07/24/2015

  The mood is a little unstable.

  It was very nice out at lunchtime today so I was out in the smoking area (vaping) with my lawn chair sitting in the shade.

  Tomorrow is the post-payday economic stimulus trip with Nice Wendy. I babble on over the course of two weeks about what I’d like to go shopping for, she puts it in her phone because I have the laser-sharp focus of an eight year old and will pretty much forget about everything long before the shopping trip comes up.

  Top of the list is a new wireless keyboard for my PC that I’ve really been looking forward to getting.

  On the way out I walked past a beat up, rusted, late 1980’s Mercury Cougar, sitting in CGA’s parking lot (behind the welfare office). A chap is sitting in the driver’s seat talking on the phone.

 At some point he had gotten out of the car and walked up to the front of the welfare office. I didn’t see this or I would have warned him off. It’s a walk of about 100 yards.

  The second he’s out of sight, the parking-lot vultures swoop in and slap a boot on his car for parking in the CGA lot. There are signs but no one ever reads them. The chap came back not two minutes later and found out he’d been booted. He calls the number on the sticker and the vultures return to inform him it will cost 75 bucks to get the boot off.

  He says he hasn’t got 75 bucks. He’s understandably upset. As he’s yelling at the vultures his wife, in a cast from her ankle to her hip and on crutches, hobbles down to the car from the front of the welfare office; remember this is a very long walk. She finds out about the boot. She hasn’t got 75 bucks either.

 The wife is in tears. The guy is yelling invective at the vultures. I could hear is voice starting to break. He asked what they should do. The vultures inform him the car will be towed to impound. That will cost an additional 150 bucks to get it back.

  So I got up, walked over, and paid the fee.

  No one asked me to. I just couldn’t sit there and watch this and do nothing. The guy swore he’d come back to repay me. I don’t expect him to. I didn’t expect him to when I offered to pay. That wasn’t the reason for doing it.

  The reason for doing it was empathy.

  A shattered heart can still feel.

  And this seemed a great deal more important than a wireless keyboard.

  Thanks for listening

07/25/2015

  The mood is about the same as yesterday. Moving in directions that trouble me.

  I'm feeling a need to get things out in the open. To try to deal with them.

  When I started doing this my intention was to work out everything that is tangled up inside me. For years I'd simply kept everything to myself. This didn't work out very well.

  So I started in therapy. And medication. All the treatment I'd resisted for years. The Journal is something I came up with myself. And I decided that if I couldn't be honest here then doing this would be pointless.

  So here goes...

  I cut myself again. Eight times. It was about a week and an half ago. Some of you might have noticed that I was wearing long-sleeved shirts in fucking July. That's why. I did put all of this in an entry but I only posted it on The Exchange.

  I put a link on Facebook but I don't think anyone there followed it. The Exchange is my social outlet. It has been for years. There I am called Conspiracy Theory...or CT for short. Everyone that posts there knows about me. They know what I'm like. They know what I've been through. There was a time in my life when , without them, I would have been lost.

  But, again, I'm blathering on.

  I had seen my psychiatrist just a few days after the incident. He didn't think I needed any change in medication but he wanted me to think about why I did this before my session with my therapist. Since they're all in the VA system, what one knows everyone knows.

  So I thought about it.

  It's irrational. It produces no positive effect. So why do it? I did it because I believed I had not been punished enough. That if I did this enough, everything would be okay. That I'd paid the price for what I said.

  During my session with my therapist, we talked about the cutting, and The Journal. And the connection between the two. And the connection between both of those and my mother's suicide...and my brother's. You see, they are connected. They are very different things but they have one common thread.

  They're all being used as weapons.

  Words have power. More power than you can imagine. And like my physical self, I don't know my own strength. I can hone words until they are sharp. I can push or pull emotions. Emotions I don't understand.

  In short, I have no idea what kind of harm I'm doing.

  I'm sorry.

  I've realized that, even though I promised to be honest, I also have to be careful. What I write can devastate just easily as any physical action. I had no idea. It wasn't meant to hurt. I was just expressing my pain. But in doing so I caused harm. Something I would never do. Should never do.

 Honestly, I have do idea what to do now. Can I continue this? Should I continue this?

  I don't know what to do.

  I don't know what else to say.

  Thanks for listening

Many years ago I was getting ready to prepare a meal for a party--finger foods, etc.  I had no idea what or where to start.  I had a couple packages of hot dogs but what to do with them.  I wasn't serving hot dogs.  Ct--I cut those dogs in small bite size pieces, put them in a larg pot and dumped a ton of barbecue sauce and cooked them for hours and hours, adding more and more sauce as it cooked up and a little water to keep everything from burning..  People raved over those dogs and some even asked for the recipe of which there wasn't one.  So Ct--keep on cooking those dogs!

07/26/2015 addendum

 The mood is still quite good.

 My moods tend to change like the wind. Just as sudden and directionless. Yes, a shocking revelation, isn't it? Ordinarily, after experiencing powerful emotion like yesterday, I spend the day closed off. Shut down. Trying to untangle my feelings.

 This, however, has been a very productive day. I got out of bed. Had a shave, shower, and brushed my teeth (yes, this is an achievement). Did the laundry and the dishes. Took out the trash. Wrote the recipe for beanie-weenie.

 I feel good.

 At my last session, I talked with my therapist about The Wendy's. This subject comes up a lot because their importance in my life is off the scale. Anyway, he asked me to show him the keys I was carrying.

 There's one of those stretchy wrist bands with a large ring. There's a key to The Stealth House with a smaller ring of its own. And there's the key to The Thingy...an electronic key...with a small ring of its own.

 My therapist asked me to write about the keys as a metaphor for The Wendy's. So here goes.

 Keys are important. They unlock things. Things that need to be protected. So I chose to think of them as the keys to my heart. Such a key is not something I give away lightly. It is difficult for me to be comfortable around someone. It is nearly impossible for me to love someone.

 But it happened.

 Let me be quite clear. This is a strictly platonic kind of love. People seem to think that just because were are opposite genders, it's a romantic love.

 It isn't. Romantic love is a whole other tangled up mess and a story of its own.

 So, there are two keys to my heart. Given with the understanding that they are sacred. Something to be guarded. Something that gives someone else the power to harm me.

 But there are three locks.

 A key is missing. Just because the key is gone, the lock doesn't go with it. It's still there. It will always be there. Locks are permanent things. They can be damaged but never destroyed. So what do I do with this? I've been turning this over and over again for the past four days and I'm not making much headway.

 I am fortunate, or blessed as my religious friends would say, to still have two other locks with two keys.

 One is the key for transportation. The key most used. The key that gets me out into the world. The key that moves me.

 The other is the key to shelter. A place of safety, security, acceptance whenever it's needed.

 But the missing key, and the third lock?

 Just as important.

 But still a mystery to me.

 Thanks for listening

CT, I haven't been on in a while, but spent today catching up and realized you also have not written in a bit. Hope all is OK. I think of you often and hope you're doing well. I'm venturing back into the counseling/psychiatry system again after kind of throwing my hands up at the whole thing a few years back, and my return is in large part thanks to you. I'm trying to be honest with myself and things are not as stable as they had been, and doing what I've been doing isn't quite enough any more, so I figured help is the next step. We have a lot of the same challenges in life and I feel like when I read your "random thoughts," I end up understanding myself better.

So I really appreciate it... and hope to see more from you soon.