Today has been rough,

I;ve had one of my sleepy days. The days that make me feel like I can’t truly wake up. The days that strand me in a freezing fog that clings to my mind like like a leech and makes it hard to think and even harder to do stuff.

The days that make me feel like I am being squashed face-down against the frying pan by the spatula of life.

And the thing is, it sucks, but not in a direct and obvious way. It’s not like I am in pain in the same way I would be in pain if I had a headache or my depression had gotten really bad. That, at least, would be an identifiable enemy.

But no, it’s this invisible odorless untracable fog that permeates everything and makes me feel like I am completely alone in the world (good thing I know it’s just a busted antenna) and that reality, for me, is a distant and shimmering image that could, at any second, disappear forever, and then where I would be?

Locked in the hell of my own mind… the ultimate form of being buried alive.

I cling to reality, despite my poor relationship with it. I always feel like I am on the edge of losing all connection to it and ended up in a hellish land called Catatonia.

I have no idea if these fears have any rational basis. I suspect they do not. They made sense up till the day I turned 26, because up till then schizophrenia and/or psychosis were still a possibility.

A remote one – the only markers I had of the disease were that I was intelligent and creative – but still a possibility.

But I am 44 and way past the age of onset for that kind of thing. I suppose going crazy (okay, crazier) is always a possibility…. especially if I live long enough to be in the dementia zone – but I highly doubt I will actually go crazy.

No matter how tempting it seems sometimes.

Holding myself together takes so much stress and energy. It would feel so good to just let go and stop trying to make sense of things and just do whatever crazy fucking thing pops into my head.

And who knows. Maybe giving up on filtering out the crazy thoughts and blocking their access to the controls would be the best possible thing for me. Maybe all that would happen is that I would go a little  nuts for a little while but then I would find the natural structure of my psyche and put myself back together in a way that just hangs together on its own withing my need to constantly pump energy into it just to keep it together.

But I can’t take that risk. Not if I want to continue to live the life of a free (ish) human being. Because I know I have a lot of dark impulses and if they got access to the controls, I would end up in jail for doing something that is not merely heinous but utterly unthinkable to most of humanity and hence rather evocative and memorable.

Taking all my clothes off and walking through a mall is a mild example.

The darker ones would get me arrested just for thinkling them, to be honest.

Let’s just say that I am a man who has a lot of untapped rage and a lot of unmet needs and when those two combine, anything is possible.

Speaking of unmet needs, my libido has been strong lately. That’s largely a good thing. Horniness is very life-affirming and draws me closer to connecting with my id.

And the better I connect with my id, the more whole and happy I will be because I will be – and feel – truly alive.

I have been a ghost for far too long. It’s time to take substance and live a little.In realtime. Without time to think things through. Just going for it.

My libido in increasingly driving me to desire contact with others. This is, presumably, the drive that makes teenagers’ crotches drag them to all kinds of opportunities for potential hookups and perhaps even love.

I’m not used to that sort of thing. My mind has blocked absolutely every impulse that would lead me out into the world – and that’s most of them – for so long that feeling this active desire to get into this whole “sex that involved other people” thing that I have heard so much about feels strange and alien.

At least I am lucky enough to be a gay man. There are a lot of options for me to get no strings attached sex. There’s bath houses, hookup apps, craigslist, some portions of some parks from what I have heard… you name it.

But none of those modern conveniences solve the fundamental problem of social anxiety and that is being terrified of people you do not know.

People we know well don’t trigger the anxiety. Familiarity has reduced their stimulus value down to safe levels. We know and trust these people. All the feelings of judgment and rejection being resented and horrible and awful stay in their cage around familiar people. Even when they aren’t great people, at least they are known quantities.

But strangers are the opposite of that, and make all those bad thing break free of their cages and have a fucking party in our minds.

It’s easy to get lost when all that is going on, and ending up wanting nothing more in this world than for that terrifying stimulus to GO AWAY.

And when that terrifying stimulus is a person, things get real frigging complicated.

But who knows. Maybe with a little practice, I could learn to let the lust lead and shut down the social side of things and only concentrate on getting off.

And getting him off too, of course.

After all, I’m a Canadian, and hence too polite to be selfish in bed.

Just putting that out there, fellas.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.