I love Halloween dearly despite it being the time of year I take a serious beating by life as if there's a holiday dedicated to kicking my ass. Octobers are rough for me. They've always been rough ever since I was a little kid. I have no idea why this pattern is like this. It's a feedback loop. Again and again.
When I was a kid, it was report cards with bad grades and severe head colds and my dad being drunk and angry at me for not being the football star he imagined himself to have been. He was disappointed that despite me being bigger and stronger than he was my age, I wasn't a football hero. I stopped playing football after my freshman year because of grades. Besides, I really hated playing football.
October was when bad things happened. It's always been like that.
Right now, I cannot work because my entire cable package isn't working and hasn't worked for days. MediaCom won't be out until the day after Halloween. I'm going to lose half a paycheck over it because I cannot work without cable.
And my computer monitor isn't working right. Once again, I need to get another one, because I'm the only guy I know who needs a new computer monitor once a year. I'm using the one from work and I'm not sure what I'm going to do when work starts back up again.
But there are some lucky things happening right now.
I have a DVR full of recordings I haven't had time to watch. I've caught up on Star Wars Rebels, Gotham, and a few other things. Right now I'm watching Doctor Who. I love the Doctor. He's taught me a lot.
This weekend, I went to a Halloween party. Those of you who know me will know I have a terrible time leaving my apartment. I'm reclusive and a borderline shut-in. I leave my place maybe once a week. So for me to actually leave and go see people isn't easy. But a voice was telling me I needed to go. There was something about this Halloween party that was important and I had to be there.
It was a fun time, I met some new people, and was able to offer words of solace to a woman who was doubting herself. Plus, I met a very gifted young girl who is incredibly powerful. She's a medium and very sensitive. She can see spirits and talk to them. It's my belief I could teach her a few things about defense, energy, and perspective. I'd hate for somebody to learn lessons the hard way like I did.
The Doctor Who episode I'm watching right now is the first adventure Peter Capaldi takes his new companion, Bill, to Earth's first colony on another planet. There are these buttons everybody wears that reflects your current mood. And if you're not happy, you get killed. Just like that.
This blog has become my own person Black Box like on an aircraft so I can document just how far down I've spiraled and what I'm doing to get back up. Or if I ever will. The New Agers in the world will tell you that if you're feeling down, all you need to do is think happy thoughts and change your mind's perspective.
As someone who has dealt with severe depression and all kinds of damage, and has been accused of being broken and damaged, I can tell you that isn't the case at all. You can't just think happy thoughts and move on from there. Thoughts aren't easy to change.
As I've said before, you can't think your way into right acting but you can act your way into right thinking. It's impossible at first. It's like trying to walk up a wall or stand on your head. But it's the little things you do while you try to scale that wall that add up and make the difference.
My mood is better. That moment of clarity I had two weeks ago was powerful and saved my ass from a dark road with a fast end. I've been making the effort to do what is right and pull out of this tail-spin.
But every once in a while I hear some New Ager/positive thinker and it just kills me. Somebody once told me to "Just decide to be happy." It felt like a knife in the gut because I had now idea how to do that. I felt defective because I didn't know how.
I want to live my life. I want to find all of the things that make this life worth living. I want to experience the things I see everybody else having. So much of this life has been just survival. It upsets me to know what I've missed out on and to know what has been denied to me. Worse, that which has been taken from me, and I can never get it back.
My friends tell me it's not too late. They tell me it might still happen. I just have to believe it will be a reality and move accordingly. I have no faith. I have no hope. But I'm doing what I'm doing because there is nothing left for me to do. I have two options and as I've said, I've picked this one, for now. And I'm ready to jump to the next option at the first definitive sign that this is wasted effort and worthless.
But those who tell me to "just be happy" seem to me to not understand things. How does one do that? How does one just suddenly decide to be happy? To me, it's a form a denial. It's a lie you tell yourself. It's about having no guilt, remorse, and being incapable of empathy.
Sociopaths suddenly decide the past no longer matters.
