What my problem is

I know twhat my problem is. Why I have been so depressed.

It’s because spending all day playing videos game just isn’t enough for me any more. I’m outgrowing it. Needs that I have smothered for decades are finally free to make themselves known, and they are doing so by the most convenient channel available to them, which is depression.

Thqat means the voice in my head that is mierable and angry while the rest of my mind is placidly placated by the mental stimulation and distraction of a video game.

This outgrowing is a very positive thing… in the long term.

In that short term, it means I have to confront the fundamental problem of my life, namely the question of what the hell I am supposed to do with my time.

And it scares me. It always has. I have spent my entire life hiding away from the world and consuming media.

If that’s not enough any more, then I am stumped.

Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and I can’t answer that basic question.

But it’s not a matter of IQ, it’s a matter of fear. The massive, nameless fear thay grips me when I contemplate expanding my safety zone.

This fear freezes me in place like the proverbial deer in the headlights. One that,. on one level, can’t wait for that car to hit it because at least then, it would be over.

I’ve realized that my lifestyle needs to grow, bbut I don’t know how to do it. I mean, of course, I can think of zillions of things I could do.

That’s not the problem. It never is. I’m a highly creative person. And very intelligent. I could come up with an endless number of the exact sorts of things people would advise me to do, and it wouldn’t make one fucking bit of difference.

Because none of it will happen. I’m still frozen in those headlights. It could be the most brilliant suggestion possible in this and all other universes and it wouldn’t mean a goddamned thing because whatever it is. I know I won’t do it.

I might act exactly like I am going to do it and even think I will do it while I am with the person who suggested it, but when they are gone the icy cold fog returns and I am once more isolated and alone and dying on the inside and I cope with it the only way I know how, which is to bury myself in media consumption.

Making most suggestions as to what I could do is as pointless as recommending that a legless man take a brisk walk.

The “doing things” part of my brain is broken.

Ergo, the entire question of “what to do” is based on the false assumption that I do things and it’s just a matter of picking something.

Nope. I died inside at a shockingly early age and thatplus all the bullying  made me fundamentally incapable of self-motivation.

Any urge I have to do things is instantly smothered to death by my intense and overwhelming need for safety.

Like I have said before in this space, the many traumas of my childhood destroyed my fundamental sense of safety. I never had that sense that I would be okay because my family was there to protect me and deal with the hard stuff. I never had my period of thinking the world was a safe and happy place.

When you’re raped at the age of three, that shit is gone forever.

And when you live with a constant fear of the world and all its horrors, the only real reaction to that, at least if you have a passive type personality like me, is to hide away from everything. To choose a defendable position and stay there no matter what.

And to quash any and all desires that would tempt one to leave their defensive position and thus expose themselves to enemy fire.

I swear, I am the mad wizard of metaphors.

When I even contemplate leaving my tiny comfort zone, I get this intense feeling of exposure, as if I am contemplating leaving my warm home to walk naked through a snowstorm just for the hell of it.

Suddenly, my comfort zone seems very warm and comfortable and safe, and the outer world seems cold and harsh and brutal, and it seems like utter madness to abandon my safe position in order to go out there where I could get hurt.

And sure, intellectually, I know that my fears are extremely irrational and unfounded and are, indeed, guaranteeing harm whereas expanding my life only risks it.

I guess it’s just a matter of what you’re used to.

But rationality is useless in cases like mine. Theses fears were installed in me when I was very young, and therefore are not accessible by the rational processes that I did not have at the time.

I mean, I was three or four when I got raped. I didn’t even have the majority of my adult brain mass yet.

So  whatever the solution is to my problems, thinking alone will not get me there. The answer lies outside the bright light of reason, somewhere in that inky black night where you can’t use your eyes to guide you… only your heart.

Problem is, I’ve never been comfortable “going with my gut”, even in circumstances where I really should. I attack the world with the overwhelming force of mny considerable intellect, and that’s great… amazing even… as far as it goes.

But what about the rest of me? The life support system for that massive intellect?

It’s that scared monkey with its hand on the controls of a machine that  is so powerful that it scares him too much for him to use said controls.

It’s the limp and vestigial body of a race of giant brains. Only without the telekineses.

It’s a freaked out little animal driven crazy by the pursuit of its predators so it never leaves its hiding place and, over time, slowly starves to death.

It’s an old man reading a thick book in a burning library.

It’s, on some level, the real me.

And it’s very, very sick.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

 

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