Didn’t have therapy today.
My therapist, Doctor Avrum Costin, called me yesterday and told me he had a personal emergency so could he reschedule our weekly therapy session to Friday?
Sure, Doc. No problem.
And could we make it noon instead of 1 pm?
Also no big deal.
So it’s on for noon tomorrow instead.
And it occurred to me that I am way way more flexible and adaptable than I usually give myself credit for.
Because it really was no big deal for me to make the adjustment. I wasn’t just fawning and placating when I said that. I made the change in my mind and that was it.
Put that in the “evidence against Asperger’s column. I have none of the mental rigidity and inability to cope with change that that the syndrome is usually associated with, and that seems like a pretty fundamental if not foundational part of the disorder.
So I honestly don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. Again.
Maybe there is a disorder that is to Asperger’s what Asperger’s is to autism : a milder and higher functioning version of the same sort of thing.
But it’s more than just “being a nerd”, which is what I used to say. There is something very deep and terrible wrong with me on a fundamental level. Something that cuts me off from the rest of humanity and locks me away in the ice fortress of my mind.
Three guesses as to which early childhood rape led to THAT. When I was raped at the age of four, I escaped the only away available to me and fled deep, deep into my mind and built this icy fortress there to keep the rest of the world out.
But at some point along the the line, I lost (or threw away) the key. I forgot how to get out of this damn place, or rather, I lost the ability to survive outside it.
Like Mister Freeze being unable to survive outside his deep-freeze suit.
Now I might be wrong about that. Maybe after a thawing out period (which might be quite painful) I would survive outside this icy womb-tomb of mine just fine, and I would finally be able to feel warm and alive and real.
Like shaking your hand or foot awake after it falls asleep.
But for now, the part of my mind that equates thawing out with death like I am Frosty the Fucking Snowman is too powerful for me to defy.
But I am working on it. Slowly I am driving the illness from my mind and prising the fingers of its clammy hands off my throat, and some day I will be able to leave this musty sarcophagus behind me for good.
I am in the process of resurrecting myself. It’s slow going – the depression releases its grasp slowly and reluctantly and it is only by sheer bloody-minded application of constant force that it give up any ground at all.
But a fixed foe cannot triumph over a truly implacable hero.
And I am that hero.
So give up now, depression. You cannot win.
More after the break.
One of me
There’s times when good ol’ Doc Costin suggests something like I need to learn to parent my inner child, or be my own inspiration, or somesuch.
And I have to tell him that I can’t be two people. Not yet, anyhow.
For me, it’s like he’s telling me to scratch my left elbow with my left hand. I can’t be the thing being fixed and the thing doing the fixing at the same time.
Not consciously, anyhow.
Maybe I am thinking about it all wrong, though. Maybe it’s more like scratching your left elbow with your RIGHT hand. And maybe this balking at the idea of being “two people at the same time” is just more of my depression’s bullshit.
I’m getting really tired of your crap, depression.
If it is depressive manure, I know what aspect of me it’s using : my lifelong horror at the thought of dividing my identity.
This is some deep mind stuff so bear with me.
But I have always had this fear of dividing my identity. As if were I to do so, my mind would break into pieces and I’d never be coherent again.
And yes, I see the irony in saying that when I spend a couple houjrs of every day pretending to be a fox from another planet.
To me, that’s not dividing my identity. That’s putting on a mask, which to me is entirely different. I am not being two people when I am Fruvous, even though it’s not like I forget I am really Michael John Bertrand back here in mundane reality.
I’m still Michael. I’m just Michael with a mask on.
I suppose in that sense, Fruvous is more like a fictional character in something I am writing. When I write from the point of view of a character, I do so by, in essence, pretending to be them so I can see the world from their perspective.
To me, that’s a very enjoyable part of the process. I love looking at the world from different points of view. It enriches my own view of reality the same way that seeing photos of an object from different angles enriches your knowledge of said object.
I am too paranoid to ever trust that my own POV is sufficient.
But I can see how to someone without my fluid sense of identity, that would seem like schizophrenic madness. A lot of people can only see the world from their POV because they have such a deeply rooted and fixed sense of who they are.
I can’t imagine being cooped up in my own head like that. How stifling!
Back to being Fruvous. There is yet another layer of elaboration, because I don’t have any “alts”. I have the one character I play on Taps and that’s it.
Most furries on there at least experiment with trying being other characters, either to further explore their own identities or just for fun.
Not me. Not an option. THAT, to me, would be dividing my identity, and is therefore never ever gonna happen.
I am one complicated dude.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,