But that's not fair. I've known some who weren't sociopaths but they still just suddenly decided one day to start life anew and leave all the shit behind them. I don't get it and I never have.
I've been the victim of it, though. I've been the past that gets ignored. I've been the mistake that got erased.
But I've never been able to just "be happy" and live my life. There are no switches inside my brain for that magical transformation. And I'm not even sure I wish there were because it seems like a horrible thing to do to those you care about.
I have always felt like doing that is somehow a denial of yourself and a denial of who you are. The reinvention of yourself has to be from devastation and cannot be on the fly or mid-stride because otherwise it's an evasion of truth and just another form of self denial.
To me, somebody who has just simply decided, "I'm going to be happy" is the same as someone lying to themselves. I've been left behind by those people before and I can tell you it's incredibly painful to be an afterthought or worse, to be treated like a reminder of a past they want to escape.
I will never do that to another person.
So what am I going to do?
Well, tomorrow is my birthday. I've scheduled an appointment at the clinic to get some bloodwork done and get a follow-up check-up. I have no idea what will come of it.
After that, I'm not sure. I really don't want to spend tomorrow alone but there's no other option. Once again, it's how I've set my life up, and this is the cycle I'm in. There aren't many options.
I did this to my life. Not directly, but my actions did this nevertheless. I'm trying to fix it. I'm going where I'm invited. I'm visiting people when they ask me to stop over. I'm trying to fix this.
But it's going slowly.
People all around me are moving. They're evolving. They're becoming the person they were meant to be. And all the while I'm stuck in the trenches doing battle daily with personal demons and a head full of ghosts.
I want the magic switch I can flip to stop memories. I want to forget about those I've cared for deeply and rejected me. I want to forget about how badly my name is a curse word to some. I want to forget how many years it has been since I felt happy.
Actually, I'll be honest here and say there is a switch. It's just a substance you put in your body to make it all go away. And it was killing me so I have been walking away from it. That, my friends, is a battle for the ages!
I feel so badly on most nights! There are nights where it is a monument to my own internal mechanisms just to wake up the next day to do it all over again.
So how to do I just turn my back on all of that and sing "La-Di-Da, I don't give a fuck about anybody but myself and my own happiness! La-Di-Da" while smiling broadly?
Tomorrow is Halloween. I'm really hoping something happens. And maybe that's part of my problem. In truth, I need to make things happen instead of waiting for it. Fortune favors the bold and I'll be honest and say I'm not very bold. I'm withdrawn and reclusive. So how do I change that?
Furthermore, is it something I can speed up or is it like bread dough rising and I just need to let it take its course?
I'm just not feeling Halloween this year. For some reason it's just not that magical to me and I don't know why. Maybe because it's so fucking cold outside that we had snow today. Or maybe because I haven't eaten any sugar in the past three months. I'm craving it. Badly. Or maybe because I keep my apartment decorated with Halloween decorations all year long. I don't know why but for some reason Halloween just doesn't have that spark for me this year.
But I'm looking forward to getting on a scale tomorrow. I want to see how much weight I've lost. It's a small, insignificant victory. Hollow, really. But I want to know. My pants fit me better so I'm curious. I try not to tell myself it's too late. I try not to think about those I've cared about who rejected me or of all those times I imploded and self-destructed and ruined everything. A few pounds won't fix that. There's no amount of weight I can lose that would fix anything. And I can be clean and lucid all I want and that won't fix anything either.
So where does that leave me?
On Halloween I am going to treat myself to something sweet. Diabetes, heart problems, and threat of stroke be damned. I'm going to eat things and celebrate. It's not a Happy Switch but it's the best I've got to work with. I'll be alone, but that's okay. I put a lot of effort into destroying my life whether I wanted to or not. It just happened that way. And while I miss certain people, I can't change the past, nor can I undo what I've done.
I have no idea what's going to happen next. I'm just going through the motions and if the universe decides to give me something, then so be it. All of my plans have always failed. All that I have wanted was kept out of my reach and all I have loved or cared about have left me or were chased away by my own insanity. So at this point, I'm not sure what I could possibly look forward to, but I'm going to hang around and find out. No magic switch, just clawing my way through one more day, and that's the best I've got right now.
