I finally got around to asking Julian if it would be helpful to him if I made a checklist of things to check on in order to keep me happily stocked with stuff.
So do I have…
- Baby carrots or celery
- Fruit, apples or oranges
- Cans of pop in the fridge
- 2L of pop in the fridge (I have such a soda habit)
- Microwave popcorn in my cupboard
- Bread, though that’s more of a communal thing
That should just about cover it. I might think of more items later.
What I would like to be able to avoid is running out of my essentials. I am a little ashamed to admit it, but when go to the fridge and what I want is not there, it has a deleterious effect on my mood.
It bums me out and makes me feel neglected, which I confess is a feeling that is never very far from the surface of my consciousness and is very easily triggered.
And it bugs me that I have to bug Julian to do and get these things for me. I really miss the level of independence I had before my legs went boom in the summer of ’22.
Like the lady sang…
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone
I mean, I know it is impossible to be grateful for every single bad thing that is NOT happening to you. There’s way too many of them.
A functionally infinite number, basically.
So I am going to resist the urge to tell people to appreciate having legs that work just because mine don’t.
I mean, go ahead, appreciate that if you like, but don’t feel like you have to take on a greater burden of gratitude on my behalf.
Just stop and think of what it would be like to need to use a walker to get around now and then and maybe give your legs a nice rub for continuing to do their job.
That’s all I would ask of anyone.
I kept putting off suggesting that checklist to Julian because I was afraid he would find it insulting or inappropriate or even presumptuous on my part.
On the other paw, I need to have some sort of power over the care I get. Being passively helpless to even advocate for my own needs, let alone getting them met, is an awful like my “never ask for anything” childhood.
That’s why it was so hard to bring this up with Julian. My deeper programming insists that asking for anything will get me in big trouble, SO much more trouble than it is worth, and so my only choice is to mutely hope someone thinks of me eventually.
And that’s really sad.
And it’s no way to live. It smothers the soul to never be able to get what it wants or really take an activate part in its own standard of living at all.
You can’t live your life like a dog sitting under the dining room table hoping someone will eventually drop something.
Being perpetually broke is a big part of that passivity. Money is power, ergo poverty is helplessness, and that is very bad for your spiritual health.
That’s what middle class types don’t get about poverty. It eats away at your soul and makes you depressed and saps your will to do anything that takes effort, such as, say, looking for a job.
Job hunting is a really harsh process. Most of us are not cut out for that level of constant rejection, especially us sensitive artist types.
It would be far better to have a central government agency that has your resume on file and submits it for various jobs you are qualified for and only contacts you if you at least get through the first round of qualifications.
Kind of like having a Hollywood agent, but for everybody.
Imagine how awesome that would be for both employees AND employers.
A businessperson would be able to find a dozen qualified candidates for whatever job they needed to fill without having to do a single interview.
And we used to have that exact thing when I was a child. It was called Manpower and its job was to get you a job.
We need to bring that back!
More after the break.
The problem with generation
So why can’t I generate my own tasks? Or set goals for myself, or follow my ambitions, or any other form of directed action towards a goal?
Why do I need some outside entity, like school, to give structure to my life?
It’s like I need something to adapt to. Without it, I am a boneless blob of protoplasm with no ability to act on my own.
And that’s just so wrong. Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and yet I am stymied on the most basic of levels by this strange weakness of mine.
The glib, easy, and incomplete answer would be to say it’s because I had so little order imposed on me as a child that there was nothing for me to internalize.
But there’s definitely more to it than that. There’s also the fact that what I did internalize was the idea that I don’t count, I don’t matter, and I am not worth anyone’s time and effort or even inconvenience.
And the heartbreaking truth is that I still feel that way today. I neglect myself in the exact same way I was neglected as a child.
Ergo, anything I want or need is just not important enough for me to bother doing. That’s why I can’t set goals for myself and I live my life compulsively doing the same things.
Plus there’s the fact that there is this massive untreated psychological wound taking a huge amount of my mental resources and as a result, there is a part of me, a big part, that has been silently weeping for 47 years.
And I don’t know what to do about that. Psychological wounds are not the kind of thing one can think their way through.
All I can do is try to be good to myself and try to take away whatever is preventing my mind from healing itself properly so I can get that big part of myself back.
Maybe then I will have the strength to take myself seriously.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.