Remember how I have been talking about freeing myself from the feeling that I am never doing what I am supposed to be doing and how that feeling is like the bedrock layer of my depression?

Well as I was making supper, the penny finally dropped. The other half of the equation suddenly flashed into my mind, and lo, I was Illuminated.

I realized that if there is nothing I am supposed to be doing, then there is nothing wrong with my playing video games all day.

And that….. is huge. So huge that I have no idea how to deal with it yet. It feels like I just opened the door to a whole new world and I am staring through said door trying to summon the nerve to go through it.

It made me realize that I have been hating myself for “wasting” my time on Earth for a very long time. It came part and parcel with my feeling that I am never doing what I am supposed to be doing. They are two sides of the same coin.

Conjoined twins joined at the hate.

So that’s it for that bullshit. I hereby declare that it is perfectly fine for me to play video games all the time. That is perfectly acceptable behaviour. What matters is my happiness, and if video games make me happy, there is no more to be said.

And they do.

Could I be happier if I were more actualized? Maybe. And maybe not. At any point, I am free to choose to pursue something more productive.

But I don’t have to. And I am definitely not supposed to. There is nothing to duck or dodge because there are no obligations to others or even to myself.

I don’t even have to contemplate all my options if I don’t feel up to it. I know that I can never truly contemplate them all anyway. The best that I can hope for is to ponder a few possibilities and choose the one that appeals to me the most or, at the very least, seems to suck the least.

And if it doesn’t work out, whatever. I know there are a zillion other options, so if I go through a bunch of possibilities before I find the one that is the right fit for me. it is no big deal. There is not a lot at risk.

So I can just relax and have fun for once. And lead a natural, healthy life without constantly being hounded my demons into hiding from the world by whatever means I have at my disposal.

My life is truly my own, to do with as I please. All that matters is my happiness, and to hell with thoughts of my potential or my obligation to make something of myself or any of the rest of that toxic bullshit that has been calling the shots from behind the scenes for way, way too long.

I am me and I am mine and nobody else’s needs come before mine by default. I am a fully legitimate and worthy adult and I deserve as big a share of the good things in life as everybody else gets.

I am under no geas to always mimize myself and my impact on the world and I am especially not under any obligation to minimize how much resources I use, whether that resource is time, money, space, or anything else.

I have been cringing in the shadows like a timid mouse for far too long. It’s high time I sit down at the big kids’ table and demand my share of the meal.

I deserve better. I deserve better. I deserve better.

Repeat until believed.

Here’s a big one : my disability doesn’t make me inferior to others. I have felt a great deal of shame for the fact that I have never supported myself for a long long time and it is time for it to go.

Because you know what? I’ve been sick. And nobody expects sick people to support themselves. All they expect us to do is do our best to get better.

And that’s what I have been doing for a longass time.

When my parents took me out of university and I was forced to move back into the family home in Summerside, it dealt my mental health a near-fatal blow. That’s why I went seriously fucking crazy there for a while.

And true, I managed to haul myself out of that quagmire by sheer force of will backed by a certain degree of good old fashioned cussedness. But I came nowhere near to recovering fully. I only managed to shift to a less drastic form of crazy.

And since then, I have been very ill. I have managed as best as I could, considering for a lot of that time I didn’t even know I was ill. Once I had my diagnosis, I made the best use of the resources available to me in order to get better, but the system eventually gave up on me before I was healed and I was too sick and too poor to go in search of private therapy on my own.

So I went another long time medicated but untreated. It was sheer luck that I happened to ask my GP about private therapy when Doctor Costin happened to be available.

Five years later, and I am finally well enough to realize these things.

Oh, and finally : it is not my fault that it is taking me so long to heal. I have consistently done the best I could to get better but the system let me down and left me in a position where I was too sick to demand the medicine I needed.

Even now, I can only push against the current every now and then. The rest of the time I just get through the day however I can.

And that’s fine. I am doing all I can and that’s all anyone can ask of me.

It is not my fault that the system has repeatedly failed me and it is not my fault that the world, in general, does not know how to handle people like me.

After all, I am one of a kind. There are no other people like me.

And that’s fine too.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.