#bad writes

RULES: post the last sentence you wrote (fanfic / original / anything) and tag as many people as there are words in the sentence

oh how it scares me

to move my body

the way that it wants

turns out the last sentence I wrote was a one sentence poem lol. sincerely, late diagnosed autistic

Of course.

My ego is not stupid. On the contrary, it might even be a little brilliant. It is most definitely strategic as hell. 

So of course, my ego gets itself a psychic guard dog. It knows that at the core of my truest, deepest soul, I can never pass up a dog, especially not one in distress. When my ego feels endangered, it just calls out that yippy little fucker and together they do a number on me.  

My ego is terrified of losing, of losing itself, of annihilation. It needs a hypervigilant warning system with a built in deterrent. Being strategic, then, and most interested in maintaining its luxurious life and free ride in the front seat of my life, my ego does not turn to ferociousness for personal protection. No, my ego knows how my soul responds to aggression. It doesn’t; it won’t. So, my strategic ego gets itself a dog that is overly friendly, noisy as the day is long, rambunctious and insistent and better at nothing other than demanding all the attention in whatever room it is in. My ego’s guard dog will not be ignored, nor forgotten, nor left at home - no matter how agitated it has to get to accomplish these goals. My ego does not have to be like this all the time. It just keeps the psychic-ego-guard-dog around for those very serious threats, the ones that warrant serious action. 

I first figured out what was going on, on the way to the skate rink. Skating is one of my soul’s favorite things. Skating frees my soul from everything. There is not a single binding worry or thought or life pressure that can reach me when I am skating. Obviously, the skate rink is not my ego’s prime territory. No one is really watching me, there is no audience. My ego needs a performance in order to play its role. It’s lost without it. Plus, with my soul so alive and engaged and pretty much in charge of my whole world - there isn’t much left for my ego to feed on. My ego feels abandoned at the skate rink. It disappears entirely and I not only don’t mind, I thrive without it. That is why, before every skate session, as my soul begins to vibrate with wild happiness in anticipation, my ego goes all grumpy. My ego calls out its dog. 

Now, you should know, my ego doesn’t like to think of itself as brutal or violent or aggressive. So of course, my ego does not employ that kind of dog for self-protection. Instead, my ego, as noted, picks one of those really loud, yippy, ankle-biting tiny dogs. The kind that circle around you wildly in a frenzy, jumping and yapping, barking and nipping. It starts about an hour before it’s time to go skating. I am happy and excited but also... just agitated. Like there is something buzzing at me, something tying up my feet. I always have trouble getting my crap together just when it’s time to go out the door: where are my keys, my wallet, my skate bag, what should I wear, where are my socks... on and on and on - distracting and irritating, concentration shot all to hell. Once I get in the car, I can hardly sit still to drive for the ten minutes it takes to get to the rink. I find myself rocking my whole body, careening around the front seat, leaning forward into my grip on the steering wheel, then banging my back against the seat again and again as I get onto the highway. Turning the music up loud, fiddling with my phone. Heaven forbid there is a red light at the top of the off-ramp. I can see the rink from there and it’s like my whole body loses it, all my muscles tense and I just give in to total weird spasmodic reverberations. The ego’s little protection puppy puts on the whole show, every time.

But my soul almost always wins. I have not given in to the agitation and skipped a session for a long long time. I get to the rink, I park, I go in... throughout all of which the little yippy dog just seems to be... dissolving. By the time the smell of bearing grease overwhelms me and I hear the sound of skates, loud on the flour, the backdrop of top-forty-hits music -- at that point, there’s no sign of my ego, or his crappy little dog, anywhere. 

Before I figured out that’s what it was, my ego’s little guard dog, I always thought it was the weirdest thing. I couldn’t explain it. Then once I figured out how useless my ego was at the rink, it all just came together. My ego was pitching a fit to try to keep me away from skates. It was a huge insight. Plus, nothing could be easier than ignoring them, now that I am on to her game, Ms. Ego-face and her stupid pet cannot get the best of me. In fact, they seem to have packed up their little act and left the premises. At least under those circumstances, they no longer bother to bother with me and my soul free skating. Now that I paid attention and figured out why I was so agitated, I’m magically no longer agitated at all. 

