I am, so far, maintaining belief in my own amazingness.

But it isn’t easy. My mind is bending into a new shape and the desire to give up and let everything snap back into its usual shape is strong.

But I have successfully engaged my sheer bloody-mindedness and that is a very good thing. As a Taurus, I have enormous reserves of stubborn refusal to quit, especially if I am angry, and I am angry at all the unjustified self-loathing I have endured for all this time and I am sure as fuck not going to let it win.

So I will bend myself to my own will.

Even if I have to summon up a near psychotic level of determination.

Essentially, like I’ve said before, I am holding on to the truth of my own amazingness as hard as I can and not letting it get pulled away by the icy fingers of depression that are just waiting for me to be too distracted and/or demoralized to resist so they can put everything back to the way things were when it ruled the place.

Fuck that. I’m in charge now. And there are going to be a lot of changes around here. The new regime has arrived. The revolution was a total success and now the real me – strong, powerful, dazzling – is in charge and things are going to go MY way.

I’m amazing. I’ve always been amazing. For almost my entire life, I have been a wizard and a wonder and one heck of a guy.

Only now, I can finally see it. Even feel it a little. It’s the crack of dawn and the birds are waking up and the air is starting to warm up and chase the cold of night away.

And I have already had a few successful skirmishes with my demons. Earlier I felt quite bad. Very depressed. And the easiest thing in the world would have been to let that make me hate myself all over again, because it takes no sustained energy investment in order to believe you are how you feel.

But I am not my mood. Feeling bad and being bad are not the same thing. I am drawing a line in the sand and then planting my flag smack dab in the middle. And the flag reads, “I AM AWESOME”. and nobody is ever going to change that.

So no, I am not going to fall apart any more. My outer layers will always be protean, ready to be shaped into whatever I need at the moment. I will always be the same old shapeshifting trickster that I have always been.

But on the inside, everything stays the same. The inner sanctum remains stable, safe, comfortable, reliable, and nice. I hereby mark it as off limits to the ever-shifting shimmering mirage of my mind. My tentacles can no longer cannibalize vital mood and identity processes in order to support whatever background process is hogging all the working memory at the time.

Enough. No more..My core processes are now protected and any tentacle that tries to violate protected memory space will be cut off at the root and burned/

The shit can’t be negotiable. It has to be rock solid stainless steel. with no give, no flex, and absolutely no wriggle room.

And it is.

Anjd maybe establishing this protected zone in my mind makes me less smart on some level. I don’t give a fuck. I have always been too smart for my own good anyway, and I would rather be dumber and happy than smarter and miserable any day.

Had a good therapy session today. Wide-ranging. A little too wide ranging, actually, as my therapist brought up politics of all things.

He actually used the term “social justice warrior”. RED FLAG.Oh HELL no. I went from relaxed to “bull right before the gate goes down and lets him at the matador” in less time than it takes to say “Trump sucks”.

And that surprised me a little. I had no idea I was that wound up about stuff. It’s a sign of these politically charged times that I was carrying such a huge charge of anger without even knowing it.

Anyhow, I shut that shit down RIGHT AWAY. I told my therapist we were NOT going to talk about politics, period. He was quite shocked at my reaction. But there was no way I was going to let politics hijack my therapy.

So I told him NO, then when he tried to explain and justify I told him NO on that too. Nuh huh,. Not gonna happen. Not on my watch, pal.

So THAT was unpleasant. But he knows how I feel now, and we were able to get back to the usual therapy without much fuss.

I mean, I know I am a fascinating guy to talk to, but I am not there for that.

He did help me get a better grip on the difference between being real and present with people and when I am merely intellectualizing by sharing my thoughts, theories, ideas, stories, and so on.

He said I am far more charming and engaging when I stay away from that shit. And that makes sense. Intellectualizing is the exact opposite of connecting with people. When I go off on a tangent like that, it’s to distance myself by retreating partly into my own little world of safely intellectual things.

And that is when I lose the average person too. My mind moves too fast and too nimbly for the average person to keep up. So I lose them.

And I don’t want to do that any more. I want to stay real. I want to connect with people who are not like me so I can learn from them.

I want to be close to other humans dammit.

So I am teaching myself to recognize when I am switching into intellectual mode and ask myself if this is the right time and place for that.

I will still be my braniac self with my friends because the prime requirement for being a friend of mine is being able to keep up with me.

But with others, I will be staying real and in the moment as much as possible,. and relying on my winning personality and easy charm to see me through.

And that sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

I will talk to you nice peopl again tomorrow.