It’s my birthday today. I’m 47.
Can’t say I am particularly excited about it. Just adds another digit to my failure to getmy shit together and make some kind of life for myself.
Yay, another year for me to do fuck all except blog and play video games. Sure, it’s not enough,it’s not nearly enough, but it’s not like I am going to do anything about it.
Got lots of pretty ideas. Most of them might even work. Podcasting. Becoming a YouTuber[1]. Invade Cracked forums and try to write for them. Cash my check next week, put it all on the card, buy a bus ticket to some small town, and bugger off to try to start a new life with a fictionalized past free of my 25 years of abject failure.
Or give up entirely and finally become a crazy homeless person.
I have to admit, it would take a lot of pressure off me. I could finally stop fighting all the craziness in my head and go completely fucking nuts.
Might make for a pleasant change. The only tricky bit would be to make sure I end up in the loony bin, not jail.
Though come to think of it, jail has certain perks for a gentleman of my persuasion.
Anyhow, at least I have a new game to play. A whole bunch of them, in fact. And for once, they are all from the same series.
I’d been looking over my wishlist on Steam, lazily pondering my next purchase, and one of the possibles was a game called F.E.A.R., a combination of supernatural horror and FPS that had a high score on Metacritic and a strong recommend from Maelkoth.
Then I check out what’s up on Humble Bundle and lo and behold, they have every single game in the series in one big bundle for $15!
The normal price for that on Steam is $55. Well I ain’t one to hesitate when I see a bargain like that. Kind of made up my mind for me.
So I bought it, and I have started playing the first one, and I am very impressed.
It looks very good for a game from 2005. Sure, the graphics are low res compared to today’s offerings but they are so well made and placed that the environments feel like real places regardless.
But what I really love is that the whole thing has a cinematic feel to it. The action portions feel like an action movie and supernatural parts feel like a very spooky movie. I love the feeling of being inside a movie.
The game is rather repetitive though. The whole first part of the game takes place in this endless factory/warehouse that is supposed to be a waste water treatment plant and it’s just the same elements combined over and over.
And so far, there’s been exactly two kinds of enemies : light solider and heavy soldier.
I’ve finally made it to the next part, and it’s in an endless office building. Which is better, I suppose, though I am getting sick of it as well.
So it’s not impossible that the repetition might ultimately be a dealbreaker, In which case I will shrug and try F.E.A.R. 2.
I mean, what are the odds that I won’t like any of them?
More after the break.
I’m not here
Let us proceed with the next phase of my moral strip-tease.
Part of the reason I was so blind to the effect my deterioration was having on others was because I have a deep seated feeling that I don’t exist.
Not in a literal sense but in an emotional sense. I spend so much of my formative years alone that my sense of self dwindled to the point where it felt like at any second, I would disappear entirely, the the flame of a candle when it is snuffed.
Patient readers will recognize that this is an example of the numbness of depression reaching a horrible maximum. I became so numb that I could not even feel my own existence any more.
And while I am much healthier than that now, that feeling like I am not really here persists. My world is so virtual that it provides very little in way of physical feedback, and without said feedback, I can’t really feel the world around me.
And it’s not a healthy way to live. Especially when that numbness blocks all the necessary emotional inputs from the real live people in your life.
That’s bad for everyone involved.
The thing is, when you feel like you are not really there and that nobody notices anything you do and nothing that you do counts or matters, the last thing on your mind is your effect on others.
How can you effect others when you’re not even there?
How can anyone miss you when you were never truly present in the first place?
How can I be important to anyone when I am not even important to myself?
Why would anyone care about me more than I do?
And after all, if they want me around. they can “just ask”. Right?
Right back at you, Mister Social Anxiety. You know damned well how hard it can be to “just ask” anything. How it can seem like there is a vast dark chasm between you and reaching out to someone.
How it can feel like if you tried, you would fall into that chasm and die.
So I repeat to myself : I am not the ice. I am that which is frozen. The only thing that can die when I contact others is the ice that grips my soul, and I am not that ice.
It is not a part of me. If it dies, I will still be here. In fact, if it dies, I will become more myself than ever as long-dormant parts of me finally can activate and integrate.
And at long long last, I will finish waking up, and be able to truly live for the first time since I was raped at the tender age of 4.
And what a holy, blessed day that will be.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.