Ow, my soul is burning!

Quick, get me some spiritual Lidacane!

Feeling somewhat better today.

Part of that is the usual post-therapy euphoria I have felt since I first went to therapy as a teen. It feel good just to have someone listen to me and take me seriously and let things be all about me for a while.

I really need that kind of validation. It helps me fight the darkness inside that says that I am nobody and nothing and worthless and don’t deserve anything ever.

After all, anything that goes to me is wasted and should go to someone who deserves it more, namely literally anybody else.

There’s a monster in my head…. and it’s trying to kill me.

It also helps that the weather is sunny and pleasant without being oppressively hot. That is, as patient readers know, my ideal weather.

So that got me feeling good too,. In fact, immediately after therapy, I was downright chipper. And I like that. I feel like I got a glimpse of the person I might have been had I not been raped. The person I still could be if I ever finish detoxifying myself.

No big surprises there. He’s cheerful, funny. silly, and quite fun to be around, with an infectious positive energy and buckets of charm.

He’s Fruvous, basically. My spiritual hero and role model.

The real world never provided me with anything like a hero and/or role model, so it’s not surprising that I had to invent my own.

When you are a one of a kind original like myself, none of the pre-made off-the-rack solutions work for you. They just don’t fit. They are fine for others, but they just do not work for yours truly.

So I have to make my own.

After all, I am the guy who solved the problem of not getting permission from those dickheads at Samuel French to do the play I wanted to do by just writing my own play.

That is not how most people would solve that problem. But for me, that was the easiest and most natural thing to do.

Some of us are just born to create, I guess.

Anyhoow, despite all the warm and fuzzy vibes today, I am still keeping that fire burning inside of me. I am still both warmed and tortured by the flames and I am also still determined to keep it going for as long as I can.

For the rest of my life, hopefully.

Because I know that my perkiness today comes from the same place as that burning searing cleansing flame. The same fire that burns me can also uplift me and support me if I clear away the bullshit and let its magic fill my soul.

I have often thought of myself as an extinguished optimist – someone who is not naturally negative or pessimistic, and only got that way because of mental illness.

It would be lovely to lighten my load enough for that inherent optimism to take over and lift me up.

Right now, it just can’t provide enough thrust to overcome depression’s gravity.

But some day!

Finding it hard to focus on the words tonight. That’s the unfortunate but handleable side effect of all this sunshiny happiness. It puts my brain into summer mode, and summer mode is way less focused and intense than winter me.

It would happen when I was a kid too. Summer would roll around and suddenly I was looking out the window or staring off into space when I should have been paying attention in class.

I usually found I hadn’t missed much when I finally yanked myself back to reality. Life can be rough when you’re bright enough to have gotten what the teacher was telling us the first time.

Then you have to wait while she explains it over and over again until the dumbest students have understood it too.

God, I was so fucking bored in school.

As I have confessed before, I was far too socially clueless to realize what a jerk I was being when I was obviously barely paying attention to the teacher.

And I am ashamed of how pleased with myself I was when, with every new teacher, I got to show off by waiting for the teacher to call me out for not paying attention then repeating back everything they had just said, verbatim.

Shit…. I just remember that there were times I did that without even looking in their direction. I still wasn’t paying attention to them.

God damn it…. no wonder my teachers didn’t want to lift a finger to help me. I was a smug little shit.

All I can say in my defenses is that I was just being my honest self. I never set out to hurt anybody or put anybody down. Nothing was done out of malice or some kind of sadistic desire to wreak havok.

I was just reacting honestly to the situation I found myself in – namely that I was stuck in classes that lasted hours that only taught me things I could have learned in minutes.

And I can honestly say that it would never have occurred to me to pretend to pay more attention than I naturally would. That was nowhere on my radar. If someone had asked me to do it, I would have (with most teachers, anyway).

But that’s how clueless I was. Same with conforming to fit in. Never occurred to me. I tried my best to get along with people but like I have said many times before, I have always been ferociously myself and that is simply not negotiable.

And to be honest, I think that might be the biggest symptom of my social damage ever. The vehemence with which I reject all suggestions of conforming is not normal, and reminds me of some of the strong, no-negotiation responses I have seen from people who are on the autism spectrum.

And no doubt my lifr would have been a lot easier if I had been willing and able to bend at least a little bit to fit in.

After all….. everyone else does.

But no, I am a strident individualist whether I want to be or not. The die is cast and I am unlikely to change at my advanced age.

All I can do is remind myself that I am a very nice and pleasant fellow most of the time, despite this lack of flexibility, and the odds of something making me go all squirrelly as as an adult are quite remote.

Just as long as NOBODY TRIES TO OVERWRITE MY IDENTITY WITH THAT OF A GROUP OR OTHERWISE INFRINGES ON MY INDIVIDUAL SOVERIGNTY.

But what are the odds of that?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.