mental-illness

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It’s Saturday now

And I’m in the office.  I haven’t come to the office this time, of course, I’ve just been here since yesterday, as I noted in my confusing and single-paragraph post yesterday evening.  I slept at the office, on the floor, and it was just as comfortable in many ways as if I had been at the house.  True, I couldn’t shower, but I’ve buzzed my hair down to 1/4 inch after seeing how it looked after I was in the hospital, and so it’s impossible to tell just by looking that I’ve not showered.  I usually have deodorant and other toiletries at the office, but those are already moved to the new office now, so I’m going to need to go over to the convenience store and get some deodorant and mouthwash this morning.

As for the house, well, there’s a reason I don’t refer to it as home.  It’s not a home to me.  I haven’t felt like I have a home since before I went to FSP.  No, it’s just a place I can hide for a while at a time, and not have to interact with anyone, and where it’s just my stuff inside, such as it is.  But I don’t feel at home there, I don’t feel comfortable, it’s just a place I’m existing.  I don’t even have a real chair there, though I have a piano bench and a folding metal chair tucked into a corner.  When I’m at the house, I just recline on a pile of pillows on the futon on the floor.  It’s good for my back in the short term, though after I stay there for a while it tends to backfire*.

Everything in my existence orbits around pain.  I guess it’s no irony that one of the two songs I have had memorized on piano for decades now is the Police’s King of Pain (the other is Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles).  Maybe it’s because I memorized that song that my life took on its current aspect.

I don’t really believe that, of course.  That’s absurd, magical thinking, and there’s no evidence that it’s the way the real world works, except through confirmation bias and the like.

Right now it still hurts to urinate, with spasms up in my right side and flank, which lingers a little even in between.  It’s nothing compared to the acute onset of the issue, but it’s still there.  And my back and hip and leg pains haven’t ceased to exist out of some strange courtesy.

I’m overwhelmed, and not in a good way.  There is too much happening in my head and around me right now, too many stupid little, annoying changes, too many deeply unpleasant surprises, too much chaos and randomness even in the day-to-day routines.  I am overwhelmed.

I used to be a person who could accomplish things, at least partly because I had people around me whom I loved and for whom I wanted to make things good as much as I could.  I cannot do good for myself.  I cannot live for myself.  But I used to be able to do good and make good things and relieve suffering.  I’ve saved people’s lives and even helped ease people’s deaths when it was appropriate.  Some of the most copious thanks I’ve ever received were from the families of patients who had died.  I was told by one family that, before he died, their 96 year old father/grandfather said I was the first doctor he’d had that he felt that he could trust.

Now look at me.  Or rather, don’t look at me.  I’m disgusting to start with, with my teeth that used to be good but have been ravaged by years of pain killers and prison and then just an inability to have the energy to take the very good care of them I used to take.  Also, I’m currently crying, and there’s snot on my face.  I don’t look great at the best of times anymore, and certainly no one is going to want to look at me now.

I’m caught in the pincers of some kind of weird metaphorical tweezer.  I cannot stand the thought of trying to change my situation; the idea of moving, of trying to change jobs, of trying to find something, is literally horrifying–imagine needing to wade through a swimming pool filled with roaches and centipedes and maggots and other larvae, above which soars a nearly-opaque cloud of mosquitoes, all female.

But staying where I am, doing what I’m doing, is just as horrifying, and now there are a bunch of new stressors, not the least of which is my fresh, new pain problem, which hopefully will be temporary, though it isn’t gone yet.  I guess a week is a relatively short time, and maybe I’m expecting too much, but it’s a fucking huge level of discomfort, and I don’t have the mental resources to deal with it, not on top of everything else.  Why I am I continuing to endure my already-existing chronic pain, my anxiety, my depression, all the other things associated with my hitherto undiagnosed ASD, and then now dealing with newly discovered problems?

I’m overwhelmed.  I cannot summon the will to make a change, or even the conviction that I ought to do so, because I cannot really think straight.  I cannot imagine what to do.  I don’t know that there is any way at all to escape, except by dying.  And I am always afraid.

You might think that after having pain every day for decades and having lost basically everything that ever mattered to you and for which you had worked so hard for so long you wouldn’t have any need to be afraid anymore.  What do you have to lose, after all?  But fear is not a rational thing, it’s not the conclusion of a thought process, it’s an emotion, one in which nature has invested heavily, and having pain after pain for a long time, of various kinds, can cause a “learned-helplessness” reaction related to depression, but even then, fear doesn’t go away.  One is always afraid of yet more pain.  One is afraid of facing another day with the same old pain.  One is a afraid that one is going to live a long, long life and never for one day of the rest of it not be in significant pain.  One is afraid that one will also be alone for the rest of that long life, with no comfort and little joy.

I don’t know what’s going on.  I mean, I’m writing this post, of course, that’s going on.  But I don’t know what else.  I’m falling apart, I think.  I’m breaking down.  Like I said yesterday, I can practically smell the melting plastic and circuitry in my mind.

Whatever.  Nothing I do or say matters, nothing I am matters.  I don’t know what I expect to happen because I’ve written about this.  I feel a bit like Frodo crying out for his friends in “Fog on the Barrow Downs” after they’ve been separated, but the only answer I will probably get will be from some foul undead spirits.  There’s no Tom Bombadil out there to come rescue me.  I wish there were.  And I could really use Elrond’s healing power, or even Aragorn’s.

