schizophrenEEK!

(or, the two wrobs)
What an inauspicious start...invoking the false factoid definition of a famous term. But "multiple personality disorder" or "dissociative identity disorder" are crappy titles. And neither are true either, as the two wrobs have always been integrated. So well in fact, that it's only in middle age that i've pondered the duality.
But it's always been there.
In personality and physicality, there is a duality in me that seems more pronounced than for most. I was once described by someone as the most diplomatic person they'd ever met...and by another, the most tactless. The most easygoing and open-minded...and most stubborn or self-righteous? The most tolerant...and harshest critic?
Somehow, all true.
Being an unimpeachably trustworthy nurturer has always been at the core of my self-image. And often the reality. Several wimyn have made me the first person they've told they were raped. Other people have shared their most troubling secret. I've been trusted, profoundly and humblingly.
Yet others might tell you of an insensitive, creepy, or narcissistic wrob. I've rubbed some the wrong way, because i've always had a minor (or not so minor) savior complex, and have almost no fear of being misunderstood. That's brilliant, yet tragic.
I spent decades chasing radical humility, because i was far too aware of the arrogance lurking in us all. In my case, i might have called it justified arrogance, and we could lose hours debating whether such a thing exists.
To all that, you might respond that many of us are complex, and most of us contradictory.
Agreed.
But still, what the hell am i? College standout kissed by the hottest coed? Teetotaler who had my retainer tossed in a toilet by drunken floormates? On-call back-rubber for every womyn in my dorm (literally hearing my name shouted in summons down the hall, almost every night)? Outcast who had makeup applied to my sleeping face by smirking comrades? High school star of the play? Loner who didn't go to the prom because "he wouldn't have wanted to go with anyone who would have wanted to go with him"? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
That last choice was a bit of a martyrish pose, reflecting both unacknowledged snobbery and my determination to have a womyn whose "hotness" was perhaps unconventional, but indisputable. That's not quite fair to me though - i also sensed that prom was bullshit capitalistic show and tell. And even at that tender age, i had to be subconsciously aware that i'd met no female who was a pea for my offbeat pod (three decades on, same story). But still, wimyn weren't flocking to me as i thought they should, so my subconscious dealt with it in a way that kept my self-worth bulletproof.
Am i simply an embodiment of our culture of psycho-sexual alienation, in which we forever struggle to come to terms with that person in the mirror? There is a disconnect in us all, between the way we see ourselves and the way others do.
All true...yet for me, it feels like there's more to it. More than anyone i know, it feels like a fair response to my life is "What the hell is that guy?"
For instance, i've no idea whether i'm handsome or ugly.
Okay, that's not true. I'm either.
I'm not talking about bad hair or lighting. Some days, i look in the mirror and am struck by model good looks. Other days...as a friend said, "yechhh". I promise, this isn't some manifestation of the crippled self-worth we all share. I had to have my occasional ugliness pointed out, as i'd always seen myself as the most attractive person on the planet. Much of that stemmed from a teenage defense mechanism. I built my emotional walls so high, they took years (decades?) to deconstruct.
But i recently came face-to-face with this changeability, undertaking a six-week music project, recording a new video almost every day, in the same place with the same camera. I received a more profound tutorial in THIS IS YOU than most people ever do. And what i discovered was looks so inconstant, one might almost wonder whether it's the same person.
It leaves me envying all those who are simply one or the other. Attractive. Ugly. Somewhere on that spectrum.
I know, i know, the grass is greener, and being indisputably one quality or the other is its own prison. Yet mine seems the crueler torment...wondering whether my life might have gone in different directions, receiving (or being denied) love or opportunities, simply through random timing. One might think it would all balance out, but i suspect that in the long-term, it's more disadvantageous. I've not had many long-term romances...is this part of the reason?
I truly have no idea.
Personality seems inextricably tied to physicality, as our assessments of others are profoundly bound to how "attractive" they are...or how attractive we think others think they are. We all bullshit ourselves into thinking we're not so shallow.
I truly have to ponder whether a weaker personality would have succumbed to genuine schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder long ago. Some have been quite intimidated by my intelligence or attractiveness - yet i've also had striking feedback in the other direction. I know that if any of us came face to face with total truth...with what everyone we've known has actually thought about us, mental breakdowns would result. Few grasp just how tenuous and fragile our self-images are.
I would love that raw honesty. Even if it contained a thousand gut-punches, and only a few gems of affirmation. I promise you, there are a handful of hopeless crushes from all our pasts, who were pining for us just as much. Life-changers that never happened.
Who am i, we all want to know...we strive to label it, yearning for the comfort of certainty. Am i who i THINK i am? Am i what others think? How will i ever know?
Even for the strongest, this culture provides enough disconnects to keep anyone in perpetual therapy.
We trudge on, constantly trying to get the world to agree with our self-serving self-image.
Who am i?
Who are you?
Who are we??

i, wrobot

People born into a culture of alienation, fear, or repression express their humynity in bizarre ways.
Displacement behaviors, misplaced aggression...compensating for inner pains they're only hazily aware of, if at all. You know the words - commitment-phobe, pathological liar, eating disorder, anger issues, control issues, addictive personality, abuser, energy vampire, suicidal, cutter, anhedonist...and on and on and on...
If a dysfunctional culture's institutions of socialization are strong enough, suppressed trauma can stay deeply buried. Fifty years ago, our cultural institutions were much stronger. The growth of freedom since then is a beautiful thing...but also destabilizing and occasionally terrifying.
Men are still taught to direct their aggression outward, and women inward. Of course, women are becoming more like men. There may be good in that; there certainly is bad.
And me?
When i was young, i would have laughed at the notion that i had any "displacement behaviors". I was the happiest person in the world, and you couldn't have told me otherwise. If you'd suggested that i were afraid or insecure, i'd have laughed. If you'd told me i was touch- or sex-deprived, i might have agreed, but assured you that my day was coming. Ah, the power of positive thinking...or rationalization and denial, for you can make a compelling case that my entire life was one walking displacement behavior. An alienation intimacy-deprived identity crisis gone steroidal, melding seamlessly with a savior complex.
Having long pursued the path of self-awareness, it's rare when any new realization startles me. But yesterday i stepped into a biggie.
I've never told someone they're hurting me.
Not in all contexts, mind you! In less intimate relationships, even family, i've made such declarations. But in romance, this society's most intimate arena, i've never told someone they're hurting me.
Astounding.
Mind you, it's not like i've been disconnected from my pain. In many ways, i've been more in touch than most. But that's on an impersonal level...understanding how as a baby and child, this culture of fear (and circumcision) crippled my capacity to trust. Then, from adolescence, how being unfucked and untouched for months or years will damage anyone irreparably. And finally, how an almost total lack of daily, unconditional communal nurturing turns all of us into hollowed-out caricatures of humyn beings.
I've never told a lover she's hurting me.
The reasons are myriad. My pathologically-happy teenage transformation. Then as a young adult, i began a process of collecting ever-larger perspectives that make one realize how most of the things we all get upset about, are nonsense. I became one of the "strong ones", a rock of reliability. I don't wish to disparage those qualities out of hand; they've made me who i am, and there is good in them. Somewhere along my quixotic path, i also began to embody asimov's First Law of Robotics, the one that prohibits allowing any humyn to come to harm. Not that i imagined myself some sort of robot...but when i read those words, they subconsciously affirmed something in me. That trait melded with my feminism, which longed to make right (or make amends) for the thousands of years of incomprehensibly brutal dehumynization of wimyn, and created in me a very giving attitude in matters of the heart. It made me content, even eager, to take more than my share of sacrifice or hurt. Yet i also became (never by choice) more loner than lothario. My singular ways have pushed me far enough from the mainstream, that i've had only three deeply intimate romances. All of which has contributed to me never...
...tell a lover she's hurting me.
And i know that's not even the right way to say it! It's better to say "I'm hurt when such and such blah blah..." Heck, i'm fairly sure i figured that one out even before it made its way into popular consciousness. But i realized this week that when someone's actions are hurting you, it can feel insincere to deflect the blame off them. Even if you realize that blame isn't appropriate or productive, it still can be HARD to not shout, "You're hurting me!!"
It turns out that i, like everyone else, have spent much of my life as little more than a robot, emotionally. If you're not out in the street once a day, screaming your outrage to the moon or dog or postal carrier, then part of you isn't quite alive.
You're hurting me!
Not you, reader. Like everyone, you're doing your best.
I wish i could tell you that's enough.
But if we're going to save this playful, loving species of ours, we're all probably going to have to start doing better than our best.
That's not unrealistic, is it?
I love you all.

