Been pondering my profound mistrust of life today.

Because I realized that on some level and in some way, my mind is constantly working hard to see problems coming so I can control outcomes and keep all the bad things of the world from hurting me.

On paper, that sounds relatively normal. But when you add just how deep my mistrust of the world goes, it quickly jumps the rails into complete and utter madness.

Because without some kind of baseline of trust, there is no limit as to the scope and depth of my paranoia. There is no point at which I can say “beyond this point, I don’t have to worry”. I worry about everything all the time, or rather, I worry about everything I can think of all the time.

And then I worry that I can’t think of enough things and the ones I am not covering are the ones that are going to get me.

Most of this is subconscious. If I think about it, I am aware that it is happening, and on a good day, I might even be able to influence the process and apply the only solution that works – hard logic – in order to create breathing space for myself.

But for the most part, it all happens under the hood, on its own, and the only part that is conscious is the constant anxiety and concern I feel even when I am home, in my room, typing away on my computer.

And that’s as safe as it gets in my life.

Fundamentally, this is a very diseased way to live. All that computation drains my mental resources and saps my motivation. It’s a very “expensive” program to leave running all the time in my subsurface consciousness, and yet I literally cannot imagine life without it there.

As absurd and costly as it is, it is the only thing that I know of that can give me the feeling of control over events that I need because of anxiety it itself creates.

Rather efficient, that.

If I could, I would turn the whole thing off. But I would have to address my fundamental profound lack of trust in the world and that is trickier even than it sounds.

This “permanently unsafe” thing has roots deep, deep into my mind. It’s been a constant ever since I was raped by a stranger at the age of 4 and no amount of reasonable reasoning is going to fix it.

I don’t know how to make that scared little animal inside me feel safe. It wants there to be someone warm and strong and trustworthy for it to follow, but it is so afrad of getting hurt again that it doubts such a person actually exists.

This is what happens when you had a deeply emotionally neglected childhood where you also happen to be smarter than most of the people trying to help you.

I have never known a greater power than myself who was smart enough and strong enough to make me feel like they could do all the worrying for me and I could trust enough to relax and stop worrying.

And kids need there to be someone like that. And usually there is in the form of teachers and parents and so on who are smarter than the kid, know more about the world than the kid, and have that reassuring strength that makes the kid feel like everything is going to be okay.

I have never in my life felt like everything was going to be okay. I know too much, I see too much, and I am all too familiar with the darkness of the world to think that I could ever reach a state where I have any kind of faith that things will work out for the best.

On what would such faith even be based? I have no omnipotent father figure to trust with my fate. There is certainly no human being who could or would take charge of my destiny and my wellbeing so I could finally relax and feel safe.

I don’t think I am capable of even one tenth of that level of trust.

I don’t even trust the people I know love me and want the absolute best for me. Not that I think they are all plotting against me or anything, or that nobody actually loves me.

But they don’t see things the way I do. With the best intentions in the world, I know they will miss things I see coming a mile away, and in general not be as good at looking out for me as I am.

That’s a terrible thing because it means I am all alone in this world. There is nobody I would even trust to have my back in an emergency, and that’s just plain wrong.

Nobody currently in my life has done anything to warrant such distrust. They don’t have to. This is not about reasonable emotions.

This is about out of control madness, the kind that comes from deep inside your mind and floods all the spaces where input from reality should go.

So please don’t take this mistrust personally, loved ones. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with my own diseased mind.

You can see now how an inability to trust others coupled with a total lack of religion and a deep feeling that the universe is a cold and hostiles place can create a person who is deeply parnoid at all times.

And the worst part is that no matter how smart I am and no matter how paranoid I get, bad shit will happen anyway. Because there is always a limit to how much you can control outcomes. That’s the real limit to paranoia.

Then you have to ask how much this prevention program costs versus how much good it actually does me. Cost/benefit analysis, in other words.

And I am pretty sure the cost vastly outstrips the benefit.

But the question remains : how the hell do I shut it down?

I don’t have the answer. But I know one thing.

The answer will be in the form of emotion – not words.

So it might just take me a long time to find.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.