That’s enough.  Go on, go read something else.  No one wants to feel miserable, and that’s how I tend to make people feel, so you should probably find something comical or at least entertaining to explore, and just try to have a good weekend.

*Honestly, no pun intended.  I didn’t even notice it until the editing process.

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A nameless Friday blog post

It’s hard to believe, but something truly obvious didn’t even occur to me until yesterday afternoon as I was getting ready to leave the office.  I was really worn out and tired and grumpy, and I said to my coworker, who was very kindly giving me a ride to the train station, “If I were a sane person in a civilized world, I wouldn’t even have come to work at all this week.”

That’s when I thought: the people at the hospital probably didn’t expect me to go back to work this week.

Meanwhile, this has been one of our busiest weeks in a very long time at the office, and the office is in the process of moving to our new location, and I had to iron out the details of the records from Monday and Tuesday, which were a bit off, and then I had to do the payroll on Wednesday all while having the busiest day of this very busy week so far.

Yesterday was not quite as hectic as Wednesday for me, but on Wednesday I had kind of maxxed the pain med dose so I could get done what I needed to do.  Not so on Thursday.  I want to make sure not to overuse the meds in the short term, since I don’t know when a really bad spasm might happen.  Of course, I’m not taking my usual aspirin either, per recommendation, nor any other go-to NSAIDS, so things are complicated.

Anyway, the meds situation wasn’t what I wanted to discuss.  I just wanted to note how pathological I must be to have not only come right back to work after being discharged from the hospital, but to have applied pressure to get me discharged Tuesday afternoon.  I can’t believe that I even said I would sign out AMA* if I had to do so.

But I am basically on my own; if I don’t work, I don’t eat, so to speak.  Even that is misleading, though, and is not my real reason, which is that I have to be productive or useful to someone, in a way that I accept, or else there is no point to the fact of my continued existence.

I mean, I know no one wants to be around me or to have me around them for fun and pleasure; the copious evidence for that is glaring and even blinding.  But I am capable of being useful in quite a few different ways; even my misautonomy doesn’t force me to deny that I have gifts that can be productive and useful and even sometimes beautiful.

So, if I can’t be useful, well…what’s the use of me?  If I were not at work, what would I be doing but lying around in my one room (plus bathroom) with a malfunctioning AC unit?  

Meanwhile, I still haven’t made my follow-up appointments or any of that.  My sister has offered to help, and I think I’m going to have to take her up on that, though she’ll have to be doing stuff from long distance and second-hand and I still find the process daunting.  It’s really quite pathetic.

And if not being useful is a feeling like being in an intergalactic void, it’s even more horrible to feel like I’m a burden or even an inconvenience to someone else, especially someone who really matters to me.  That’s a failure worthy of fire.

Also, I am tired of being in pain.  Everything in my life centers around pain.  I suppose it should have been obvious for quite a while, but at least since the time I was sent to be a guest at FSP West, pain has been the central fact, the only consistent thing, about my existence.  Now I’ve just added another color, another flavor, another timbre and type of pain to my usual mix.

I suppose one could almost call it refreshing as a change, or one might if it weren’t just absolutely overwhelming at its peak, and none too pleasant when it’s at a lower level.  And while, if one’s pain is in one’s back and legs, it is possible to rest them to some degree, you can’t really rest your urinary tract when it is where the pain is focused.  If you try to drink less, you’ll only make the primary problem worse, but of course, drinking more (hopefully to get the stone to pass) does mean more of the acute discomfort in the meantime.

Why am I doing any of this?  Why am I continuing?  It’s certainly not out of any sense of my personal value.  I’m just a maggot-ridden turd lying by a dirt path in a humid, stagnant, pollen laden drizzle that doesn’t refresh anything or allow anything but mold and fungi and coprophagic organisms to grow.  I’m so tired.  I have no purpose, and I am so tired.

Anyway, this ought to be it for this week.  I don’t think there’s a plan for the office to be open tomorrow.  If it is, by rights I ought not to come in anyway.  But since the alternative is just lying around by myself, and since I’m stupid, and I don’t live in a civilized world, and I am certainly not sane, if they open the office, I will probably be here.  If so, I’ll probably write a blog post.

Until my next post, whenever it is, I truly and sincerely and urgently hope you all have objectively good days and nights and everything else.  If my words have the power to make anything real, that is what I would want.

*Against medical advice.

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The blogger, learning, physic, must all follow this, and come to dust.

Hello and good morning.

It’s Thursday.

I was inclined to make that the whole post today, just, “Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday.  TTFN.”

I still don’t think I’m going to make it much longer than that.  I don’t have anything new to say.  Everything I have to say has surely already been said here.

Nothing is any better than yesterday, or the day before, or the year before, or the decade before.  I have no reason to expect that anything will be better tomorrow.  It’ll just be another day gone by, so I’ll be a little more used up and fatigued and probably a little more pessimistic.

I’m waiting for the train now.  I expect today to be pretty much as always.  There is nothing to which I look forward.  Music isn’t interesting, whether playing or listening.  I can’t eat foods that give me any kind of even momentary surge of pleasure, because those foods also tend to give me GI problems (and then apparent metabolic problems).

