I…. think I may have had a minor cardiac event this morning.
Let me set the stage.
I had been playing Pathfinder (how rare) and as I have been doing more and more lately, I was sitting in a seemingly awkward position, namely sitting with my left elbow on my left knee and supporting some of my weight.
Sounds bizarre, but it takes the strain off my lower back so it’s good for giving my oft abused and chronically sore lumbar region a break.
Good thing I use the mouse with my right hand, I guess. Although most games require enough keyboard input to make them very awkward to play with one hand.
Anyhow, so I was sitting like that and then I straightened up and that when this completely awful feeling welled up from what felt like the middle of my brain.
It was mostly dizziness, but not the normal kind of dizziness that you might get from spinning yourself around on a lazy Saturday afternoon when you are bored out of your mind and Inspector Gadget isn’t on the TV for half an hour and three cats are watching everything you do because to them, YOU are TV.
We’ve all been there.
So not that kind of dizziness. Something far more sickening and unsettling. Like that spot in the middle of my brain had a black hole in it and it was distorting the very space inside my skull and making it go all wobbly.
To the point where it made me feel like I was on a rocket going straight up.
No surprise that it also made me feel nauseous, then. A lot like the kind of motion sickness I got when as a kid I would overdo it on the carnival rides and my inner ear would throw a tantrum.
We’ve all been there.
Worse than that,. though, was this feeling of terrible wrongness. Like something had gone terribly wrong in my personal universe and nothing was certain any more.
I was afraid to move.
And this sensation just got worse and worse, till I had to say goodbye to my fuzzy friends (by this time I was eating breakfast) to go lay down for a nap.
And as I lay down, I told myself that if I felt the same way when I woke up again, I would have to do something about it.
Well I was still dizzy when I got up again.
But, I didn’t do anything.
I didn’t get that far. I was still busy panicking and dithering and silently whimpering when suddenly the feeling just…. melted away.
Within about a minute, I went from feeling awful to feeling fine except for still being pretty freaked out by the whole thing.
And before you start in on me, yes I know I should have called 911, either during or after the incident. I know that would have been the smart thing to do. I know that by just going back to my life I am take a crazy risk.
But what can I say? I do dumb shit.
Hell, I didn’t even mention the chest pain yet.
More after the break.
Wow, that felt good.
Got a phone call. Some asshole with an East Indian accent saying, “My name is Richard and I am calling from the technical department…”.
And I said, “No you’re not, you’re a scammer, so FUUUCK OOOOOFF.”
And hung up.
We get a lot of those calls and they piss me off so bad. Felt good to finally direct that anger at its source.
As it turns out, righteous anger is an excellent antidepressant.
What I fear most
In no particular number or order.
The idea of getting truly close to anybody scares me to death.
Not sure why. Nothing rational, that’s for sure. It has to be something that operates in the deep dark layers that handle things like identity and connection.
One simple explanation would be that it’s because I’ve never actually been close with anyone at all. Not within my memory, anyhow.
Pretty sure I was very close to my mother before she went back to work. But that was when I was three years old, so I have only vague, sunshine soaked memories of it.
In my mind, the memories sound exactly like this :
And I know I loved my babysitter Betty, and life under her tough but loving care was quite lovely too. I missed my mother during the day but Betty knew how to take care of me with the sort of loving kindness with just a dash of discipline to keep me in line that I needed so badly as a kid WAY too smart for his own good.
But after school began, that was it. I got to and from school by myself right from the beginning. It was up to me to get myself out of bed, make and eat breakfast, and get my lil butt out the door in the morning.
And before long, there wasn’t even anyone around when I got home either.
Hmmm. I didn’t intend this to be yet another inventory of my sad and lonely childhood, but well, here we are.
Back to the point. Yes, my fear of being close to another is tied to my terrible childhood,. especially the rape and the bullying.
I arguably have no idea what it is like to truly open up to another. I have never gotten closer than friendship with anyone in my life, and even that is at a distance.
It really feels like if I get too close to someone, I’ll die, like a moth in a flame. Or melt like a snowflake in the desert sun.
Crazy, it’s true. But I am a very socially deranged person. Almost none of the stages of social development actually happened to me.
No play-acting with my toys to entertain myself. No making friends and forming bonds. No acquisition of a peer group in my teens. No nothing.
This means that I am socially retarded, developmentally speaking. The rape and then the bullying broke something fundamental in me and I doubt it can be fixed.
I have lived in an ice bound prison ever since.
There are people out there who love me and care for me but I can’t feel it. The best I can do is acknowledge it and be grateful for it.
But under the warmth and fluff lies a heart sheathed in ice that pumps its love out into the world because that’s the only kind of love I can feel :
The kind that is only my light reflected off others.
I want so bad to come in from the cold.
But it feels like I’d die if I did.
I am not my ice.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.