National Petroleum Day

There aren’t too many non-schizophrenic non-anarchists who live a more alternative lifestyle than I do. It seems I had a breakdown a decade ago. I’ve been living with post-traumatic stress syndrome slash dysfunction ever since. Before, too, from ancient traumas, but that’s background noise. I haven’t bothered to inform myself about the condition or its treatment, but I’m guessing that the vivid ideations I have, reliving certain vicious scenarios, are flashbacks. I hadn’t thought to think of that, before. But yes, I am there again. It gets old.

A sweet and lovely young woman raced at me today and gave me a birthday hug. I get tired of being such a freak. I reverted to my adolescent persona, and seized up, a broad joke of course, to mask my discomfort. It’s not that I don’t like to be touched. I need warning though. Part of that pattern, where I’m not a greeting but a farewell hugger.

I’ve taken the past couple months easy, mostly doing strength training, and not a whole lot of that. Now I’m getting regular again with workouts, and I’m significantly detrained. Disheartening, but what should I expect. Excellence is earned. I now look more fit than I am, and I hate that. So I’m going to get fat. Ha. My time is strangely organized, with a few free hours in the middle of the day, but most recently I need to use that time to get an hour or so of sleep. A little nap, to tide me through the evening, at the cost of not being able to sleep at night. But I can’t sleep anyway. As I have said, I’m like a thoroughbred – highstrung and temperamental.

I don’t look closely in a mirror for months on end sometimes. Now I find that I’m showing some age. I’ve gone a long time without having to deal with that. I don’t have boyish features, but time has never had a chance to work at me. Age now represent lost opportunity. If I’m old, I’m less desirable to that hypothetical female who would bear me more offspring. My little fantasy -- how would that happen, of someone who can hardly be touched. If I don’t have youth, and I don’t have wealth, and I don’t have charm, what attraction do I have? My genius? That would be expressed via conversation, and I barely speak on any subject of merit.

I am not disturbed by the realization that I have to be immeasurably grateful to my former wife. I have no idea what would have become of me if I hadn’t become a father, and no normal woman would ever have had me. So, a bad match, for which I must be thankful. Sort of what life itself seems to be. A bad match from which we extract blessings.

Life. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

J