Rosie

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Woke up from one of those very long tangled dreams to Barry Manilow singing a new Christmas song about superheroes, and thinking ok, that lisp of his is getting way worse...

I was at a friend's house up the road after not visiting for a very long time. For some reason, I needed to use her shower, and only very briefly saw her to ask, because she had to rush off, but handed me a folded note. I didn't open the note right away, just wanted to get that quick shower and go home, because it's always weird taking a shower in someone else's house.

By the time I got upstairs, the house had grown a bit bigger, added rooms, appointed details, and naturally I had to slow down and think Wow, she always did love her house. I made it in the upstairs bathroom, but for some reason I had to go back downstairs and outside real quick. I don't remember why now, but this happened over and over and over umpteen times, and each time going back into her house, the house kept getting bigger, more people kept showing up, until the entire building was nearly as big as a small shopping center, and every bit of it was still her glorious house, decked for holidays and people everywhere.

She wasn't the sort to have loads of guests, but very quietly the genteel artist type who loved Americana and flowers and the good life, excellent with complex recipes and always a picturesque purebred dog by her side. I didn't think about any of that in the dream, which would have thrown it all off. None of it seemed out of place at all. Everything that kept adding on an becoming more detailed and thronging with more people seemed right. It felt like exactly the kind of holiday party she might love if she had been born a very wealthy person. It had her spin on it.

I don't know how many times I made it back upstairs to that bathroom, which also kept getting bigger and more elaborate, but I finally opened the note. The topside was typed, and I don't remember much of what it said, but it was to me from her. Then I realized the underside was handwritten in felt tip pen, and oh no, the bathroom was damp (the shower was steaming it up), and a lot of it was running onto my hands and my clothes. Most the words were on me by the time I tried to decipher it, and the harder I tried to read it, the more it faded until it was gone.

I realized about then that I was in my shabbiest jeans about to get a shower, and there were dozens of people arriving all around for the start of the party, all dressed up from where they came, like one big family had just come from a ski slope and were all laughing and red from the cold and in matching sweaters, and another family had just come from a big church service and were still all dressed up and looking for the wine cellar (I don't recall her having wine around either in real life or the dream), and many other groups, and I thought Wow, she has a LOT of people connected to her. She'd always seemed so quietly reclusive to me, but I imagine I saw only a glimpse even though she was right up the street.

So I left the bathroom again, intent on going home to get better clothes, but it was too late, the party was starting, Barry Manilow was singing, and I woke up.

My very first thought this morning was maybe she had died and that was one of my heaven dreams, so I did quick recon and she hasn't, whew (although now I'm hoping there isn't something else). Yes, even though she moved far away a long time ago, I know where she is, what her house looks like, and a tiny little bit of how she's doing. I don't deep lurk very often, but a handful of people have never left the back of my mind, so once or twice a year I check on them.

So, psyche analyze this dream. Barry Manilow singing a Christmas song about superheroes. A friend's house growing very big and luxurious. Me trying to get a shower and being embarrassed about my shabby clothes. A note I couldn't read.

I have lately (this past year) become a bit self aware of how public I am. It feels awkward, and even though I'm not bothered by it most of the time (in my aspienado mind I'm just an avatar living a story), I've been feeling a little bit shy for possibly the first time in my entire life (I'm diagnosed with a mild to moderate level of narcissism, thankfully not dinging the psychotic bell or anything, but this is thanks to the childhood I survived as I've pointed out on facebook, you can find tests online to see how you rank, as well).

Ok, that was a stretched out overly-inserted paragraph. I'll just daintily step away from it instead of trying to fix it and move on.

I don't know yet how I feel about being aware of feeling sorta shy. It's not the kind of shy that people automatically think of as shy. I'm not afraid of anyone seeing me. I think it's more like I'm shy of seeing myself. I'm shy realizing I'm in this role I'm playing out. I'm cognizant of being ME.

When I was a child, I'd have very disturbing moments, almost out of body experiences, about being a skeleton walking around, about living in a skull, about my arm not being 'me', about my legs feeling like doll legs that I moving around from the inside. I know now that is a dissociative disorder. Not feeling in the moment, running all the incoming through filters, losing track of time (quite badly sometimes), and delayed emotional response most of the time come from this dissociated thing. I am often walking beside myself, following behind myself, distracted away from myself, coming back to myself. I am often not in the moment.

