It really isn’t.

But first, medical update : I have arteriosclerosis in my head.

That’s what Doctor Teal had tell me. And obviously, they can’t go poking around my gray matter to put in stent or scrub that shit out.

So it’s all up to me now. I have got to get my risk factors under control.

Which is why I was shocked and dismayed when the possible Doctor Ebtia^[1] told me that my blood pressure and cholesterol levels are way too high.

But I am on two different blood pressure meds plus Lipitor!

Turns out that when that doctor at Richmond Hospital cut my blood pressure meds’ dosages in half to cure my dizziness problem, he may have gone too far.

As for the cholesterol, well, our bodies start producing their own cholesterol as we get older and so I guess I need a dosage increase.

From 20 mg to 80 mg. Seems a tad extreme to me. I have her permission to drop it down to 40 mg if I start getting muscle pain.

I am thinking I will just start with 40 mg. Call me crazy but that seems more sane.

As for the blood pressure issue, I really don’t want to end up super dizzy again so I am hoping some kind of happy medium can be found.

I mean, I guess dizziness beats having a stroke, hands down, but still.

Anyhow, on to the actual topic.

What was that again?

---

It’s still not darkness

Oh right. Did the Therapy Thursday thing today.

And I was explaining my whole “leaving the light of reason and entering the dark of irrationality” thing I was writing about yesterday and Doctor Costin pointed out that this was a false dichotomy that made thing far too oppositional and that only served the purposes of my depression.

And he was right, gol’ dang it.

And that sparked another thought about how this side of me I want to develop – the side of emotion and intuition and trans-rational thought – is not wholly alien to me.

How could it be? It’s a vital part of me and always has been. Like I said yesterday, it was there before I could even talk.

And once I opened up this avenue of thought, I remembered a lot of times when I was in that mode and it turned out OK.

It is over my overweaning superego and its chief crony the ego that thinks of that sort of thing as alien and irrational and malign.

The real me – because your emotions are ALWAYS the real you – the real me knows that I have a heart and a soul just like everyone else and that there is nothing wrong with letting them do the thinking if my feelings are the topic of discussion.

I have resources within me that can aid my efforts to heal myself immensely but my depression has hidden them from me until now using this pseudo-rationalist bullshit about light and darkness as cover.

Well fuck that. I am not my mind! I am a fully functional and intact human being and I can totally handle my deep emotional self just like the billions of other human beings on the planet who do not have my towering intellect.

We CAN think.

We MUST feel.

There is so much more to me than my clever mind and it is high time I got to know the rest of me.

More after the break.

---

Making my life move

I won’t be able to get my life moving until I stop clinging tenaciously to my little world.

Hence, the Trog has got to go. Or at least learn to be more reasonable. His (my) tendency to react to any kind of hand like it’s an invader looking to drag him off to hell has cost me a hell of a lot in life and if I am going to go anywhere, he has to let go.

There are far worse things than to be carried away by something. It is, in fact, a good thing to let your passions and desires drive you to leave your crummy little comfort zone in order to pursue what you really want in life, even if all you want is a good time.

I have spent far too long suppressing, ignoring, and even resenting my passions because they made sitting around doing nothing with my life more painful.

Well good for them. They were clearly trying to tell me something. Something like, “Hey you out there! Do something with us! Put us to work! DO SOMETING DAMMIT. It’s getting really crowded in here and the line stretches for miles!”

Or something like that.

I’ve talked before in this space how when you almost never act on your impulses. you die inside. Eventually the impulses more or less stop trying to move you and then you sit there and wonder why you have no motivation.

Because you didn’t feed the little motivation you had and now it’s dead. Happy?

Myself, I have smothered my spirit by living under a policy of suppressing all impulses because whatever they will make me want, I can’t have. So these impulses can only bring me pain and disappointment and frustration.

That’s a heck of a big generalization. Sure, if what I want is a private jet, I can’t have it. Same with a lot of things that cost money to do.

But if what I want is someone to talk to, that’s entirely doable via the internet. If I want to explore a new space, there’s plenty of those available online. If I am looking to maybe advance my career as a writer, I can do that too.

My point is that there are a lot of things I CAN have but this brutal suppression of almost all impulses keeps me from doing them.

Instead, I just play fucking video games all the damned time.

No motivation needed. It’s more than habit. It’s a reflex. Something I do as automatically as I breathe or digest food.

I try to imagine doing other things with my time. But my addiction is not that reasonable. It says that any time where I could be playing games but don’t is the worst thing ever.

And once more, we’re back at “it beats having to figure out what to do with myself. ”

And it does. But only in a very limited and self destructive way.

But that’s the way of all addictions, isn’t it? Sooner or later they displace or destroy everything but themselves and make you do things you know are bad for you but feel compelled to do anyhow.

They have hijacked the very core of your motivational structure – the drive which makes the thirsty animal look for water and the hungry animal search for food.

And I do not, so far, know how to hijack it back.

Bet it’s really gonna hurt, though.

Addictions don’t die easy.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.