….I honestly have no idea what I would do with myself.
That’s the great thing about being addicted to video games. I never have to think about what to do. If I am up and awake with nothing else to do, it’s video games every time.
I don’t have to face the burden of hours any more. I never feel like time is a wasteland of meaningless sensations any more. I don’t need to figure out what to do, or even to figure out what I want to do.
Free time is video game time. Period.
And the thing is, because the games fill my mind so completely, I can easily ignore the rest of the world, including my own rotting on the vine, while I play them.
Like all drugs, they are the source of and solution to all my problems.
The real killer aspect of addictions is that they bypass all the emotions that normally warn us of danger and keep us together and help us function.
You could deal with the guilt you feel over neglecting your kids in favour of indulging your addiction by going to spend time with your kids…or you could indulge your addiction and make the guilt go away.
You could deal with not having eaten in days because you spent all your money on your addiction by going out and trying to borrow some money for food or by going to a food bank or whatever else….or you could indulge the addiction and not have to think about it for a while yet.
You could deal with your dissatisfaction with your idle and worthless life by forcing yourself to be productive and find meaningful work to do….or you could just play video games all day and avoid dealing with anything ever.
But hey, you blog! That’s something, isn’t it?
Yes it is.
But it’s not enough.
And yet, it’s all I have right now.
I can think of dozens of things I “could” be doing, of course. Looking for work on UpWork. Making a video. Writing fiction. Looking for an agent. Joining some major forum so I can express my views in a more visible way.
Hell, getting into contact with my siblings via Facebook so I don’t feel so alone. I’d be happy just to be a small part of their lives.
Beats being so disconnected all the time. I presume.
But of course, it’s never a matter of not knowing the solution to my problems. I am a very clever and resourceful person. Solutions are easy for me.
So easy that I can think of so many possible solutions that it becomes impossible to choose one, so I do absolutely nothing!
Except play video games, of course.
And I know it’s all a trick, An illusion. A hall of mirrors making my problems seem legion so my depression and my addiction can have me all to themselves.
And I know that if I really, really tried, I could make all those mirror images disappear and see things as they are.
But then I might have to do something.
And I’d rather just play video games.
More after the break.
Destroying my world
So that a new one may be born.
That’s more or less how I feel about my life right now. Like I am slowly but mercilessly destroying absolutely everything that gets in the way of my rebirth.
Because that’s what it is going to take. A rebirth. The time for incremental change is over. The rot has set in too deeply for that. The whole thing needs to be burned to the ground so that the whole damn thing might start over with what we know now.
Am I still talking about my mental health? You decide.
This grim view of my prospects for slow reform does not come easily or naturally to me. I am the sort of person who always checks the bathwater for babies. I am by nature (but not by politics) a conservative person who does not like big risks and inherently mistrusts big changes and especially mistrusts people who say things like “the system cannot be saved, we have to burn it to the ground and start over!”.
During what I will heartrendingly call “normal times”, I view that type of person as a dangerous lunatic who wants to watch the world burn and has found a flimsy justification to hide that behind.
Either that, or just a hyperbolic nitwit in love with the sound of their own voice.
So you can understand my reluctance to throw in with that crowd.
But there comes a time when ever a reformer like me has to admit that the degree of “reform” needed is so massive and extensive that calling it reform is like calling death a “blood pressure issue”.
At the same time, though, on the other front, I feel like I have to make war with the actual dangerous thoughtless lunatics on the left.
Aw fuck, veered into intellectualizing again.
Back to talking about me.
The point stands that even when talking about myself, I think the system is too corrupted for incremental change to do much good.
What I need is a transformation. Transformation is the little death that lets a person surrender all form in order to be born anew. It means abandoning all you were in order to become who you truly are. It means reforging your identity into something fresh and new, without all the impurities that tainted it before, and turning it into something far closer to who and how you really are at the core.
But that means leaving all your old disguises behind. :Let them burn like the impure and improper shadows of your former self they are.
They are mere shades of you, and hold no more power over you than your reflection in a mirror or a picture taken of you from long ago.
It is time for the shedding of skins. It is time for the forest to be cleansed by fire. It is time to put the old self out of its misery so that a newer, stronger self can be born
Guess I’ll just die then.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.