Good Friends Come at You With Good Questions

Ok. Full disclosure. I’m pretty sure I’m a psycho. Except I say that out loud so that usually means that a person is not a psycho. But I can see right inside a totally insane persons head. Some of it is sheer research and time spent in the trenches dealing with them, but some of it is shit that I can completely identify with and even appreciate (so gross) as a survival instinct.

I have spent far too much time revisiting my past lately and looking at it with some different perspective, but mostly the same perspective. Who I am, my core personality, has never changed. Yesterday I was braced for and then asked this question:

Friend: So…where are you in your head now?
I am going to ask a weird yet serious question

Me: hmmm currently i am in a good place
it has changed so rapidly for the past several weeks

Friend: Who is Eric? Who do you see yourself to be? If you could strip away the damage from the parents, which led to more damage from a lot of other people…who is at the core of you?

Me: whoa…
I dunno
(excerpt removed)
I’ve just been this thing cruising around
trying to survive

Will you look at that? Seems like a pretty fucking important question to be able to answer.

I write so much shit it is ridiculous. I’m going to share a paragraph I started a while ago and just abandoned.

“Wow… You ever drink too much coffee? It makes you shake… a little sweat can bead on the forehead, your thoughts race. Your fingers or your mouth, depending on your medium, struggle to keep up. I kinda feel like my brain is redlining and I didn’t drink any coffee. This happens to me sometimes. Sometimes for months at a time. This is what I often imagine ‘mania’ feels like. I don’t know. I have sat and looked at least four white coats in the face and told them I thought I was bipolar. All four of them were like, naw… Now, you guys know the things that interest me. I’m not tossing that dx around like most regular people who say anyone with any sort of erratic behavior must be “bipolar”. I know exactly what it is. I’ve interacted with people who have it. I’ve seen it severely disable people. I’ve never really had the downside of it though. So I’m kind of forced to agree with the doctors.”

I WAS manic for a second there. I felt so good. In 169 words it was gone again. I type fast.

“Where are you at in your head?” “Who is Eric” (I dunno if I ever said my real name on here)

Those are two questions that only a person who cares about you would think to ask.

My head is a swirling, buzzing, endless stream. Sometimes it rushes like rivers and carves out chunks of the earth and changes direction. Sometimes life flourishes and sometimes the water recedes and everything dies. I can only answer that question in the moment.

“Who is Eric?” though is quite different. I find it alarming that when I was asked that question the whole water works shut down like a hydrant at the mercy of a monkey wrench. There’s just darkness there. I find it further alarming that since 2009 I have been encouraged to pursue the answers to that exact question. Work on myself. Distance myself from co dependant relationships. Seek out a counselor to help me stop shaking. Start sleeping. I have. I did and I will continue to do so. But still, once my name is uttered finishing that particular sentence… its just emptiness.

I honestly don’t know. I went from little kid on a bike, to junky, to parent. I’ve spent my whole life in phases where thinking about yourself or looking at your wants/desires/dreams was not even on the spectrum. I’ve spent hundreds and thousands of hours exploring those transitional phases and why I became this way. I’ve concluded that there are no uniform rationalizations for it. Everyone is different. All that I DO know and take ownership of is that, my goal here in this lifetime is to just not be shitty. Just don’t be shitty. Don’t tell people shit you don’t mean. Because in the end you find yourself alone. Drowning. Or on fire and not in a heavy metal, flames rule kinda way.

I am the motherfucker who will help you figure out who you are. I need to surround myself with people who can help me solve my own puzzle, not throw in fucked up pieces while I’m trying to assemble the frame.

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