everything's comin' up neurosis

I've been awash in mental illness the past two years.
Not my own (though i have been touched by minor depression and PTSD).
No, i've been coping with the mental illness of others...a parade of close associations with very unbalanced folk . Moreso than at any time in my life, by far.
But when talking about mental illness, i have a different understanding. In this culture of fear, alienation, and touch deprivation, mental illness is the norm. You never have, and never will, meet a humyn untouched by some form of depression. Every one of us is, to some degree, a sociopath. Even the medical/psychiatric establishment fails to grasp the fullness of this. I was recently reading a study about how stress affects sleep patterns. The baseline comparisons assume the existence of sleepers who experience no abnormal levels of stress.
I assure you, such people are mythological as unicorns.
Science's inability to grasp the fullness of this means that most of our clinical understandings of "normal" humyn behavior are a little (or a lot) off. We are all damaged...but most of us manage to rationalize or deny it, for what other choice is there?
Many, however, stumble over that line where we're able to control or hide how broken we are. And when we slip, we often go FAR.
It started with a tree-trimming client, who lived alone. I worked for her several days a week for a couple of years, eventually doing all sorts of handiwork. I became her largest source of humyn contact, something we all need to keep us sane...but this culture makes us all so damaged and needy, that the very thing we require to live (love and unconditional support) is corrupted. As a result, the obvious cure for loneliness can be a pill as poisonous as staying alone. In our last year, i became more and more aware of a bipolar disorder in her. There were weeks when she was a joy to be around, but other times a darkness would descend. She would become paranoid and condemning. Some days, i knew that nothing i'd do would be right. I abided it, because i knew how much less caring and understanding my replacement might be...but those of you who have known such people, will probably understand what i mean when i talk of stomach-hollowing stress.
Then i had an almost-romance with a womyn who had PTSD (and was well-aware of it). Her mother, sister, and the love of her life (and his replacement) had all died within a few years of each other. Even though she was aware of her condition, she couldn't control it, of course. Fortunately (or tragically?) i held back from consummating our intimacy. I feared her demons, and knew we didn't have deep compatibility. Yet even with that, she became unhinged and wrathful, so much that i feared she might try to hurt me, or worse. One night there was a fire across the canal, and i awoke with a nightmare, fearing she had set my home ablaze.
After that, my first (temporary) home in CA was with an obsessive/compulsive, bipolar live-in landlord. The first condition can be tolerable or even amusing, but in conjunction with the second, it's a horror show. You quickly learn that it's not the outbursts that kill you, it's the holding one's breath, knowing an outburst could come any moment. I lived like that for three months, in a shared situation where i couldn't even retreat to the privacy of my own room. I wanted to stay in touch with him after i got out, to be a support and friend...but my own wounds are too raw, my walls too thin.
A month after i arrived in San Francisco, i became entangled with an open mic MC who has anger issues, compounded by paranoia. I became a demon to him, someone who was perhaps responsible for everything that was wrong in his life. The most irrational hatred could pour out of him...and again, i wanted to be a support and friend, because i understand what he's going through far better than most, and underneath it he's brilliant and well-meaning. But i couldn't escape the terror over what he might be capable of, and how his outbursts shredded me, so my only goal became to extricate myself with my life intact. Hopefully, i've done so.
My point in sharing all this isn't "boo-hoo for me". My point is that these people are US...and though most of us may fancy that there's a huge gulf between such obviously damaged people and ourselves, i assure you that's not the case. With just a few unexpected turns, you could find your life spinning into darknesses you can neither comprehend nor control. Or maybe NOT you personally! Maybe your own walls are so impenetrable that you'll never fall prey to such "weakness" (i was like that for a long time myself). But if that's the case, i submit that you have no idea what dehumynizing price you've paid to stay "healthy".
We're all sick in one way or another. What else could we be? We're products of a sick society.
A century or two from now (on the unlikely chance that humyns are still around), we may finally understand how we existed so cut off from the love and security we need to live.
Keep pushing toward that day.
In the meantime, do your best to fill everyone around you with forgiveness and love.
Especially yourself.
I love you all.

well-maladjusted

When i was young, i prided myself on being one of the most well-adjusted, healthy people you might ever meet.
Ah, the power of self-delusion.
Or more accurately, the power of socialization plus rationalization and denial.
One day, we may discover that the capacity for adapting to unnatural (and unhealthy) conditions is perhaps our species most prominent characteristic. Our highly-social nature makes it imperative that we do whatever we have to, in order to get the feedback we require. That urge can blind us to no end of neglected needs. At the moment, we live in such a touch-deprived, sexually repressed, fear-based culture of alienation, that the "average" person lives their entire life much closer to full-blown insanity than he or she ever imagines. Most of us are able to keep it together (more or less), because...what other choice is there? And many can even convince ourselves that not only are we okay, we're...great! In a properly "socialized" (or brainwashed) individual, the power of positive thinking is a staggeringly potent force.
Like young me. I was one of those people who might occasionally burst out loud laughing while walking down the street, just thrilled to be alive.
That's a nice thought, but objectively what the hell did i have to be so happy about?
As a white male of the middle (or upper middle) class in the richest country in the world, i was somewhat insulated from many of the fears that cripple the majority of humanity - fears of simple subsistence and safety. I wasn't exempt entirely of course, as i lived in a "look out for number one" culture, and understood that an abyss of poverty awaited anyone who failed to do so properly.
Let's assume that my formative experiences were reasonably close to average. As a member of this society, i was not by any stretch of the imagination surrounded by love and acceptance that manifested in abundant, meaningful physical intimacy. Quite the opposite. Starting in adolescence, i only ever had real physical intimacy during sex - and since my society provided no automatic, daily addressing of those needs, i pretty much only ever got to be held for a few stolen moments here and there. By the time i was an adult, i had already accumulated thousands of nights alone and unheld...with objectively no relief in sight.
Oh, in my mind my future was filled with an unending procession of days and nights in some beautiful woman's arms...but in reality that goofy guy laughing out loud walking down the street probably hadn't had sex in a month (or even a year). He was profoundly, ridiculously touch-deprived. How could he be so deliriously happy?
The power of self-delusion.
Fast forward a couple of decades. I decided that i wanted to experience emotions and perceptions more honestly and directly, without so much of that enormous wall of personality i'd been constructing all my life. How does it really FEEL to fall in love? How does it really FEEL to go a month (or year) without any physical intimacy? I wanted to rid myself of as many layers of personality-filter as i could. I undertook this, because i wanted to better understand myself...and more importantly, better understand every other human.
I had such strength of personality as a young adult, that i needed virtually none of the crutches (alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, sweets, pets) that help most people get through the day. Doctors told me that health-wise, i was in the top 5% (or better). And i certainly couldn't relate to the "weakness" of character that kept people in dysfunctional (or even abusive) relationships.
And now, after a few years of trying to honestly, fully FEEL every kindness, every cruelty, every hug, every laugh, every loneliness that this world has to offer? After a few years surrounded by infinitely more isolation than love, how am i doing?
Being around unkindness now has the power to make me feel sick to my stomach.
I've always had an occasional sweet tooth, but one that felt well-controlled - my pattern has long been to have some kind of dessert perhaps once a week. Sweets, salts, and fats fill our brains with feel-good dopamine and opoids. In the past year? I've had stretches of two, three, even four or five nights in a row with some kind of rich dessert. I've also noted an uptake in my potato chip intake.
It has long been my habit when dining at home alone, to watch some DVD as i eat. A sitcom for breakfast, and a one-hour show or half a movie with lunch or dinner. In the past year, at dinner i've found myself watching the whole movie, or two one-hour episodes. It was sporadic at first, but now it's all the time. What are movies/TV but pure escapism? And on a deeper level, with episodic shows we bond with the characters in such a way that they become as real to us as real people. On a subconscious level, our brains don't know they're not. So they fill a need for friendship...with the added benefit that TV characters will never betray or abandon us.
I haven't had sex in a long time, so i haven't had much deep human connection. Recently, i got a phone call from someone who proceeded to yell at me for at least fifteen minutes, even though i wasn't the cause of her unhappiness. In the days that followed, a part of me wanted her to call again. Being berated felt better than...nothing.
The paths of addiction, abuse, or obesity that so many of us walk down...i've stood at those doorways for the first time in my life.
I understand the force of will (conscious or sub-conscious) that's required of anyone, to avoid those paths.
Hopefully someday very soon, we'll all understand.
In the meantime, don't fix, just feel.
Don't scold, just hold.
Don't judge, just hug.
I love you all.

amiss leftovers

(a follow-up to http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2014/11/amiss-conceptions.html)

