How to be nicer to myself

I know that it starts with anger.

I have spent decade upon decade taking out my frustrations on myself. They say that depression is anger turned inwards, and that’s certain true for me. I am my own tormentor and if I am ever to stop bullying and neglecting myself, I am going to have to learn to do something out with those angry emotions of mine.

And that’s a daunting prospect because of all the latent anger boiling just below the surface like molten lava that’s just waiting to burst out of the ground and form a caldera.

There’s so much of it and it wants to lash out at the world so bad and I don’t yet have the internal mechanisms necessary to redirect that into something less harmful.

I’m working on it. I am at least completely open to the idea that these these potent latent id energies can be turned into something positive, like happiness and optimism.

But making that transition is hard. Right now I have two modes : passive and numb, or angry and bitter. And neither of those are super helpful.

Although at least being angry and bitter helps vent those emotions some.

It’s a step in the right direction but not a solution unto itself.

And as attractive as the thought of turning rage into sunshine might be, I am still going to need to deal with it as anger before any of that can happen.

And that feels hopeless. But I know it’s not. I know, deep in my bones, that there is a way for me to find a way to get it all out of my system without violating my very high ethical standards for myself.

Maybe I should sign up for a really violent PVP battle arena game so I can vent my rage on total strangers in a socially acceptable fashion.

After all, it’s PVP. We’re all trying to murder one another. It’s cool.

I’ve never really been into that kind of thing before, largely because I play video games to escape my social anxiety, not to trigger it.

And multiplayer games trigger the hell out of it, sad to say.

Another possibility : picking some poor unsuspecting subReddit and using it as my personal stomping grounds where I give myself permission to be a total a-hole there.

Let’s see how long it takes for my sarcastic ass to get banned, shall we?

I suppose I could live with that as long as I stay within the broad moral framework of public discourse. So no personal attacks, no sadism, no abuse.

Just me expressing my unique thoughts and opinions in an honest way and then dealing with the inevitable fallout.

Knowing my luck, though, people would just ignore me like they ignore everything else that their minds can’t handle.

Being a visionary is hard.


Not sure if it’s just the heat or maybe something else, but I have been very tired and sleepy today. Barely made it out of bed to eat n’ write to you lovely folks.

I am a little worried it might be an attack of “something else” because I have noticed that there is little “catch” every time I go from exhaling to inhaling, and even worse, I feel a kind of bubbling feeling in my lungs at the same time.

And that’s pneumonia, folks. Or something a lot like it.

Plus my muscles are sore in weird, random places. And I have that “heavy” feeling and it’s getting hard to concentrate.

So you can bet your bippy that I’ll be keeping an eye on that and getting my overstuffed butt to the ER or the UC if things get worse.

I don’t want to make the triage nurse need to call in another nurse to verify that she really was seeing the blood oxygen reading she was seeing like I did before, many years ago now, when I landed in the hospital with pneumonia.

My blood sugar and blood pressure are normal now. My immune system should be able to handle this kind of thing.

If I end up with pneumonia again, I’m going to have to speak with the manager.

More after the break.


Doing a little better

The gunk in my lungs seems to be gone. Which is a relief. And I do not have any weird random muscle aches like I had earlier today.

But I am still quite tired.

And possibly depressed. I have been having a hard time getting out of bed lately, which is a classic sign of depression. A big part of me just wants to lay there and play games on my tablet in between naps.

But I am not going to let things fall apart like that. I’ve done far too much of that in my life. I’m going to keep getting out of bed to sit at Mister Computer till I get over this.

Besides, there’s no way I am going to blog from the tablet. Or chat with my fuzzy friends. Typing on a tablet sucks.

It distresses me that things have fallen this far, though. But I think it’s part and parcel with the ways I have been improving my mental health lately.

I have been waking up inside and trying to reach out into the world and find energy, and that means not living life on automatic mode any more, and that means it now takes a certain amount of energy and motivation to get out of bed.

Sad when what used to be the bare minimum now takes effort. But it is all worth it if it helps me get to a saner, stronger, happier state of mind.

Like I keep saying. odds are that in order to make it to sanity I am going to have to get a lot closer to being crazy. A lot of the bad machinery keeping me trapped and miserable and unable to deal with life was put in specifically to keep things stable.

Pathetic. But stable.

And now my mind has to learn to walk without crutches, and that’s always going to be rather wobbly at first.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.