I love that I had that curious dream at the very start of 2018. I love that I have another mystery to solve about myself. What was in the note? I already know why Barry Manilow. My best friend that was murdered later gave me her double best of Barry albums before I moved away when I was 14. Christmas over the last ten years has very much become about superheroes, we are inundated with merch and entertainment on all sides. The beautiful house growing larger and more detailed was actually all in my head. More and more people arriving is me connecting, while I hide out in a bathroom. Click that. It's very pertinent. As for the shower part, that's baptismal, like washing off the old and putting on the new. Cleaning off. Refreshing ourselves. Maybe it's time I faced this.

I've still never reconnected to that friend. I've not reconnected to a lot of people in my past, but that particular friend had a very strong impact on me. You guys know how I feel like I'm walking through people's minds when I find their artwork somewhere. She takes photographs. I've seen all the public ones. If she reads my blogs at all, and I know she did in the past, then maybe she'll find this post and feel a little hug in her mind. I wasn't able to be what she needed when she was here, but I understand now. And that is the way our lives work, isn't it?

She was one of the very rare few who knew me in real life.






:edit: nearly 6 hours later- I burned 4 1/2 years' worth of correspondence between my best friend from school and I after I heard she was murdered. Clearly that is a horrible regret I live with, the note I can never seem to read in so many of my dreams. THIS TIME- the. words. got. all. over. me. That just screamed through my brain just now. The words are IN ME. I was handed a note and the words got all over me.

I'm not in the mood for a psychotic break right now, so I'm going with this is all normal and it's cool because I'm going to write a whole bunch of words this year that are totally going to vindicate that sad ritualistic grief burn.
Creating Rituals to Move Through Grief

emotional consorts

click to Get Peanutized

I've been thinking for a long time about how social media has created new ways to connect that no longer fall into traditional roles. I've been on the internet since 1994 and have seen it all in so many varieties of ways that I'm convinced traditional roles in societal norms in developing civilizations over tens of thousands of years catered to the purpose of crowd control, when all else is brushed away from the archaeological bones of our anthropological history as a human race.

I remember my mom being on the phone quite a bit on some days when I was a kid. We shared a party line with several neighboring houses, about ten miles out of town along a rural highway. Back then we didn't know anything about depression and how connecting helps people get through rough days. Telephones were probably a godsend to her on some days, but none of us really understood the need. Our world was pretty black and white back then.

I was in the 9th grade when we moved to another state. My best friend and I snail mailed each other faithfully 3 times a week for a little over 4 years. I'm not exaggerating that at all. I had a huge box full of letters that documented her half of our unending conversation, and when that conversation ended, I was so lost that I completely shut down emotionally. It took me years to understand why that particular friendship was so deep.

In the mid 90s I jumped into the email trend, which was basically a lot like twitter in slo-mo, and wound up in fan groups and forums quickly after that. I had never had so much connection in my whole life. I cannonballed with so much gusto into connecting all over the place that I irritated a few people with my splashing, but I loved every minute of it. I didn't learn how to emotionally connect, though, until real faces started showing up with all that connecting. I had no idea what to even do with that, but I learned very quickly that's when it starts to hurt. It took more years to figure that part out. I had to learn to be more careful and play nice, and I'm the first to admit that my idea of careful and nice back then were not careful and nice.

I ran into a wall one year that disconnected my whole world, and everything felt like the rubble in the wake of the Nothing in Neverending Story. Several horrible years of rubble went by before I decided to give up and walk away. I was on the verge of deleting the very last of the rubble when Something Happened and shook me awake in seconds. From that moment I have intensely interrogated myself and studied how to get what I want.

I made a Plan and got back into the internet, learning to swim all over again, trying new ways of connecting. People are real, and I need people. I've spent most of my life so alone inside of myself. I have felt several times like if I didn't find a way to connect to my own humanity I would wilt and die inside. I cannot connect if I'm alone.

