I’d really like to know.

Because I’m not one. Not really. I am, at best, a reasonable facsimilie of one.

And yeah, I know that makes no sense. To the world, I am exactly as much of a person as anybody else.

Well, buck up, patient readers, because the nonsense has only just begun.

When I say I am not a person, what I am saying is that I do not feel like one. To me, it feels like other people are solid and real and I am just a shadow traced on smoke. The simplest of simpletons seems, to me, to have more substance and vitality than I have or will ever have.

Perhaps this is a side effect of a corrupted empathy. On the empathic channel. other people stand out like floodlit statues to me.

But my own self is so familiar to me that I don’t see it any more. It’s the background of the background of my life. So I don’t feel its presence.

There’s more to it than that, though. I can feel it. There is something that is supposed to be there within me that pushes back at the overwhelming reality of others and establishes my own identity as distinct, equal, and sufficient.

I call this thing – this missing substance – ‘self”.

It’s not hard to see how I ended up in this fix. My profound sense of vulnerability caused me to cling to my tiny world and tune out all emotions and instincts that would lead me out of it. That included the social growth and self-actualization instincts that lead most people to explore their boundaries, find out who they really are, and grow into emotionally balanced adults who can, like, do stuff.

But not me. Oh no. I was too “smart” for that. Why would I follow some mysterious urge to go out and find others my age and hang out when it “made no sense”? Why would I go looking for sex when I “knew” that would only get me in trouble because of the whole small town closeted gay thing? What was the “point” of thinking about how lonely I was when I could just stay distracted and not think about it?

Now here I am, 45 years old, and wondering if it’s too late to become a real person with a solid sense of identity and an idea of who I really am.

And that takes me back to the idea of moving out and moving on. It would be a huge step towards figuring myself out. I would love to find a nice place off the artsy part of Commercial and meet new people that way.

Or maybe get myself a sugar daddy on Davie. That would work too.

But it’s not something I will be able to accomplish with one big act of will.All I can do is wait for those moments when the fog parts to push myself a little further towards it.

That way I can get there, over time.

Sometimes baby steps are the only ones you can take.

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Well, it’s 11:24 PM and that means I have 36 minutes to write 487 words.

(elaborate knuckle crack) Noooo problem.

At least it’s a sane temperature now. The other half of this blog entry was written in the hellish heat of the afternoon, and it’s a wonder it’s even coherent, let alone sensible.

I hearby declare summer to officially suck. And for once, pretty much everyone else agrees. This heat is making everyone miserable. It’s way hotter that the seasonal norm.

Good thing global warming is a myth, or we’d have something to worry about.

And there is no winning. I can’t even siesta my way through the heat because it’s way too hot to sleep in the afternoons.

I don’t know how the Mexicans manage it. Years of experience, I suppose.

Plus, for them, it’s probably a dry heat. And I have experiences both (extremely) dry heat and (very) wet heat, and let me tell you, dry heat is way better.

At least in dry heat, your sweat evaporates quickly and cools you down. In fact, if you are from a wet climate like me ^[1], that rapid evaporation fools you into thinking it’s not all that hot.

It also means you can get dehydrated fast. And that can really fuck you up if you don’t realize what is going on and thus know how to fix it.

But dry heat is still way better because at least it doesn’t make it hard to breathe like humid heat does.

Had therapy today. It was a decent session. Better than last week’s session, where I was only half awake and therefore not exactly my usual sharply perceptive and expressive self who sort of directs the therapy himself.

Because that’s the only way to make absolutely sure it’s done RIGHT. *eye twitch* WHAT CONTROL ISSUES?

Took a cab there. That’s normal. Then took a cab to my bank to cash my monthly cheque. Mildly unusual.

But the real new ground was that I got the cab to wait for me while I was in the bank, then took it home.

In fact, I had never asked a cab to wait for me before. I had been in cabs when it happened a couple of times, but never asked for it myself.

And that wait cost me around ten bucks. So, probably not something I am going to do again. seeing as my bank is like five blocks from my home.

But I am resisting the compulsion to obsess over the money I “wasted”. I tried something new.  I thought it might make me feel more grown-up and in control and all that good stuff.

Turn out, it did not. I just felt silly. But now I know.

And the only failed experiment is one that produces no result, right? This one’s result was that I don’t feel like it was worth the money.

And that’s worth the ten b ucks I spent. I think.

So STFU, compulsions!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.