Monkey
All the time it's like there's a monkey in my head, going "you are shit you are shit you are shit". It's saying "you are losing because you are shit you won last month because you were lucky you're not unlucky you were lucky". It's saying "no one wants to talk to you you fool they're just polite you are always fucking it up". It's saying "they're playing with you they're fucking with you always trolling you no one really wants to know you". It's saying "that was just to tease you that was just to set you up for hurt you are not worth caring about".***
Yesterday, I was saying something to Mrs Zen about turntaking in conversation and she went off at me. She didn't want to listen. It was just something interesting.
I said, wtf. This is something I studied. This is something I can be interesting about.
She goes, you were just going to whine. Which was not true. But she says, you're like the people in London, you used to say, if you don't like it here, fuck off home.
And I'm like, yes please. YES PLEASE!
And the monkey is going, "you wanted to fix it you wanted this you wanted this shitty life that you can't escape from" and it feels like an avalanche of shit and I can't breathe.
The monkey says over and over, "forget hope forget hope forget hope you are getting what you deserved".
And I am thinking, what the fuck does "deserving" have to do with it? Since when did anyone in this world get what they deserved?
I made some mistakes and now I have to pay for them with bitter unhappiness for the rest of my life. How could I have deserved that?
***
And I am fractured, smashed, with different parts of what I am running the show at different times, one part answering the question before the other has even heard it.
And the monkey is like "YES YES MOTHERFUCKER YOU ARE BROKEN AND NO ONE WANTS YOU no one wants damaged goods". And it seems true that no one wants me to be fixed so that I am healed, just so that they get what they want. And what they want is always so much less than I have to give, or just too different for me ever to be able to do it. And I want to say, do I have no value at all just as I am?
And I don't need the monkey to say a word; I know the answer--I know it deep in me and days like today, I don't know how I am living, because I'm barely living at all.
posted by Dr Zen @ 1:01 pm
24 Comments:
Yesterday, I was saying something to Mrs Zen about turntaking in conversation and she went off at me. She didn't want to listen.
imagine what it's like growing up in an Italian family!
or worse yet, having interesting points to make at a weekly poker game where everyone at the table is shouting at you to shut the fuck up because they're so aggravated that you keep winning.
i oughta record some of the sessions.
they're absolutely hilarious.
V: "stop shuffling the cards!"
moi: "huh?"
V: "you're not allowed to shuffle the cards when you're not the dealer! it was MY turn to deal."
moi: "but i just dealt that last hand and was simply gathering up the cards and shuffling them while you were busy arranging your new winnings into your chip stack."
(my response was unheard by anyone because at the same time):
C: "it's against the rules to shuffle the cards unless it's your deal!"
moi: "C, you just did the same thing last hand while B and V were figuring out the All-In split -- when it was supposed to be *my* deal. [C confesses to it]. so, V, why didn't you complain about C shuffling when it was my deal?"
(again, my response was unheard by anyone except C and V because at the same time):
K: "i think he does it to annoy us! and i'm not going to play anymore if everyone keeps arguing."
moi: "ideally, the more you shuffle the cards the more random the next deal will be. how can anyone possibly object to extra shuffling while the next pending dealer is busy doing something else? especially since wasting time between deals eats up the time between raising the blinds."
(completely unheard yet again by anyone else because my voice is calm and confident and not raised to compete with the other volumes)
V: "you're not allowed to shuffle the cards when you're not the dealer! it was MY turn to deal. when you shuffle the cards you ruin them for me! you know i don't like it."
simultaneously:
C: "let's make a rule!"
[the overlapping yakking briefly stops]
moi: "ok. that's perfectly fine with me. and let's have a penalty, too. if you're not the dealer and you shuffle the cards in any way whatsoever after the hand is played, you have to pay a fine."
K: "no fines! no way."
simultaneously:
C: "um..."
+
V: "oh, no, we're not doing that!"
+
C: "nuh huh. no way!"
+
E, M, R, etc: [some variations of the above]
moi: "we'll make it a hundred dollar fine."
[a sudden blast of unintelligible angry gibberish from almost everyone]
and when the dust settles:
K: "yeah, and try to get it! i'm not paying no fines like that! that's crazy talk."
moi: "no, not a hundred dollars in cash, a hundred dollars in chips."
C (the admitted out-of-turn shuffler): "five dollars in chips."
moi: "five? the lowest blind we play is ten. but if you think a hundred is too much, how about fifty?"
all together:
C: "no more than five."
+
K: "i'm not paying ANY fines, not in cash NOR chips."
+ the original complainer about the alleged shuffling infraction:
V: "i'm not paying any fines either and you can't make me, you don't make the rules here! and stop shuffling when it's not your deal!"
moi (to C): "how about twenty-five?"
C: "five."
moi (to C): "ten. it's our standard game-starting small blind."
C: "five."
K to V: "i can't take all of this noise. if Z doesn't shut up i'm leaving."
+
E: "me too. and it's so wrong to shuffle the cards out of turn."
+
R: "hee hee hee, i'm gonna take a food break."
+
M: "this is all getting too stressful. (blah blah blah blah...)"
K to J: "how come you never say anything?"
J: [silence]
K to J: "seriously. you're always quiet for most of the night. how come you rarely say anything?"
J: [silence]
K pleads for an answer from J while everyone else keeps bickering on and on.
J obliges: "well, i only talk when someone else finishes what they have to say."
I made some mistakes and now I have to pay for them with bitter unhappiness for the rest of my life. How could I have deserved that?
Karma?
BTW: that scene i described above actually happened at last night's poker game.
i forgot to note that K has been threatening to quit coming to the game several times at each game for the last twenty plus weeks -- same goes for E and M.
so when i read your blog article i couldn't resist sharing it with you. sorry for hogging so much space here with that.
it's all so funny that i'm gonna be including it in the new book i'm writing.
thanks for inspiring me to write it up!
