This Xmas afternoon, I feel a little depressed.

That has nothing to do with Xmas though… I am always depressed in the afternoon. Afternoons are the worst time of the day for me. Don’t know why that is, but it is so.

So I am not sitting here depressed because it’s Xmas Day and I am all alone and blah blah etcetera. I am depressed because I feel like yesterday’s day-old crap, and that puts me in a foul mood.

Made home fries last night for the first time in aaages. I had to bend my pride a little and look up a recipe, because while chopping up a potato and coating the pieces in vegetable oil is not something one forgets, the time and temperature is.

The recipe called for 40 minutes at 450 degrees. That seemed long to me, but my usual policy is to trust the recipe the first time then adjust or discard it based on results.

Turns out my instincts were right. After 40 minutes, my little potato wedges were about half burned, and the bits of onion I had included were blackened cinders.

So yes, I had to endure the smoke alarm screeching in my ear from the smoke. Argh. And the potatoes were edible, but next time I think I am going to try 30 minutes, and see how that works out.

I didn’t feel depressed last night either, which is good. I think I was able to sort of hold myself in a pattern of eighty percent not thinking about it and twenty percent enjoying it.

So there might be a delayed reaction coming my way some time soon. Fine. This two shall pass.

Looking forward to dinner with Joe’s family tonight, although, if you know me, you know that means that I also dreading and freaking out over it and there’s a voice in me that says “Don’t go! Stay home where it’s safe!”

That is approximately what it is like to be me. The social anxiety is always there, waiting to rise up and stage a coup. Even though I know I enjoy it every year and that these are very nice people who mean me no harm, there is still a loud voice, perhaps that of my inner child, saying “No no no, I don’t want to go… don’t make me!”

But I have been concentrating on seeing the truth beneath the fear lately. I have realized that a lot of things I thought I could not do, I actually probably can do if I wasn’t freaking out over it inside due to the feeling that I can’t.

This means that I am actually a lot more competent than I think I am. The fear is the problem, but fear can be overcome. Fear can be smashed with a brick of grim determination. You can say to fear, “We’re doing it no matter what, so you might as well get used to the idea. ”

Sometimes, your inner child needs discipline, not love. Structure and limits, not hugs and kisses.

That’s something I never got as a kid. Nobody ever paid enough attention to me to discipline me or make me do things I did not want to do.

That, admittedly, would have been difficult, given how willful and stubborn I was. It would have taken someone with a lot of willpower and tenacity.

Not a lot of those around in my life. I was… not easy to deal with. Even back then, I was a very sensitive kid, which meant that tidal mood shifts were always a possibility. They didn’t happen a lot, but still.

And there was the constant issue of my brightness. To this day, I don’t think I truly understood what effect it has on others… what it is like to be around me. I do my best to be funny and nice and so on, but I am pretty sure there have been many times in my life where I have been too blunt because I have insufficient theory of mind to imagine that other people really do not think like me, with all the possible cards on the table and a philosopher’s determination to follow the truth no matter what.

Unlike mine, their world has walls. And they live within those walls. To them, those walls are their world. And those walls are mostly made of rules about what to think and talk about and what you should never, ever door because it spoils the illusion of walls and limits and so forth.

It’s like we are all standing in the same wide open field, naked, but some people have all decided to believe that they are in various structures and fully clothed. They do such a good job of this that, for the most part, they don’t get cold, and can live their whole lives in that field without ever knowing it except for a few bad moments when the illusion drops.

That’s why conservatives always think liberals are trying to destroy society. We’re not, obviously, but we do tend to destroy people’s illusions, and for a lot of people that is the exact same thing. Everyone agreed to the common illusion, or so they think, and then liberals come along and attack those social illusions, and the very foundation of conservative life starts to shake and crumble.

It would behoove us on the side of the people who are actually factually right about the world and what makes things better to remember this when we argue with these people. Remember that they are fighting for their world, a version of the world that makes sense to them, and to them, we are attacking everything they stand for and all their illusions.

We need to be able to supplant those illusions with better ones. Ones still comfortingly simple and comprehensible, but which also reaffirm positive liberal values like mutual support, planning for the future, and mercy.

I am positive there are many within conservatism who have grave doubts about how callous and downright evil it’s become. They are waiting for some way out, but it can’t be defecting to the other side… that’s unthinkable.

They need a third option.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.