopes to.

Why do I always have to be so goddamned realistic?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.