I’m having my usual busy Friday.
Ya know, wound care at 9:15 am, then ordering my groceries online, then at 2 pm heading out for my weekly shower at Rosewood, then back here just in time to have lunch and start blogging.
And today, while Albert was showering me, I got to think about I tend to be a very agreeable and accommodating person to the point where it becomes problematic.
Because it’s very hard to me to ask for what I want or speak up for myself. The urge to tell people what I know they want to hear is far too strong. It makes it hard for folks to care for me because something might be going terribly wrong with me and they would never know because I would just keep it to myself.
Well, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience anyone with my symptoms.
I’ve gotten better about it as my health has gotten worse. I still find it very hard to speak up and tell people what’s wrong with me, because when I was a child, that didn’t work.
I would try to tell adults about my issues and just get brushed off.
But there’s nothing quite like illness and pain to get you to rethink your attitudes about a lot of things. Suddenly, shit gets real, dawg. Fuck your neurosis.
That’s how I learned that I was completely alone in the world. And were I made from sturdier stock or more ambitious temperament, that feeling of being alone might have sparked in me the urge to prove to the world that I was just fine by myself and I didn’t need anyone else at all.
But my soul is emaciated and paper-thin, so all it made me do was withdraw even further into my mind and away from the world that I could not survive alone and could not get any help with either.
I’m way too fucked up for anyone’s love to get through to me.
Crap. I need sleep, badly. I am going to have to lay down for now.
Now where was I?
Forgot I had not finished Part 1 of my writing, so now here I am at 9:23 pm needing to write slightly less than 650 words in one go.
No problem at all.
Was weird to get that sleepy so fast. But I’d had a long day with all the wound care and groceries and shower and whatnot.
But whatever. I usually write all of part 1 in one sitting, and that’s 600+ words.
So really, it’s more like part 1 and part 2 just switched places for today.
Anyhow, back to the self-therapy.
I wish I was a more robust kind of person. But I suspect that a very big part of my problem with that kind of thing is my very weak connection with my id.
I have taken refuge in the crisp but chilly world of the mind far too much and for far too long, and it has left me feeling only weakly embodied and merely technically present.
And I know that has to end. I need to bring myself into balance instead of being so very lopsided in the direction of the ego and I can only do that by spending less time looking at screens and more time actually interacting with the real world.
Or at the very least, increasingly the depth and scope of my screen time. Go out into the wilds of the internet in search of remote work and new social experiences.
The image that keeps crossing my mind is of me throwing a grappling hook out into the ether then pulling myself along by the chain attached to it.
A strange image, to be sure, but it encapsulates how I feel about reaching out beyond myself into the real world in search of a new anchor point or two.
Still feeling nervous about the phone call from the SkillUp people on Monday. And I know why. It’s because I will have to explain the stark raving lunacy of my life so far and admit to having fucked everything up so completely that I am 51 years old and have never even entered the workforce.
And I am so ashamed of what a loser I am that explaining that will hurt a LOT.
All I can do is make myself think about all those lost years now and then and hold them in my mind for as long as I can stand to do so in order to drain some of their power.
Because they are definitely something I need to get over before I truly move on with my life. They are gone and I can never get them back and I don’t know how to handle that.
All I can do is grieve. Let the pain and loss and the horror I feel at what I have done to and with myself wash over me so I can get to the other side of them.
The only cure for emotions is to feel them.
The only way out is through.
I wish it was as simple as telling myself that there’s nothing I can do about it now so I might as well forgot about the past and concentrate on making my future better.
But it’s not that simple. I am not yet capable of that level of hope.
I feel like I have only just arrived at the possibility of positivity, and true hope, full and strong, would be asking far too much of my sad little spirit.
But my deflated soul is slowly filling up with air and systems that got mothballed a long time ago are struggling to come online, and over time, I am sure I will perk up more.
Like I keep saying, I know there is a very upbeat and positive person lurking within me and waiting to emerge.
I can feel him within me, like the shadow of someone I might have been. A happy, optimistic, pragmatic dreamer dedicated to making amazing things happen.
The kind of wonderful things that give people hope.
Maybe in order to find hope, I need to give it to others first.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.