I don’t really even know the full state of my physical health; I haven’t been to see any kind of doctor for several years, maybe almost 10, not since the time when I went to an urgent care because a respiratory infection I had was persisting longer than expected.  They found that I was desatting* a bit, so they told me to go to the ER, where I was admitted.  While I was there, they did an echocardiogram, and supposedly (I never saw the actual echo myself) there had been a slight…I don’t know, a recurrence, a reopening, a relapse of the ASD** that I had that required open heart surgery when I was 18.

I was supposed to follow up on that recent echo, but after my infection was treated, I felt much better, and I didn’t and don’t have insurance.  Honestly, the thought of going through all that shit with my heart again now, almost 40 years after the first ordeal, is not acceptable.  Besides, honestly, there wasn’t and isn’t any reason for me to try to preserve my life and/or health.  I’m disappointed the thing hasn’t caused me any problems so far.

Many days I wish I would just have a heart attack or something, or get a severe infection.  After my little semi-humorous footnote yesterday, I thought about just trying to inject some shall we say less-than-sterile liquid into myself, and I even ordered some syringes from Amazon for that purpose.  If I do still have any kind of irregularity in my heart, that would provide a good nidus for the beginning of an endocarditis.

I may do that.  It’s simple and straightforward, but it could be a very long process.  It’s probably not a very rewarding option.  It’s too slow and too reversible.

I’m so exhausted.  I’m so tired, mentally, physically, and “spiritually”.  I wish I could just go into a field somewhere and collapse and just lie there not moving until the elements took me.  And I feel so tense and angry so much of the time.

Never mind, this is all stupid.  Sorry, again.  I’m sorry that I’m whining so much.  Yeah, yeah, life is hard, the universe is hard, the world is idiotic and no one is in charge or in control of much of anything, but it’s nothing new.  Humans‒at least some of them‒do have the potential to do great and relatively enduring things, but all the other idiots who want to think of themselves as special and important to some divine creator, but who are, ironically, much more akin to chimpanzees and savages than are those who reject superstition, get in the way almost inevitably.

Anyway, enough of this.  Again, I’m sorry.  You’ve been kind and optimistic to read my daily excretions, so here’s a slight break for you.  I hope I won’t write a post tomorrow, but I probably will.

TTFN

*Short for desaturating:  when the percentage oxygenation in the blood drops below normal, healthy levels.

**Atrial Septal Defect in this case, not Autism Spectrum Disorder.  Apparently it wasn’t much more than a patent foramen ovale at this recent stage, but that still shouldn’t be there.  I mean, my heart surgery was done by the guy who literally wrote the textbook on the procedure.  That was in 1988, of course, so things have surely improved, but still.

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Morose, meandering musings of a misautonomous moron

Every time I write a blog post on a Wednesday morning, I feel the urge to include a reference to the Beatles song She’s Leaving Home, as in “Wednesday morning at five o’clock as the day begins…”

There, see, I just did it again.  At least it was self consciously done, not some quote put in as if it were my own words, intended only for those “in the know” to recognize.  I guess that’s a way for me to feel vaguely clever‒and sometimes funny‒while actually just following the often irresistible compulsion to quote shit* at every turn.

In high school, when I was a senior (and maybe when I was a junior?) I was pretty confident in my place as one of the “leaders” of our school orchestra, and I used to go to the orchestra room first thing in the morning before school, usually arriving before the teacher, and then I hung out there (with other orchestra members and friends who arrived a bit later) until time for classes to start.  While there, pretty much every day, I would write a quote from something‒Shakespeare**, Tolkien, Stephen R. Donaldson, Poe, etc.‒on the board.  I even won the “Dusty Cello Award” at our end of the year orchestra party because of it.

I’ve always had that habit of quoting books and movies and plays and shows and so on, and even doing the voices of people when I could.

I think reading fiction in particular was very good for helping me to understand what goes on in other people’s minds, at least in principle.  But I also just liked being able to go to those other worlds and other lives.  It’s better in general than watching TV or movies, though the latter are easier and also easier to enjoy with other people, if you have other people with whom to enjoy them.

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there.  My past and my thoughts about it are of no moment to anyone but me, and even I find them boring.  It’s just that they’re all I really have.

I’ve tried to interact with people to some degree online, but that just gets me weird feedback, like getting almost 3,000 “likes” in less than 24 hours for pointing out in a comment that the biblical Jesus would not approve of a particular, supposedly religion-based, exclusion reported in a thread about a shopkeeper toward a trans woman (ironic for a nonbeliever to be pointing out Jesus’s very clear attitudes, but I am one who remembers characters and quotes).

On the other hand, when I noted yesterday on the same site that the office where I work was 3.4 miles from the nearest “beach” (and a fishing pier) and I thought it might be good to walk down to the shore, kick off my shoes and socks, and just start swimming east into the Atlantic and not come back (pointing out that it would leave no need for cleanup, and it wouldn’t mess up anyone’s day, or anything of that sort) I got 3 likes (after quite a while) and only one comment by a person saying she doesn’t like to dwell on such thoughts.

This is, supposedly, Mental Health Awareness month, but I don’t know what good such a thing does, especially if such is the response to someone expressing suicidal ideation.  I’m aware of mental health in general, but it’s been a long time since I had any personal experience of mental health (if I ever have).  It’s been at least 13 years since I’ve had even moments of mental pseudo-health.  That was the last time I saw my kids in person, for one afternoon.

