A long time ago, I forget how this came up, but Joe said that he thought I wasn’t ll that grateful for the help he and Julian give me.

And I replied, “But I thank you guys! I thank you all the time!”

Which is true. I unfailingly thank them for every little thing they do for me. It’s very important to me. Politeness, manners, and consideration are all things about which I am meticulously^[1] correct, and not because I have some abstract sense of propriety or a love of “the rules) (ick) but because that’s what I believe to be right and I hold myself to an extremely high standard of behaviour as a reflection of said beliefs.

This, according to some, makes me manipulative.

And by “some” I mostly mean my brother Dave. Many times we had this same extremely dead end conversation :

Dave : No, you see, you manipulate people by being so nice.
Me : I’m just being the best person I can be!
Dave : Yeah, that’s how you do it!
Me : So what, I should start being rude and crappy instead?
Dave : Well no…

And… scene. Conversation has crashed. Ctrl-Alt-Delete, kill process, reboot.

It’s true that I behave so well partly in hopes of people being nice to me too. That kind of mutuality is something I seek with a missionary zeal.

And the roots of it all is that brutally depressing image of myself as a fox trying to be the best fox I can possibly be in hopes of being let back into the house.

Sometimes I can’t believe I wrote all that. It’s so sad. But it was something in me that had to come out, and as much as I cried when writing it, I felt a lot better afterwards.

And it represents a tragic truth of my life.

As patient readers know, I was a Christmas puppy, Before I was school age, I got loads and loads of love and attention. I was often the center of attention as a cute n’ precocious child who effortlessly entertained and bemused adults. And I was a happy little guy in the warm and comfortable world of my babysitter Betty’s care in the morning and afternoon and time with the family at night.

But then I got raped. And then I got bullied. And somewhere along the way, people got sick of me and went away, leaving me all alone in a world suddenly gone not just cold and lonely but savage and cruel as well.

And on some very, very deep level, far below conscious reason, I concluded that I had done something wrong and that if I was very, very good, I could get the attention back.

Problem was that my family did not provide any instruction on how to be good in their eyes. And even if they had, I doubt it would have made a difference. They had gotten sick of me, and left me tied up in the back yard, forgotten.

And all I know was that it was good, and then it was bad, and I didn’t know why, but it must have been something I’d done.

No wonder the terrible damage done to me by the rape led me to conclude, much later in life, that I was a horrible disgusting awful toxic thing that was the quintessence of repulsiveness and lowliness and completely impossible to respect.

Yes, that’s really how I used to view myself. I still feel that way sometimes, the difference is, I don’t believe it.

Not everything that feels true is true, especially if you have a mood disorder.

Anyhow, to drag myself back to the point like a bag of wet cement, the idea that I manipulate people by behaving well is a real mindfuck and I more or less just reject it out of hand because it’s a line of thought that goes nowhere fast.

I’ll just keep on being my dear sweet lovable self.

After all, it’s all I can be.

More after the break.

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Making being me easier

I know that I still have enormous amounts of inner friction.

Hence my “driving with the parking brake on” analogy. I know that there is a lot of inner turmoil roiling and writhing inside me. Parts of me are locked in conflict with each other so that my energies act against themselves.

And maybe that’s not an accident. Maybe that’s just how the sick part of me likes it.

After all, that way I can be “in control”. No pesky drives or impulses making me want to do new and unknown things that will take me God knows where. Everything safely ground to a halt.

I can gun the engine all I like, I still ain’t going anywhere.

And it all devolves back to a lack of faith. Deep down, my deeper self refuses to believe that following my drives and desires can be “safe”.

Only that which can be fully understood and predicted is “safe”. I have to know where the road leads before I set foot on it. I have to completely comprehend things.

And that’s just not possible with most things.

What I am missing is that vital faith in being okay no matter what happens. Faith in my ability to handle things, even very unexpected things, and survive them and be fine after them, maybe even profit from them.

Faith that it is, therefore, safe for me to explore and maybe find my niche.

I’ve been locked inside myself for so long, and as a consequence, I have never gained any of the life experience everyone needs in order to mature and grow and become strong enough to handle the world.

And now I’m fifty one and still terrified of the world and still stuck frozen in time and locked in the conundrum of being too scared to go get the life experience that is the only way to become less scared.

Something’s got to give. There has got to be a way to break this deadlock and get myself moving for once in my god damned life.

This ride sucks. I want off.

Next month of meds will contain a further reduction in my Paxil dose. From 30 mg two times a week to 30 mg three times a week.

We’ll see how that goes. I hope I can unfreeze my emotions enough to find my natural vibe and stop feeling so god damned frozen inside.

This year, Spring is coming for real.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.