Well, I have been to the ER and back, and the skinny is that they found nothing wrong.
The fat is that my lungs are clear and my blood oxygen is normal and I don’t have a fever, and those were the three metrics I was concerned with, so everything is cool when it comes to the serious problems like the pneumonia I thought I had.
I still have a heavy feeling in my chest and my breathing is somewhat constricted. I have a sore scratchy dry throat (which is probably why my breathing is tricky) and the pain in the throat goes all the way up into my ears via my Eustachian tubes.
That last bit has my worried that this will turn into a sinus infection, or an inner ear infection, or some other ailment of the otolaryngological area.
But the main thing is that I did not end up admitted to the hospital and that is a relief.
And also sort of a disappointment. Part of me, I suppose, was looking forward to a bit of an adventure. Something to take me out of my ordinary life for a while. Something that gave me challenges to overcome, things to endure, issues to face.
So clearly I am looking for change in my life. I am just not ready to provide it for myself.
And sad as it is, I think some part of me was looking forward to having people nurture and look after me for a while, even if it was in a clinical environment.
I have a massive unmet need for nurturing that I have no idea what to do with. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing one can solve as an adult middle aged male.
Especially one of elephantine proportions.
I’ve mentioned getting rich enough to have staff before. That’s the solution that always springs to mind when I try to imagine a solution to this.
But logistical and practical issues (like “how would I do that?”) aside, I am not sure that would solve the problem. Deep down I would know that however nice people were to me, they would be doing it because I was paying them, not because they truly love and care about me, and so it wouldn’t really fit the bill.
I suppose I could look for a “daddy” in the gay scene. I have unresolved daddy issues as well. They stem from a lack of an acceptable father figure in my childhood.
My father was unacceptable for many reasons and hence could not provide what I needed in terms of firm guidance and encouragement to take risks.
My mother wasn’t that great at her role either, come to think of it.
This sort of thing is why I hate it when people say that it is never too late to have a happy childhood. Bullshit it ain’t.
Happy childhoods come from good parenting, and if you’re a big huge guy in his forties, that ship sailed a long long time ago.
The only alternative is to parent oneself, but I can’t. The very weakness and helplessness I am trying to treat prevents it.
So I’m fucked. Ain’t that a fine how’d you do.
More after the break.
Life has really been cruel to me, ya know?
Starting with the big one : me being raped by a stranger when I was only four years old. That did immeasurable damage to my poor little redheaded self. I retreated into my own little world in order to escape the truth, as so many other victims of sexual assault do, and that crippled me for life.
Locked away a lot of my potential and my strength as well. There is a reason I have been this weak for this long. Why I have always had this paradoxical combination of great intellect and talent with strange weaknesses and incapacity.
I really am, in many ways, a big brain in a diaper. Overdeveloped mind, underdeveloped soul (or spirit or will or whatever).
Moving on. The thing about being an emotional cripple as a child is that it invites the world to damage you even more.
People just love piling on, I guess.
In my case, my intellect (and attitude) caused me to skip kindergarten, thus setting me up to be way behind my peers socially when I went to school for grade 1.
But even that might not have been so bad if my emotionally crippled state had not kept me from being able to defend myself from my bullies.
Looking back, it’s so clear to me that I have had this sort of emotional semi-paralysis ever since I was raped. Something died in me that day and it saps my willpower and pulls me away from reality and bollixes up my ability to deal with things.
The right person could have helped me, though. It would have had to have been a pretty amazing person, but it was still possible.
Anyhow, my childhood was extremely lonely. I had no friends. I never learned to make friends. I was a pariah and that’s very, very bad for one’s development.
See how one evil (the rape) led to others, like being bullied and isolated?
Isn’t that fun?
Eventually, I stumbled into some friendships. But those were not great for me because, due to my being so awkward and wimpy and strange, my “friends” were as likely to abuse me as be good to me.
I must have gotten something out of the times when it was good, though.
By the time I hit grade 10, I was back to being isolated, and stayed that way throughout high school. All I did with my life was go to school then come home and consume media : watch TV, read books, play video games.
Were I not an emotional cripple, my natural instincts would have led me to do normal teen things like hang out with my peers, experiment sexually, maybe get into my first relationship, and so on.
But nope. School. Home. Video games.
And that’s how I live now, only without school.
All because being raped at the age of four left me too crippled to take care of myself.
It’s the gift that just keeps on giving.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.