Day Three of me thinking about myself. Probably the last one for a little while.

Getting bored of myself.

Today has been the usual uneventful blur of time online, time asleep, and time eating and watching something via Netflix.

Or trying to, anyhow. My Netflix reception is terrible lately, especially around suppertime. It’s always been slower at that time (presumably a lot of people get home, cook supper, then sit down to watch an episode of something via their Netflix) but for the last three days, it has been completely unusable between the hours of six and eight in the evening.

And I am getting seriously annoyed. I may even complain to the company if this keeps up, and my non-Canadian friends should know that it takes a lot to piss us off enough to actually complain.

We are just too polite to do it, most of the time.

Oh sure, we complain all the time… to each other. We are actually quite big on complaining about things like government, the weather, even bad service at a restaurant.

But we wouldn’t complain to the actual restaurant staff unless it was really, really bad.

Otherwise, it would just be too rude.

And I like that we are a grumbling, complaining, but non-confrontational people. I think it has a lot to do with why we are such calm and polite people. We complain to one another about things and that dissipates a lot of our anger without their being any serious need for confrontation.

It’s not that we can never, ever confront. We just need a really good reason to jump the fence of politeness that makes Canadian society work.

Tomorrow, I get to do two things I will enjoy : cash my first big $946 check, and go to therapy.

Granted, saying you enjoy going to therapy opens up a whole forest of prickly issues. One might even crudely argue that if therapy is fun, odds are it is not doing you any good.

After all, the real progress comes from confronting (there’s that word again) the demons of your past and letting them go by finally finishing processing those painful emotions.

So I would never say that therapy is fun, but still, I do enjoy it. I am quite comfortable with unlocking deep pains with the help of my therapist. I am not the sort of person who resists the therapy they are there to experience. I am not only willing to confront those demons, I look forward to it, because afterward I always feel a hell of a lot better.

And not just in the short term. It’s more than mere stress relief. Once you have truly defeated those inner demons by facing your fears and your deep deep hurts, you get a little piece of yourself back. It’s the piece of you that has been dedicated to holding that pain for so very long.

Nothing in the human mind can be erased, only concealed. When we suppress our emotions, they do not go away, they just disappear into the subconscious where they drain your energy, deplete your mood, and drag you down.

The pressure to finish the job of processing the emotion never, ever goes away. You cannot simply outlive that kind of internal injury. And when suppression becomes a habit, that pressure just builds and builds, taking up more and more of your mind and your soul.

So I am a big believer in the power of catharsis. A lot of people’s problems would go away if we all could just look inside, find those terrible wounds, and let go of all the pain associated with them. Let it all flow through you. Experience the traumas again, if that is what it takes. Go back to that terrible day, and find what part of you got left behind there.

Easier said than done, of course, but I am not claiming it’s simple or easy. That’s why you need a therapist to help. They can guide you through the process, both bringing those demons up and helping you deal with them when they have arrived.

My therapist finds it odd how I have such clear self-knowledge and be so open to therapy. I would like to think it was because I have an amazing mind and a kind of intellectual fearlessness that lets me go anywhere and deal with anything in my mind.

And that is certainly part of it. But mostly, I think it’s just because I am so socially retarded that I never developed the kind of defense mechanisms that normal people have to defend their egos.

After all, they had to develop them just to make it through adult life. You can’t go out there and face the world unless you develop some way to protect your self-worth.

But I have managed to avoid all that. Lucky me. I have merely orbited life.

And let me tell you, the view is great from up here, but it is so terrible cold.

But whatever. I will have more money now, and with it greater self-esteem and a feeling of security that should do wonders for my mood.

I will feel less like a pathetic loser at the ass end of everywhere and more like a vaguely competent grownup who can even, on occasion, do whatever he wants just because he feels like doing it.

That should help with my profound sense of illegitimacy that plagues me and which poverty only reinforces. There is nothing quite like always worrying about money and rarely if ever being able to indulge yourself that makes you feel like you just don’t count.

And that’s a feeling that still comes to me far too easily. I am thinking that at therapy tomorrow, it will be time to open up the vaults and let some more of the bad stuff out.

I can feel the arctic chill from those freezer vault doors swinging open, and I think it may be time for another truckload of bitterness and rage to come out.

Suit up, demons…. you’re on.