Heater on High

Heat: Strong feeling or intensity of feeling; excitement, ardor, anger, zeal, etc.

One of the great advantages of The Program is that I get to meet so many people who feel and act like I do. When I was out there, blindly groping through the real world, trapped inside my own head and breaking bread with the insane monsters who were squatting there, I had no conscious contact with reality. I would think crazy thoughts, vaguely aware that something wasn't quite right, yet not have an outlet to release the steam. Quite naturally, I got crazier and crazier. I decided to dispense with the theory that I was descending into madness and just kind of went with it. I got to know the monsters. I started to like the monsters. I became irritable when Earth People suggested that, not only were the monsters not real, they weren't particularly pleasant or helpful monsters, like Shrek or the Cookie Monster. They weren't even monsters like Frankenstein, who was a good sort, really, just misunderstood, lurching around in that vest 5 sizes too small.

For instance, I am by nature full of the most absurd level of kinetic energy. I have ants in my pants and bees buzzing around my head. Things are chasing me, apparently, so I have to run run run like hell to get away. It can be disconcerting to have to manage all of this white hot heat. I can be incredibly productive when I harness this nuclear fusion but I can also wipe out the occasional suburb. Sometimes it's very uncomfortable to try to sit quietly in my own skin, which is often stretched to the breaking point trying to contain the chaos threatening to break out.

I have been chatting with my friend MudWoman who, I believe, is similarly afflicted. It's not as if the knowledge that others think, feel, or behave the way I do cures what ails me, it's that it takes away that debilitating sense of isolation. I used to sit in bars with other drunks who wanted to talk about sports (couldn't care less), work (couldn't hold a job), or women (couldn't get a date). I tried bringing up my theories about Good Monsters versus Bad Monsters a few times but the conversation lapsed. To be sociable I would try to make the conversation topical, as in: " Who do you is faster, Shrek or the Cookie Monster?" Or who would be a better CEO: Batman or Superman?"

SuperK can sit through a movie, like a normal person. I start squirming after a half hour or so, grit my teeth for another twenty minutes, then hit the Pause button, burst out of my chair just so I can get up and move around. She just rolls her eyes, picks up the magazine or knitting she keeps handy to indulge my restlessness, and goes with the flow. You can feel the heat coming off of me. You can see the sparks flying.

Today I know it's not just me.