Be Prepared

I am almost always prepared to try any thing even without cognitively knowing how it works, without any reason to believe it is safe, without any experience or anyone to guide me. This is sometimes expensive but often sufficient and occasionally excellent. If I give up the idea of anxiety I am allowed to do many things.

But I don’t always do this to be free, sometimes I do it because I am fearful I won’t have cognitive memory to depend on. Sometimes I am afraid the me who knows won’t be available in the time that matters, and so I am loathe to depend on memory for anything I need to survive.

This can be good. I can use it to train myself in non-cognitive ways to make it easier to behave in the way that I want. I can use it to pay attention to other ways of knowing and being and to apply my whole self instead of merely cognition.

But also it makes me afraid to learn things that need cognition. It makes me resentful to need to practice not just for physical training or response pathway building but for integrated narrative recall. That sort of practice and memory means that I will not have it available in all states. It means that I will have to be in the same state when I study as when I apply.

It means that I can never let Work self go, because they’re the one who knows work things. They are the closest I get these days to School self, and have the best access to that sort of learning and practice and memory.

It means I’m afraid to learn things that require memory when I’m in my base state. I can’t be here when things are tough. I won’t be able to do these things. I’ll have to fake it, or be willing to give up this base self and build it into a new Knower. To strip it of meaning and give it armor instead, to train it for instant activation whenever it might be required, always at high tension. To be abused and coerced into performing when I need them and practicing when I tell them to and not existing the rest of the time.

It’s difficult for me to imagine that it might be safe to rely on memory, and terrifying to imagine that I might have to sacrifice yet another self to the anxious memory practice of some skill I train myself to hate.

It makes me resistant to learning things that I can’t either obsess about or reduce to behavioral response. It makes me fearful of using any technical skill for self expression. It’s the fundamental way I don’t let myself keep anything. I can’t have even my past selves or their experience because none of those things are reliably available to me, particularly when times are tough. I can’t depend on any preparation that I don’t bake into my soul.

This writer only exists when I burn something to fuel them. I can’t be them because they only exist when I work up to a certain level of distress and bundle it into productive panic. I can’t just write for 20 minutes a day, I have to be upset enough to become Writer and then run until it burns out ¹That’s why these frantic screeds often just sputter out. I run out of fuel before I document a conclusion, and then Writer drifts off until next time I startle them into existence..

This is also why I can’t do 20 minutes of work. I need to be up to switch to Work. They’re fucking miserable and can only be coerced into action under dreadful conditions. But I’m not sure how I’d do work without them.

ZiB

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