When I was a kid, it was report cards with bad grades and severe head colds and my dad being drunk and angry at me for not being the football star he imagined himself to have been. He was disappointed that despite me being bigger and stronger than he was my age, I wasn't a football hero. I stopped playing football after my freshman year because of grades. Besides, I really hated playing football.
October was when bad things happened. It's always been like that.
Right now, I cannot work because my entire cable package isn't working and hasn't worked for days. MediaCom won't be out until the day after Halloween. I'm going to lose half a paycheck over it because I cannot work without cable.
And my computer monitor isn't working right. Once again, I need to get another one, because I'm the only guy I know who needs a new computer monitor once a year. I'm using the one from work and I'm not sure what I'm going to do when work starts back up again.
But there are some lucky things happening right now.
I have a DVR full of recordings I haven't had time to watch. I've caught up on Star Wars Rebels, Gotham, and a few other things. Right now I'm watching Doctor Who. I love the Doctor. He's taught me a lot.
This weekend, I went to a Halloween party. Those of you who know me will know I have a terrible time leaving my apartment. I'm reclusive and a borderline shut-in. I leave my place maybe once a week. So for me to actually leave and go see people isn't easy. But a voice was telling me I needed to go. There was something about this Halloween party that was important and I had to be there.
It was a fun time, I met some new people, and was able to offer words of solace to a woman who was doubting herself. Plus, I met a very gifted young girl who is incredibly powerful. She's a medium and very sensitive. She can see spirits and talk to them. It's my belief I could teach her a few things about defense, energy, and perspective. I'd hate for somebody to learn lessons the hard way like I did.
The Doctor Who episode I'm watching right now is the first adventure Peter Capaldi takes his new companion, Bill, to Earth's first colony on another planet. There are these buttons everybody wears that reflects your current mood. And if you're not happy, you get killed. Just like that.
This blog has become my own person Black Box like on an aircraft so I can document just how far down I've spiraled and what I'm doing to get back up. Or if I ever will. The New Agers in the world will tell you that if you're feeling down, all you need to do is think happy thoughts and change your mind's perspective.
As someone who has dealt with severe depression and all kinds of damage, and has been accused of being broken and damaged, I can tell you that isn't the case at all. You can't just think happy thoughts and move on from there. Thoughts aren't easy to change.
As I've said before, you can't think your way into right acting but you can act your way into right thinking. It's impossible at first. It's like trying to walk up a wall or stand on your head. But it's the little things you do while you try to scale that wall that add up and make the difference.
My mood is better. That moment of clarity I had two weeks ago was powerful and saved my ass from a dark road with a fast end. I've been making the effort to do what is right and pull out of this tail-spin.
But every once in a while I hear some New Ager/positive thinker and it just kills me. Somebody once told me to "Just decide to be happy." It felt like a knife in the gut because I had now idea how to do that. I felt defective because I didn't know how.
I want to live my life. I want to find all of the things that make this life worth living. I want to experience the things I see everybody else having. So much of this life has been just survival. It upsets me to know what I've missed out on and to know what has been denied to me. Worse, that which has been taken from me, and I can never get it back.
My friends tell me it's not too late. They tell me it might still happen. I just have to believe it will be a reality and move accordingly. I have no faith. I have no hope. But I'm doing what I'm doing because there is nothing left for me to do. I have two options and as I've said, I've picked this one, for now. And I'm ready to jump to the next option at the first definitive sign that this is wasted effort and worthless.
But those who tell me to "just be happy" seem to me to not understand things. How does one do that? How does one just suddenly decide to be happy? To me, it's a form a denial. It's a lie you tell yourself. It's about having no guilt, remorse, and being incapable of empathy.
Sociopaths suddenly decide the past no longer matters.
But that's not fair. I've known some who weren't sociopaths but they still just suddenly decided one day to start life anew and leave all the shit behind them. I don't get it and I never have.