Do i want to share deeper (or at least further) insights into the psychological underpinnings of "amiss conceptions"? Well, apparently. But i'm ambivalent, as i'm trying to evolve away from navel-gazing for its own sake. Not that there's no merit therein...naked self-revelation is an honorable art, and can trigger profound resonances (particularly in a culture where most people are seldom honest with themselves, never mind the world at large). More and more though, the standard for my writing is public-speaking potential. Nor is it simply a question of entertainment value - there's a part of me that finds prattling on about myself boring. Not that there isn't some level on which my favorite subject matter is "ME" (like everyone else, i'm too wounded and needy for it to be otherwise), but to a considerable extent, i'm one of those people who are generally eager to deflect attention away from themself. I don't need it like others (or at any rate, i don't need more of the crappy substitutes for real attention this society affords - unless it involves getting my recliner upholstered...but i don't want to make my point before i make my point...i don't want to expose my edifice before the groundwork gets laid...i don't want to suffer from premature articulation...).
Sorry, my mind wandered.
There are at least a couple additional levels to my recklessness. I would say "sexual recklessness", but there's also an element of simple self-destruction - a part of me that's tired of living. These impregnation fantasies are so pervasive, i'm currently having them about a woman i've not even met yet. I may be acting in a play, in the part of her older husband. The fact that we'll be a mixed-race couple feeds into my rainbow libido (and desire to have the world fuck away all skin differences). I dream of sweeping her up in such a mind-bending rush of sexuality (combined with the most emotionally naked intimacy she's known), that the first time we make love she'll want me to cum in her, and hold her on the day she dies.
Care to bet against me? I've got hormones and her crippled self-worth on my side.
I write that with a gentle smile around these haunted eyes...for it's hard to imagine my reservoir of nurturance ever being truly depleted.
But i do feel like i'm holding up the world with nine broken fingers.
Part of this is just about reclaiming my identity as a sexual being. Sex is an integral part of human nature, and we're only beginning to understand the ways in which we've tortured and denied that aspect of ourselves. What could be more natural, more primal, than the moment of conception between woman and man?
Rational? Of course not. Elemental, dear watson.
Is there something a touch predatory in this fantasy? Yes...and that's rather the point. Predation is the foundation upon which romance exists in this society. I've avoided this...and, rather than being rewarded, have found increased loneliness as the result. The notion of romantic predation is amply romanticized (ahem). All's fair in love and war...faint heart never won fair maiden...i resisted and resisted, but he won me over...THE BACHELOR, THE BACHELORETTE, THE BACHELORD OF THE RING...as children, we learn to perceive romance in terms of winning or losing. Women are just as corrupted. You set your sights on the one you want, and you "win" when they're yours! But mostly, i've refused to play this game - refused to treat another human being as a prize, or a commodity. And sometimes in the long lonely nights, that starts to feel like foolish naivete. The biggest romantic scars of my life are the two women with whom i've been in love - full, hormonal love (which is the only way to talk about romance honestly, as a function of hormones). There are other kinds of love, including companionate (yay!), but i've felt the sweeping grandeur of hormonal love with two women, and with each, there was a point (or multiple points) when they were ready to "give themselves". And i demurred. They were offering themselves for the wrong reasons, or weren't truly ready to love another. I knew how good it could be if we waited and came together in loving mutuality, but in each instance, the relationship ultimately crumbled (while all the while users and controllers held the keys to their carnal kingdoms). And that's typical of the rewards for being "nice". Many (women, especially) would protest that that's not so. But it is. Deep down, we're confused when a potential lover refuses to treat us as a prize to be won. Ultimately, we shun the non-predator.
So why should these two relationships torment me? Aren't i better off, having held out for healthy? It's hard to manifest that attitude when you look back and see the normal human sexuality you were supposed to live, that never came to be. Days, weeks, months, even years spent unheld. Or held, but almost always with the underlying tensions and fears that surround the "battle of the sexes". Humans weren't made to live like this. In ways science is only beginning to understand, this isn't the way our ancient (and recent) ancestors lived.
And thanks to our cultural penchant for post-romantic immolation, i don't even have the consolation of the memory of these two women thanking me for loving them more than they were capable of loving themselves. I never got to hear vanessa say "Thank you for not taking advantage when i just wanted to lash out at vlad". I never got to hear amanda say "Thank you for refusing to allow me to be less than the person i hope to someday be." I don't even have those tiny, healing gestures.
So a lifetime of being a non-predator starts to feel like the act of a quixotic fool. Never mind being a "player", had i simply taken what was offered, i'd have the memory of sharing the most intense human intimacy with the two women i've desired most. And who knows how many others? For really, in a world like ours based on selfishness, "healthy relationship" is a contradiction in terms...and more and more, it's getting harder to not think that bad sex is preferable to none.
It's thoughts like these that propel me toward recklessness.
And thoughts like...aging.
In an ageist society, aging is a degrading mindfuck. And this 46 year-old homo sapiens is showing (as they might say). When i lean a certain way, my stomach skin gets a little squidgy. It might be temporary, because of a shoulder injury that's forced me to abandon my push-up regimen. It might be that...
But i also got my first white hair this year! The fact that it returned to its original hue some months later is neither here nor there, for...
What's incontrovertible are the lines around my eyes. I call 'em laugh lines, which is embracing, healthy, and at least partly true. If all such attitudes were up to me, aging would be righteously venerated. But it's hard to maintain that serenity of mind, when the rest of the world is only too happy to remind you of your aging...and their reminders are more often than not tinged with either mournfulness or gloating.
Anyway...
Don't fret about me abandoning this kind of essay entirely. Even though it's got a smaller audience, that's almost balanced by the intensity of said audience's appreciation. Plus, i suspect that this kind of essay will be of far greater interest to historians of the 24th century.
And the future is ever on my mind...

amiss conceptions

"I used to want a pulse AND a brain. But these be lean times..."
-fuzzy houndstooth, on love

My self-love fantasies these days are heavy on women from my past. It always starts with a real memory, that morphs into a fiction wherein we give in to desire completely, and in the ensuing carnal cornucopias, i give these women the best sex of their lives and intentionally, mutually, blissfully impregnate them.
Paging Dr. freud! Midlife crisis, aisle 2??
No. "Culture crisis" would be more accurate.
With these women, i can point to any number of reasons why getting in "the family way" would have been ill-advised, either in terms of compatibility, or as a measure of what was best for my life (and the creativity i have to offer the world). Unless you're rich, or a male who knocks up an "old-fashioned" woman, or you stumble into some "alternative family", you can't have it all. Man or woman, you can't. Don't let anyone suggest otherwise. The two-parent paradigm will consume your life - and that's just if you're willing to do it badly.
For a window into this reality, try watching an episode of AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS, imagining that you're the parent of any child shown. It's of course easy to laugh at kids' shenanigans, and much of AFV's humor is founded on the principle "it's funny if it's not happening to YOU"...but go deeper. You're seeing just one ten-second slice of the 24-hour need machine that is a child. Now imagine it's your child who has left a trail of chocolate syrup through three carpeted rooms (and a staircase). Or that it's your ceiling fixture a would-be orangutan has brought crashing to the floor. Or that your home now has a ten-foot wall of spreading foam, courtesy of a moppet ill-prepared for washing machine technology. How long does it take for that moment to become less than funny, if it's your home and your foam? So much for any hope you had of putting in an hour today working on your novel, or getting frisky with the old ball and chain...
And this thought leads to another - parenting is at once adulthood's most crushing burden, yet perhaps simultaneously life's most encompassing escape from growing up. Your life becomes so invested in the realities of childhood, that to a significant extent your perspectives return to that infantile state. How many parents can recite numerous children's books from memory, but haven't read a serious book in years? Two-parent child-rearing almost forces a parent to abandon their own personal growth, and shelve serious consideration of the world's problems. I'm convinced that for many, there's a subconscious level in which having children is about reality-avoidance. How's that for an upside down thought? Tasty irony? A whole new angle on the peter pan complex?
Anyway...these impregnation fantasies have been so strong that they've even spread into real life. I have a friend in China, and i've suggested to her (somehow both playfully and seriously) that i'd give her american citizenship and babies. Perhaps this doesn't quite count as my first bona fide procreative proposal, as she's given almost no evidence that she could or even would take me up on that. But it's noteworthy, as i've never talked babies with any woman. Not ever, not even kiddingly.
What does all this mean?
It means that i'm so lonely my teeth hurt.
No news there...we live in a culture of almost seamless alienation. The only people not crying themselves to sleep every night are the ones who have sailed their little raft onto Denial River.
But as the isolating weight of decades living in this world settles upon me, my subconscious searches for any way out. If i were more promiscuous, i might have already gotten into some domestic entanglement these past few years - i've been positively reckless (for me). Unprotected first date sex? Yup. Just once, of course.
So far.
Yet why WOULDN'T i have impregnation dreams? On the other side of that door, there's an endless supply of free sex (um, in theory), plus getting to hold and love a baby every single day. Sign me up! I'll take two!! Mommies, i mean. Or babies. Whatever.
Have i ever told you how much i love children? And vice versa. Any time i've been in some group or endeavor that had children, they would be drawn to me like magical huggy-magnets. I've always known how to talk to children (the first realization of how rare this talent is, is one of life's more frightening moments). One woman made the choice to be my lover, only after watching me with kids. Some even call my childless state tragic - if i had a hug for everyone who's said i'd be an amazing parent, my endorphins would be set for a year. I firmly believe that one of the keys to health is holding a child at least once a day. There are moments when you realize that this society sometimes punishes one for NOT being an idiot.
Sigh.
I want babies!
Just not (and i can't overemphasize this) 24 hours a day for eighteen years.
I was even starting to worry that these impregnation memory flights might be taking over my fantasies entirely...but happily, i've met one or two women who've nixed that concern. Not only do i fantasize about them, there's nary a fetus in sight.
Well...
Except for a couple other female acquaintances i'm actively impregnating in my mind.
So there it is. The recklessness lurking in the shallows.
Somebody rescue me, before i trash one of the few singular lives you'll ever know!
But nobody gets rescued in this world. We've now initiated women into this horrible reality. Not long ago, we encouraged half of humanity to dream of nothing more than being "rescued", then placed into their very own doll house (where they could have their own little baby dolls). The reality was disturbingly less idyllic, but at least there was some comfort in knowing that your needs would be taken care of and you wouldn't have to figure out life.
Now, not even women have those illusions.
And it's only right they were thus freed.
But welcome, sweet sisters, to reality in a me-centered world.* You're on your own. Take care of yourself, for no one else will.
And the love you need?
Fight for it. Scrape for it. Be worthy (and society will be only too happy to instruct you in just what "worthy" looks and thinks like).
If all that comes easy to you today...
Leaner days are coming.
Rescue is not.
Nobody offers you love, simply because you need it.
We're alone.
If you're not nodding your head, your self-delusion serves you well.
In a world of unfeeling barbarism, who wants to know so much?

*The female shift from a he-centered world to a me-centered world is another subject that calls for rumination.

