I think that, at an early age, I learned to protect myself by projecting innocence.
And by that, I mean as a gut level, “when in doubt look cute” level defense. It’s never been something calculated or planned, although I would be remiss if I did not admit I have consciously played it up after the fact a few times.
And it makes sense as a defense for the youngest of four kids, with the closest in age being my brother Dave, who is 4.3 years older than me.
When you’re the youngest and smallest and weakest, your best defense may well be the fact that you are cute and innocent looking and therefore your parents or other siblings will intervene on your behalf if one sibling tries to hurt you.
Heck, your assailant themselves might feel bad and stop.
And that works when you are a genuinely dumb and clueless little kid. But things get more complicated when you enter school.
The innocence defense doesn’t work on bullies. In fact, it attracts them like flies on shit.
And it only gets worse as you age. Trust me when I say that the innocence defense is not going to help you a lot when you’re a 50 year old fat dude.
People kind of expect you to have your shit together by now.
And one thing the bullies taught me was that the same behaviour that gets you sympathy when you are little arouses disgust and contempt when you get to be of school age and face the politics of the schoolyard.
Far worse, though, is the fact that in order to maintain your shield of innocence, you have to remain passive and harmless and helpless.
It feels like your very survival depends on it.
Which means that in a very real sense, you can’t grow up. If you did, you would lose your shield of innocence and despite all the hard lessons it has brought you, that is still the only defense against the world you know that works.
The only defense you have. That you know of.
And I guess it has, in a terrible way, worked for me so far. I have managed to dodge reality thus far, in large part, do to it.
And this is where this subject turns into a mental minefield full of ninjas for me because it combines doing a deadly dance with this instinctual innocence of mine, it adds a very twisty, tricky element of metaconsciousness to the mix.
Because it is nearly impossible for me to even think about this subject, let along write about it, without dealing with the issue of intention.
Talking about it makes me sound, even to myself, like this is all some kind of Machiavellian mind game of mine.
I guess the deliberate and strategic, chess-playing way I express myself sometimes could give people that impression.
To confound the fact, I can’t even say myself where to draw the line between instinct and intention. I know that I don’t ever “act innocent”. I am a very honest and sincere person, and I am not capable of that level of deception.
But that’s exactly what I would say if I was trying to seem as innocent as possible.
I swear I am not. It’s all instinct. Something I learned before I even had words to use to defend myself. When in doubt, be cute.
In that one sense, I guess I truly am “innocent”.
All in all, I think I’d rather have a life. I’d rather be happy.
Even if that means not being so innocent after all.
More after the break.
Less than a leg
It’s looking like the worsening of my “condition” is permanent. Damn it.
Ever since last Thursday or so, I have felt heavier than ever. I just stand up and my muscles start screaming. Just making it to the car and into Denny’s and back took a lot out of me tonight. More than ever before.
Luckily, I can compensate somewhat by being very careful with how I grip the walker. I am learning (out of necessity) how to keep my body somewhat rigid so that my weight is distributing more onto my bones and the walker and less on my major muscle groups.
Because like I said before, it’s in my arms now too. And that really scares me. Not being able to walk any more. even with the walker, would be terrible, don’t get me wrong.
But I spend most of my time sitting or lying down already. And wheelchairs are a thing, and they are roughly as wide as my walkers, if not a little smaller, so if I can get around in my walkers, I can get around in my wheelchair.
Ergo, if my legs stop working entirely, it would be horrible, but survivable.
But I don’t know what the hell I would do if my arms stop working. I would presumably have to get braces on them or something if they become too weak to hold my hands up so I can type.
Luckily, as far as I can tell, that’s a long ways off. My arms feel heavy and weak but are perfectly fine for ordinary tasks like typing and eating and such.
But the writing is on the wall. If I don’t find a way to halt the progress of this disorder – whatever it may be – then it’s a steady slide into gooberdom, where I will end up paralyzed and full of tubes and unable to do anything but lay there and internally scream myself hoarse out of the sheer gibbering madness that my locked in state has engendered in me.
And all because my FUCKING GP dropped the ball on my case.
Well my trip to the neurologist this Tuesday is Doctor Chao’s last chance. If that produces something approaching an actual result, then Chao is off the hook.
But if, as I suspect, this Doctor Madhani turns out to be even more useless than Chao, I am going to complain to the College about both of them.
And then I am going to start contacting lawyers.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.