Part of my motivation was unclear at first. I had to keep reaching deeper and deeper inside myself, pulling out ripped up shreds of cast off emotions I never dealt with. My survival skills were a lot like the Walking Dead, shoot first and walk away, or just go another direction and disappear so no one can find me. I've done that both in real life and on internet. I am really good at knowing how to just go away. Part of my intense self questioning vomited up a very ugly self righteous gloater that didn't have a clue how to care about other people (my narcissism diagnosis, guys), an emotionally distant loner buried deep in obsessions (my autism diagnosis), a sad cynic who refused to believe happiness was nothing more than a lie invented by social structure controlling people (severe depression), a tiny child terrified of monsters and shadows and water and death (anxiety and dissociative disorders), and an overlord squeezing all of that together into a tightly controlled survival unit that blew apart after a string of viral illnesses affected my brain.

I watched everything about me fall apart as I raced time to keep dissecting, keep laying it all out in autopsy, keep looking for all the pieces I need to make all of this functional again, because without a coherent goal, 'I' simply have no meaning. My soul is a tattered shred on a crusty plain in a very long night. There is nothing else laying around inside myself that I am able to see that gives any part of me a tic mark in a box that doesn't say 'FAIL'.

Except to tell the stories.

There is redemption in honesty. I think that is inside all of us. Humanity is a story. We are all stories.

HEAR and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild--as wild as wild could be--and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.

That paragraph clicks back to source.

I need each of my people in each of their individual places. I can no longer slot people into categories like a tackle or embroidery box. Each person I connect to is unique to me and in their very own slot in my mind. Each slot has its own kind of personal reason we are connected, and I will never be able to go back to the traditional slotting of genders and roles and whatever else people get labeled with. Each and every person I've ever met seems to have grown into their own thing inside of me while I have taken myself apart, and as I put myself back together I can see now that the only way any of me goes all back together is by intersecting the connecting lines of other people with myself. I still feel all the same feelings about each person now that I did years (or days) ago when we last connected, and those feelings never change, even though I keep changing. Each person I have encountered has helped create who I am now, and I could never go forward as a soul being severed from that.

One of the things I've learned over time is that no one person can hold all my feelings. I am a wildly oscillating passion of obsessions with very little natural social intuition, so when my emotions, whatever they may be, blow up into roller coaster rides, the only way to survive them is to spread myself across as many friends as possible as quickly as I can before one unlucky person gets yanked into the roller coaster with me. I'm afraid I'm only just lately over the last few months becoming cognizant of this, so apologies to a few people who've been dragged in front of the bus with me, and especially one nobody really knows about who has actually been surviving that in real time.

I am part of what I now privately think of as a small tribe of emotional consorts. I can see now that the one person I needed and pulled into that crazy upside down fling needs to reach out and balance with others who need to know what's going on for the support system to work. I can be very selfish when I'm stuck in my tunnel vision, but to get what I need the most, I need that entire support system in place. I'm still getting used to this idea.

This is all new to me, but I think it's what I've been missing and needing all my life. I just never knew how to be part of a little group of close knit friends. It's exhilarating. And I think that's how it's supposed to be. It's not about rigid roles in labeled slots, and I don't think it ever has been. Psychological health in homo sapiens sapiens is about the connect/disconnect. Before there were societal norms, there were little groups interacting without labels, without rules about roles. Maybe aspienado kicking at the cart all these years was simply about persisting in my quest to find other brains that mine can fit with, without all the junk in the way. Like the first friend I faithfully wrote letters with 3 times a week for 4 years. She was popular and had lots of friends, and she was my only. She incorporated me, the others moved over, and I dismissed them a bit (I accepted and talked to each of them in school, just never thought of them as *my* friends), but maybe it's time to finish growing up. I run with a pack now, and we take turns stepping aside for each other. I got that a bit wrong on the medias, but I think I'm kind of getting it right now in the background. I sure hope so.

a sprinkling of brain things

I came out a little over a year ago in this post with my diagnoses on my disability papers. I didn't link them to anything, but I'm doing that now. Each one will click to an explanation or article.

• 2007- Axis I clinical disorders of adjustment disorder with anxiety, axis II deferred but with narcissistic feature, axis V GAF of 60.
• 2008- depressed mood with congruent affect, Asperger's, GAF of 50.

My psychiatrist would like a harder diagnosis since I've progressed into dissociation issues with my psychologist, which I've basically lived with my entire life but never talked about. He asked for it last winter, and my psychologist said not yet because I was up and down dealing with pain med adjustment problems, and he said that could affect the testing and the diagnosis would be permanent. My psychiatrist reminded me again lately that he'd like that done, and now that I'm more evened out with the pain med situation and another successful set of physical therapy visits, I guess I'll see what my psychologist says.