(for a follow-up, read http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2014/11/amiss-leftovers.html)

tawdry

I bike over a nearby bridge, and imagine hurling myself thither.
I arrive home, and imagine tying weights to myself and sliding into the canal.
It is a sadness that suicide is not a more common topic of conversation and debate in this world. If any world ever needed more dialogue on the subject, it is surely ours. But we avoid such talk, as most of us avoid even thinking about it, because suicide goes to the heart of the most primal human fear. This fear is so overriding that we treat death with superstitious aversion, and the mere thought of voluntarily dying turns our brains into misfiring muck. Our culture projects this death fear so thoroughly, that we can only perceive suicide as an act of cowardice.
Nor is that fear entirely irrational. Every last piece of available objective evidence points to one conclusion - death is the end of life. To believe anything else is like calling gravity a lie.
Could gravity be a lie? Of course. But imagine how hard it would be to get converts to the "lie of gravity" cult. Selling life after death is so obvious, it's tawdry. And easy...just as the "lie of gravity" would be an easy sell if humanity's most elemental fear was falling. You'd have gravity-confounders on every corner! What would a gravity-confounding steeple look like?
Or imagine how far you'd get selling the notion that clams have a soul. I promise you, no one ever went broke overestimating human vanity.
But lost in all that is the reality that for many, suicide is far and away the bravest thing they might ever do. How could it be otherwise, knowing our most basic fear?
Sifting through suicide statistics for meaning can be daunting. Women have a higher attempt rate, men a higher success rate. That's nothing, just a relic of a dying era where women are trained to be rescued and "men" are trained to succeed (without emotion).*
90% of suicides are due to mental illness? A spurious bit of partial research cranked out by a well-meaning society with a woefully inadequate understanding of mental health. This statistic allows us to hold on to the illusion of "us/them". Us/them? Is there anyone naive enough to suppose that a majority of people HAVEN'T thought about committing suicide at some point in their lives? Anyone that naive? Anyone? Hello? Why are we not more bothered by the fact that most people have thought about killing themselves? Because if we allowed ourselves to be bothered, we'd have to ask some very hard questions about our most basic beliefs and institutions.
Winter holiday suicides? A myth. Suicides peak during spring and early summer.
The global suicide rate is up 60% in the last 45 years? A lot of that is due to the fact that suicide has long occupied a prominent place - in humanity's closet. A few countries still report NO suicide...which tells you all you need to know about accurate reporting. However, the fact that youth suicide is increasing at a faster rate than any other demographic indicates that that 60% figure isn't just about social stigma. Nor is it about teen angst - within another generation or two, suicide could become the number one cause of death among ALL humans in the 15-45 age range. Clearly, something is going on.
Cranky conservatives will tell you it's because society is going to hell in a handbasket...that racial equality, women's lib, homosexuals, legalized pot, and nudists are tearing this world apart.
And they're right.
Not in the myopic way they intend, of course. But humanity in general is going through revolutionary times. Notions of universal democracy, human rights, the rejection of poverty, tolerance for people who don't believe as you do...these are radical upheavals in our species' history. And at a basic level, suicide rates will always be lower the more stable one's society. When everyone "knows their place", fewer people kill themselves (or others). So yes, things are getting uglier...and it might get worse before it gets better. The human race is awakening from a nightmare of repression, exploitation, and brutality that's lasted for thousands of years. It can't happen overnight. But the more obvious our society's pain, the sooner things will change - for good. Greater social freedom is a wonderful thing, but with people unclear about "who" they are, plus the lack of emotional and financial security incumbent in a society in which nothing is free, plus the profound sense of isolation we all think is "normal", you have a cocktail that often ends at the end of a rope.
I had an insight recently into how sad suicide notes are. Not just sad, but again...tawdry. And before i substantiate that, i'll allow for exceptions - notes which absolve others of blame, or such. But i suspect that most suicide notes amount to little more than emotional pleading...the same nonsense we project every day of our lives, in one form or another. In this world, the fulfillment of our most basic needs (love, sustenance, and security) is so tenuous that we spend our lives trying to convince others that we're deserving. Living in a culture of individuality gone overboard (i.e. a culture of celebrity), our egos get wrapped up into it too. The only currencies this world respects are success, beauty, and money. The more of those one has, the more stroking and security one gets, so we spend our lives reinforcing our own egotistic self-mythologies, desperately trying to get others to agree with our self-image. Relationships become little more than codependent truces in which all parties agree to bolster each other's notions.
As for my own suicide...
It has a lot to do with what the buddha called "removing the veil". People who are able to peel away the layers of bullshit we accumulate by the time we're adults...the prejudice, the vanity, the desensitization...to see the world for what it is, such people are rare. And most of them at some point probably make a conscious choice to go on living, or not.
I have never felt more keenly the absence of a veil between myself and the world. I feel centuries beyond my own time. And along with that understanding has grown my respect for those who take their own life...not as an exercise in self-aggrandizement, trying to grip other peoples' emotions in death like they never could in life, but simply through the realization that we live in a world of staggering barbarism, to such an extent that it requires no small amount of perverse denial to even endure. Objectively, this world is NOT worth living. The more one understands how cut off from our own most basic humanity we've become, the more obvious that conclusion is.
I haven't been held intimately in thirteen months, my bank account reveals that i'm $410 away from having no shelter or food, and every day i am forced to endure a world where people treat each other brutally.
Even family.
Even lovers.
Even when they're smiling.
That's not to say that my suicide will come now, or ever. Hope refuses to easily die. Nor do i have any afterlife delusions to sweeten the pill of death. That said, i've come to a gentle respect for those who correctly assess that this world we've created is no fit place for any healthy creature, and without a whisper of complaint or coercion, remove themselves therefrom.
So if you should chance upon someone contemplating suicide, try offering friendship rather than fixing. In the midst of their misery, they might just be experiencing the most clear-thinking moment of their life.
I love you all.
I know how empty those words are to those who are suffering.
Nonetheless...
I do.

*Okay, there's a little more to it. The era humanity is leaving is a patriarchal one, wherein life is harder for women in every measurable way. Ergo, women have more motivation to want to end life.

escape from planet earth!

