Alprazolam! And poof, your anxiety disappears.
Had my big important phone meeting with the nice lady from SkillUp this morning. And it went fine. All my nervousness about the whole thing was entirely unjustified and to be honest seems downright silly in hindsight.
But what can I say? I’m crazy. And crazy people do (and believe) crazy thngs.
It all says a whole lot more about my own rampant neurosis than it says about SkillUp. I was dreading the whole thing because I had convinced myself that I would have to tell this person from SkillUp my whole sordid lack of a life story and confess to them that I was a 51 year old loser who had never had a job.
And I obviously still carry an enormous about of guilt and shame about that.
And I honestly still don’t know how to deal with it. There is a lot of self-forgiveness that needs to happen before I can lay that burden down.
I’m working on it.
So because I was so nervous, I took a Xanax about an hour before the appointment. And it helped a lot.
Plus feeling my anxiety kind of melt away under its effects was fascinating and cool. I could feel my subconscious mind trying and failing to become anxious. The nervousness just faded away.
It all makes me very happy to have Xanax as an option. I would never use it on a regular basis, but for certain events it’s magical.
Now back to all that shame.
I know, intellectually, that I have nothing to be ashamed of. Yes, I have been unable to get employment due to mental and eventually also physical illness and that does make me a fairly extreme outlier – most people have had at least some kind of job.
But I have never supported myself at all. First I freeloaded off my parents, then Dhugal and David and Ross, and then I moved here to the GVRD and finally got to stop freeloadinf off friends and start freeloading off the government of BC.
Yay, independence at last.
All I have done is hide from the world and played video games. I have a massive lack of any kind of meaningful life experience.
Never been in love. Never supported myself with a job. I’ve never really traveled or had little adventures like that.
An awful lot of absolutely nothing of lasting value has happened instead.
And looked at that way, it’s kind of amazing, albeit in a terrible way. Most people would think avoiding life and work and romance for that long would be impossible.
But one of my gift/curses has always been that I can see how much of what people go through in life is actually optional and requires your cooperation and so I know intuitively that you can just,,,, not do it.
And when you can clearly see just how much of the social reality people live in is actually specious bullshit, you can choose not to participate in it when it does not seem like you will benefit from it.
This is bad.
It’s bad because you actually need to do all that stuff in order to become a properly socialized adult who can actually function in the modern world.
Turns out, all that “bullshit” was actually super important for reasons that are not at all evident to a stubbornly skeptical child, and by maintaining my right to disregard it any time I wanted to, I was actually dooming myself.
There are other factors. Lack of kindergarten. Lack of any meaningful form of guidance from adults. Total social isolation. Being a fundamentally broken kid due to the rape.
All of this led to my being deeply incapable of functioning as an adult. I have lived like a kid on a very low rent permanent vacation for my entire adult life.
I guess all that shame and guilt of mine stems from an assumption that I could have functioned like a normal, mentally intact person but failed to do so anyway.
And that’s highly debatable.
More after the break.
The eternal loop
Patient readers know the score.
COULD I have done better? If I couldn’t have, then I am off the hook for what a colossal waste of potential and living years my life has been so far. I can just square my shoulder, set my jaw, and tell myself that I did the best I could.
But it’s not quite that simple, is it? Because then I would have to face how truly ill I am, and give up on the idea of doing better in the future, because I’m doing my best now.
And its kinda pathetic.
The opposite side of this is the idea that I could have done better and can do better in the future if I just try.
That would involve taking full responsibility for the despicable mess I have made of my life so far, and I am not sure I can handle that.
My self esteem is already dangerously low. Taking responsibility like that seems like handing my self-loathing all the ammo it needs to finally take me over the edge.
But maybe not. I know I don’t really hate myself any more. I have gotten that far, at least. I have embraced the fact that I am, in fact, an extraordinary person, brilliant and amazing and unique, and what’s to hate about that?
I’m a great guy with big problems. That’s all.
The middle ground between taking full responsibility and continuing to skate along like usual is obviously to create a privileged moment where I can say, “OK, I was helpless until now. but from now on, I take responsibility for everything that happens. ”
The question then becomes, well, what changed? Everything. Nothing. Whatever.
Honestly, my true best course of action is probably to just keep fumbling along doing the best I can day to day, knowing that progress will be slow and uneven and hard, but also knowing that there’s no way I’m going to stop now that I know which way is up.
And I guess that’s the best I can do right now.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.