Where the heck did the afternoon go?
I just laid down for a nap at 1 pm or so, blinked, then poof, it was 6 pm.
I hate it when this happens. Luckily, it’s not that frequent, but nothing quite jars my sense of reality like this absurd and surreal nonsleep. It’s not like a nap at all, it feels more like an error in the video tape of my life.
Back up. We skipped a bit!
It makes you realize that, despite what you might think, we have a distinct sense of time passing in our sleep. Or at least, we do when our brain is working properly. Obviously, the usual wet chaos that is the workings of my mind while I sleep never gets tired of coming up with new ways to screw with my waking life and prise another of my fingers off of the death grip I have on my slender and delicate connect with reality.
No wonder I have such trouble focusing and getting anything productive done. The ground beneath my feet is always shifting. My mental landscape is tectonically unstable and in constant flux. It is all I can do, some days, to keep my head above the surface of the sand.
Getting the hell out of this hellish desert of quicksand and mirages is out of the question.
Spending the whole morning playing Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii probably doesn’t help, either, with that whole “sense of reality” thing. There’s something to be said about the long term effects of experiencing so much of one’s life as a series of nonreal events (video games, videos, books) instead of real actual events that actually happen to a person and its effects on one’s sense of connection to the real world and hence one’s sense of connection to the real world.
The something said is probably, however, “get the hell out of the apartment and do real things for a change and you will feel better!”. And that sounds great. But I don’t see it happening too soon.
Reality is just too… real. Too intense, too sensory, too stimulating, too much. Perhaps that is the real root of agoraphobia, or mine at least. Staying in your nice safe familiar home environment, where most of the sensory input remains the same and therefore your senses become completely habituated to your environs and they might as well not exist any more, is a great way to arrange things so that you can live more or less entirely in your head, with only the absolute minimum “reality business”. A “perfect solution” for someone like me, whose development has been so completely unbalanced in favour of the intellectual that often I feel like I am one of those creatures that are all brain with a tiny body.
You know, the Creatures from the Land of Very Subtle Metaphors.
And how did I get to be such an absurd creatures? Why, by staying home and doing nothing but reading and playing video games and watching television, of course, from my friendless childhood till right this second.
When you look at it that way, the pathology is obvious. I have a life long pattern of reality avoidance, and once there was no external stimulus to force me into the real world in the form of schooling, there was nothing to keep the pattern from taking over completely.
Knowing this, however, does nothing to lessen the paralytic fear that keeps me here. It does nothing to make the real world less frightening or my comforts and controls and distractions any less appealing.
I might get tired of my low impact meaningless life sometimes, but my fear is far stronger than any puny discontent that my weak and atrophied spirit is capable of generating.
So here I am, a total spectator in life, and rapidly approaching forty without having done a single god damned thing with my life.
Perhaps the best thing for me would be to simply accept that this is my role in life, whether I like it or not, so I might as well just get used to the idea and stop beating myself for not being into that whole “reality” kick that the young people are so damned fired up about these days.
After all, I might not have a life, but I have a pretty amazing brain, and surely I can teach it a useful trick or two eventually, or at least, train it out of some bad habits.
after all, it works for me…. right?
Hey, it’s Victoria Day. How about a picnic in the park? Hugh Boyd Park maybe, or Garry Point Park if you can rustle up a ride. Or maybe just on the lawn outside your window?
I don’t think acceptance is the way to go. In the ten or so years that I’ve known you I’ve watched you get less and less mobile and becoming more and more of a shut-in. Even a trip to Safeway is too much for you now. Was that true ten years ago? Even five years ago? No.
And I’ve been thinking about this very subject lately, and I’ve concluded that it’s acceptance that brought you to this new bad place. Specifically, you started taking what you previously recognized as negative but controllable tendencies and redefining them as intrinsic character components. This includes not just the reluctance to go out but also other things like forgetfulness and inflexibility. You are entitled to prefer not to do things spontaneously, and to tell people that the best way to get your involvement in something is to send advance notice, but in the last few years it’s become a much harder, more unbreakable rule, so that your response to any suggestion, no matter how valid, is automatically “No” if it’s unexpected. That’s when it goes from being a legitimate preference to a handicap.
So the answer would be to not accept. To not follow the path of least resistance. That path leads downhill. To 500 pounds and not being able to leave the apartment. And the thing is, you don’t overeat and you do eat fairly healthy food, so it’s not inevitable. You just need to move more. A few months ago I suggested walking the length of the parking lot in front of the building, but if that’s too far or too many stairs or too outdoors, try walking a circle in the landing outside the apartment’s door. Add one lap per day.
I look forward to both of us being fit, clean, mobile people.
Well, the point of the sort of acceptance I am talking about is to give myself some room to develop some kind of positive self-image. Right now, I hate myself a lot. I have almsot no self-worth. So if I could simply accept that maybe my role is to watch and comment, then maybe I could develop the confidence to send out my writing and ease into a writer’s role.
View that way, it would be a way for me to maybe take baby steps that would lead to a healthier me in the long run, because I would finally have a role in society (as a writer) and hopefully even some income so I can afford clothes that fit and a transit pass and so on.
I know I can be quite inflexible about surprise things. 🙁 And you are right to point it out. I should suppress my urge to freak out and shut down when something is a surprise to me.
It’s just that…. whether it’s around the building or just the landing… it’s Outside. And Outside is a big deal for me.
Especially when I am such a loser, I can’t even get clothes that fit. 🙁
Some things should be accepted and some things shouldn’t. A good rule of thumb would be to gauge whether accepting something is going to give you permission to increase that tendency and become more of an invalid.
I do think you can stop worrying about whether you’ve done anything with your life. You’re dealt the hand you’re dealt in life, and you can’t measure your functionalness against society’s advertised ideal, or even its average.
The problem is…. how do you decide when beating yourself up over something is just plain not working and you are better off accepting it at least to the point where you don’t hate yourself over it?
How do you know when you are better off making due with what you have?
I am just tired of hating myself.
You are right, however, that I should be wary of listening to the voice that makes me even less capable.
Avoiding bad, facing good!