You know, some times the hardest thing about writing my blog entries is slowing my brain down enough to produce coherent, expressible thoughts.
My usual mental speed doesn’t always allow for that. Often my mental state is more like a planetarium show on fast forward, or a merry go round running out of control.
Normally, I don’t consciously notice this. For me, that’s normal. Sometimes my mind is normal-ish (double ish) but other times it’s moving at hyper speed and trying to get so much as a topic out of it feels like trying to grab one bullet out of a stream of bullets fired by a machine gun.
But I can do it. I can tame and harness my hyperactive hamster wheel of a brain when I need to do it. That’s not the issue.
The issue is that I worry what this superheated state of consciousness means about me and my state of semi-sanity.
Because it certainly isn’t normal. Not for most human beings.
Not without mind altering chemicals being involved, anyhow.
I mean, I seem to do all right, at least externally. By societal standards I am more or less sane because my mental illness doesn’t cause me to misbehave.
I just waste away quietly, not bothering anyone as I stand over my own grave.
I am almost fifty years old and I am still staying out of the way.
This world of mine – my personal reality – is very good at keeping me content and distracted but lousy at actually making me feel good about myself and my life, and at giving me any hope for the future or acceptance of the past, and at making me feel whole and alive, and basically absolutely anything else.
An argument could be made that society should care about all the incredible things I could be doing for it that are locked behind a wall of mental illness, but society doesn’t give a shit out that kind of thing. Not really.
At least, it doesn’t care enough to come looking for you. If you’re a terminally timid sort like me, too scared of the world to venture out in it, you’re pretty much screwed.
Not that I can see a way for society to fix that. Not until we have some sort of mental potential detector that the government can use to detect untapped geniuses like myself and send government agents around to force me to be productive.
Wouldn’t that makes so many lost souls like me happy?
I bet the Soviet Union had something like that.
But no, it’s all up to me. It always has been. I’ve been on my own in the world without guidance or discipline for my entire life.
Not that providing either of them to me would have been easy. I was a very unusual child and it would have required a very specific kind of teacher to get through to me.
But it’s not a child’s job to accommodate the adults in their lives. I was just being myself. It was up to them to figure me out.
But they couldn’t. Maybe they could today, but they couldn’t back then.
And so it is, in fact, all up to me. I am the only one who can rescue myself from this deadly trap I call a life.
I deserve so much more than this. But nobody is going to bring it to me.
I’m going to have to go out there and get it, and that means leaving the comfort and safety of this unkempt little nest of mine.
I can’t make the fear go away.
So I will have to be scared and do it anyway.
Pardon me if I whimper a bit.
More after the break.
A place for me
I guess that’s all I have ever really wanted : a place for me.
Someplace where I feel like I belong. Where I am wanted and needed and appreciated. Where I can contribute. And earn. And add value. And all those other good things that most people take for granted because they have always had them.
Even really crappy jobs give people a level of deep validation. They are our bizarre society’s way of telling you that you are doing your part to contribute to the collective and that you are, in that sense, okay.
You’re a taxpayer, and therefore society is fine with you. Your tribal instincts have been satiated. You can relax and live your life.
But for those of us for whom that is not readily achievable, we are left to be gnawed at by those same tribal instincts that drive us to crave some kind of way to be a part of the tribe and contribute.
Long term unemployment is bad for the soul.
That goes triple when it’s permanent.
But no, god damn it, I started out trying to write something positive and life-affirming where I talked about my dreams, and almost right away went all sad instead.
That has its place too, of course. Venting the negative helps me a lot, actually.
But I need to be able to feed the positive too.
So. What I want. What I dream of. A place for myself. Right.
I would love a simple office job. File clerk, mailroom, answering the phones, whatever. I think I could do a job like that quite well.
In fact, given my enormous capacity for work, I could probably take over some of the other employees’ least favorite jobs.
Which is how I would make myself indispensable. Anyone brings up the possibility of getting rid of me and every sees the looming possibility of having to do the parts of the job they hate again and the resultant feeling of loss of status and they say NO.
I am so goddamned devious it’s spooky . N’est-ce pas?
I could be happy as a cashier as long as I got to sit. No sitting, no me. That was true even back when my legs worked.
But now, well, my walker kind of speaks for itself.
OF course, what I really want is to write for TV. It’s a job I am sure I could not only do but totally kick ass at.
I would blow people’s MIND with how well I write TV.
And there is really nothing keeping me from trying it. I could write for TV writing contests, apply for open call jobs, try to network with people.
I just wish there was some kind of psychological prosthetic, the equivalent of my walker, but for my weak and trembling soul.
Something to keep me steady and calm and focused even when things get scary and I start to feel lost and panicky.
I suppose that’s why some people turn to liquor, drugs, and sex.
I don’t need any of that shit in my life.
But I could get myself some edibles. Pot, I trust. It’s not chemically addictive, it’s now government regulated (and legal), and I hear great things about its ability to give people both pain relief and emotional support.
Hmmm. Maybe better living really IS through chemistry.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.