Picture three people in a room. One is eating, one is reading, and one is injecting heroin. What would you say if i told you all three were engaging in the same basic activity?
For this to make sense, one has to accept the following premise - every human you've ever met has been in about fourteen different kinds of pain, of which he or she is conscious of maybe three. The society humans have constructed over the past ten thousand years has strayed so very far from our most basic nature, that you have never met a healthy human. If you met one such, you might be amused or shocked, but you wouldn't recognize yourself in this creature. It is only through layers of rationalization and denial that modern humans are able to function at all. There is compelling biological, archaeological, and other scientific evidence to support this premise. This article is about none of those.
This article is about behavioral evidence.
This article is about escape.
How does a creature in pain respond? By trying to make it stop. If that proves impossible, the creature will try to escape that pain as much as they can.
If you step back and look at behavior objectively, you'll suddenly see around you a world of humans who are trying to escape reality virtually every single day of our lives.
This isn't about obvious escapes, like a flophouse full of strung-out addicts. This is about a universe of behaviors that affect our brains in the same way as "drugs". This is about adrenaline. Stimulants and sedatives. Dopamine and endorphins. I won't insult your intelligence by listing the things in this world that might render one anxious or depressed. I won't ask what percentage of people know that their most basic life-sustaining and intimacy needs, will always be met.
Or even met tomorrow.
Here are the ways that humanity is in a constant state of trying to flee this planet. And here are the drug realities that underlie them all.
FOOD
Oh, what a surprise - when we eat sugar, fat, or salt, our bodies powerfully reward us with feel-good brain chemicals (dopamine, a neurotransmitter with a hotline to the brain's pleasure center, and opioids, psychoactive chemicals which induce a feeling of euphoria). Chocolate and spicy foods promote the release of endorphins (neurotransmitters that reduce sensations of pain). You know the line about food not being love? In terms of brain chemistry, that's a lie - food IS love. Even though culinary highs pale in comparison with an orgasm or first kiss, no cookie ever made someone feel rejected or worthless. Food isn't love? I'm sure everyone's gotten that memo - but it seems a whole lot of people aren't impressed. And i won't even go into caffeine, other than to say thank you America, but i've avoided the amphetamine-style monkey you offered me as a child. Nine out of ten people aren't so lucky, but them's the breaks.
ADRENALINE
"Adrenaline junkies". So often the truth slips out in moments of glibness. All those testosterone-filled types chasing highs in unimpeachably legal ways. Get those dudes on a commercial! Um, except for the gamblers, that's not so macho. Adrenaline is a hormone that causes a rise in heart rate and body glucose. It constricts blood vessels and dilates air passages, making us hyper-responsive to stimuli. Any chance that under conditions like those we'll remember our miserable love lives or unpaid bills? No, we didn't think so. Get us a parachute/snowmobile/motorbike/bungee/four-wheeler/gun-with-one-bullet, stat!
RELIGION
Does religion feel good? Yes. Does it take us out of ourselves? Great googily, yes! How much further outside your own reality could you get than focusing on an invisible creature with the power to do ANYTHING? Do not underestimate god. Neurologically-speaking, for a believer, god (or its childhood equivalent, the imaginary friend) is just as real as any living being...which can obviously be immeasurably rewarding, given that each believer exercises complete control over god's identity inside their heads! On a more basic level, here is what religious thought does to the brain - it renders the anterior singulated cortex (the part of the brain that controls anxiety) less active. That sounds nice. Just be careful with this drug. Long-term faith has been linked to atrophy of the hippocampus, which can lead to depression and Alzheimer's.
HUNTING & SHOPPING
I put these two together because of the ridiculousness (but also, sadly, accuracy) in the stereotype of the old couple - she can't understand his obsession with hunting or fishing, and he can't understand the unending hours she spends shopping. Yes, mensaites, it's actually the same activity. Dopamine production is similarly stimulated in both. On a good day, both activities add adrenaline to the mix. Hunters are accused of being insensitive to the animals they slaughter, but if that were literally true, hunting would be far less popular. Indeed, it is the subconscious awareness that prey animals think and feel in much the same way as us, that makes hunting attractive. Put another way, if hunters knew that their prey were emotionless machines, many would become bored. The awareness that prey think and feel makes hunters relate to them, because hunters can imagine being hunted. It is this identification that feeds the adrenalized aspect of hunting. Any hunter or fisher who was truly blind to the suffering of other animals would be a full-on sociopath (as opposed to the semi-sociopaths we all are).
PORN/SEX/LOVE
The brain activity in pornography addiction is identical to drug abuse.
An orgasm is the simultaneous activation of pleasure pathways, and deactivation of defense pathways. Seeing an attractive stranger fires no less than four separate pleasure-related neurotransmitters. The chemicals in semen relieve a woman's anxiety or depression, and lessen her pre-menstrual pain. A woman having regular sex will become addicted to these chemicals.
In the second stage of falling in love, elevated levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin may render us temporarily clinically insane. In the third stage, release of the hormone oxytocin makes us feel profoundly pacified in the presence of our poopsie. Romance triggers the same part of the brain as cocaine.
Drugs, drugs, get your drugs here!
And if you're still unsure about the enormity of our need for escape, and the fact that for the most part it's each other that we're trying to escape from, look up a nifty little psychological condition called objectophilia.
TOUCH
Even more crippling than the sexual repression we endure in this society, is the touch deprivation. A simple hug sparks a wave of endorphins. Touch is the most immediate, effective, and safe drug. Science is only beginning to understand how we need it as much as water or air. Yet in regular social interaction, romance is the only place we sanction abundant physical intimacy, making it an unforgiving battleground in which we constantly balance reward with anxiety. So our bodies subconsciously drive us toward alternative outlets. How many who can afford regular massages, don't indulge? How many enjoy regular manicures, pedicures, or haircuts? How many of us have never NOT had a pet? How many have entered (or stayed in) a romance we didn't really want? Love is the drug? Yes, but touch is the better one.
PAIN
Do people like pain? Apparently we do.
Masochism as a way of life.
People who repeat self-destructive behavioral patterns, over and over.
Floggers and cutters.
High-altitude mountain climbers. Rugby!
The psychology behind finding pleasure in pain is a complicated thing. Both sensations emanate from the same brain centers, so there is an element of subjectivity involved. One of my lovers loved being bitten hard. Does that qualify her as a masochist? Does the fact that it gave me pleasure to please her, make me a sadist?? Nonetheless, an affinity for pain is often about conscious or subconscious self-loathing. A way of dealing with guilt or shame over what others have done to us, or what we've done to them.
Yet sometimes too, pain is simply nothing more than one hellaciously effective escape mechanism. Putting your entire nervous system on overload? A never-fail ticket to leaving all your worries behind.
RECREATIONAL DRUGS
Uncomfortable with my lumping "hard" drugs in with a roller coaster or pie? Get over it. While i don't deny that breaking a reality TV addiction is easier than getting over crack, the stimulation of particular brain centers is a goal that can be achieved in an almost infinite number of ways, and no drug expert would claim that psychological considerations aren't a big part of any addiction. It might be helpful to simply consider hard drugs as just the first escape mechanism to be "outed" in our understanding of addictive behavior. Nor is it only a drug's effect that delivers us out of life - it's also how others treat us when we're under some influence. Whether happy buzz or acid trip, nobody chooses that time to have a "we need to talk" moment with us (and even if someone is reckless enough to do so, you'll hardly be held accountable for your response). For a creature trying to escape pain, that alone is worth the price of any ticket.
ALCOHOL
Alcohol stands apart from other recreational drugs, but not because it doesn't belong in their category - it does. If you've ever used the phrase "drugs and alcohol", implying that they're not the same, you have a deficient grasp of pharmacology and cultural relativity. That said, alcohol gets to stand alone, because no other drug allows you ALL THREE drug escapes, and often at the same time. Alcohol allows you to feel good, bad, or both, on the way to feeling nothing at all.
SMOKING
The first few cigarettes of the day affect the same part of the brain as heroin and cocaine, and can boost your mood, suppress anger, and enhance concentration. Hardly news. But an unspoken function of cigarettes as an escape mechanism has nothing to do with nicotine. Every time a smoker lights up, particularly in public, they're rewarded with a few minutes of untouchability. No matter how shitty things are, they'll be left alone for that little window of time. For all the whining smokers make over their status as social lepers, a part of that is insincere. Many are as addicted to those five minutes away from the world, as they are the nicotine.
MUSIC
Depressed people suffer from low serotonin. Music stimulates serotonin production. It also stimulates endorphins, and has a salutary effect on the healing process. For someone who's spent a lifetime avoiding the weaknesses and pitfalls of drug use, this one irks me a bit. I'm just a sad junkie after all.
BOOKS, MOVING PICTURES, VIDEO GAMES
Do you know why we love movies and books? Why they arouse such passion and devotion? Because our brains don't know the difference between fantasy and reality. Studies have shown that doing an activity, or just thinking about doing it, triggers the same brain response. Have an athlete win a race, or just think about doing so, and her mind won't know the difference. Hence, we have the ability to bond with fictional characters just as deeply as any real person, but with one very important difference. Fictional characters will never, ever, ever, EVER turn on us. The comfort they provide today, they'll be ready to provide thirty days or thirty years from now - no questions asked. Are you beginning to understand why the average person spends NINE ENTIRE YEARS sitting in front of a television? It's the greatest drug ever, and nothing comes close. Understood this way, what percentage of the people imprinted in your memory as your dearest friends, are people you never met, or never even existed? Video games are a fascinating development of the genre. And it's here where the premise of this article takes on its most frightening weight. Video games go one step beyond fiction or fantasy - in video games, you're no longer YOU, and actions (even the most hideous) have NO consequences (except in our minds, which can never forget). Under those conditions, video game players spend hours, even days, in uninterrupted play. What level of misery must a life be in, to spend days pretending to be someone else? And i won't even get into the hyper-violent nature of video games. Unraveling that psychology is a multi-layered, even contradictory mess. But can we all agree that people who are strongly drawn to graphically violent fantasy are dealing with some powerful demons?
SPORTS
Just as alcohol stands apart, so too does spectator sports fill a gap that goes well beyond the escape of "normal" television. Humans are social creatures, and any who don't get enough social intimacy will become off-balance. Unfortunately, male indoctrination has traditionally produced enormous intimacy issues. The average male simply doesn't have the emotional tools needed to react with others in a healthy manner. This is profoundly obvious in the dysfunction of romance, but not so clear in male/male relationships, and a huge part of the reason is...sports. The bonding that males experience therein, is a substitute for actual emotional intimacy. Sports becomes an enormous source of passion, such that it's very often the only thing males are truly comfortable talking about (whether among strangers or those one has known for decades). And talk they do! For hours - team prospects, statistics, fantasies, favorite players, favorite games, even sports-related social issues. Competitive urges can be safely sublimated. And sports is the ultimate piggy-back drug. Is there any setting more natural for the serial downing of beer, beer, beer? For many males, high fives and chest bumps are the only real male physical intimacy they'll ever know. While watching a game, the adrenaline rushes and heartbreaks are a veritable ocean of brain chemical emotion. Now if only some genius could find a way to inject sex into sports. Wait, i've got it! Naked women jumping around on the sidelines! What? Too obvious?
CONCLUSION
Can you picture a close-at-hand future when all psychological profiles (or...shudder...dating profiles) will prominently feature "escape mechanisms" on the list of characteristics? Is it easy now to think of any person you know (including yourself), and break down their life in terms of escapes?
This list is far from comprehensive, of course. Our electronic modern media cocoons are the very definition of social isolation, false camaraderie, and escape. There are workaholics, cult members, comedy junkies, greed junkies, charity junkies, serial killers, trekkies, and a billion other escapees out there.
At this point, the reader might be inclined to say, "Wait...all these activities damn near encompass EVERYTHING humans do! It seems like you're pathologizing life, wrob. What about the simple desire for pleasure? Isn't a certain sensate hedonism just part of what it means to be human?" To that i answer, yes. But it's all about context, and need. We're biologically constructed to be pleasure-seekers, but we're not psychologically constructed to need pleasure (or pain, or excitement, or numbness) as a never-ending escape. A certain amount of escape is natural, too...we are creatures of imagination. But when escape becomes the only thing that makes life bearable, something has gone terribly off-balance.
Put another way, try to imagine how you would feel if you were cut off from your own favorite escape mechanism, suddenly and forever. Might you not become sad and withdrawn? Agitated and anxious? Edgy and short-tempered? Might not your behavior be indistinguishable from any "junkie" in withdrawal?
What then, is the answer? A continued search into what it means to be human. Our species' self-awareness is still in the infancy stage. As science continues to learn about our essential needs, physically and psychologically, we'll continue to understand just how dehumanizing is this world we've created for ourselves.
And in a more immediate sense, awareness of our profound investment in escape mechanisms can help us cope when they take over our lives. Addiction has very little to do with willpower, or the lack thereof. If you find a certain behavior (or substance) has you in a seemingly unbreakable grip, remember the word "replace". You'll never quit any addiction without replacing what it brings to your life. Holes will always demand to be filled. But fill them you can, with behaviors over which you can exert more control. Those words may seem idiotically simplistic to someone with a painkiller addiction...but Alcoholics Anonymous aren't nearly as dumb as they seem. Fill someone's brain with the power of community, get them hopped up on daily doses of religion...it may be borrowing from peter to pay paul, but you'll more closely resemble a functioning human being. And be less likely to set yourself on fire, or wake up naked in the mayor's gazebo. Or some such.
And i adore the phrase "painkiller addiction", by the way. It's got to be the most unintentionally-revealing addition to the english language in the last century. It describes exactly who and what we are, as a people.
Painkiller addict?
You've never met someone who wasn't.

