An annoying and rather suspicious issue with my usual credit card provider has come up and it has me worried.
A bit more than a week ago, I stopped being able to log in to the PayPower app. That app is the only way to check my balance or register a new card.
And I tried to log in many times, thinking I was just mistyping my password.
A few days into this, I tried one last time. And this time, it told me there was a problem with my account and I needed to contact customer service.
Pain in the ass, but whatever.
Well today I finally got around to doing that, and the results upset me.
After going through the many steps of identity verification (the age we live in!), the lady on the line said that she would have to escalate the call to a Level 2 representative who could give me a temporary password, but there were none available at this time, so I would have to call back again tomorrow.
I grumbled and hung up. But then I got to thinking.
Why wasn’t there any level 2 reps available? Is there no way to contact one? Can I just give you enough XP to level up and become one?
It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this!
Was this some bullshit answer they give to people whose accounts have been flagged by law enforcement to delay the criminal while they call the cops?
Seriously, that’s how my mind works. Went there with zero effort.
And it’s not like I have done anything illegal with the dang card. All I ever use it for is to order food delivered by Skip the Dishes (weird name for a set of dishes) and other things from Amazon.
I would be less likely to come to the attention of law enforcement than I would be to come to the attention of the nutrition police.
And they would be less likely to make an arrest than to stage an intervention.
I walk out into the living room and they are there. “You have been ordering an awful lot of McDonald’s and Donair Dude lately, and we’re worried. ”
Rampant paranoia aside. it is an irritating problem because if I can’t log in to the app, I can’t register a new card, and I have to get a new card every month because the process to make a card permanent asks me for a PAC and nobody on God’s green Earth knows what the fuck that means.
Personal Access Code? Maybe. But if so, I dunno what it is. Didn’t know I had one.
And this is a particularly vexing issue to have right as we swing into the weekend before Xmas. I wanted to use my next card to order some comfort food and other nice items to make my lonely Xmas eve more bearable, and currently, that would be impossible.
So I am going to have to call back tomorrow and hopefully get all this straightened out.
This is stress I don’t need at a stressful enough time of the year.
I ain’t feeling the Christmas spirit much this year.
More after the break.
Fawning like Bambi’s mother
Because Bambi is a fawn, so….
Dug into this painful subject with my therapist, Doctor Costin, today.
Hurt like hell and that cold feeling in my chest that I get when I am thawing out large amounts of emotion was going full blast, but I think progress was made.
We got into the reason it is so hard for me to talk about it : because I am afraid to find out that the person I think I am is fake. That it’s just a mask I put on and that the real me is someone I would like a lot less.
And I think that’s true. I really have been fake all these years.
And of course, in a way I already knew this. But mostly intellectually. Now I am facing the true emotions involved in discovering I have been falsifying myself, and those emotions are raw and brutal and terrifying.
Because it means I don’t actually know who I am. The real me underneath the mask is a mystery to me. We’ve never even met.
But my initial impression is one of a much colder, quieter, sadder, and darker version of me. Someone who is bitter and short-tempered and sarcastic who lashes out a lot.
A person going through the tempests of teenage personality formation at the age of 50.
The big problem, of course, is that I want to be the fake me. I love being funny and warm and interesting and such. I am so much happier that way. “Putting on a show” comes so naturally to me.
Dealing with the world as the “real me” would leave me so open and vulnerable.
God, and what about my friends? I can’t tell them that the person they know and love is not real. That this putative “real me” is someone who is way less fun to be around. That would be tantamount to saying I have been lying to them all these years.
To myself too, for that matter. I fooled us all.
I can’t leave Fruvous behind. I won’t do it. I love him too much. I don’t care if he is not the “real me”. If that’s true, then I am perfectly happy being fake.
That’s the thing, though. I intuitively grasp why it is better to just be yourself, but it is hard to make a conscious case for it.
Right now, all I can see is it meaning I head off into a cold, dark, uncertain future without any protection in search of something I can’t even conceive of.
Existential growth rarely meets hedonistic standards, I suppose. That’s why it’s good that most people pursue it instinctively, without questioning it.
But not me, oh no. I had to question everything. I had to quash every impulse and instinct and inspiration that didn’t “make sense” in pursuit of a laughably futile attempt to be “smart” and stay “in control”.
Well I live two feet about the bottom of the food chain and I can’t make myself do any of the things I know I truly want and need to do.
How fucking smart and in control is that?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.