Another day, another session of brain frying sleep.
And I knew this would happen. Once more, I got sleepy when i was supposed to be hungry (wrong dwarf) and took a nap when I should have been eating and blogging.
And as I lay me down, I thought, “I’m going to wake up feeling awful and then have to blog and eat while my brain slowly cools, aren’t I?”
Man, I hate it when I’m right.
And yet, i felt like I had no choice. The nap attack could not be denied.
Well, not without a damn good reason anyhow.
It occurred to me recently that I have managed to arrange my life so that I almost never have to stay awake when I feel like sleeping.
So I almost never have to force myself to stay awake. Bed is always close at hand,
I don’t even have to stand up before I lay down. I can just roll right out of my computer chair and into bed.
It’s kinda fun.
Anyhow, the luxury of being able to sleep when I please is pretty awesome.
But it leads to my “abuse” of sleep.
I’ve talked about this before, and it’s been on my mind again. I use sleep in order to reset my anxiety level. Over the course of a day, my background anxiety level slowly rises, and taking a nap resets that level back to zero.
And I have grown very dependent on this coping mechanism. So much so that I start to feel panicky if i am away from home and my bed for too long.
Because odds are, by then it’s nap time again. And forcing myself to stay awake when the urge to nap strikes has become very stressful.
This is not healthy.
The so-called real world does not allow for unlimited nap breaks. If I want to be able to go out there and find my way some day, I am going to need to be able to stay awake for at least eight hours in a row.
That is logical and undoubtedly true.
The idea scares the hell out of me, though.
Then again, what doesn’t? I live wrapped in a straitjacket of clutching fear. Everything I want to do to improve my stupid fucking life is out of reach as a result and I am stuck trying to find the way out that I am actually strong enough to use.
It feel futile. But what else am I going to do?
There must have been a door there in the wall when I came in. Right?
I wish I was so much stronger. Maybe I will be after my operation, I dunno.
I am so tired of collapsing under even the slightest of burdens. That is not the real me. The real me is mighty of heart, mind, and will.
This fragile demeanor is just a thin shell over my real and genuine self.
And some day I am going to crack that motherfucker wide open.
More after the break.
Shell? What shell?
Sometimes I feel like this little guy.
That’s Sheldon from the comic strip/cartoon U. S, Acres. He is a baby chick who decided he didn’t want to hatch, and has therefore stayed in his shell.
Sound familiar. But what really makes me identify with him is that he is highly intelligent and quite the intellectual. He’s probably the smartest animal on the farm.
And yet, he’s also an undeveloped infant.
The parallels are as numerous as they are shocking.
Cause that is how I see myself. On the one hand, I have a brain the size of a planet and all this deep philosophical insight and wisdom and true understanding of people.
On the other hand, I am a helpless malformed creature unable to take care of himself in even the most basic of ways who wallows in his own filth and weakness and degradation because he lacks the strength to do anything about it.
As corny as it is to say, I am a study in contrasts. An admixture of opposites – vast mental strength paired with great spiritual weakness, bright and warm and friendly persona masking a dark and cold and lonely life, abilities far above the norm coupled with shocking disabilities that leave me far below it.
Like I am some strange sort of savant, with all my human potential bound up in a broad but limited set of abilities leaving nothing left for even basic functioning skills.
I am a hothouse flower without a hothouse. I was never going to be able to make it in the wild. I need (and needed) very specific conditions to thrive.
Instead, I barely eke out a pathetic existence way below the radar of society at large, clinging to playing video games as my only effective medicine against my depression an like all good addictions, it is also killing me.
My deep and abiding bitterness demands that I point out that all of this would have been different if someone had simply see the value in me as a child and taken the time and energy to invest in me despite my being a rather bizarre handful at times.
But instead, I was so very very alone. Like I said before, I got almost none of the emotional nutrients a growing child need in order to grow up healthy.
No love, kindness, guidance, discipline, and so on.
I told my therapist that given all that, it’s a wonder I grew up as sane as I did. There must have been some stubborn inner core of stability that refuse to give in to the kinds of jaded and embittered paranoia endemic to folk like me.
You know, the profoundly socially isolated weirdos with highly developed intellects but vastly underdeveloped social instincts.
A lot of people in my position would have become misanthropic and hateful and addicted to the sort of justification for outrage the internet can provide so well.
But I refuse to give in to the darkness. I am going to keep being a nice person who wants to get along with people no matter what.
The darkness is tempting. I totally see how it sucks in others. The short term benefits must be incredible. Feeling all righteous and justified and persecuted and seeing the world as being against you must be very alluring.
But it’s bullshit of the worst degree and will kill you if you take it too far.
Better not to go there in the first place.
So far so good!
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.