fear

so anyway, sometimes i feel like walking away would be like dying, and sometimes i feel like staying would be like dying. so how could either way be worse? i guess i have become scared of the unknown.

scared of everything. i have a boil or something on my back. maybe a tumour. i feel i should put a winky there, because of course it's just a boil. but it's been there for ages and it's sore.

also, zenita hit me in the right bollock a couple of months ago. she caught me right on the tip. not on purpose, obv. it was sore for a week, then it stopped hurting. but intermittently it is sore, and this week it has been painful enough to be noticeable.

should i see a doctor? what if it's something bad? i just don't want to know. i would not be able to live if i knew i wasn't going to live.

atm that feeling is the only thing that's keeping me alive. i know that sounds dramatic but i have actually stopped living, and i know it. life is so bad that i could almost just not bother.

it's about joy. i can't define what that is; i just know it when i feel it. but i have so little of it these days that i don't know whether it's enough. i have stopped being someone who is basically okay and sometimes has the black dog at his door, and i have become someone who is basically not okay and sometimes doesn't suffer so much.

scared of everything. i see poker as a way out but i'm so scared of failing that i won't take a risk and fail.

it's not rational. i know that it doesn't matter, that i should try and be happy with whatever the outcome is. i know i shouldn't tie so much life capital into something so silly, so small. but i hate not being good at things, and losing would be confirmaton that here is one more thing i cannot do well.

maybe i am also afraid of success, because if i succeed, i have to leave.

i know that because how can i bear this if i have a road out? ever since she decided she didn't want a relationship with me, mrs zen has refused to indulge even in human decency. we get on okay most of the time, because actually, i'm a very decent person at heart, and not so hard to get on with. but she will not "put up with" anything.

put up with! people do all sorts of things that you don't like but you allow it because actually that's just fucking life.

but mrs zen wants a divorce so she doesn't have to do life. i do though. i have to put up with her because i have no cards in this game. if i leave, i lose my kids.

so i have to eat shit.

and it's not going to get better. even when i've fixed this thing, i will have to live with this woman who has an enormous sense of entitlement and no sense of responsibility. do you know how hard that is? to be with someone who feels every hurt keenly but has no idea that they are hurting?

and i have to bite my tongue when i see that she has slipped back from being warm and kind to the children and is again resentful, leading to being unpleasant to them. god, it's horrible to contemplate. she can be very decent but also i see the kids' aping her resentfulness at the intrusion of having to share. we are both bad models. the difference between us is i want to, i try to, change.

i get scared when i see it. zenita hits mrs zen and shouts at her, and i say, why are you doing that? and zenita says, she shouted at me. and i know mrs zen gets ratty with the kids. which is okay. we all do that; it can be tough with three young kids. but i say to zenita, don't blame your behaviour on mummy. you are responsible for your own behaviour. you choose to hit and shout. but i know that i won't have any impact, because mrs zen models that behaviour for the kids. everything she does is someone else's fault. usually mine.

how do you deal with that? mrs zen is a huge block of "indulge me". there's no negotiation. you indulge it or you fuck off. i don't know how you get from there to a healthy relationship. in fact, i know you don't. i know that anything i arrange is just going to be pretending. i have a choice of pretending.

you know, i think mrs zen's whole divorce thing is just another way of saying she doesn't want to have to bother. she doesn't want to work at a relationship. she just wants it on a plate or fuck you, Jack.

***

this is a terrible empty stasis. it doesn't feel like anything. i am so numb that i have to smoke weed every night to stop thinking about how numb i feel. it's like shellshock.

some days, i'm hanging out at five for a smoke. bring on oblivion, i'm thinking. i also think, don't keep reading autistic websites. i'm not autistic. i'm like a small boy trapped in a man's life. that's not autism. it's just the crying need to be helped to be a man.

i am more scared of dying without ever having been a man than i am of anything else.

don't keep reading autistic websites and think that i'm "difficult" because i am damaged in that way. i'm not. i'm a smart, sensitive man stuck in a nightmare of a life. i made it. i don't blame anyone else. that's why it's a nightmare. but it is hard to deal with some of the time, and i'm not damaged or bad because i find it that way.

i am scared of success, i realise. much more than i am of poker. i don't know why; i can't analyse it. i don't know how to begin. am i scared that i can't live up to it? well, who cares about that?

i feel that if i have the options i keep saying i want, i will have to take them, and that's frightening.

***

i am also scared that i will simply take failure badly. that i will lose some money at poker and just give up. and that will feel right but it will be wrong, because i could have just been unlucky, or not mentally right, or almost good enough, and just in need of a bit more work. and it would be hard to know which of those things were true, because in poker it's really hard to know.

and everyone feels like this, i know, and that makes it worse. because i don't want to be everyone. i don't feel like i am.

***

and sometimes i wonder, will tomorrow be the day i wake up and be?

i know, you are asking, why do you think you're not being now? and the answer is so plain and simple for me. if i was being, i would be living without fear. i know what it is like, because i do lots of things without fear, and i'm not afraid of many things people are afraid of.

***

i know i can make it. that is why i am here, talking to myself endlessly, boring myself and anyone fool enough to stumble into it with this blah. blah blah blah blah enough for now.

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:32 pm