Who the hell am I, anyway?\

It took a significant act of will to ask “who” and not “what”. I have asked what the hell I am for decades and I think it had led me in the wrong direction.

I ask what I am because I have never met another person like me. A lot of nerds and intellectuals (but I repeat myself) end up feeling the same way – that’s why so many of us have wondered if we are actual aliens at least once.

But we’re not aliens. Just alienated. Humans made to feel inhuman.

And that’s the fundamental answer to the question of what I am.

I’m a human being, with all that entails. And I have the same right to love and peace and acceptence and human connection as anyone else. I am not some strange inhuman monster struggling to fit into human society despite lacking some key fundamental ingredient, like my robot with the busted antenna.

I’m a human being, being human just like the other 7 billion of us.

It’s amazing how good it feels to type that. I think I need to remind myself of my own humanity as often as I can because I have felt extremely isolated from the rest of us crazy naked beach apes ever since the second half of the first grade.

But nothing that happens to a human can make them no longer human. The fact that I fell into a negative pattern that resulted in my receiving very little socialization during key phases of my childhood and hence ended up a socially retarded adult does not make me one whit less human than anyone else.

Something something Donald Trump.

And now, a poem. See you after the cut.

The many meanings of “okay”

“How are you?”

“Oh, I’m okay. “

“But what does that mean?”

Well….

It might mean, “I’m terrible and want you to go away”

It might mean, “I’m miserable in ways I don’t know how to explain”

It might mean, “Bad, but I’ve been worse, so… okay?”

It might mean, “Suicidal, but I don’t want to hurt you with my pain”

It might mean, “I can’t tell you because you will not understand”

It might mean, “I’d like to tell you but I feel far too exposed”

It might mean, “How can I tell you when I live on shifting sands?”

It might mean, “I can’t say because I am feeling too enclosed”

It might mean, “I would tell you, but where would I begin?”

It might mean, “I can’t hear you over the chaos in my head”

It might mean, ” I love you, but I don’t let anybody in”

It might mean, “I can’t tell because I feel too fucking dead”

It might even mean that I am actually okay

But if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t bet the way

Right then. Where was I? Oh right, being human.

So the question of “what” is resolved. I’m a human being like any other.

But the question of who the hell I am remains very much open. I suppose that’s the question every human being must face sooner or later.

Not everyone has the sort of fluid sense of identity I do, however. My fundamental challenge before I can begin to answer the question of who I am is that I feel like I am a million different people from one day to the next, so how do I choose?

Which one of my many forms and modes is “the real me”? Is there even such a thing as a real me? Perhaps there has never been much more to me than an act of fiction.

But who’s writing it?

Someone who wants to stay in the dark, obviously. Someone who cloaks himself in multiple layers of illusion in order to keep his real self hidden. Someone who wants the illusions to be real so he convinces you they are real.

And yet, they are still just illusions, and can be discarded when necessary in order to keep that fragile eminence grise at the center safe.

Safe from what? There’s no external threats. Must be the demons within then. Either way, it’s a simple defense mechanism : when the predator grabs you, you shed the outer layer of your skin and slip free.

But who is it that escapes? If the layers are so easily discarded, they can’t be a fundamental part of who I am as a person.

Therefore the question remains : who is that scared little animal inside it all?

He’s the mastermind behind it all. He is the one who orchestrates the whole stinking show just to keep attention away from him. He is the man of the shadows, pulling strings and adjusting variables in order to achieve a result.

But that desired result is a product of paranoia and a resulting obsession with safety. It can be placated but it can never be truly satisfied because there is no such thing as total safety even under its harsh regime.

And there are worse things than getting hurt. Like hurting yourself through starvation and isolation and brutal, thoughtless self-denial.

When the attitude is, “everything is bad so it’s fine to reject all of life without even thinking about it, as a reflex” then you are in a very bad place.

A place I am in the process of leaving. The road out is hard but the reward is greater freedom so it’s a road worth taking.

The humanity in me isn’t dead. It’s just frozen. It will hurt to thaw it out but I would rather feel a deep and terrible aching than nothing at all.

There are things far worse than pain. And when you realize that, you have taken the first step towards maturity and good mental health because now you know that some things are worth the pain.

Life is suffering, as the Buddhists say. Attempts to prevent all suffering in your life are doomed to failure.

If you can stand a little pain, you’re way ahead in life, is what I am saying.

Now go out there and get hurt.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.