There are a number of brain things sprinkled throughout my family. On my mom's side are Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, depression, Munchausen by proxy, OCD, and personality disorder. On my dad's side is a strong inclination to autism spectrum.

I am of the opinion that anyone on the planet could be diagnosed with some level of mental illness under the right (or wrong) circumstances. I knew I was having problems as far back as high school, and I walked into MMPI testing of my own volition in college and apparently passed just fine. Years later I asked my primary care doctor to refer me to a psychologist after I learned about Asperger's. Anything mentioned in between to family or friends was mentioned back as me being a hypochondriac just wanting attention, to which I replied I actually dislike attention anyway, so to purposely seek out negative attention seems a bit stretchy, especially since I'd been corporeally punished and lectured at length throughout my childhood and never got enough positive benefit from that to want to seek out more. Well, I didn't say it like that, but you know what I mean.

I have never been hauled in for evaluation. I have never caused disturbances that required interventions. I have never self harmed (typically, visibly) or harmed others (in ways that would get me caught). I was rigidly raised to obey, behave, and don't be embarrassing. I took longer than most kids to catch on, but because of that, I learned to self monitor and avoid unwitting consequences.

I have developed the opinion that beating, humiliating, and scaring children into submission is a very big mistake, but I can see how mentally ill people living in dysfunctional families manage to survive in society that way. Being raised to have too much pride to wind up in jail was a powerful motivator for me, although that was never said in so many words. I actually turned down a lucrative offer based on the fact that I'd eventually wind up in jail, because I personally detest being confined and told what to do. I didn't choose correctly on moral principle or because I might lose custody of my child over it, no, I chose correctly because I had a deterrent I didn't want to tolerate. I was smart enough to at least avoid that by walking away from the offer (which was actually a dangerous thing to do, and I knew it, but I had such a flippant attitude back then that I didn't care).

I'm old and wise now, like Gandalf. I see people all around me who are like me but toe the lines so their lives don't get stupid. They stick to rules and reasons for why they have those rules. I personally think most of the rules are rubbish because the reasons are even more rubbish, but whatever works, right? The goal is to function successfully enough to survive, not win a logic debate. It's easy to see how not toeing the line can go all bad real fast, and that implies stupidity, and many of us would rather not be caught being that stupid.

I've noticed that very few people have actual moral principles, and even when they do they betray them without an eye blink if it serves their momentary purposes. Human mental health is relatively new on the long term scale of human development, and survival traits often include the more cunning virtues, like being able to lie and cheat well, learning when to fake or steal without being caught, jumping into opportunities without sharing them, and more. Part of human intelligence is cunning, and cunning isn't necessarily emotionally healthy.

I think neurodiversity is in it's infancy, and I really hope it doesn't go through a sweeping genocide because of 'mental illness'. It's possible that some level of mental illness might actually be a positive survival trait for some people. For instance, my narcissistic attitude as a child about other people being stupid kept me from self destructing into self deprecation and the nasty consequences of self harm, corroding addictions, and suicide, as per discussion with my psychologist. It's true that some people benefit from help with tweaking brain chemicals, but it's also true that some of our greatest art, literature, and science leaps were borne in mentally ill brains.

I am not ashamed of a single one of my diagnoses. I didn't even know I was this much of a mess until I sought out help for a very real personal problem that bothered me very badly. I wanted a friend. A real friend, a friend who would accept me and respect me and care that I walk this earth and not just toy with me or use me. Real life isn't like television for most of us. Most of us feel lonely a lot more than TV says we should. Most of us don't have laugh tracks following us around like we're so cute even when we're dumb. Most of us live like facepalm cliffhangers that never get resolved because the show got cancelled.

Most of us remain undiagnosed.

Side story to make a point. @bonenado has shingles. He is dealing with a level of pain I've been living with for years. He has suddenly taken an interest in a little research, so I sent him a link with a list of shingles symptoms. I have been living with every one of those symptoms for years, minus the rash. I am not afraid of shingles. That doesn't mean I ever want them or that I would blow them off if I got them, but it means I'm a seasoned veteran with experiencing nerve pain and therefore don't feel that tingle of fear around the word shingles.