I’ve only recently realized that it’s now been a longer time since I saw my children than how old they were when I last saw them.  So, I’ve missed more than half of their lives now, and that fraction is only going to get bigger.

What would I possibly know about mental health?

Physical health is not my biggest attribute either (not many people had open-heart surgery at age 18).  But I know it gets very boring for people to hear about‒for instance‒the fact that I feel right now as if my entire right side from the lower ribs on down to the ball of my foot feels as though it’s filled with molten lead, which is quite painful, in case you were wondering.  But that’s always the way it is, for much longer than 13 years (more than 20, actually) and though it waxes and wanes and shifts locations, pain never fully goes away while I’m conscious (and probably contributes to the worsening of my insomnia).

Anyway, I know, Waah, waah, waah, shut the fuck up, Robert, no one wants to hear all this shit*** over and over again!  It’s tiresome to face nothing but complaints.  I’m sorry.  I’m very, very sorry.  I really am.  To everybody.

I really should just try that swim.  There isn’t much to prevent it.  I’m not particularly afraid of drowning (other than in an instinctive sense) though I do have misgivings about sharks and other sea creatures.  That’s probably silly, since, even in shark infested waters, statistically people are far more likely to drown than to be attacked by a shark.

I have to do something, or at least to have something done to me.  I don’t have the will or the wherewithal to take action to save myself in any way (and wouldn’t know where to start if I could) but I don’t have the strength to keep living, not for much longer.  And I don’t have any good reason to keep living.

But that same problem with “executive function” or whatever it is makes it hard for me to take action to kill myself.  So, for the moment, I just hurt myself to try to distract myself from other pain and to punish myself for being such a lame and shitty person, but weirdly, I have a hard time making such things hurt very much anymore.  Maybe I’ve always got too much pain medication in me, but I just don’t realize it because it doesn’t do all that much for my back and joint pains.  It’s weird.

Then again, I’m weird, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  Like the song says, “I’m a creep.  I’m a weirdo.  What the hell am I doing here?  I don’t belong here.”

I don’t belong here.

*This is the nonjudgmental version of the word “shit”.  It’s more or less synonymous with “stuff” but it flows better (so to speak).  I don’t mean to imply that the song to which I refer is in any way shit.  It’s one of the most beautiful songs I know.

**Yes, I loved Shakespeare even back then.

***Here, the use of “shit” is much more in the derogatory, excrement-related vein.  Though if someone had excrement in their veins, they would be in big trouble, because that excrement would be carried to the lungs and then heart and could cause horrible endocarditis and pneumonias and so on.

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Six songs to try to express a little bit of how I am doing

I don’t have the energy or will or “spoons” to write much today.  I’m just about ready to tap out.  My “executive function” is so low that I think the only thing I’m capable of executing is myself, and even that is difficult.  I certainly don’t have the capacity to act to save myself.  I keep trying to express just how fucking horrible I am doing, but I don’t think it’s coming across.  I guess it doesn’t matter much.

Anyway, today I figure I’ll embed some songs I’ve recorded myself performing that do something to convey my difficulties.  Some are originals, some are covers.  I don’t know if they will work, either.

It doesn’t really matter.  I don’t have the will to take any action about anything.  I can only do what I do every day, automatically, and I am getting closer and closer to being unable to do even that.  I think I’m pretty nearly completely out of gas, and I am basically only a burden to the world.  It doesn’t help that we’re moving offices this month, which I hate, but that’s just a little insult to add to the injuries that are leading to the end of things.

Anyway, here are the songs.

It’s not a perfect expression or set of expressions, but it’s about all I’m capable of, even after a weekend “off”.  It doesn’t matter.  I’ve basically given up.  I’m so tired already and it’s just Monday morning.

I hope you each have a great day, individually, and that you all have a great day, collectively.

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Therefore the Moon, the governess of blogs, pale in her anger washes all the air

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, the first of May*, the beginning of yet another stupid month.  They just keep coming, on and on and on, so irritatingly relentless that I find myself wishing for the elimination of the Moon and the destabilization of the Earth’s rotation and orbit just to break the tedium.

I know that would inconvenience a great many other people, though, so I’m not going to try to make it happen.  To be fair, it would be much “easier” to alter the Earth’s rotation than to shift the Moon.  A decent-sized asteroid collision at the right angle could alter both the rate of Earth’s rotation and its angle to the ecliptic.

Of course, such an impact would have devastating consequences for almost everything and everyone on the planet’s surface.  So that’s a win-win scenario!

I’m kidding.  But I often fantasize about wiping out all life as we know it, because none of it is truly benign and it’s all futile and will always be marked broadly by fear and pain and other suffering, because all those things are evolutionarily vital (in the literal sense).  I shouldn’t choose that for other people, though, so I probably would never do such a thing even if I could.

Thinking back to earlier, though, I’ve been pondering the question of just how one would move the Moon in its orbit, and I thought about the reflectors up there in the old Apollo landing sites, still used (last I checked, anyway) to measure the distance to the moon with great precision.

There have long been discussions about how to alter the course of an asteroid that looked to be prone to intercept the Earth.  One way might be to vaporize a portion of the asteroid, causing its “outgassing” to act almost as a rocket propellant, and by Newton’s third law (or, equally valid, by the law of conservation of momentum) the asteroid would shift its trajectory in the direction away from the artificial outgassing.

