There I am, a happy, carefree child on his way to school, eager to play with all his friends in the schoolyard before attending his classes.

Because you know what? Fuck reality. Fuck the truth. Fuck history. I am going to give myself the happy childhood I deserved.

Holy crap, is this what they mean by “it’s never too late to have a happy childhood”?

Suddenly that seems a lot less insipid.

In the same vein, this is also me :

There I am after school, passing the time until my mother gets home by happily playing a video game. When she gets home, I will happily tell her about my day, and she will tell me about hers, and we will bond.

Then we cook supper together, joking around the whole time.

I mean, when you really think about it, what use is the past? What value does it have? What are all those painful, lonely childhood memories doing me?

If some alien decided to do me a favour and replace all those traumatic memories with happy, healthy ones like the ones in my new headcanon,. what would I really lose?

Besides a whole lot of mental illness.

So to hell with it all., This is my new truth now. A happy, healthy, wholesome childhood where I was loved and cherished and validated and given all the support and attention a little boy could ever desire or need, and where I never, not even for one moment, doubted that I was wanted.

And every night, the family would gather around the supper table and enjoy the meal my mother and I had cooked. And everybody got a chance to talk about their day, and everybody listened to them, and really cared about what they heard.

It looked like this :

I had lots of good friends, more than enough, and we hung out together and played and had each other’s backs, and learned a lot about life and how to live it as we grew up together in our happy homes.

Now I know I can’t erase or delete my old memories. But I can definitely de-index them. De-emphasize them. Drop them from active consideration. Declare them to be unimportant in the extreme and leave them behind as the useless baggage they are.

And go on to sleep like… well, like this.

Softly, peacefully, deeply, and well. Asleep the moment my head hits the pillow. And straight through the night every single time.

So yeah. To hell with my real childhood. It will always be a part of me but I hereby disown. I will no longer be beholden to it in any way, shape, or form.

And I am sure as hell not going to live there any more. I’m packing up and shipping out, destination the here and now.

If I hurry, maybe I can catch up with myself while I still can.

Above all, I am going to face the future and learn to see it as a good place to be.

No more hiding from reality.

After all, what’s there to hide from? The world is a beautiful place.

More after the break.

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I’ve never Peter Cushed

So it turns out that Doc Chao thinks I might have Cushing Syndrome. 

That’s what this whole cortisol testing business is about. Cushing causes cortisol levels to rise in the blood and that causes all kinds of problems… including muscle weakness.

Taken rationally (what can I say, it’s a habit), I don’t think that’s the case. I have a few of the symptoms, but not enough of them.

Which is too bad, because if I did have Cushing, fixing it with a cortical blocker or antagonist could solve a lot of my problems in one swell foop.

Like I said before, it causes depression, weight gain, and Type 2 diabetes.

Boy, would it be awesome to have all of those gone. I’d come out of the gate roaring like a lion, ready to take on the world and make it say “uncle”.

But I don’t have thin arms and legs, even though it often feels like I do. And I don’t have a fatty lump between my shoulder blades^[1], though I do get pain there sometimes.

But I am fat and fifty and I barely move. I get pain everywhere sometimes. There isn’t a part of me that doesn’t ache occasionally.

I get cramps in my eyebrows.

No stretch marks, but I have had them in the past, so… maybe?

My skin is neither fragile nor easily bruised. Which is a blessing considering how god damned clumsy I am.

I’d be one big broken bruise by now. Yikes.

Go not erection issues, knock on wood. My problem is on the other end of the cycle, climax, and that’s due to the antidepressants.

And I don’t have trouble controlling my emotions. There, too, my problem is at the other end of the spectrum. I have trouble letting go of the illusion of control enough to actually feel what I need to feel and do what I need to do in order to be healthy.

God damned emotional constipation.

“Moon face”? I don’t think so. If anything, my face is less fat than the faces of other fat dudes I have known.

Trouble concentrating or remembering? Yeah it’s called brain fog, and it can be caused both by depression and by antidepressants.

Ain’t that a peach?

Depression? Yup. High blood pressure? Yup. Infections? Had them. Bone deterioration? Radiologist though I had osteoporosis.

Hmmm. Maybe I have more symptoms than I thought.

Better get my Peter Cushed.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.