P.S. In the seconds after publishing this online, i felt one of the sweetest drug rushes of my life. We found another one...

dear sidney

(note: only devotees of M*A*S*H will understand the title of this post)

Dear Sidney,
An interesting week here in the land-of-barbarians-who-think-they're-not. The most interesting psychological occurrence was the re-appearance of my last lover, in my inbox. We haven't seen each other for the better part of a year. We parted on rocky terms, and it took me a fair while to get over the pain and heaviness that knowing her brought. In moments of harsh loneliness over the past months, i'll sometimes dream of being her lover again. There was always the sense that her issues exploded us before they should have...that we never got the chance to really explore being lovers, or at least give her the chance to accrue some of the psychological benefits that loving me would have opened to her.
And now, she's opened the door to having a "booty call" relationship with me. She says she realizes we (she?) let way too many words get in our way the first time. She says she's gone through changes which have made her less emotionally turbulent.
Am i tempted? Sure. Especially in the moments when i'm alone in the dark with my turgid penis. But the closer i get to making this a reality (our one phone call this week, or discussing plans to meet), i can feel all the fear and painful memories rise up. I remember the emotional tear i felt with her almost from the start, the feeling of not being entirely present when we were most intimate. The further i get in life, the more terrible it is to feel that...or maybe it's just that i feel things more than i used to. Anyway, it's a long time since i felt 100% present with a lover. That might be the thing i'm most afraid of, with this.
The first time she and i were together, i knew i had something good to offer her. Something real. Truthful. Now...i know that purity is gone, and i have my doubts that it could return. It feels like i only have carnality and darkness to offer her. On the eve of the first night we talked about getting together this past week, i had positively dark impulses. Reckless, uncaring. Remembering how my investigation into the sex trade had bothered her, i actually pondered doing one of my non-sexual, physically-intimate investigations with a prostitute that SAME night, right before meeting her. Not that i would tell her where i'd been...but not being one to hide any part of myself, i suppose i knew that if she pursued certain lines of inquiry, she might one day find out i'd been in the arms of a prostitute just hours (or less) before having sex with her.
Not surprisingly to anyone who knows me, i ended up being intimate with neither her nor a prostitute that night. But still...
Has loneliness and sex/touch-deprivation driven me so far that i would risk exposing another human to destructiveness, or exposing myself to the ulcerous state that came of knowing her the first time...just to indulge in humanity's most primal need?
Not that i'm averse to resurrecting the friendship we shared, but...a part of me feels like i wouldn't be able to offer her much more than carnality, at least now.
Strangely, she seems to almost understand that, even though we haven't spoken about it in any depth.
I know you don't like talking about yourself in our little discussions, Sidney. So i'll accept what you can give me, and cherish it.
devotedly,
wrob
P.S. I've been trying to start a house poker game here, and we always end up one player short. Just in case you, y'know, know anyone...
P.P.S. The moment of truth came and went Sidney, and no booty call came with it. Perhaps my greatest fear wasn't that hollow feeling, but the thought of being destructive with someone. If everything else in my world falls apart, that might be the thing i hold on to with my dying breath.

depression undressed

"Depression cannot be cured, only prevented"
-dr. jane aloysius o'mccorkleschlatt

It was my intention to drop the above one-liner into my next connection of not-ends...but to do so would move my words from being likely misunderstood to almost-certainly misunderstood. So i'll 'splain.
The sentiment cannot be taken as literally true. One person's depression can be functionally "cured", given certain circumstances, those being more or less the concerted effort of approximately ten people who are close at hand on a daily or near-daily basis, filling the life of said person with all the laughter, sex, acceptance, and physical/emotional intimacy they could desire. Beyond that, any attempt to "sort out" the person's psychological problems will generally run counter to the group's goal.
Understand what i am saying. I am calling out the psychotherapeutic community, and labeling them little more than charlatans (certain nobler intents notwithstanding). Our understanding of basic human nature is still so nascent that the bulk of our psychiatric paradigm is bogged down in ignorance and rattle-shaking. Their definition of "normal" is little more than a reflection of our society's mores. A person is "healthy" when their thoughts and actions are those of a good citizen, circa now.
I challenge us all to become used to the idea that depression is not an aberration, but the norm. Given the level of physical and emotional isolation the average person experiences, combined with the levels of fear we all live with on a daily basis, it is much more fascinating when someone shows NO signs of depression. It is those people who are more worthy of study, in terms of coping mechanisms and sublimated stress. If our understanding of human psychology is to move forward, those who have obvious trouble holding it all together must come to be viewed as the norm.
The usefulness of jane's quote is in deflecting the well-intended efforts of any of us (professional or amateur) to "fix" someone we perceive as depressed. Advice-giving is of NO use. Even when we're broken (and know it), this society's focus on self-reliance will prevent most of us from responding well to being "fixed". There are of course exceptions...in our miseries, many do give control of our lives to a "higher power". Religion or similar cults, sports teams, and celebrity fan clubs come to mind. The more literal among us skip all that and go straight to painkiller addiction. But on the personal level, deep down most of us will be offended at the thought of someone "figuring out" our lives better than ourselves. And even if we agree with the advice, even if it has merit, it still likely won't address the real roots of depression.
Put another way, the more you display signs of clinical depression, the healthier your response to this world.
Pretty impressive irony.
So save your advice. Give hugs instead, especially to those who don't want them. And let's start figuring out how to raise our children so they don't become like us.

Wrob's Depression

There may be a tiny handful among you who have noted the batterings in my spirit these past couple years, and considered the possibility that i was willfully flirting with a clinical depression that once realized might be hard or impossible to control or escape.
To that i say...thanks for noticing.
A confluence of factors plunged me in this direction. I wished to experience my emotional response to this dysfunctional world without so many of the psychological walls of rationalization and denial we all build. As a result, i became increasingly unable to disconnect from all the physical and emotional isolation i've accumulated in this lifetime. I also desired to understand firsthand (in the hopes that such knowledge might make me a better writer, and person) those epidemic miseries (depression, suicide, violence, anti-sociality, stress-induced sickness, self-destructiveness, drug abuse) that my personality and life circumstances had heretofore allowed me to avoid.
In other words...good times.
That was irony.
It's occurred to me that this spirit quest might be, in some part small or large, just the playing out of an enormous conceit, and that my own pains are laughably incomparable to the hardcore real thing. I can only have faith in my motives, invite you to walk through wrob's depression, and judge for yourself.
Hm, if i ever discover a canyon, and am naming its trails and nooks, "wrob's depression" might make it onto the map.
The most stark, compelling symptom i can offer is the feeling of inertia. An inability to do things that are right there to be done. It becomes so easy to look up and realize weeks or months have gone by, with no forward movement. But as with other complex people, it's not so simple. That inertia gets jumbled up with an intentional philosophy, the refusal to run around on anybody's gerbil wheel. The avoidance of wasted time, even for a good cause. A refusal to measure my worth by values i perceive as shallow or contrary to human nature. It becomes so easy to let a day wile away with an hour or four of writing, an hour or two of music and reading, an hour of physical exertion, and two hours of relaxed meals accompanied by three hours of movies or sci fi. Are there more hours in a day? They drift away in the river of etcetera. If i could find a way to add an hour or two of fucking, i might come as close to grace as possible in a world that has none. I reject the notion that i should aspire to "more", particularly if my writing is of value to other humans (i believe helping others should be a part of everyone's day). But that all said...there are two projects i've been intending to get to for months, if not years: starting some form of public readings of my work, and producing one of my plays. In the case of the latter, i've finally had the financial wherewithal to do so for the better part of a year. In both cases, all i've been able to manage is a couple half-hearted half-efforts. I want to do both these things. Nor is it a matter of not knowing how, as i've done them (or things very much like them) in the past. It's just too easy to not do them. I think this sense of inertia particularly attaches to anything that's at all complicated or stressful. There are occasions when it begins to affect my writing, even. Mostly it doesn't, because my writing has become so essential to my identity that, if a string of unproductive days goes by, it begins to feel like i don't exist. Yet i don't think there's any aspect of my life that isn't touched by this inertia, at least in some small way.
Which is not to say that depression is joyless. There are moments (not nearly enough) when i experience the fullness of laughter (not, i hope, the manic kind).
Are there thoughts of suicide in Wrob's Depression? Yes. From time to time, i wrap my mind around initiating the release of death. It seems, frankly, a sane reaction to this world we've created. Although these thoughts are idle, their existence is significant, as ANY thought resembling suicide was utterly alien to me before the past couple years.
Violence? Even in the midst of all this gnawing emptiness, i can honestly say i've had no hurtful thoughts toward any other living creature. I'm probably just not getting out enough.
Joking aside, perhaps i'm NOT getting out so much, because i've also been living some very distinct anti-social feelings. A part of me cringes when the phone rings. "Friendly" voices are as unwelcome as any other. I feel an aversion to Facebook, and rush to get off it "ASAP LOL" when some alert calls me there, because that instant message window is open, and ANYONE could start a chat with me. Go away, go away, would you all just GO AWAY?!?!
Stress/openness-induced sickness? Check. Earlier this year, i began to feel sick in my stomach while reading a book about infant genital mutilation. I had to stop, and it took weeks before that sickened feeling (the precursor of ulcers) went away. It was months before i could pick up the book again. My emotions are so close to the surface, that being near two people who raise their voices to each other can make me feel sick. I avoid contentiousness (the only exception being this site, where there are occasional reports of inflammatory prose).
As for self-destructiveness, that particular treat hasn't found me...so i got that goin' for me.
This society is going to have to embrace a broader definition of "drug abuse". Science is discovering that there are many activities which stimulate the production of chemicals in the brain (endorphins, foremost) that induce euphoria, relieve pain, and provide a host of other effects that we associate with recreational drugs. Among these activities are music, exercise, religion, movies/shows/books, humor, and of course sex (or a good hug). We all use these things to escape. Take a look at that list of my daily activities, to spot which "drugs" i've been using hardest. I even experimented with spectator sports, following a basketball team through this recent season and playoffs, feeling the reactions inside me as i "identified" with the highs and lows on the court. My most intense drug experience resulted from my investigative series on prostitution. The daily anticipation of intimacies with the enormous variety of prostitutes i profiled was in many ways as real to me as the actual thing (on a chemical level, brains don't know the difference between fantasy and reality). Once it became reality, the nuru massage i received exploded my brain with bliss that lasted for days. It took an effort of will to not act recklessly to get those feelings again - when the series of articles was over, i invented reasons to write further articles, even if only to experience the "search" once again. I feel horrible sympathy for addicts who get hooked on something more powerful than fantasy or touch. Resisting physical intimacy on demand was so demanding, i understood how virtually impossible it would be to walk away from the more intense experiences addicts fall prey to. And i felt a twinge of that which all addicts eventually feel, the realization that taking more and more makes you feel less and less. Alcoholics reach a point when they can't get drunk when they're drinking, and can't get sober when they're not. I experienced a taste of that when the ecstatic anticipation of human touch was suddenly poisoned by the thought of the emotional emptiness of loveless loving.
Okay, pull yourself out of Wrob's Depression now. Dust yourself off.
Pretty fucking miserable, huh?
And guess what?
I'm still better off than any number of people you'll meet tomorrow. Maybe you'll see it when you look in their eyes.
Maybe they'll see it when they look in yours.

