Really enjoying the summer sunshine now that it has finally shown up.
Got to admit that at the end of May there, I was starting to wonder if summer had failed to ship. The days were gray and overcast and rain-ish, which is like being rainy but without actually committing to rain, and I still had to wear a jacket whenever I went out.
And I hate that. I am always the last person to start wearing a jacket in the fall and the first person to get rid of the damned thing in the spring.
The difference now, of course, is that the older I get, the higher the stakes are concerning being cold. When I was a kid walking to school, taking the jacket off a little too early just meant I felt kinda cold on the way there.
In my opinion, it was generally worth it.
But now, if I get cold, it seems to go straight through my body into my bone marrow and set up residence there. I start shivering like crazy, to the point where I feel like I have one of those old time-y illness that give you wracking chills. And worst of all is that it sets off the “THIS IS BAD! FIX IT NOW” alarm system in my body and that, obviously, makes my mood go south pretty damned fast.
South is down. It’s bad.
But the absolute worst is that the cold stays with me. It hangs in there even when I am all buried under my comforter AND wearing cozy clothes. It’s like the chill turned my bone marrow into liquid Freon and keeps me refrigerated until my sluggish circulaory system can finally distribute body heat properly.
Honestly, when that happens, I should probably exercise. Should speed things up.
I honestly have a lot of reasons to exercise. Like my health, both physical and mental. Physical because exercise removes stress from your system, stretches muscles that have grown tense, builds your body up to be more flexible and resilient, and greatly improves your odds of getting a hot dude to fuck you up the ass.
Well that would improve MY health, anyhow. Talk about a stress buster.
And mental because the entire world seems to be saying, as one, that the absolute best treatment for depression is exercise.
And I believe them IT makes sense, both for all the physiological reasons I just listed and because in my opinion the main mechanism of depression is the suppression of the urge to move and do things via anhedonia, causing personal energy to build up in your system without any healthy method of release and that bottleneck is what fuels the anxiety and depression.
It’s like having the gas pedal down and the emergency brake on. You’re not going to get anywhere but it’s sure as hell going to put a tremendous strain on the car.
And I want to exercise. But I am scared. Scared that if I just start exercising on my own, without guidance, I will end up hurting my fragile muscles and end up making things far, far worse for myself.
Speaking of which : I have started getting these pains in the tendons that connect my knees to my legs and they worry me.
Another reason I should go to Urgent Care, I guess. But I have a very poor track record when it comes to doing what I “should” do.
Mostly I do what I can manage to do, and that ain’t much.
But boy oh boy do I play video games a lot!
Whoop de fucking do.
More after the break.
It’s hard to have hope
But it’s also hard to stop.
What I need to do is learn to consciously decide when to push against the almighty blockage jamming up my life and when to rest up for the next big push.
Or I dunno. Maybe I should be trying my best to reframe the whole thing in such a way that I don’t feel like I am constantly in a crisis I must flee reality to avoid.
I keep coming back to the idea of truly living like a child. No worries, no future plans, no pressure, no crises, no anything except enjoying myself as much as possible.
Superficially, it might seem like that’s the problem. That I have been living a childlike existence for my entire adult life and that’s why my life is such a sack of crap.
But no.I have been operating on autopilot. I don’t choose to play video games all day. At no point in my day do I say, “You know what would be the most fun now? Games. ”
I just compulsively play games because they are my escape from the existential hell trying to fill all the empty hours of the day.
More specifically, it keeps me from having to choose what to do. As patient readers know, I have severe decision issues and that makes even just the thought of trying to choose among the billions of options open to any human with an internet connection and unlimited free time makes me break out in a cold, prickly sweat.
And I know that’s because I am broken. Normal people do not have this problem. They are used to forming impulses and acting on them with little or no thought about all the other possible things they could be doing.
Must be nice.
Oh wait. A YouTube video told me that I need to stop thinking of myself as broken.
And I guess Jewel agrees.
But here’s the problem, Jewel, I feel broken. I try to do normal things and it hurts and I get scared and I feel like I am going crazy and I just… can’t.
You can call it whatever you like. But a person with a broken arm or a failing kidney is not just “different” and doesn’t just “need to learn to forgive themselves”
That kind thinking is toxic, Jewel. It tells people like me that it’s all our fault for not looking on the bright side of things and not having the right attitude.
The problem is that I feel terrible. And I can’t just change that.
And if this is what not being broken feels like, pass me the fucking hammer.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.