Where I should be.

At 7 PM I put on my pajamas and bathrobe and turned on the TV. Then I promptly fell asleep until about midnight. Now I am sitting here yawning with a mug of decaf and a cigarette, waiting to see what will happen next. Will I be sensible and go to bed, or will I be stubborn and stay up and, like my cats are doing, getting into all sorts of mischief? I think I will end up on the sofa again after a while, where I will drag myself once my sleeping pill starts working and I stop making sense.

There is nobody here to warn me if I stop making sense, though. I could be typing all sorts of nonsense and not be aware of it and push the publish button and forever make a fool out of myself...

...well, to prevent that from happening, I went back to the sofa and promptly fell asleep again until 8 AM. I think that was the most sensible thing to do. Now that I've got the heater going all the time, it is so nice and pleasant inside that it makes it very comfortable to be anywhere and to fall asleep anywhere. I'm supposed to turn it off at night, but I failed to do so last night and it has been toasty warm here and I only wore my bathrobe and didn't even need a blanket. I worry about my energy bill, yes I do.

The Überhund is snoring away by my feet and has given no inclination that he needs to go outside. Speaking of bladder control! He is most adorable when he lies by my feet this way with his head on his paws, because he looks like a stuffed animal and you just want to pick him up and kiss him all over the place. He would be mighty surprised if I did that!

The cats are sitting silently in the kitchen with a bit of an accusatory attitude, because their food dishes are empty and I am ignoring them. They have no real idea of what it is like to go hungry, because there is always food. Now they act like they are patiently suffering and it is all my fault. Some people make their cats fast one day a week, because they say that in the wild animals don't eat every day either. Well, neither do people, do they? Let them drink only water for 24 hours.

Oh goodness, today is Saturday, well, hurray! It's always a little bit festive when it is the weekend. I am officially excused from being a responsible adult. You think I am during the week too, don't you? Well, nothing could be further from the truth. I take this business called living very seriously.

The truth is that I deal in a lot of escapism, because otherwise, the weight of the world would drag me down. The gravity of it would pull me splat down to the ground, never to get up again. Therefor, I very often feel that I am playing a role in a film and that none of this is real, or that I am only a figment of someone's imagination and that all of this is a dream or a fantasy someone is having. Maybe a character named God, but not as we know him from the bible. Or her and she is rather careless and playful in a painful way. Well, maybe that is exactly as we know God from the bible. From the Old Testament.

What is reality is an interpretation, isn't it? Unless you are faced with such cruelty, that you find yourself in a nightmare that you can't get out off, where you are being held against your will. But what does my reality look like?

I live a fairly safe life and nothing really horrible is going to happen to me today. I don't face war or famine or murder or rape. The worst things that are likely to happen are the confusions that take place in my own head and they can be pleasant or unpleasant. They can change the way I interpret my reality. If that happens to be in a pleasant way, then there is very little stress that I am going to undergo and I will feel that I've had an excellent day, regardless of what happened to my fellow human beings on that particular day. My reality, or my take on it, was fine, there was no problem. If there was a problem, I saw it as a minor blip on the radar, like a mosquito that I splatted with one hand.

If the confusion in my head turns unpleasant, then that day will be experienced as a very unpleasant day and all the events that happen in it will be interpreted negatively. I will see doom and damnation and the end of the world nearby. I will see the suffering of my fellow human beings and identify strongly with them in a totally ineffective way, because I am not capable of doing anything productive. I will suffer and cry and face fear. Only because something in my head is telling me that this is how I see reality now.

So you see, what is reality is an interpretation. At least, what is my reality. If war breaks out tomorrow, we will have a common reality. At least, the Dutch people and I will have. God forbid, maybe all of us will.

Very often I live on the edge of hypomania or I am in fact hypomanic. That colors my point of view on my world. I am very grateful that I can live in this state of existence, because I know the alternative state. I couldn't have made it through the first four months of my separation if it hadn't been for the state of my hypomania. It made everything very easy. My reality was altered through rose colored glasses. When the hypomania ended, my view on my reality changed and I suddenly became a needy and sad little person before I found my balance again. Is it any wonder that I pray for a little bit of hypomania? Which reality would you rather face?

Well, I suppose I am trying to explain something very basic about myself and maybe about other people as well. I don't know how people without my particular disability go through life. I don't know how it is to live without mood changes that are as arbitrary as the November weather. I've been this way my whole life.

In the meantime, the Überhund is still laying here and not a peep out of him. I have gotten a new mug of coffee and fed the cats, but I guess he is not interested in going out. I think he is really getting old, because he sleeps so much. We make a good pair, the two of us.

There is nothing better than a fresh mug of coffee and a cigarette. All of you who don't smoke will disagree with me, but believe me, to me this is heaven.

Well, that's enough of my sermon on the mount. I've got to get the day started, whether or not the Überhund is ready. Have a great day and be good for goodness sake.

Mwah!