beggars

I live in New York, and have had one foot out the door for at least a year. I realized last night that one of the minor reasons i'm still here is perverse self-punishment.
I've imagined my next home will be someplace warm and wet. Palm trees, perhaps. A lower population density. There's a tiny part of me however, the pseudo-messianic voice, that would deny myself such a life, because i don't deserve it in a world filled with unspeakable deprivation and incomprehensible cruelty. In this world, how can anyone deserve contentment?
I just made myself laugh, as a metaphor sprang to mind: "sticking my head in the sand".
Where is my self-punishment dynamic most clearly crystallized?
With beggars.
I'm approached by beggars on a virtually daily basis. It can be easy to take that for granted if you live in it long enough, and easy to forget how sheltered from it most americans are. That constant presence will be denied me if i no longer live in a city.
How does living around the homeless affect one's psyche?
For me, perhaps it feeds the outrage that informs my spirit.
For people with little or no exposure to beggars, it makes the realities of abject poverty abstract. Somebody else's problem.
I've no wish to be an angry person. But perhaps this is the price of human progress, the martyring of people like me on the altar of hope.
What sad idiocy. In the big picture, probably pathetic conceit too.
Do i always give to beggars, emptying my pockets and spirit as i walk the streets? No.
When i left the house today, having gotten just this far in this article, a beggar was dropped into my lap. I was crossing a large intersection when he stopped me in the middle of the crosswalk. He talked faintly, almost a mumble, with a thick accent. I picked up maybe one word out of five. It wasn't clear what his need was, as he was relatively well-dressed. I finally caught the word "epilepsy". He handed me a stack of prescription slips. I thought perhaps he needed directions to a pharmacy, but i soon had confirmation of what i'd been mostly sure of...he wanted money.
Mind you, all this time, we're standing in the middle of an intersection, with the lights changing. Unsure whether his spiel was sincere, i declined to give and walked on.
Sometimes i give, often i don't. My choice to shy away from the wheel of materialism makes it easier to live with that, knowing that on many days i earn far less than many beggars. It also makes it easier to not give when you realize that, in the big picture, charity is a masturbatory joke. The pillars of our society are self-interest and hoarding. Until that changes, nothing else can.
Looking into the eyes of a beggar is a no-win situation. Spiritually, it's almost as painful to give as it is to not. Giving, you're reminded of how paltry your money is, and the likelihood that you're not changing someone's life even the teensiest bit. You're often just subsidizing chemical dependency on an express track to death.
Sometimes, the faint spectre of fear makes you give when you otherwise might not...you give with the thought that doing so might prevent this individual from one day murdering you.
Sometimes too, i think the act of not-giving is my way of steeling myself for hard choices to come. Perhaps an element of heartlessness will be required of me one day, in the service of a greater good.
I hope not.
The one situation where i always give, is when someone is performing. Music or dance or poetry...
Except those pan-flute guys with the amps and cds. They're a little hinky.

matthew

I once took care of Matthew's trees.
I was asked to do this not because of my efficiency in trimming and tending (though i possessed those skills).
I was asked to do this because of the gentle, non-invasiveness of my spirit.
A skill perhaps as rare as any you've ever considered.
Even non-overtly aggressive people inject their psyches into their social environments with no small amount of insistence, because we live in a society in which individualism is glorified, and the price of being overlooked is steep. If we want love or physical security, we must be ever-willing to display our worthiness. Which is not the same thing as always trying to please everyone (although for many it manifests that way). In an individualistic society, what matters above all is that we make an impression. Even if it's a bad one. It's far easier to navigate being disliked than being a cypher. Being disliked has its rewards...if nothing else, you're always part of the conversation. If a boor ends up in a bad way, a part of us waits for redemption. If a cypher ends up in a bad way, we wait for nothing.
When i was an actor/director in southwest Florida, my chief supplemental income was freelance tree trimming. I traveled around by bike, with saws in my backpack. I loved it...the meditative quality of the labor, and the physical challenges of the climbing.
My time with Matthew came about through Kandi, his yoga/massage therapist (and one of only two or three humans on Earth allowed to enter his home). Kandi thought i might be capable of not damaging Matthew's wounded psyche, by my mere presence. In the year or two i worked for him, we only had interactions a handful of times. At first, he would leave a check for me on the porch. Eventually he was able to hand them to me in person, as we exchanged brief hellos. Perhaps sometimes i just smiled. You'll never in your life meet a gentler person than the Matthew i knew.
He was not always so.
In his youth (and he was not old), he had been one of humanity's sharks. A Wall Street mover and shaker, he had risen in a cutthroat world on the heads of those less lucky or talented.
And then something in him died. A mental breakdown left him unable to function, and barely able to talk. There was no event that preciptated his destruction - no love gone bad, no drug addiction, no sudden trauma...
It seemed that his life had killed him, plain and simple. The fact that he was still breathing was almost an afterthought.
The people upon whom it fell to care for him (or manage his estate), set him up in a modest house in Florida. He never went out, and all interactions with the world were kept to a bare minimum. There was Candi, plus a psychotherapist. His meals were delivered to his porch.
And a tree trimmer.
Meter readings, i'm sure, were experiences it took him days to recover from.
The secret to being non-aggressive psycho-spiritually is the ability to be present in the moment. To be serene, focused, and clear of mind. No peripheral thoughts about the past or the future. Matthew's sensitivity was so profound, he needed this quality from me even when we had no direct contact. Had i been anything less than a manifestation of self-contained, gentle one-mindedness, it would have upset him, even from within the closed confines of his home.
Hollywood could make a movie of Matthew's life, of course. If they did it well, we might ooh and cry and argue over which deserves best picture, that or PEARL HARBOR 2: SINK OR SWIM.
But it's really not like that.
If you search for a weakness that brought Matthew down, all you'll find is a human being. There's no morality tale. It wasn't ego that killed him. Or greed. It certainly wasn't hyper-sensitivity. Our myths, our movies, inherently make people one-dimensional. We flatten them, so we can judge them. But life isn't like that. Our lives are just one tiny, unimportant decision at a time. There's no single choice that Macbeth or Ted Kaczynski ever made that you wouldn't make as well, under the circumstances.
All that happened with Matthew is that his coping mechanisms failed. We all employ coping mechanisms. Living in this world requires a complex, staggering web of them. Matthew entered a profession where he needed extra psychological protection from aggressive callousness and resentment. Above that, he needed psychological shelter from the knowledge that billions of people who are just as capable and deserving as he, live every day in miserable, fatal poverty. Capitalism gave him extraordinary material comfort, but that was just one link in the chain of comforts he needed to sustain himself. Nothing in this world is given for free...try to wrap your mind around how many coping mechanisms we all need to deal with that. Simple love and human affection - not free. They must be bought, and won, then re-won again. What other coping mechanisms did Matthew employ? Three-martini lunches? Adrenaline highs? God? An hour of music each day, followed by an hour of programmed communal laughter (or sitcoms, as we call them)? Did he buy lots of touch - massages, prostitutes, lovers? Maybe his morality precluded some of those outlets. Each one of us is a fascinating study in survival...the things we will or won't do, to get what we need.
And let's not forget the two very greatest coping mechanisms...rationalization and denial. I didn't get love today, or i treated someone badly, but it's okay...others are worse off, there's always tomorrow, blah blah blah.
Most of us only barely get what we need. You can see it in our faces and deeds. We hurt each other. We hurt ourselves. And we keep on. Mostly, we keep on because we must.
We keep on...but not all of us.
In some, the balance snaps. Coping mechanisms fail (suicide, nervous breakdown, "mental illness"), or our mechanisms sometimes overwhelm us (cirrhosis, overdoses, a bullet in the head from jealous lover or wronged bookie).
I write about Matthew today because, lo these years later, i understand him more intimately than i ever could have then.
I understand his breakdown.
I understand it, from the inside.
I know what it means to witness your coping mechanisms deteriorate. In seeking to understand human suffering, i've intentionally broken down so many of the walls we protect ourselves with. In doing so, i've laid myself open to feeling more directly all of the sadness and anger and pain that surrounds us. On top of that, i'm dealing with the loneliness of a lifetime's accumulation of being unloved or poorly-loved...something we all experience in this society. How many days in your life did you receive as much unconditional love as you could want? How many nights did you fall asleep knowing that, no matter what happened, you were going to be loved and held tomorrow?
I've become so sensitive to any kind of aggression, there are even times when i don't have the strength to bring myself to this computer to write...too wounded to open myself to the pain of this life, and the weight of fighting for humanity's soul. It's not so hard to imagine never again having the aggression required to enter into this world of ours. I know what it means to avoid human contact...to be in a place where even "friendly" voices are demons to be shunned.
These vulnerabilities, i feel them in the very bowels of my physical being...a sickened stomach, a hurting head.
I know Matthew, for i am becoming him.
Whether i am able to pull myself back from my own destruction, by force of will (or with the right kind of love from the outside)...isn't really the point.
The point is understanding what we've come to, as a society.
It's not about me.
It's not about Matthew.
It's about finding a voice inside you, and lifting it up. A voice to say "no". No, this is not the life we have to live. We can live in whatever world we choose. We are humans. Humans, on a planet dominated by...humans.
Whatever way we choose to live, we can.
Each and every one of us is on Matthew's path. Whether or not you or i go where he led, is a matter of chance.
Whether or not we expose our children to Matthew's path, is entirely up to us.