The idea of being mentally ill doesn't frighten or upset me. I have apparently been living with all of this for a very long time without knowing there were names for it. My life has gotten better and even easier since I found out about them. I was struggling so hard for years with why is it so hard for me to be nice. I really did try, and everywhere I went, one hour into whatever and I was in defcon migraine level hate and badly needing escape. Why? Once I found out it's because my senses are so easily overwhelmed and that my natural coping mechanisms are faulty, I stopped being so hard on myself. All I have to do is simply remove myself from a situation before it gets overwhelmingly ugly for me, and people all around think that I'm nice.

Learning to live with mental illnesses is like learning to live with chronic illnesses. You develop rhythms and lifestyles that help you stay balanced and learn to navigate the disruptions that upset that balance. I happen to need a lot of quiet time in order to cope well, and when that becomes impossible, I have fallback modes I can go into to focus my way through until I can reach a place of quiet. A lot of it is about preplanning for sensory overload, which triggers all kinds of personality issues when I don't stay smart about how I want my day to go.

It's not a piece of cake. I live with both mental and chronic illnesses. Sometimes it's really hard to get through life sucks, but sometimes everything goes all wrong and I'm fine with it. The most important thing about each moment is keep moving. Keep breathing, keep minecrafting, keep doing my laundry, keep checking on people I love, keep keeping. Enjoy the little things, treasure the moments, love all the nouns (people, places, and things).

I don't know if this will help anyone, but I believe honesty and transparency are becoming even more rare and precious in this super socially saturated world, and the more we just say our stuff, the more we'll not feel alone.

💟

my life as a dangling participle

 Had to make that.

A question comes up once in awhile about Pinky blog that basically asks- Just how much of an egocentric narcissist are you?

I will asplain. (I mention these things sometimes, but they are scattered, so here we go all in one place.)

When I committed to a public personal blog (key word being personal), I had a good long think first. Do I really want to do this? How do I do this? I have a very public history in various places, and deeply private stuff going on all the time with a number of people. If I'm not careful, I'll wind up like Vance Major and create exponentially escalating gossip to the point where followers are duking it out all over comments. He keeps posting on facebook that he stands up for what he believes while simultaneously inciting hater rabble back against his own haters. True, he's a different sort of interesting cream rising to a vague kind of cool top in facebook blogging, but he's making loads of enemies doing it, and his followers are there as much for the train wrecks he creates as anything. I've already been through that grind. The last thing I want is my personal blog becoming a black hole kind of a drag with an event horizon of followers. No offense to Vance, he's becoming a power player in his own right and he actually is a really cool and sweet guy.

Aspienado doesn't tolerate attention very well. I learned that back in my Bluejacky days. I am my most comfortable public blogging with zero comments. I have no problem whatsoever with no one ever cheering me on, although I deeply appreciate the lurkers brave enough to make private contact about something real. And I don't mean angsty real, I mean real. They can see what I'm doing and where I'm going with this.

Committing to a public personal blog requires a little more honesty with myself than committing to a themed blog. Am I going to keep a certain upbeat tempo? Am I going to dump my day? What is the point of a personal blog, anyway? Why make one if I'm going to hide some of my stuff? How do I be honest if I'm still wearing a mask for public? Lotta fine lines to cross, lotta feelings I can hurt, so defining 'public personal blog' was a big deal.

Number one, it has to be about me. It's my blog, not someone else's. The minute I drag junk about other people into my blog, it becomes about them. This is aspienado handling the day to day hard living stuff while trying to get a book written. This is not aspienado venting and spewing and opinionating. I tried that on Bluejacky, and while it got a bit of attention, it wasn't the sort of attention I felt comfortable with. It was great for gaining interaction experience and learning what kind of readership lurks around my stuff, but in the long run, it was self destructive. So the really big question is- how do I handle my negativity publicly? Because if I'm being truly honest, I'm trying to retrain a very negative personality.

I've got material in private that would outsell sitcoms. I read some of my old stuff back to Scott and he says it's better than Everybody Loves Raymond. But is that what I want? To tell other people's stories from my point of view? It wouldn't be my blog then, would it? (But they'll make great books someday...)

