Am I a secret genius? The answer is probably 'yes.'

I struggle with anxiety and depression and a sinister form of ADHD which only appeared after the other two beasts had been beaten into a sort of submission. It's no great secret, really, and while I don't recall if I've mentioned this specifically in past updates, I think it's pretty obvious from the way I write.

For the most part, I acknowledge and understand that, and I try to reign myself in when I begin to go off of the deep end. But there are other times, times when I begin to obsess over a problem - or a potential problem, as the case usually is - and there's... there's nothing I can do about it. It's coming down the highway like a spastic caravan and I am powerless to stop it and the people who can stop it are drunk and high and oblivious to the danger and SMASH it's all over. I'm left standing on the sidelines, stooping to pick up the smoking wreckage the best I can while I drag along a leg which is all but useless now that it has eighteen pieces of shrapnel embedded into the bone.

It used to be easy for me to write this off as a manifestation of my ever-present anxiety and tendency towards pessimistic outcomes. The thing is, when I do talk to others about these situations, they agree with me! They agree with analyses and predictions. They just think I let it get to me too much.

Sometimes I have to talk to people uninvolved in whatever situation is going on to make sure I'm not crazy. Because sometimes.... sometimes you have to make sure you're not crazy. I know I have to, constantly. You raise a hypothetical and you give enough oblique facts to let the person make a somewhat-rational conclusion. Or you talk to someone who's close enough to the situation to see all the moving pieces but far enough away - eternally unlike myself - to be clear of the blast when it occurs. Then the other person agrees with you, as long as the 'you' in this case is actually me.

But they always give the same advice: don't let it affect you so much. It doesn't really involve you, don't let it get to you, try to just forget about it. You've done your best to minimize the damage from the impact and resulting multiple explosions, try to be content with that. They do understand why I can't do that, bless their hearts, but in a very general way.

I'll tell you the truth, reader: I think I might be a secret genius. Because - and I swear this is true - sometimes it seems like no one else can see the writing on the wall except me. Which, y'know, is insane, because it's so very clear, and at first blush I am not that intelligent. Yet here we are. When this happened when I was younger, I kept my mouth shut; I assumed that the adults knew what was going on and understood something I did not. It took several large disasters for me to realize that, no, they don't understand something I don't. They don't even understand a few things I do. With that realization came no power, however, and I was still born away on a mudslide of others' choreographed mistakes. Slippin' and slidin' all over creation.

Now, I'm a little older. Slightly wiser (?) and definitely slower, in absolutely every way. But I'm still running into the same old thing. I'm still seeing collisions before they appear. The left knee tweaks and the right eye twitches: a storm's on the way, an it's going to be a bad one. Those who know me, believe me. Those who don't, don't, and I pull and drag at their clothing and shout doomsday predictions to closed ears and vacant homes. They're standing in the fields, hands shading their eyes as they look out toward the sun, blind to the winds bullying them and the storm clouds above their shadows on the ground.

I don't know why I care so much. I try not to care so much. When I fail, I do my best. That should be good enough for me. But it doesn't prevent the tragedy, ever. So it isn't.

The Little Man (or Woman)

I've been feeling better lately. Mentally, I mean. And physically, too, I guess, since I'm just getting over another Illness (always the same thing for the same duration). Mentally is the most important, though, and without going into much detail about it I'll just say that my head hasn't really been screwed on straight for the past two weeks or so.

Which is fine; we all have little breaks like that. Things can send us into a loop of regret, confusion, and self-flagellation. But what I found is it also leads to a lot of introspection, and self-evaluation, and if you can control that - and medication helps, absolutely - then you may come out of it a more balanced, mentally sound individual. I like to think that's what happened to me.

Of course that might be the crazy talking, though I haven't yet taken to peeling shrimp in my bathtub to prepare for the promised dolphin plague. And it may be short-lived; it's hard to know. I would like to send out a beam of good-vibes to my friends and family, most of whom have been very supportive during this ordeal. No, I don't really believe in beams or good-vibes or whatever battiness really positive people say, but hey, it's a way to express yourself when you can't think of anything else to say. So, again, thanks.

