But not really.
The question is : how do I convince myself that I am not, in fact, utterly and completely alone and abandoned in the world. That in fact, there are many people who love and cherish me and think I’m something pretty special.
And here’s the big one : how can I learn to let their love in?
It’s a rather sticky question because there are so many factors working against me.
Like bad brain chemicals. Feeling alone and isolated and afraid is my brain’s “normal” and it will fight to return to that state no matter how I feel about it.
It doesn’t matter that it’s an extremely negative “normal”. That’s not the kind of value judgement primitive brain chemistry can make.
All it knows how to do is maintain whatever state is recorded as the default, and in my case, that’s Lonelytown.
Then there’s the fear. I was hurt so badly and so often as a child that my deep self is terrified that if it opens up the door to let love in, annihilation will come instead.
In fact, the sad truth is that it’s very very hard for me to even imagine a scenario in which truly opening up to people doesn’t result in instant doom.
I guess that’s what happens when fear runs that deep for so long.
This isn’t the person I want to be. I want to be open and loving and warm. I don’t want to be closed off in my own little world, detached and aloof and unreachable.
But it’s where I am right now.
There is also the issue of my broken machinery – my “busted antenna”. The brutal truth is that I did not get the socialization and/or social stimulation I needed at a very critical time in my development, and so it’s entirely possible that vital parts of my social machinery are broken beyond repair.
And it’s so damned frustrating because here I am, a warm and caring human being who can dimly perceive the sunshine filled world of normal human connection he wants to join, but there is this fucking dead space between me and it that thwarts me.
I dunno. Maybe I should stop trying to fix the unfixable and just accept that this is who I am. I’m a broken robot, a friendly alien, here but not here, sensitive and caring but trapped in an ice cold cage of traumatic scar tissue and fear.
But no. I don’t think giving up and making the best of a bad situation is an option for me. I will continue to struggle and fight the numbness and the pain and the fear for as long as it takes to crack these prison walls and let the sun in once and for all.
And then do my best to not get totally freaked out by that and end up skittering back into my deep dark hole to hide like a startled roach.
I know there is a vast universe of human emotion waiting for me to clear the clogs and get my true emotional self up and running.
And when I do, maybe I will be able to truly connect with people.
And then I won’t be alone any more.
More after the break,
My strange universe
My personal reality is emotionally unstable.
I never know how things are going to feel.
My total emotional affect varies wildly from moment to moment, and it is only by clinging hard to whatever I can that I create any sense of stability amidst the superstorm of pure chaotic flux that is my emotional state at any given moment.
No wonder I cling so hard to whatever stability I can find and need my world to be super predictable in order to be able to function at all.
I can only cope with the maelstrom within if I have the opposite outside.
If I was ever to lose that hyper predictability, I am quite sure that I would, at long suffering last, go completely insane.
Part of me feels like the sense of relief alone would make it worth it. I have been fighting to stay sane despite my mind being a madhouse 24/7 for so long that finally just letting go sounds almost divine.
And who knows. Maybe if I just stopped trying to hold myself together, I would finally have my much needed nervous breakdown and emerge from it a far stronger and saner person with a stable and reliable mind.
There are times when breaking down is the smartest thing to do, and it’s my insistence on always keeping on trucking no matter what that is the madness.
But that’s the only way I know to to get through life. Just keep going no matter what. It got me through the regular school system. It got me out of the total physical and mental breakdown I had when my parents yanked me out of university.
And it’s gotten me to where i am today : 47, dying without having lived at all, watching with deathly passivity as my health falls apart while feeling no particular drive to do anything about my situation.
I mean, I know I should.
But that means next to nothing. I am quite used to not doing things I should be doing. There’s always millions of things I should be doing.
I can see them through the bars of my cage.
But they can’t reach me. Nothing can. That’s what the cage is for, after all,. On the deepest level of my mind, there I sit, impassively alone, staring out at the world with the crystal clarity of the truly mad, seeing all, touched by none.
I know so much about that world beyond my cage. The view is excellent from my cozy corner of the place where all things come together. Sometimes I look at those above who think they know what is going on, and I laugh, because they know nothing.
At least, not compared to me.
I could crush them all if I cared to.
Good thing I’m dead inside, then.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.