His specialty was to yell at me to stop, because I was doing It Wrong.

Her specialty was to just fret, that I would do it wrong, oh no not again, and hurt myself.

Or the plumbing.

Which, ironically, was broken from the start … though …

somehow no one ever thought to yell or worry about that. It wasn’t self-evidently herniated or ileocaecal enough, as I understand the self-justifying mythos, and so the fault became simply mine, a character flaw inherent, and just another thing we didn’t talk about.

Too shameful, yeah buddy.

I patched myself with libidinal duct tape and old introspective wire, and the patchwork is fucking ugly as Sin, but it serves the Purpose.

I grew a specific kind of orbit, around that shame. That sneaky shame.

Anyway, I’m out here attempting to de-internalize all this ancient useless shit, and, mostly …

Still doing it wrong. Occasionally, hurting myself, and having to re-heal.

But I did learn not to yell, and I am working on learning how not to worry, and I’m doin’ alright, with that. (See: How am i?)

The main thing I want to know from you is: Do you have any genuine interest in helping? (It’s another way of asking if you love me or if I can rationally dare to love you)

and

What, in your considered view, does helping even mean?

I covet your genuine help, and I am very willing to compensate you for it, by helping in return, reciprocally, or most other ways. I’m quite good at many of them, too. Expert, in a few.

But I don’t need it, not any more, to keep on abiding or existing in my patched way.

And I definitely don’t want it if it comes with strings attached–I’m thinking in particular here about the Yelling string and the Fretting string, but there are others, naturally, some of them legally binding and others more nebulously grounded in the day-to-day flavor of the relating.

I am modestly proud that, at my advanced state of decrepitude, I can at least still feel and say these quietly brutal things with calmness and clarity, in service not to the Truth, whatever that is, but just because it’s for the best.

Congratulate me.

Not for being a good feeler or a good writer or a good man or so full of something we’re gonna experimentally call Integrity.

But just for making it this far, still alive and still kicking like a mutant radioactive mule.