Karma doesn't punish mistakes, Gunt. It's much understood. It's not a balance of good and evil either.
Karma Ok Davy you are paying for mistakes in a past life! Most people when you say Karma, they think what goes around comes around, meaning you get what you deserve. Is that clear. you make out you are a victim when in actual fact you are the architect of you own misery and you wallow in it.
And it seems true that no one wants me to be fixed so that I am healed, just so that they get what they want.
Actually Dave people do want you fixed, its not actually pleasant watching you turn yourself inside out, but it is compulsive viewing. Get healed and take it from there do it for yourself no one else. Why do i think self pity is such an important part of who you are what would you do without it? You are the proverbial blind man from birth who refuses the chance to see because he thinks it would be a betrayal of who he is. What is actually is is cowardice.
Karma doesn't mean any such thing. Maybe I'll blog about it some time for you.
Gunt, it should be pretty obvious that people don't get what they deserve. The world isn't and never will be fair. It's only the very privileged, like yourself, who can con themselves that it is.
It's only the very privileged, like yourself.
LOL i Wish.
boots sez:
"And I am thinking, what the fuck does "deserving" have to do with it? Since when did anyone in this world get what they deserved?"
What is "deserving", what is "karma", what is "consequence", what is cause and what is effect?
Suppose the question is not why people do not get what they "deserve", rather how have they come to deserve what they've got?
And you'll look around you at pain and suffering in the world and say nobody could deserve that, and I'll say ask that old preacherman Berkeley and you'll tell me to piss off because it doesn't suit your sense of acceptability that it is not the world which has created us as tiny cogs to live within it rather we who have created the world around us here in this internet of wombs.
It's too complicated for a monkey Zen, and I grow tired from time to time. When I'm tired it's all too much to deal with and everything gets more and more difficult until finally I sleep.
Maybe you're tired, Zen.
Dr Zen:
And I am thinking, what the fuck does "deserving" have to do with it? Since when did anyone in this world get what they deserved?
LOL! Nailed it.
- -
Okay,
Father Luke
leave it to Father Luke to catch the ultimate irony!
leave it to Father Luke to catch the ultimate irony!
Well it beats the shit out of your, "look what a laugh I'm having and how great life is, have faith!" bollocks. Don't get me wrong, I'm as tormented by life as the rest of his readers but my God. Geeing up either so isn't your thing - or you're retarded (I know it's not the latter). I thought Zen was insensitive until I saw you posting comments. Jeezus.
And fwiw, you're no longer invited to my funeral. I've decided not to die.
Zen knows (and probably takes some comfort in knowing) that my life is much worse than his.
i just laugh more about the whole thing.
I've decided not to die.
that's an excellent strategy!
and probably takes some comfort in knowing
In all seriousness... I don't think I have spent more time "with" a single human being, as I have with Zen (no 'zen? human being?' jokes, please) my whole life - as sad as that maybe (is). And I can quite categorically tell you that he would take absolutely no pleasure what-so-ever in your misery, zero. Of all the places you can be on Usenet, that allow you to ditch the act, it would be here.
i know that, but i'm not acting.
everything i've written is true.
anyway, you missed my point.
i wasn't suggesting in any way that Zen is a sadist of some sort.
i was explaining why it was that i felt completely comfortable "gleeing it up" here.
i've got the street creds to give me a free pass to share such stuff.
i'd imagine he'd take comfort in knowing that he's not alone in his highly evolved suffering and that there are others of us out there who are even a bit worse off in that tortured-mind / tortured-situation regard and can just laugh it all off anyway.
oops.
what did you mean by "Geeing up"?
maybe i am a retard.
i'd imagine he'd take comfort in knowing that he's not alone in his highly evolved suffering
You're a betting man? I'd take all your poker winnings without turning a card.
Which is nice because I really do suck at poker.
what did you mean by "Geeing up"?
Sorry, was that a Britism? You had it right anyway.
One of the best descriptions of the monkey in the head comes from Radio Free Albemuth, by Philip K Dick. It's worth reading, even though it's fiction, because it's nice to know that someone else has also heard the monkey, and possibly even heard it worse than you. Or me, for that matter.
I've found no real cure for the Monkey other than to go out on a bike and work myself into a state of near-exhaustion. The monkey feeds on your energy, use it all up, and the monkey shuts up. Simple enough.
You're a betting man?
you betchya'
I'd take all your poker winnings without turning a card.
that's called armed robbery.
Zen will tell you why it would be armed robbery and not just stealing -- employing a squirrel, a peach, Martians, and some peachless dudes hanging out in the Orion belt.
anyway, apparently i need to give up this "being a writer" thinger because you've missed my point yet again.
so let me clarify it further.
i'd imagine he'd take comfort in knowing that he's not alone in his highly evolved suffering and that there are others of us out there who are even a bit worse off in that tortured-mind / tortured-situation regard and can just laugh it all off anyway.
see the words after that last conjunction?
and can just laugh it all off anyway.
ok.
i'm now off to the Unemployment Office to file my claims.
if they only pay out benefits as a percentage of income, i guess i'll at least get a funny story out of the argument i make to all of the Supervisors.
I've found no real cure for the Monkey other than to go out on a bike and work myself into a state of near-exhaustion.
i'd suggest starting a nice garden.
then the Monkey can see the seedlings getting nurtured while you work yourself into a state of near-exhaustion.
obligatory writerly rewrite:
if they only pay out benefits as a percentage of income, i guess i'll at least get a funny story out of the argument i get into with all of the Supervisors.
obligatory writerly rewrite:
I could barely bear the original.
Still - I like your one-man crusade to make Zen look commently popular.
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