Well, what if one were to train powerful lasers at one site on the surface of the Moon**?   The fact that the moon is tidally locked with Earth means it’s constantly showing the same face to us, so one could keep focusing on the same portion of the surface.  One could study the albedo and absorption characteristics of the surface of the Moon to try to pick the best wavelength for causing “outgassing” of that surface, and that outgassing would propel the moon away.

It would be a slow process, since the Moon is big, and shifting its orbit significantly would require the delivery of quite a bit of energy, but that’s okay.  One could set up a single laser (or pair of them on opposite sides of the Earth, or more if one desired faster effects) perhaps solar powered and using ordinary telescope-style tracking equipment and software, to train the lasers always on the same point on the surface of the moon.

Gradually, the Moon would shift away from Earth (you’d need to keep adjusting your aim a bit), more quickly than it currently is, and eventually:  lunar liberation!

Of course, even given the abysmal state of science on Earth (and particularly in the US right now), people would eventually notice the Moon moving, and they might even notice the “outgassing”.  But a lot could be done before then.

If one wanted to have a much quicker effect, or rather, a more instantaneous effect, one could develop a large depot of antimatter, which we know how to make in particle accelerators.  Storing antimatter is challenging, of course; it must be kept within electromagnetic fields in high vacuum, since it will annihilate if it encounters its matter counterpart.

Still, with enough time and patience and care (and money), one could gradually accumulate a large stockpile of antiprotons and positrons, perhaps stored adjacent to each other so their mutual electrical attraction makes containment slightly easier.  Then, when one had gathered enough, one could launch it toward the moon in a fairly standard rocket‒it wouldn’t need to be manned, and it certainly wouldn’t need to return to Earth.

Release your tons (I would guess) of antimatter onto the surface of the Moon, perhaps at the center of “mass” of its face that points toward Earth, and watch the fireworks!  There would be complete annihilation of matter-antimatter in a release of energy far more extreme than any mere nuclear weapons could produce.  Heck, if you wanted to bypass the whole Moon process, you could just accumulate your antimatter here on Earth over time, maybe near some damage-multiplier like the ice caps or near a super volcano or something, and release the containment when you’re ready.

In a typical nuclear explosion, less than one percent of the mass involved in the reaction is “converted to energy”***.  In an anti-matter reaction, ALL of it would be converted.  Imagine releasing hundreds of times more energy per kilogram than the most powerful nuclear weapons.

Of course, antimatter is absurdly expensive to make, but economies of scale might help that.  It’s not as though one would be expecting a profit‒unless one went the Bond villain route and used one’s anti-matter bomb to hold the Earth for ransom, which is a thought.

That’s enough of that madness for now.

Speaking of madness, today begins “Mental Health Awareness Month”.  I would say that I’m already aware of mental health in a general sense, I just don’t have much personal familiarity with it.  Mental illness, mental dysfunction, mental dysregulation, these are things with which I am more personally acquainted.  I’m only too aware of them.  Physical health falls into a similar position.

All right, well, before I discuss more ideas about how to alter or eliminate all life as we know it‒I’ve many such ideas, I’m afraid‒I should draw to a close for the day.  In case you can’t tell, I’m not right in the head, am I?  So this is a sort of appropriate month for me, especially coming as it does right after Autism Awareness Month.  Batman only knows what will happen next.

TTFN

*Also known as May Day.  I wonder how that came to be used as a distress call, as in, “Mayday, mayday, we are going down!”

**Alternatively, one could, in principle, use a very large array of adjustable mirrors on Earth, and they could be shifted to reflect sunlight and focus the reflections on one spot on the moon, but to get a strong effect would require a worldwide collaboration or at least acceptance of these mirrors.  It’s hard to see that happening.

***I used “scare” quotes because technically it’s all energy to begin with, it’s just changing form.

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It’s the end of the month as we know it

It’s the last day of April in 2025, which means tomorrow is the beginning of May.  This is also the last day of the official Autism Awareness Month, and tomorrow begins the official Mental Health Awareness Month.

That last term is a bit odd.  If mental health is the norm, we don’t really need to be aware of it, except perhaps to be thankful if we have it (I certainly don’t).  It’s the lack of mental health‒you know, mental illness or even mental injury‒that we would like to be aware of and make better.  But I guess some people feel that’s too stigmatic or negative or something.

I think that’s silly.  Do we euphemize cancer?  Not really, not when we’re dealing with it seriously.  All the cancer awareness things slap you in the face, and they more or less say, it’s cancer, take it seriously, we want to fight it.  But what does it mean to be aware of mental health?  We don’t want to fight that, we want to fight for it.

I’m aware of mental health as a concept, of course, though even there, things can be a bit nebulous.  I guess health in general is just the notion that things are functioning more or less as they are supposed to function.  But that allows a fair bit of leeway.  It’s also somewhat relative.  If it were “normal” to be as healthy as Captain America, for instance, Usain Bolt might be considered a bit sickly, and most of the rest of us would be functionally disabled.

It’s hard to convince oneself that the average person, in America, at least, is as mentally healthy as one would like them to be.  I suppose that shouldn’t be too surprising.  Mental health (or the relative lack thereof) is measured largely by its interactions with the surrounding civilization, and that has been changing quite rapidly, from any kind of evolutionary standpoint, especially in the last few centuries, and especially in the last few decades.

