Well it’s been a while, so I suppose I should remind myself of how amazing I am.
I don’t want to. The thought still causes me pain, to be honest. That’s how fucked up my motivational pathways are at this point in my life.
Overmind : Hey you! You’re an amazing person full of warmth and wit, with gifts enough for three people and a unique genius all your own!
Conscious Me : Must you remind me?
It gives me a headache-y feeling, like a bright light or loud noise.
Well, they always said I was bright. Turns out I am so bright I irritate myself.
But why? Why this resistance?
Let’s see…. well, there’s that old standby, responsibility. As a lifelong Spider-Man fan, I know that with great power comes great responsibility, and that scares the webbing out of me, to be honest.
I’m not sure why the idea of taking responsibility for my power is such a terrifying thought to me. Maybe because then I would kind of have to do something with it.
And that would mean figuring out what to do with it, and hello option paralysis.
But no. That smacks of my depression’s bullshit. Another facile dodge. Yet another smokescreen hiding yet another unpleasant truth I don’t want to face.
It takes a lot of work to hide things from a megabeam mind like mine.
I hate my depression, but I have to admit, it does work hard.
I definitely get that feeling like something is trying to pry me out of my safe warm little hell when I think abou tmy own gifts. Like I am a barnacle and some very hungry seagull is trying to pull me from my reef.
In the surrealist cartoon of my mind, this is the part where the prisoner, who has been looking out his window at a beautiful sunny meadow and sighing forlornly while writing in a big book called When I Get Out, sees the door to his cell swing open, gasps, runs over without a moment to lose…. and slams the door shut again.
Then sighs, phews, and goes back to writing and sighing.
Because the truth is, as much as I want to get out into the world, I also don’t. In fact, the whole reason I am stuck in this cage is that the “don’t” force is a lot stronger.
But really, there is no cage. The cage is bullshit too. I have had the key to that door whis whole time. The only reason I “can’t” get out is that I want to keep the world out, not that something is keeping me in.
So fuck that whole metaphor. Kaboom, there go the walls of my prison, and there I am, dazed and covered in soot cartoon style, naked and exposed in that sunny green meadow. the cage blown to bits, gone forever.
Okay, now I am REALLY freaking out.
But oops, too late, the cage is gone and I am just going to have to adapt to life without it from now on.
But it’s okay if I want to lay down and cry for a while. I’m probably overdue.
Back to actually talking about the thing I’ve been talking about.
I really am kind of freaking out right now. It’s kind of thrilling. I feel very alive.
Scared, but alive. And that beats “calm but dead inside” any day.
I think that, when I have been imagining myself out there in that great big beautiful world , with a job and a hubbie and all, I have been “forgetting” to include the fact that in order to do that, I would have to give up all the comfort and safety I have right now.
As if it was somehow possible for me to leave and stay at the same time.
But no, obviously, logically, I have to choose. I can’t be both out at play and safe at home. If I want that big warm wondrous lustrous world out there, I have to leave.
Well, I blew up my prison cell. That’s a good start. In that sense, I already left.
Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the waves of panic and terror to subside.
It’s not like I could go back. Not now that I know the whole cage thing was bullshit and I was free to go the whole time. That genie isn’t going back in the bottle. I can’t pretend that I am more trapped than I am any more.
Honestly, I think that at the root of it all. I was just afraid to grow up. Afraid, perhaps, because I don’t feel like I have grown up on the inside at all, and so to me, adulthood means being a child in an adult world.
And I have no faith that I can cope with that like, at all.
And that speaks to a very deep lack of self-confidence. Specifically, a lack of confidence in my ability to adapt and grow stronger when faced with difficult situations.
And that, in turn, is largely a fact that I have not done that much in my life. I fled the difficult situations instead. Retreated into my shell. Hid from my pursuers.
The pursuers were also bullshit. Truth be told.
I find myself wondering how I would have turns out if someone or something had somehow blocked my avenues of escape.
What if something had forced me to stay in the game and play?
Looking back on my life, I find myself thinking about how much life let me get away with. And is still letting me get away with.
I mean, I never even had to learn to study.
And it’s been that way my whole life. It’s all been too easy on one level, and way too hard on, let’s face it, all the others.
I never had to learn to overcome things that seemed scary and impossible at first. Never had to struggle and defeat my fears and toughen up.
I’ve always been far too skilled an escape artist for my own good.
Well fuck that noise. I am going to stay out here in the sun.
It’s not like I have a choice.
After all, I blew up my cage.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.