Just another brush with death.
Needed to get a potato out of the crisper drawer of the fridge. Bent down the wrong way. Bad circulation in my legs means that if I bend down the wrong way, it cuts the blood flow to my brain and I instantly become deathly dizzy.
So I then had to push myself off the bottom section of the fridge, the shelf on top of the crisper drawers, in order to get back up to where the blood could reach my brain again.
Turns out that’s really important.
But that’d my life. Death lurks everywhere, and I can’t look everywhere at once, so one of these days catastrophe will stop playing with me and go in for the kill.
I wish I could say that this truth galvanized me into being more determined than ever to live my life to the fullest and get the most out of every fleeting moment of it.
But it does not. Rather the opposite, actually. It just makes me want to withdraw even deeper into myself and wait for it all to be over.
The whole idea of living life to the fullest seems flawed and doomed to me. How on Earth would I even know if I’m living life to the fullest? How could I possibly know that out of the billions of things I could be doing right now, the one I am doing is the one which will bring me the most joy?
To me, that just sounds like a recipe for constant dissatisfaction as you worry and wonder whether you could be living a fuller life right now.
For some of us, that positive shit just doesn’t work.
Like, take for example Doctor Scott‘s recent video about the third way to fight depression that isn’t therapy or drugs but works just as well as them!
I saw that title, and immediately said to myself, “It’s exercise, isn’t it?”
Yup. He wanted to sell me on the idea of exercising my way out of my despair and I had to laugh a bitter, mirthless laugh at that because if I can barely find the motivation to get out of bed to go to the bathroom some days, how the fuck am I supposed to find the motivation to do something that will actively hurt the entire time (but for “only” 20 minutes!) and then leave me feeling horrible after?
The level of delusion in that kind of thinking is atrocious.
This kind of thing is why I am thinking of not following Doctor Scott on YouTube any more because he seems like a great guy and I believe he is entirely earnest and sincere and really did go through depressive hell too, but despite all that, his videos keep making me really angry because it’s like he has no idea what it’s like to be someone like me and his advice is always this perky bullshit that feels like it’s from another planet.
The Planet of the Ryans, where Ryan Gosling and Ryan Reynolds are from.
I’ve had the same problem with other YouTube therapists as well. They are sincerely trying to help but they clearly have no idea of what it’s truly like to dwell in the darkness feeling so numb from the hard edged chill inside you that sometimes it is hard to remember why you do literally anything.
I mean seriously. Fuck you people. You clearly don’t get it, and if you don’t get it, get OUT. Get out of my fucking head space because you’re worse than useless and I was happier before you came in and dispensed your insipid advice.
If I am ever institutionalized, I will definitely be a “problematic” patient. Kind of like Will in Good Will Hunting. When I am angry, I lash out both intellectually and verbally, and I could easily see myself just destroying therapist after therapist.
“And we’re going to keep going through this until you bring me someone who isn’t a useless god damned idiot!”.
Yeah I can totally see that happening.
I even have to restrain myself so that I stay within the margins of what Doctor Costin can provide me. If I truly unloaded on him, it would kill him.
I mean, dude’s in his 80s.
So instead, I just stay in my tiny little cage.
It’s not like I am in a position to make any demands of people.
More after the break.
Borrowing health from the future
I feel like when you have an unhealthy lifestyle when you are young, you are essentially mortgaging your future to pay for your present.
It’s a raw deal but no young person is ever going to be convinced not to do what they want to do based on how they will feel in their forties and fifties.
That’s like forever from now. Who cares?
I sure as hell ate like a total fool a lot when I was younger. Junk food was my favorite side dish. Meals were always accompanied by chips, pretzels, Cheesies, or whatever.
And even after my diabetes diagnosis, I would still eat the sweet stuff sometimes. After all, diabetes didn’t hurt (yet) and I had no other physical symptoms, so how big of a deal could it really be?
Quite big, as it turns out.
And I would love to be able to warn younger fat dudes that they are heading for a brick wall at top speed and it’s up to them whether they crash into it or only nudge it, but I know it would not do any good.
The future isn’t real when you’re young. In general, human beings are not great at reacting to any threat that is too far in the future and/or too abstract.
By the time the operant conditioning of getting a sick, teeth-aching headache within minutes of eating the wrong thing kicked in, it was already too late.
And even today, I have to remain vigilant. I suffer the consequences of my earlier self-neglect, like the nerve damage to my fingertips or whatever the fuck is happening to the muscles in my legs and arms, and yet I still leer longingly at my fave chocolate bars when I see them on DoorDash and I know that if I slipped up, that slope would slide me directly into hell and a premature and very stupid death.
The only way to be safe from that slippery slope is to never set foot on it again. Discipline is repetition and the more often you say no to that self-destructive voice tempting you to doom yourself, the easier it gets.
I still miss all those lovely sweet treats from long ago. But I can’t say I am actually tempted by them. I know they would just make me sick.
And I have sugar free treats I can eat if I feel the need for something sweet.
So why bother sinning against my future health?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.