In the past two weeks I've really dug down deep to understand what's important to me. Strangely enough, the answer has been people. A surprise to be sure, as I'm not the biggest fan of people in general, and I tend to value my alone time extremely highly. I know how to make friends though - and keep friends, if I may say - and I'd like to think that I'm a pretty good friend in return, outside of my inability to drive and general pathetic state. When I say 'people,' I'm not talking about in general, because - like I said - I think most people are pretty garbage and can't stand to be around many various types of human being. But certain people - and I think they know who they are - I've come to care for deeply, in a variety of different ways.

Let me fill you in on a secret you likely already know: caring about people suuuuuuucks. It sucks! It leads to insecurity and jealousy and fear and embarrassment and weird bizarro-situations where you want to help someone but you can't. Or you want to listen to someone but you won't. Or - God forbid - you want to repay someone for all they've done, but they still won't let you in. These are things that happen with people you care about no matter how long you've cared about them - a week, a month, a year, ten years, your whole life - and every time it happens it makes that little man (or woman) inside squirm and whimper. Perhaps it's just a little whimper, or a small shriek in the darkness, but that darkness is your mind and it is big and cavernous and reverberates. The acoustics there... you don't even know.

I got to a place where I couldn't decide whether I could stand the noise anymore. Because it is easier - it is so much easier - to wall up that part of the cavern. Let the little man (or woman) scream himself hoarse in the black. So that's what I did, because I'm always a fan of the easy way out - even if the easy way out seems hard, because the hard way out is a million times worse. I know others who have made the same choice. I know people who are making that choice every day.

The problem, which is something that age has revealed to me in all of its twisted malformed glory, is that the shrieking doesn't stop. The cries and the throes don't cease, and in that small space they grow larger and larger until they start forming cracks in the wall. So you can build another wall; that's what I did. And another, and another, and another after that. Again, even this rebuilding is far easier than letting it loose, so you keep the little man (or woman), who at this point seems more like a monster than anything else, in its cave. It's a bit of work, but it's doable.

But the more you rebuild the wall, the more space the little monster gets. One day you notice that nice, quiet dark that you've valued for so long - let's say over ten years, why not - is much, much smaller. And it's no longer a comforting darkness, but a frightening one; you become trapped in your own mind; always wary of the next crack in the wall, always counting the remaining space. It can consume you, until you don't have energy left for anything else but repairs and measurements and worry.

And sometimes you decide to let the monster out, and sometimes it forces its way out, spitting on your best intentions to keep it restrained. It was a bit of both for me, this past year, and I can tell you truthfully that the tears in the wall from my side - the side that was just me sitting huddled in the dark - were much less painful than the fractures caused by the monster. Which, if nothing else, I think, is a good thing to learn.

Even now I'm not sure how I feel about the monster getting out. Actually, let me go back to using man (or woman); because when I met that part of myself again, I saw that it was not the monster I feared it was. I hadn't seen it in a very, very long time, and had convinced myself that it really was a monster. Why else would I have walled it up? Why else would it sound so horrible and cause such pain?

The answer is that the little man (or woman) is caring, and vulnerability, and legitimate concern for others. And every time he was hurt, I was hurt, and he and I were one and the same. But if you split him (or her) off and place him alone and wall him up, then he's not you anymore. But you're really not you anymore either. And I know this sounds really cliche and, well, probably stupid, but it's the truth. I was perfectly pleased with who I became - sans little man - and didn't really want him back. Like I said before, I had hit the wall a few times with a hammer, but I never committed to absolute demolition. Because those swings were painful.

So I still am not sure how to feel. It's all a little too new, and I am not a very smart man. The little man - manster? - is free now, and he's making up for lost time. I feel a lot of things that I didn't before. Sometimes I hate him for it, because a lot of what I feel is pain. Other times, though, I think maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it's good to be able to legitimately care, and feel, and not be constantly surrounded 24/7 by a shield of irony and sarcasm and bitterness. Or maybe the little man set free will cause me to fail out of school, or do something incredibly stupid and/or reckless, and regret not binding him tighter.

I really have no idea, and that is the absolute truth. It's not as safe with him running amok in the darkness now. I'm not as safe. But I also have a lot more room to think, and that has to be worth some pain.