Actual blogging will commence shortly, but first, I have something to share.

This is how I just asked for RSVPs for the next FRED on the FRED Facebook group :

(To the tune of Manic Monday by the Bangles)

The 4th will be a FRED-ish Sunday
That’s our fun day
Our chat with everyone day 
Our burgers on a bun day
The 4th will be a FRED-ish Sunday!

I feel compelled to share that with you because not only I am inordinately pleased at my own cleverness and whimsical charm, but I just spent twenty minutes working on the dang thing and I think that should count.

Anyhow. On with the blogging. Ahem.

(TRIGGER WARNING : I will be touching on the subject of suicide today.)

Nobody ever actually wants me around.

That’s what my depression tells me. Despite buckets of evidence that the exact opposite is true, the feeling persists, and it persists because it was installed when I was a very young child and that kind of thing is not easy to overcome.

Thus, it is an example of true madness because it is a thing I know not to be true but cannot help but believe.

So much for the supremacy of the rational mind. Oh well, I never truly believed in it anyway. Not as such. There have been times when it felt like I was a mighty wizard in total control of my mental domain and capable of feats of astrounding power and subtlety and wisdom.

But that’s always been bullshit.  The truth is that there are parts of my mind, the parts I call the dark forest, that cannot be touched by even my mightiest of magics, and I am therefore a slave to their irrationality.

I believe false things. It hurts my rugged philosopher’s pride to admit it, but it’s true. I used to think that was impossible – that it was impossible to know a thing is false but believe it anyway.

But that was the arrogance of the conscious mind talking. It presupposes that there is no belief which is not based on reason and thus subject to reason,.

Bullshit. People believe things for a lot of reasons and most of them are not positions derived from reasoned thought.

Instead, they are,., god damn it, I have wandered way off point into intellectualization once again. Oh well, at least I am beginning to catch myself at it.

Back to the point. I have this deep feeling that people are barely tolerating me and that stems from my childhood and leads to me feeling like I am a horrible, horrible thing, less than human and way, way less than worthless. That I am a liability to the world and a bane to all who know me and the world would be better off without me in it.

That’s where the suicidal thoughts come in. I am a long way down the road of recovery from actually believing that to be true, but the feeling remains.

The feeling runs so deep that at one point, it even informed the severe hygiene issues I had when my depression was very bad. I figured I was so inherently repulsive and that nobody could ever like or love me so what was the point of showers and such?

People would hate me anyway. I’d still be inherently deeply repulsive to them. At least if I smelled bad, they would have a reason other than my deep down revolting self.

That’s something I truly believed at the time. There’s no such thing as a clean turd, I said. No matter how hard you scrub, it’s still shit.

Crazy, I know. That’s some highly diseased reasoning there. But it matched how I felt about myself and I was too depressed to care so I kept believing it.

I’m feeling much better now. I still struggle with the motivation to look after myself sometimes and I have days when I can’t stand the thought of dealing with myself on any level because I am so goddamned sick of myself.

But most of the time, I keep it together. I still don’t shower every day – that is beyond my reach right now.

But I shower four or five times a week, so I’m am not far from there.

As for the feeling that nobody ever wants me around, I am on the plus side of a stalemate with it. I correct the thoughts when they pop up and I push back against the feeling whenever I can.

But it’s still the size of an elephant and as hard as it is to stop an elephant, it is still far harder to get it to go in the opposite direction.

I suppose what I really need is strongly positive social input. Something to override those harsh and toxic early lessons and reach that child crying in the cold inside me and show him that there is light and warmth and hope after all.

But it would have to be really strong because I am so delicate and damaged all throughout that part of my psyche that it’s very hard for anything to get through. People can tell me nice things about myself and treat me well but all that positive energy gets blocked by my anxiety and tension in social situations, not to mention that toxic swamp of self-loathing that lies ready to swallow up any positive feelings.

Maybe I’m too scared for hope. Maybe I am too scared to let the love and warmth of the world in because deep down, I feel like the second I do that, life will crush me heart so bad that there will be notghing left of me any more.

Like I’m a lab mouse who has received a painful electric shock the last 100 times they reached for the cheese and now won’t even look in its direction no matter how safe it might seem or how good it smells.

The risk is just too great.

I’d rather starve.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.