I feel like I can imagine what a saner me would be like.
I’d be a much more upbeat and cheerful person, with a natural effervescence that buoyed other people along with me.
And I wouldn’t feel so scared of everything. I’d be able to go anywhere and talk to anyone and feel perfectly relaxed and at home because I would have finally learn to just frigging relax and stop making things hard on myself.
I’d also write more and create more and do more. I would no longer be bound by this life in suspended animation. I would be free to get out of my cold sleep pod, run a few laps to get the blood flowing into my extremities, then go try to figure out what the hell happened to the rest of the crew.
Metaphorically speaking, that is.
I would also probably end up with a wide group of friends, like I have on Tapestries. It would not be because I had any specific intention to amass acquaintances or anything.
It would be the natural result of my being friendly and personable and my need to have people to interact with.
If I am feeling sad and lonely because none of my usual friends are around, I would most likely introduce myself to someone new.
Rather extroverted of me, don’t you think?
When I was talking with my therapist Doctor Costin earlier today, I mentioned how almost everything in life has passed me by and that led to my realizing that the root problem was actually my need for things to make sense.
When an impulse or instinct would dare to raise its head, my response would basically be, “But WHY would I do that? It doesn’t make any SENSE. ”
And thus I would remain a sleepwalker in my own life.
Looked at that way, it seems especially absurd. To the point of obscenity, in fact. I missed so much of life simply because I never listened to my instincts and always demanded there be a logical reason to do things.
Or maybe it was all an elaborate con game to hide my base cowardice and timidity under a bluster of intellectualism. I don’t know.
I may never know. I’m very good at fooling myself.
And it ain’t easy.
Like I’ve said before, we all have a sort of program inside us that guides us through all the necessary developmental stages we need to go through to become adults.
And this program runs entirely on its own. A child doesn’t have to know why they like climbing trees and running around, or why they are suddenly interested in sex, or why they are now acutely aware that the world has problems.
They just go with it. It’s the most natural thing in the world.
But I was always far, far too aware of things for my own good. I could never just follow my instincts and be a kid because I knew so much about the world and life and how things work from an intellectual point of view.
I would have been much better off just turning off my brain and going with my gut. At least some of the time.
I don’t know if I can start now. But I can at least try. Maybe what I need to do is what media has screamed at me my entire life : listen to my heart.
The idea scares me badly. I am far too accustomed to knowing where the road leads before setting foot on it. It feels like my heart, such as it is, doesn’t know or understand anything. To my legacy false intellectualism, trusting it seems like chaos and madness.
And yet, my heart knows a great deal. Like how to guide my development, and what to do to make myself happy, and where I need to go to grow strong.
I’ve followed my cowardly mind for 40+ years and it’s led me absolutely nowhere. I suppose I could give following my heart a try.
But it still scares the crud out of me
More after the break.
Up from the depths
Woke up from a nap at 8 pm not knowing what the fuck.
I was well and truly asleep. I’d laid down at a little after 6 pm and I guess I managed to get pretty deep into sleep by the time my alarm went off at 8 pm.
So I more or less had to cold boot my brain. I had to figure out what was going on, who I was, where I was in the day, and what frigging planet I was on.
And all in the space of about five seconds.
It was such a rough reentry that I had to sit here in front of the computer and rest for around ten minutes before I could gather my wits together well enough to go make my supper once I remembered what that was.
I think the reason it hit me so hard was that I had inadvertently done something I know has discombobulated me in the past : I went to sleep when the sun was up then woke up after it had set.
That’s ass-backwards, according to the default human programming. It could mess up anybody, including long time night owls like me.
Oh well. I’m awake, upright, and fed, and getting my words done, and I’ve narrowed the number of planets I might be on down to two (plus a satellite), so I think I am doing OK.
Today’s been quiet. Oh, except for a phone call telling me I goofed up again.
I knew that I had my next shower on the first Wednesday of the month. But it completely failed to register that this was that very Wednesday. D’oh!
And after having missed last week’s shower too. I don’t have another scheduled until a week from next Friday, and I am feeling distinctly grungy.
I have got to get my poop in a group over these things. I need cleansing!
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.