Small wonder our brains/nervous systems often don’t function optimally in this realm.  The human (and humanoid/replicant/changeling/alien) brain is remarkably adaptable, but it is not a blank slate upon which just anything can be written at will.  There’s plenty of hardware that’s specific to certain kinds of functions, and there are read-only aspects of the operating systems and even the user interface (which we call consciousness when it’s combined with something akin to the Windows task manager).  We can’t rewrite the firmware yet, and we may never be able to do so.  We have trouble even changing current programs or loading new ones.

Well, that was an unplanned digression…which may be a redundant term.  Are planned digressions even truly digressions?

I was mostly just thinking this morning about what such a pair of months might mean to me.  Both of them are pertinent, since I have issues relating to both “awareness” subjects.  But so many of the things I see shared, particularly about “mental health”, are things I already know, but which have obviously not been adequate to improve my mental health.

Heck, I remember paying real attention in high school in our psychology lessons, reading all the abnormal psychology stuff, knowing that there was something off about me, but not seeing any good answers.  Of course, this was in the 80s, in a public high school, so the material was pretty simplistic and out of date even for the time.

I also used to own books about psychology, self-hypnotism, self help, lots of related stuff.  I didn’t know what it was with me, but I knew that I was strange.  I was pretty good at pretending to be “normal” in a sense, but a lot of even that was just me owning and sometimes exaggerating my odd habits as if they were normal things.

It helped that I was known to be smart, and also that I was raised to be polite and not to be mean or cruel or condescending to people.  That was pretty easy; while I was good at some things, there were many things with which I had difficulty, and I knew that only too well.  I still don’t feel very comfortable riding a bike, for instance, and many athletic pursuits requiring agility have always been hard*.  I also was truly abysmal at dealing with girls/relationships.  I had no idea how really to interact in any kind of would-be romantic way, nor to recognize if someone liked me, nor to let anyone know that I liked them.  I’ve not grown out of that problem.

Anyway, so I’ve been dealing with issues of mental health for as long as I can remember, including a time when I was really quite young and I almost made myself unable to talk after getting upset about some interaction and telling myself that I just wouldn’t talk anymore.  When I finally (after several hours) decided to talk again…I almost couldn’t do it!  I really had to force myself, and almost panicked before I finally was able to squeeze out some words.  That was frightening.

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that to anyone before.

So, anyway, I’ve been weird my whole life, and I’m no less weird now, but now I am alone, and I have lost pretty much everything I worked very hard to get or be or create as well as nearly everyone I care about most**.  I recognize that it’s not impossible that good things will happen for me in the future.  But I can see pretty clearly that it’s really unlikely.  What could lead me to think otherwise?  Only some profound delusions could do that, and though I cannot rule out delusions in myself, if I have them, they are not of the optimistic variety.

Geez Louise, this is such a pointless post‒just like my pointless life.  I need to wrap it up and be done already.  I hope you have a good day.

*It turns out at least some of this was related to my congenital heart defect, which was discovered when I was 18, and for which I had open heart surgery in the summer after my freshman year in college.

**By this I mean they’re not around, and most of them don’t want to be around me, not that they’ve died‒except my parents, of course, but that was basically natural.  Still, there was a long stretch when I didn’t even interact with them.  It wasn’t as long as the time since I last saw my own children, but it was still very painful.

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Step up or STFU

Here I go again, writing another blog post.  It seems like just yesterday that I wrote a previous one‒but of course, it was two days ago, not just one.  Wow, what a spooky difference.

I’m getting ready to be at work, or rather, am in the process of being on my way to work as I begin to write this.  I’m not actually currently moving relative to the surface of the Earth, but that happens a lot during commutes, especially when you don’t have your own vehicle anymore.

I don’t really have “my own” much of anything anymore.  I mean, I have a small amount of stuff, as George Carlin might say, though I’m quite sure I have waaaaaay less stuff than he had when he performed that particular routine.  Not that that’s bad; he certainly earned his stuff.  I mean, he’s still making loads of people laugh and think even after he’s been dead for a while.  I don’t know how long that will go on‒contrary to delusional claims by people who like a cool-sounding expression, online is not forever‒but he will, I suspect, be remembered fondly far longer than most.

The average day, on the other hand, feels like it is forever.  I don’t think I really look forward (in the positive sense) to anything nowadays.  There are two movies in theaters right now that I ought to want to go see, but if you presented me with free tickets, free concessions, and a ride to and from a theater of my choice, I think I’d say, “Thanks, but I’m not interested.”  And that would be true.

Likewise, though I watched the first episode of the latest series of Doctor Who a few weeks ago, two more have come out since then, and I have no desire to watch them, or anything else.  There are no books to which I look forward.  I’ve had to force myself to read at all, and even that’s probably a mistake*.  I occasionally look at my guitars and at the keyboard and they almost feel alien to me.  Like, what is that even used for?  I can’t really even imagine picking one up and playing it (or sitting down and playing, in the case of the keyboard).