wound 5

(a follow-up to http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2011/03/wound-4.html)

It's time to walk away from a spirit quest that can only end in death.
For years i've been pulling back the veil, trying to perceive reality without the filter of socialization with which we are all indoctrinated...while simultaneously re-awakening the feeling part of my spirit, long numbed by the desensitization we go through in this inhuman world. And i do mean inhuman, not inhumane. Our species has strayed incomprehensibly far from its natural state.
This week i realized i was literally dying from emotional openness. I've carried a sickened feeling in my stomach. This feeling is the start of ulcers and other maladies which pave the way to death.
It's time for sheer force of will to restore me...to rebuild the myriad walls we all need to protect ourselves and function in this world. Nervous breakdowns are not a sign of weakness. It's the people who never have a breakdown who are more fascinating, clinically.
It's time to resume the quest for laughter. I have long known that a child laughs out loud fifty times a day, and adults only thrice - and that any grownup who restores what was lost, will not be in need of medical attention for a long, long, long time. Don't take my word for it, here's Mr. Cleese in India: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEfjVnYkqM. I've also long known that post-infancy humans are so touch-deprived, we all become adults touched by insanity.
Restoring the laughter will be easier. We're so afraid of being hurt that we either shut down our emotions, or only allow someone to touch us after a protracted "negotiation". Our inner natures scream at how wrong this is...were it not so, billions of people wouldn't be off to the ol' watering hole every night. Bars serve a dual purpose. They dull our pain while putting us in the company of dulled, uninhibited people. Bars offer some of the human touch we so desperately need (even if it comes with an undesired price tag the morning after).
I want so much to lay down my psychological garbage, to love and be loved...yet finding people or a person who is undamaged enough do the same is a tall order.
It was nothing earth-shattering that pushed me over the edge, it was normal life. I had two ongoing contentious discussions, one with dad and one with a friend. They weren't even overtly malicious...but my sensitivity to psycho-spiritual aggression has become so attuned, that each talk required an immense effort of will.
And i was reading a book. "The War Against Women", by Marilyn French. My tipping point came on the subway. I opened the book, and began a chapter on genital mutilation. After less than fifteen seconds, all i could do was lean forward and quietly gasp, head between my knees.
Even writing about it now brings back the pain. I don't know how long it will be before i can finish the book.
I'm no good to the world dead (although that would make a fun debate topic, on several levels). So i'll take a few steps back into that place of denial and self-absorption where we must live. I'll not forget the lessons i've learned. The path i walked is one that claims us all, in one way or another.
Look for me in the meadow. I'll be the one giggling or humping.
Maybe both.
Somebody loves you all.
Very soon, it might be me.

wound 4

(a follow-up to http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2010/04/wound-3.html)

"Self-awareness is a paraplegic tackling a greased pig."
-dr. jane aloysius o'mccorkleschlatt

Another angle on my spirit-wound of the past few years lies in the confluence of two streams, my awareness and my ability to feel. Throughout my life i've chased two varieties of perspective: the differing one and the larger one. Inasmuch as i've been able to succeed, i've come to understand the isolation that underlies all present human activity on this planet. I see past the fear and possessiveness that define us, to the loneliness and pain underneath...a pain so profound that each of us must create monumental coping mechanisms, the foremost of which is denial. Layer upon layer of denial, obscuring our isolation.
The acquisition of perspectives has been an intellectual quest. Unfortunately, this state of awareness has coincided with a separate quest, that of awakening the feeling part of my my psyche. My youthful life of the mind prepared me for this in no way. Over the past few years, while my capacity to feel is at an unprecedented level, my sensitivity to the psycho-spiritual aggression that pervades our society has become so strong that anti-social tendencies have been the result. If i weren't so attuned to my desperate need to be held, i might have sought out a hermit's cave long since.
I've been trying to input the staggering levels of pain that are both within me and all around. Never mind the world, no one can fully integrate their own wounds, and remain quite sane.
Anyone have a suitable Mr. Rogers quote?
Choke it down, don't die.
Was that him?

dear mom leftovers

(a follow-up to http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2010/10/dear-mom.html)

Looking back over the piece, in terms of explaining me, it's really so insufficient as to be comical. I feel as if i could spend a lifetime coming up with different levels, angles, and questions of self-understanding. If i saw somebody demanding an accounting from someone like me, my blood would freeze at the sheer, callous blindness.
But i'll yammer on in that milieu anyway, as loose ends keep rolling...
That my choices seem inscrutable to anyone, strikes me as silly. It just seems so patently obvious that ANYONE walking my shoes would make exactly the choices i've made. Is it possible there's some kind of denial/coping device that makes me think that? I don't think so, but i could be wrong.
On another level, i sometimes wonder whether one of my deepest motivations is simply to NEVER do what is expected of me. As soon as somebody says, "wrob should do this", is it almost guaranteed i'll never do that? I will not be pigeon-holed, pegged, or defined by ANYONE, the child silently vowed. Yet that theory has holes (or does it?). I'm very communal-minded, and i remember somebody once saying, "why on earth aren't you writing poetry"? Ten years later, i was writing poetry. Of course, maybe i'd already had that idea, and was just waiting until i had something to say?
On yet another level, living in this society, it seems just the purest common sense to have at least one foot off the grid, and not live a life that endorses this greedy, bloody land we live in. It takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance to not be appalled with the U.S.A. For example, seen up close, the most inhuman horror of the twentieth century is the Holocaust...yet there's a good chance that when history's annals are written, the atomic bombings of Japan will be looked upon as the most horrific event ever perpetrated by the human race. That's what cognitive dissonance does, it makes the unthinkable okay.
So is my psychological need to confound simply purest good sense, or is it some drive i understand not? I feel like i control it, and that i'm happy to not confound people who aren't crying for a spiritual wakeup.
But that begs the question, am i the person most qualified to understand myself, or am i the person LEAST qualified? This is one of the chief conundrums of self-awareness. To what extent is any of us able to see past our own vanity, conceit, fear, and all-around bullshit?
I'm doing my best.
And beyond all these levels, there's an element of "dumb like a fox". In a way that i can't explain, i have this sense that one day even spiritually-challenged people will walk away from me saying, "There goes the luckiest guy ever".
There's probably another level coming.
Just wait a few minutes...

dopers & anti-dopers

"A relationship is the price you pay for the anticipation of it."
-anonymous

What was the "cause of death" on Romeo and Juliet's coroner reports?
Dopamine.
It seems i've always been bucking a common trait, the idea that wanting something is more satisfying than having it...that the chase is more exciting than the consummation. This trait seems to me the saddest of immaturities, and a denial of one of my primary spiritual goals - that of being happy with exactly what you are. I've long focused my efforts to that end, to such an extent that i feel sadness for all those around me who invest huge amounts of themselves chasing things they'll likely never have.
But it turns out that i'm fighting biology. It all ties in with delayed gratification, which has apparently been a useful development in the evolution of our species. In the words of Robert Sapolsky (author of "Monkeyluv", and to whom this article owes a huge debt), what is it in our makeup that allows us to constantly sacrifice immediate pleasures, to "getgoodgradestogetintoagoodcollegetogetagoodjobinordertogetintothenursinghomeofourchoice"? Or what is it that allows us to maintain a decades-long courtship, even though a clear-thinking friend took thirty seconds to assess the situation's hopelessness?
Dopamine.
I am, however, not the poster child for instant gratification. In one or two ways, i'm the polar opposite. Again and again, i seem almost constitutionally incapable of using people as objects of my desire. And if there is someone or something i want, i'm capable of waiting years.
I just don't pine for it while waiting (mostly, anyway).
Welcome to my brain.
So why is the hint of something we desire, the smallest taste, enough to sustain incredible amounts of hope where none is merited? Why is the lottery the biggest industry in this industrialized nation? Why can i never burn away the image of an ex-housemate i saw naked, even though there is virtually no likelihood of ever having naked time with her? Why would i jump if she asked, though our friendship was never deep?
It's time for a little trip to the frontal cortex, an area of the brain that is gi-NOR-mous in primates. It's responsible for long-term planning, and controls inhibitions of the limbic system, the part of my brain that wanted to walk into her room and tongue-bathe her holiest of holies, that day she accidentally left her door cracked.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter responsible for pleasure. When dopamine bathes the frontal cortex, it feels GREAT. What triggers dopamine? Science suggests that it's not the reward, but the anticipation thereof. In primate studies, anticipation triggered an instant rush, yet the reward itself provided no, repeat NO, rush. Ta-da! Every demeaning, unpaid internship is suddenly explained.
Why do we chase those who run away? Why are crumbs from someone we crave, a thousand times more tasty than a feast from someone we don't?
Dopamine, baby.
We're idiots, of course. "Maybe" is more enticing than "yes"? And the more uncertain the result, the more dopamine produced.
It goes the other way, too. Unpredictable punishments are far more stress-inducing than predictable ones, even when the predictable ones are larger. Baboon males keep their competition off-kilter by acts of brutal, random violence.
Baboons and Donald Trump.
So am I the one living a pathetic lie, constantly denying my true essence? Or am i a fascinating glimpse into the future evolution of the human species?
Not if i don't get impregnatin', i ain't.
Line up, ladies! Wheee!!