However, I recently discovered - upon deep reflection - that my ego’s little pup-pup is also at work in some other contexts that I have left me perplexed for a long time. I never identified it as their work before, but now that operation skate-agitate has come to my attention, I am wise to it. This is surely the doing of ego and her guard dogging me if ever there was one. 

The context here is more intimate than the skate rink, higher social stakes, too. So, it only makes sense that the duo would ramp up their act accordingly. The context I’m talking about is intimate social interactions. Not like, sexy intimate - I’ve been far too busy pulling the invisibility cloak off my ego and sparring with it directly these days, to have any spare time for sex. But I mean like deep personal, fraternal, intellectual and soul kindredship kind of social intimacy. 

My compulsive communicator tendencies are also, I’ve just figured out, an integral part of this ego-dog act. In fact, I think the compulsive communicator in me might be entirely composed of that guard dog. That might be all it is. Some dumb scared annoying barking truly useless nuisance of an ego’s guard doggie - posing as me - the effect: compulsive communicator extraordinaire ! Ugh. 

It happens like this... (It’s been happening for a long time but I only just recognized it as a pattern - that’s how good, and how old, this ego-dog routine is.) Anyway, it happens like this: I spend time with someone I really really like a lot.  It might be an old friend or a new one but the key is that I sense a very deep, soul-level connection with them. I can tell we are kindred - I can sense that we have much to share. I can sense, they have myriad wonderful things to offer. Things that will enrich me. I cannot wait to engage with them, to interact and share and learn. 

At that point, the ego grows wary. If the dog is sleeping or off chasing rats elsewhere, my ego calls him home at that point. Gets the dog alert and paying attention. I experience that as a far off sort of agitation which I have historically put down to excitement during the planning phase of the social engagement. I shake it off. And my ego ramps up, starts coming up with excuses for why I might not even want to do the stupid social engagement anyway. Subliminally suggests that the yippy dog might piss on the floor or something. When I shake those anxieties off, the ego knows it is serious business. I must really like this person. Which means they probably like me back - like my soul - regardless of all my ego’s bullshit. And that’s the thought that kicks everything into high gear. I think my ego realizes that it can’t eliminate all these relationships and still keep me and my life sane and relatively luxurious. So it isn’t really interested in destroying the connection entirely. At that point, the ego just wants to take credit for the relationship. It wants to feel that it is the one my friend likes - that ego is necessary to maintain the connection. It does not want my soul out there forging direct ties without it. Oh, no! That would be very threatening to Ms. Ego. 

That’s where the too friendly, won’t shut-up yippy dog comes in. Ego sends him along, right by me in the front seat of my brain. So ego-dog takes over and won’t let up. And I, too frequently and especially with the people i like best and with whom i share the greatest intimacies, just talk too much. I wag my interpersonal tail with incessant enthusiasm and share so much of myself it can be like a wet sloppy dog kiss. Ugh. 

Yes. Yes, I cringe as the insight adds up in my consciousness. I knew there was some connection between that skate-agitation and my cannot-shut-upness with the ones I love most. I smelled the dog lurking there. So, yes, I cringe. But, also... Yes! Yes! This is helpful, this makes sense. This is headway on a puzzle that has been frittering away at me, heart and soul, for a long time now. I hate when I talk too much. I hate it most when it causes me to miss out on things my most treasured friends might have to share - if they could get more words in, with less edgewise necessary. So, yes! I celebrate the insight even as I cringe. It occurs to me that this is often how I feel upon seeing a small yippy dog of any kind, no matter who it belongs to. 

This gives me both hope and direction. Now that I know it’s the yippy ego-guard dog talking, I can quiet it. I know how to deal with an overly friendly dog. I know when to ignore it, how to comfort it into silence and sleep... With love in the right situation, I am pretty sure I can dissolve it completely into sweet oblivion.