As a kid, like millions of other children all over the world, I loved Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and Porky Pig and the rest of the Looney Tunes cast.
And one day I was watching the one where Bugs and Daffy do Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and, being a weirdly intellectual and analytical child, I started to wonder : what makes Daffy Duck tick?
See, some throwaway line from him had given me a valuable insight : he was so egotistical and had such a grandiose sense of himself as a way to compensate for a deep down burning hatred of himself.
His psyche had learned to balance itself and make him functional by generating a counter-force even stronger than the self-loathing, and this became his primary mode for dealing with life.
Sometimes, the way to counter being empty inside is to be full of yourself.
And there is some truth and wisdom in that. After all, Daffy Duck might be a vain, greedy, selfish creature, but at least he’s functional and talented and has a way to live life instead of being paralyzed by self-doubt.
Ahem. I believe this is where I come in.
Because I have been toying with the idea of finally letting myself develop a huge ego and see where it takes me for decades now.
After all, a lot of people with even one of my many gifts have big fat egos and very high opinions of themselves. Why not me?
I’m fucking amazing!
I have resisted the allure of egotism for my whole life because I felt like it would take me someplace I really did not want to go. A place where, like Daffy, I am vain, selfish, and arrogant, as well as being pushy, manipulative, scheming, untrustworthy, and at times downright creepy and Satanic.
Let’s just say I get where the snake of Eden was coming from.
But that’s the classic depressive “all or nothing” lie. It’s not like one step in the direction of positive self esteem will lead directly to narcissism and delusions of grandeur.
“Oh no! It’s better to freeze to death than to turn up the thermostat because that will lead directly to us all boiling to death!!!”
That kind of bullshit.
What I want is enough of an ego to function. Something commensurate with my abilities, which would I admit leave me with a pretty big ego.
Well if it gives me the confidence to go take on that big bad world, I’m all for it. I need something to counterbalance my crippling fear of exposure and the voices in my head that still insists that there is nothing but pain out there in the world for me and that the only safety is in staying locked away in this filthy bunker of mine.
It’s not enough – not NEARLY enough – just to know those voices are wrong. Who cares if they are wrong if they are still around? Knowledge is an intellectual solution that bears very little weight in the world of emotions.
Emotions require belief, not just knowledge. Only positive beliefs can cancel out negative beliefs and in the long run even override those negative beliefs by completely erasing the old tapes they reside on.
Because fuck self-loathing. I’m an amazing dude. The hate for myself is sliding right off me like I’m shedding my skin, and I am all glistening and pink and new underneath.
I don’t have to stay where I am.
I don’t have to be who I was.
And I don’t have to live like this.
I’m movin’ on up. Just watch me.
More after the break.
Another busy Friday
Between Wound Care, ordering my groceries, and showering at Rosewood, my Fridays have become quite hectic.
And I love it. At last, a day where I have things to do and get done.
I am someone who is happiest when he is busy who tragically lacks the ability to make himself busy. It has to come from outside.
I guess I still have a lot of trouble generating my own impetus. On some deep layer, I suppose I don’t feel like I am worth the effort.
Gee, I wonder where I would have gotten that idea.
Eh, fuck it. My tragic childhood is currently open to review, but pretty soon it too will be a part of me I shed like it’s cat fur in the spring and leave behind.
I am through with hiding from reality like I have something to be ashamed of.
I’m fucking awesome.
Anyhow, Wound Care went smoothly. My nurse was one who had changed my dressings once before, but thankfully, she didn’t expect me to remember her name.
Given that most of the other people in the waiting area with me before a Wound Care appointment are SUPER old, that’s a wise policy.
And I am terrible with names.
I need to learn to take a snapshot of my emotional impression of a person and label it with their name when I first meet them.
That’s more or less how I remember people anyhow. How they look is too unreliable for me, given my poor eyesight.
When I got home from Wound Care, I ordered my groceries, and this time I remembered to set the delivery time FIRST.
More on that later.
Then at 2 pm we left for Rosewood.
I am quite happy that it’s now going to be the same worker showering me each week. His name is Albert, which my brain insists on pronouncing “al-BEAR” because that’s how it would be pronounced where I come from even though it is extremely unlikely that he is French Canadian.
I hope I don’t ever call him that out loud.
That went quite well. Being showered by someone else really doesn’t bother me like I thought it would. It is, in fact, quite pleasant.
I think my general friendliness and agreeability covers any embarrassment I might have felt at first. After all, I wouldn’t want to make him uncomfortable!
Then it was back home to await my groceries.
They arrived slightly before 4 pm (grr, my window was 4 pm to 5 pm) and son of a bitch, I am now saddled with some stupid sugar laden mini-cookies instead of my usual fudge striped sugar free Voortman cookies.
And I even have a substitute set up! Son of a bitch, I thought we were beyond this.
But I guess a lot of people are completely puzzled by the fact that the sugar free cookies are not with the other cookies in the cookie section and just grab the closest thing they can find.
And, well, the mini-cookies ARE fudge striped at least.
But still, it pisses me off. I just want to get what I actually order, god damn it!
Now I am going to have to prevail on Julian to go buy them for me as I know he knows where to find them and isn’t going to bring me chocolate frosted Pop-Tarts or whatever.
Oh, and for sheer randomness, we also someone ended up with a loaf of bread I didn’t order. And it turns out the Door Dash system has no way to tell it you got something you didn’t order. It’s all based on problems with the things you ordered.
So, bonus bread, I guess. But I think it’s white bread, and ick. So boring!
I made the usual complaint about the cookies to Door Dash and got the usual refund, which is good and all, but that’s not what I want.
I want my cookies god damn it!
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.