I can’t really imagine writing any fiction.  The only thing(s) I anticipate at all anymore is something to eat, and that’s just so, so pathetic.  Thankfully, even my favorite snacks are starting to feel and taste and smell very dull lately.  I don’t know if perhaps I had my sense of smell altered back when I got Covid, or if this is born of the fact that all pleasures have backfired on me at least one time or another, and more so than ever, lately.

I really think I’m just about done.  I should’ve been done already.  I should’ve been done a long time ago.  But we’re always told to hold on, to stay alive, that we’re wanted and needed here on this stupid planet.  It’s a bit of a similar situation to what happens with “pro-life” people:  They don’t want there to be abortions, they want all those potential people born, but they aren’t helping to take care of them, and they don’t even want there to be public services available for them or for education or what have you.

So it is with the people who don’t want other people to commit suicide.  They don’t want you to kill yourself, but they’re not offering to help you be alive, not in any meaningful sense of helping.  And so, of course, when people do reach the end of their rope (sorry, no pun intended, but the expression is doubly appropriate so I’m leaving it) they have to choose the analogue of “back alley abortions”, killing themselves (or trying to do so) in messy, unreliable, disruptive ways that often don’t succeed but can lead to permanent damage and social opprobrium.

In some civilized countries, it’s possible for people to go to places like Dignitas and get physician-supervised ways to end their lives with minimal pain and with some peace.  Of course, even in such places, the service seems to be available mainly for people with terminal cancer and similar incurable illnesses.  But depression is often a terminal illness, and it is certainly incurable as far as I can see.  And, of course, ASD is not a disease, it’s a neurodevelopmental difference, so there’s no curing that, short of a brain transplant (which would really be a body transplant for the donor brain).

But if no one is going to give serious help to a person who has severe difficulty even wanting to live, and who has no capacity to lift himself out of the whirlpool of self-loathing and chronic pain, then why is there all the verbiage about how “depression is a liar” and other bullshit like that.  As if optimism weren’t a liar.  As if all the ideals and isms and dogmae and “good” things weren’t lies or liars or both.

So, fuck that noise.  Don’t tell a woman not to have an abortion if you’re not going to care for her and the child, and don’t cajole and guilt-trip a suicidal person about not killing themselves if you’re not gonna come in and help them in some real, tangible, serious way, God damn it.  A person on the verge of suicide is already admitting that they don’t think they can survive under their own steam.  They can’t swim anywhere, but you want them to keep treading water, or at least floating‒indefinitely‒just so you don’t have to be aware of the fact that they drowned while you were out boating.

All right, that’s enough for now.  I hope you all have a good day.  Autism Awareness Month ends this week and Mental Health Awareness Month begins.  Fat lot of good they’ve done or do.

*Interesting aside:  I accidentally typed “provably” when I tried to write “probably” right there.  The words are, so I understand, etymologically** related‒probe, prove, proof, probable, etc.

**Etymology and entomology are however (apart from the “ology” bit) unrelated.

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“Everything is…broken”

Hi, everybody.

(Hi, Dr. Nick!)

I am writing this blog post on my mini laptop computer this morning, because I’ve been getting sick and tired of writing on the “smartphone”.  I’m also getting sick of writing blog posts to some degree, so it’s best to make it relatively easy on myself when I can, and when I have the gumption, or the will, or the “spoons”, whatever you want to call it.

We have some new people at the office this week, so depending on how many of them would be able to show up, I may be working tomorrow.  If I do, I suppose I’ll probably write a blog post tomorrow morning.  So, I guess you’ll all know whether or not I’m working based on whether or not there’s a blog post.

Of course, if I don’t work tomorrow, there will be no blog post (or at least it’s very unlikely).  And, definitely, if I die (or become gravely or catastrophically ill or injured) before tomorrow, there will of course be no blog post.

As for everything else, well—to a good first approximation, everything else sucks.  Although the universe as a whole may actually be doing the opposite of sucking, since the cosmologic constant, or Dark Energy, or whatever, appears to be leading to the universe’s accelerated expansion.  But metaphorically, at least, the universe could still suck even while it expands (you could even say it blows).

None of my problems are resolving, nor are any improving, to be honest.  I can’t even accept telephone calls from people I know, nor can I seem to find the energy to play any music, nor to write any fiction.  I am more or less all out of “spoons”*, or nearly so.  And I don’t seem to be getting as many of them replaced when I do get them.  It’s as though my subscription has been downgraded.

That’s all metaphorical, of course.  When I say spoons, I’m referring to all members of the dairy professions.

(That was a Life of Brian reference.)

I’m sorry that I keep pausing while writing; I hope it’s not too boring for you while I do (ha ha).  I’m having some difficulty concentrating.  This is at least partly because my left eyelashes seem to be getting tangled and poking at parts of my eyelids in the wrong way, and I have not yet been able to locate and remove the offending lash(es).  This used to happen only to my right eye, but apparently things are changing themselves up—equal opportunity offenses, I guess.  Sometimes I feel like I want just to pull my whole eyelid off, it’s so irritating; it’s hard to ignore something that’s basically poking you in the eye.

My back and legs are already flaring this morning well above their baseline, and I feel like I got even worse sleep than usual.  I’m not as overtly angry as I was yesterday, not because the causes are any different, but because I’m just steadily more exhausted all the time.  I don’t have the energy to do anything much.  I can barely conjure the will to do this.