I've had these convos with psyche guy, about the egocentric narcissism of public blogging, and here's what I say. I was born into a religious family that didn't believe in drawing attention to ourselves (that is vanity), or making big deals about their children (we don't boast or say we are proud of each other or make a big deal about someone being pretty), or stepping into spotlights (service to others above all things), or even admitting we need help (we daren't show that our faith is slipping, plus any kind of medical or psychological help is government control and brainwashing), you get the point. I grew up in an extremely rigid belief system that doesn't allow for differences or change, castigates new ideas and enthusiasm, and allows all members to fade into group backgrounds because individuals are no more important than other individuals (unless they are male or an authority figure). I grew up severely repressed and very angry. I rebelled and questioned until I was an embarrassment everywhere we went, and my collective family was not kind trying to reinforce stricter behaviors in me.

That's kind of all changing now as generations are changing as the times change, but I grew up on the apex of that change. I sit on a fence between two very different generations. I am part of the culture that started redefining the global system versus the local system.

For years I've watched other bloggers struggle with how to write their stuff. Some repeat current topics (political and religious opinionating), some jump on bandwagons (mommy blogging, entertainment reporting, pinterest...), some wax poetic or artsy (masks), some dump feelings. Whatever. I've struggled myself. How do I talk about my stuff when I affect other real people with real lives? Sometimes when I tell a story, someone a thousand miles away or on the other side of the globe watches every single day for what I'll say next because they know I'm talking about someone they know in real life (or themselves). How do I share my stuff without embarrassing or angering or hurting other people?

The only answer is that my blog has to be about me. Not them. No names. Some readers figure out certain parts, yes. Other readers are glued thinking more reveals are coming (they're right), but I'll never name names. I'll never point at anyone anywhere and do to them what has been done very publicly to me in the past.

Several people privately push me to 'name and shame'. Ok, how about I name all the names and shame all the shames? You have no idea what aspienado will say. I was raised (and beaten) by the most judgmental people on this earth. I still have all that pent up anger swallowing my soul. Do you really want me blackening your skies with my negativity? I can't live like that. I cannot heal heart, soul, mind, and body while I'm focusing on orchestrating a cheering section for execution festivals. I really don't know how Vance handles that. My depression won't allow me to heap coals without burning holes in myself doing it.

Besides, to give you an example, I love my mother. I don't want the world hating her. I don't want my family feeling disgusted or angry with me for telling stories on her. I want the world to understand and empathize that it was hard for her. I don't want to throw her to the raving wolves spewing hatred on people they don't take the time to get to know and understand. What in the world is my sociology degree any good for if I can't learn to see my mother's perspective? We were both miserable growing up. It's ok to say that. It doesn't mean we don't love people or that life was horrible all the time. It's just honesty.

Pinky is finding a way to be honest without sugar coating or train wrecking. I'm oscillating between taking masks off and blowing up more bridges. I want to be genuine without hurting anyone. I need to be real without inflicting pain on people I hold dear.

Part of the egocentrism is me learning to consolidate myself into a psychologically healthy person. But the narcissism is a whole different animal.

Narcissism is a necessary ingredient in being public. There are all kinds of public jobs, but maybe the easiest to understand is actors. Actors must be narcissistic to sell themselves and the products they represent. They voluntarily become the faces that take the brunt of the entertainment industry's roller coaster ups and downs, everything from the fawning to the egging. Before I committed to being a public person, I had to make some decisions about how I would handle this or that happening so that I could remain public without alienating readers, followers, lurkers, and family. It's hard finding that kind of balance when you can't really step off and hide once you've put stuff out there. I have cringeworthy days where I can't believe I hit the 'publish' button and reel away into anxiety attacks no one ever sees, shutting down the tech for hours and keeping myself busy doing chores around the house or running errands. You know what? That's a good thing. Some people just spill without remorse and very little thought to consequences. Others live in a continual dread of 'what if' and never spill at all. I hope I'm learning to spill gracefully. I'm practicing on you guys.