I've been the victim of it, though. I've been the past that gets ignored. I've been the mistake that got erased.
But I've never been able to just "be happy" and live my life. There are no switches inside my brain for that magical transformation. And I'm not even sure I wish there were because it seems like a horrible thing to do to those you care about.
I have always felt like doing that is somehow a denial of yourself and a denial of who you are. The reinvention of yourself has to be from devastation and cannot be on the fly or mid-stride because otherwise it's an evasion of truth and just another form of self denial.
To me, somebody who has just simply decided, "I'm going to be happy" is the same as someone lying to themselves. I've been left behind by those people before and I can tell you it's incredibly painful to be an afterthought or worse, to be treated like a reminder of a past they want to escape.
I will never do that to another person.
So what am I going to do?
Well, tomorrow is my birthday. I've scheduled an appointment at the clinic to get some bloodwork done and get a follow-up check-up. I have no idea what will come of it.
After that, I'm not sure. I really don't want to spend tomorrow alone but there's no other option. Once again, it's how I've set my life up, and this is the cycle I'm in. There aren't many options.
I did this to my life. Not directly, but my actions did this nevertheless. I'm trying to fix it. I'm going where I'm invited. I'm visiting people when they ask me to stop over. I'm trying to fix this.
But it's going slowly.
People all around me are moving. They're evolving. They're becoming the person they were meant to be. And all the while I'm stuck in the trenches doing battle daily with personal demons and a head full of ghosts.
I want the magic switch I can flip to stop memories. I want to forget about those I've cared for deeply and rejected me. I want to forget about how badly my name is a curse word to some. I want to forget how many years it has been since I felt happy.
Actually, I'll be honest here and say there is a switch. It's just a substance you put in your body to make it all go away. And it was killing me so I have been walking away from it. That, my friends, is a battle for the ages!
I feel so badly on most nights! There are nights where it is a monument to my own internal mechanisms just to wake up the next day to do it all over again.
So how to do I just turn my back on all of that and sing "La-Di-Da, I don't give a fuck about anybody but myself and my own happiness! La-Di-Da" while smiling broadly?
Tomorrow is Halloween. I'm really hoping something happens. And maybe that's part of my problem. In truth, I need to make things happen instead of waiting for it. Fortune favors the bold and I'll be honest and say I'm not very bold. I'm withdrawn and reclusive. So how do I change that?
Furthermore, is it something I can speed up or is it like bread dough rising and I just need to let it take its course?
I'm just not feeling Halloween this year. For some reason it's just not that magical to me and I don't know why. Maybe because it's so fucking cold outside that we had snow today. Or maybe because I haven't eaten any sugar in the past three months. I'm craving it. Badly. Or maybe because I keep my apartment decorated with Halloween decorations all year long. I don't know why but for some reason Halloween just doesn't have that spark for me this year.
But I'm looking forward to getting on a scale tomorrow. I want to see how much weight I've lost. It's a small, insignificant victory. Hollow, really. But I want to know. My pants fit me better so I'm curious. I try not to tell myself it's too late. I try not to think about those I've cared about who rejected me or of all those times I imploded and self-destructed and ruined everything. A few pounds won't fix that. There's no amount of weight I can lose that would fix anything. And I can be clean and lucid all I want and that won't fix anything either.
So where does that leave me?
On Halloween I am going to treat myself to something sweet. Diabetes, heart problems, and threat of stroke be damned. I'm going to eat things and celebrate. It's not a Happy Switch but it's the best I've got to work with. I'll be alone, but that's okay. I put a lot of effort into destroying my life whether I wanted to or not. It just happened that way. And while I miss certain people, I can't change the past, nor can I undo what I've done.
I have no idea what's going to happen next. I'm just going through the motions and if the universe decides to give me something, then so be it. All of my plans have always failed. All that I have wanted was kept out of my reach and all I have loved or cared about have left me or were chased away by my own insanity. So at this point, I'm not sure what I could possibly look forward to, but I'm going to hang around and find out. No magic switch, just clawing my way through one more day, and that's the best I've got right now.
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