I guess my problem is that I have never known what to do with my gifts.
I have so much…. intelligence, talent, charisma, charm, a roly-poly dad bod.
But it all just sits there, unused, in mint condition, because I lack the motive force within myself to pick a path and stick with it until the end.
I am stranded at an infinite crossroads and don’t know which way to turn.
So I end up going nowhere. And I am 50. And in poor health.
I can’t seem to shake the need to know which way is safe to go. I am terribly afraid of making the wrong choice and getting hurt.
So instead I get hurt by doing nothing. I have suffered greatly, both physically and especially psychologically, from my state of stasis.
All this depression, anxiety, angst, and other forms of mental misery stem directly from and are powered by my inability to act.
And I am unable to act because of those selfsame mental health issues. It is, sadly, a very stable self-sustaining cycle, and I suppose I am too scared of the world to tru;ly want to exit it.
After all, it’s keeping me “safe”. Ha ha ha.
And that all leads back to that terrible Wound of mine. Until that thing is healed, I will remain weak and diffident and diffuse because my soul is poisoned by it right down to its very roots.
And I can tell myself that I need to accept that life involves pain, and fear, and uncertainty, and risk, and so on. And that is undoubtedly true.
True, but not helpful.
Telling myself I “need” to do something only increases the pressure associated with said thing and that, in turn, makes me avoid said thing with a vengeance.
The only way forward for me is to frame it as something I want. Like fun.
That’s why I am considering fully embracing my trickster nature and treating life like it’s a game. Refusing to take anything seriously and laughing my way through life.
I don’t know if I am capable of embracing that point of view entirely. I am, despite my wit, an inherently serious guy and always have been. The jester’s POV may not really be an option for me.
But I could move in that direction. Try to learn to take life less seriously. Loosen up. Learn to forgive myself for my imperfections and start having fun instead.
Because this Nordic point of view, where everything must be sacrificed in the name of having enough food and supplies to survive a winter than never comes, has left me in a deep dark shadow that is crushing the life out of me.
I need to be a lot more Mediterranean. Learn to see each day as another chance to celebrate being alive and try my best to live life like it’s a non stop party.
Or well, one that last a while, any how.
A non stop party sounds exhausting.
But first, I have to loosen the deep hypnotic grip my Wound has on me.
Almost like I am afraid to look away. So a big part of me remains fixated, staring at it. keeping it contained, numbing it out.
And I want that part of me back, god damn it.
More after the break.
Losing my religion
But Fru, you’ve never had a religion! What gives?
It’s true that I was never indoctrinated into any kind of religion. My mother, bless her probably nonexistent soul, is the kind of atheist the Catholic nuns used to produce in large numbers (until Vatican 2) and so religion has never played a role in my life.
But I did have a doctrine of sorts inculcated in me from a very early age, and that doctrine was the holy word of 70’s health nut…. ism.
My mother raised me to believe that natural is always better, that things made aty home from scratch are always better, that manufactured foods are nasty and bad for you, and that I should always strive to eat whole foods.
Yup. That’s where the name of the snooty grocery chain came from. They started off as a bunch of dirty hippies preaching nutrition heresy, and now the founder and owner is a big sellout libertarian like all rich people.
Anyhow, my mother never brought junk food into the house herself. All our groceries were good, wholesome products.
At first, she wouldn’t even used canned or frozen vegetables. Imagine.
But then she went back to work, and slowly her determination to feed us only the good stuff broke down in the face of her lack of time and energy.
At the same time, I began eating at other people’s homes, and a lot of what I had been taught got put to the test.
Kids’ cereals? Genuinely disgusting. Especially Froot Loops.
Canned vegetables? Not nearly as good as fresh.
Skim milk from powder? A crime against nature.
Cake from a cake mix? OMG so goddamned good.
Even, heresy of heresies, better than anything my mother ever made.
Her hippie desserts, good as they were, could not compete.
That was the first blow to my indoctrination. That didn’t quite finish off my belief that from scratch is always better…. my first taste of a store bought sheet cake did that.
Like the cake mix cake only even better.
Another blow came the first time I tried Cheez Whiz. I already knew how horribly fake and nasty it was. How it was basically cheese flavoured spreadable plastic – petroleum jelly with a facelift.
But then, one day, I was nuking myself a hot dog, and on a whim, tried some Cheez Whiz on it in order to make it a cheese dog, and my MIND WAS BLOWN.
I loved it SO MUCH. It was like, where have you been all my life? Love at first bite.
And I have loved over the top artificial “cheez” flavour ever since.
But I still retain a lot of the old prejudices. I think Twinkies are an abomination, and Wonder Bread to me means “wonder how they can get away with calling this bread”.
I still prefer the natural things from the produce isle. Fresh fruit and veggies rock my world, and I will always choose fresh over anything else.
I look down my nose at :”recipes” that start with a cake mix, and I quietly despair when my friends order their meals at Denny’s with the veggies overtly omitted.
But I try to keep it to myself.
Because along with the rest, I was also raised to be polite and respectful of others.
And that lesson will never fade away.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.