And, of course, my depression and my ASD and the related anxiety and all that continue to make life uncomfortable at all moments, and there are very few things that make up for it.  Even food is losing its taste.  Where is Lestat to turn me into a vampire?

Well, I know that isn’t going to happen because that doesn’t actually happen.  It’s called reality.  Google it.

Well, this post is going nowhere, isn’t it?  I guess in that, it’s like everything else, including the universe itself (as far as we can tell).  It’s some measure of how far I’ve sunk that the first draft of this little tidbit of a blog post has taken me over an hour to write, and again, this is on my mini laptop computer.  Given that I can generally type far faster than I can speak, that should give some indication of the degree of my dysfunction.

That’s it, I’m done with this for today, I’m out of here.  I unfortunately did not die yet this morning, so here we go again with the blog post.  Couldn’t I at least be hospitalized?  Heavy sigh.  I guess I’ll finish with a quote from a great artist who took what was probably the sensible course: “Oh well, whatever.  Never mind.”

*All Out of Spoons was the original title for the old Air Supply song All Out of Love, but they decided that wasn’t catchy enough**.

**That’s a lie, of course.  At least, it is as far as I know.

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*Or as title

It’s another Wednesday morning, and I’m not walking to the train again this morning, because my feet blisters are still quite irritated.  It’s so frustrating; why were they okay on Saturday and Sunday but not on Monday?  Did I overdo it?  Or‒as I suspect‒did my socks influence things?

I wore a different type of sock on Monday than I had on the weekend.  I also wore that preventative ankle brace on my right foot, and that is the foot on which the majority of my blister problems developed.  Is that a coincidence?  Quite possibly, of course.  Don’t let Sherlock and Mycroft tell you otherwise with their apparently clever but illogical and quasi-magical notion that the universe rarely indulges in coincidence.  Except for things that are literally causally related, there is nothing that isn’t coincidence.

Of course, from another point of view, nothing is coincidence.  Everything follows the laws of physics‒or the laws of nature, or however you wish to characterize it‒and can do nothing but what it does when it does it.  That doesn’t mean it has any meaning beyond that, from the human point of view.  For instance, the idea that the universe is “sending you a message” is absurd, unless some specific person, who is of course a part of the universe, literally sends you a message.

I’ve often said that while everything has a cause or causes, many things‒almost everything, as far as I can see‒has nothing that a human would call a reason.  This is the old teleology error that goes at least as far back as Aristotle*.

I had no intention to write about all that today, but often the only way for me to know what I’m going to write at any given time is to start writing.

You might have noticed‒well, I doubt anyone was really paying attention, but now that I’m telling you it’s going to be much easier to catch‒that I have not indented my paragraphs today.  Before, I was trying to see how pleasing it was to indent manually while writing in Google Docs, in case I might decide to try again to write fiction, and to do it on Google Docs.  I’m sorry to say, I’ve felt no urge nor even any real willingness to write fiction.  I’ll probably never write any fiction again.  I’m getting pretty close to the point of not writing anything anymore.

I’m really just exhausted, in more than one sense of the word.  I hurt every fucking day, and have to dose myself with various things to keep it at least under control enough that I can carry out reasonably normal functions (for me, anyway).  I haven’t read for more than about twenty minutes total in the last week or week and a half.  I haven’t played my guitar in weeks, maybe more than a month.  I barely even listen to music**.  In fact, I tried to give my black Strat away, but that wasn’t really workable, and the person to whom I offered it was just confused.

Every little thing feels overwhelming.  The only thing I do in spare time is wander through things like Instagram and Threads, which are already starting to get boring.  Occasionally I will see things that are funny or interesting or frustrating, and sometimes I’ll even make comments that other people find interesting or funny or whatever.  But what’s the point?  I don’t feel a scintilla of any connection there; it’s not even an awkward conversation.  Not that it hasn’t been useful and sometimes enjoyable‒it has.  But I don’t have any friends there.

I also don’t really have any friends anywhere else (except if you count quite old friends, far away, with whom I rarely interact anymore).  I have “work friends” who are really more work acquaintances.  There’s no one with whom I share any time or interests outside of work.  I certainly don’t talk to my neighbors, nor to anyone on the train.

It’s been more than twenty years since I had a day without feeling constant pain (except rare moments of high-medication, which provides its own “fun”) and probably thirty years since I had a good night’s sleep without the use of heavy doses of sleep aids of one kind or another.  I’ve tried to get healthy during this time, don’t get me wrong.  I’m stubborn; I do not give up easily.  That’s probably the only reason I’m still alive, but it has other drawbacks as well.

What I ought to do is give up even trying to be healthy, even trying to get stronger or to thrive or even to survive.  Of course, knowing me, unrestrained self-indulgence in self-destructive practices would probably lead me to become unreasonably healthy and successful.

Nah, that’s not going to happen.  It would make a funny story, but the universe doesn’t seem particularly predisposed to irony, even if humans seem to love it and “find” it even where it is not.

I’m done for today, I think.  I wonder, if I didn’t ever write another blog post, how many people would notice, and then for how long they would keep wondering if I would return and how long it would be before they forgot about me entirely.  I suspect it would be a very short time.

*Anagrams include “a tit loser” and “tater silo”.  Also, see the top of this post.

**And when I do, it’s usually “reaction” videos to songs I know, because watching these feels almost like sharing a beloved song with a friend.