I'm sure we all imagine a glory day where we're cool and the world loves us, but then we come back to reality and go on with our ho hum lives, thinking they're all pipedreams. Or we imagine stepping out and everything going all wrong and never being able to show our faces again. My biggest nightmare is winding up on Oprah and being publicly humiliated for not naming and shaming, and therefore not being able to say I wrote a legitimate autobiography. (I imagine aspienado and Oprah being in the same room is a paradox that will explode the world.) Any thought of actually talking in public about myself to anybody is a nightmare. I can do it, yes, but I've been practicing for years with a psychologist. Before I started talking to him, I talked to no one about all my stuff. Not even my own husband. If I was an egocentric narcissist before I became a public person, it was more about me being right in an argument about something around the house, but outside my home I'm more the type that pulls levers behind the curtains. I push other people into spotlights. I manipulated vortices and dangled the participles for years without people knowing it was me.

Some of you are asking, "What about Vance? Didn't you just name him?" Quite right. I actually like Vance, and have even told him he inspired me to be more. I love his enthusiasm and tenacity, and especially his honesty. I don't care for some of this methods, but I can't fault them because it's not my stuff and he's doing just fine, even becoming somewhat of a star in his own right. I think that's really cool. I love watching people become and grow and inspire. He's been an inspiration to many, and I respect him for that.

I'm just saying I'm not going to throw people I care about to the wolves just because they disagree with me and worry for me and fear for my safety and my soul. I know it's going to be hard on some of them if I do break out and wind up publicly discussing real life beyond this blog. I'm going to do my best to be as respectful as possible of their beliefs and methods because I actually do have a degree saying I'm capable of being professional about how groups and individuals in those groups affect one another. I'm egocentric enough to use myself as an example in a discussion and narcissistic enough to believe what I'm doing is right and will be good for other people.

I have some ideas. I don't want to whisper them from behind a curtain and hope a few books sell. I want to stand out like a sore thumb and draw all the attention I can to the kinds of ideas that I hope help change our future as a world people to something better. We're trying. It's hard embracing change and accepting differences, and some are dragging into the future kicking and screaming. I understand those people because I come from them, but I don't agree with them.

Aspienado has been learning how to say the right words. Pinky has been learning how to share those words the right way. All the fragments need to come together into a beautiful new sentence that makes a beautiful new paragraph. There's a new way to draw lines, not in sand, not around us in salt, not in fences and border patrols. (I have worldwide readers, please do not mistake this for sidetaking in an American argument.)

When lines are crossed they turn into Ts. When a dot shows up it creates an I. While old schoolers fuss on facebook over whether schools should continue enforcing the learning of old fashioned cursive in the curriculum, PinkyBluejacky is creating a new cursive that joins all the things into a big new sentence.

Please excuse my sense of humor if you are new to me.

egocentric narcissist

This post is probably a carry over from self consumed egomaniac, and as I'm setting up testing Klout scheduling again on confidence for #archiveday tomorrow, out of the blue I started noticing none of these things have the same tags to follow a thought. Major doi time. I got a kick out of running into this because I wasn't tagged.

pic clicks to source
click here for post link

It's weird to explain or describe this to people who don't experience it, but I'm actually in the middle of one of my destroy all the things and hide phase, and out of sheer stubborn masochism I'm shoving my face in the monitor and making myself type stuff. My mind keeps wandering off. Found another cool wallpaper site. Click these to go.

 

Anyway, the dichotomy of depression and narcissism is a kind of hilarious existential horror, one which I no longer blunt with alcohol, as I'm musing after scheduling another #archiveday post with Klout, hugging is weird and that's really too bad when people need it the most. I was a really fun alcoholic. Everybody loved me. And I was devious. And wound up in really bad places. With bad people. Who do bad things. But I digress.

super cool site, go see it

I think the point I'm wandering toward is that depression and narcissism are opposite ends of the same thing- lies. Both tell lies in the existential mirror. Both are like funhouse mirrors in the mind.

Why Narcissism Is a Profoundly Misunderstood Psychological Disorder

When I can't believe in myself, I can BELIEVE IN MYSELF. I have an edge. I can be so utterly blind to feeling stupid that I wind up charging up the hill and leading miscreants on my crazy quests. This goes way back to my aspienado childhood and is probably how I survived excessive abuses fairly intact and, oddly, emotionally healthy. I was able to balance the depression with the narcissism. The more I pull together for print, the more I realize how thin the line I walked really was. I crossed a chasm on a high wire without a safety net. I made it to the other side.

I'm looking back now and wondering if I can help other people do the same thing. This blog is me practicing.