The sixth hour of the drive was still an hour from ending. rswfire was somewhere in Tennessee, headed toward Kentucky, the road running dark ahead of him and the cell signal — the worst he had encountered anywhere, he said — thinning to nothing across the hills. The GoPro he had installed for exactly this purpose sat unused. He named that first, out loud, and then named the naming: he was being hard on himself, but not on purpose. He is an emotional person. He is very sensitive. He does not censor his emotions and he was going to share them openly, and that was the arrangement, stated before anything else was said. It did not mean he needed comforting. It meant this was the real him, processing what he was feeling, in the moment, because that is how he is.
Then he said what the day had cost. The house had been empty. That had been his life in there. His mother had spent two to three days a week at that house, had slept there, had her own bedroom. He had been so focused on what he wanted to do that he had not stopped for a second to think about what he was giving up, and it hit him that day. He turned it outward as a lesson — if you want to live this kind of life, look at your life now and be sure there are not things you are giving up. Be prepared for that. Then he moved on, because he had been contemplating on the drive, and he had come to some thoughts.
Three of them, numbered. First: he was going to sign up on BetterHelp, which he said was shocking to him, because he needed to talk to somebody. Second: he was talking to his doctor, who was calling it a big misunderstanding — if that is what you could call this. He said the man was a very good man and he would probably keep seeing him, and maybe the doctor could help him through the withdrawal, because he was not getting back on those things ever. Anything that does this to your body is evil. Third: he was going to stick around Kentucky for a while. He did not have that part planned. For the next week or two he did not really know — he would probably hop around campgrounds — because he was not ready to leave his mother. He is close to her. His cats were with her now. Maybe they could work something out. It would not be the same; she was not going to be staying in the camper with him.
He held the decision and its velocity as two separate things. He did need a change. He needed this, he wanted this, he still wanted this. But he was moving too fast — definitely too fast — so he was reassessing, and it would work itself out. When he processes what he is feeling, he said, he is just being honest about it. He does not censor himself. If he feels a certain way, he accepts it, accepts that there is a reason for it, and then sits with it, tries to process it, understand it, whatever. That is just who he is.
He offered the audience two things to look up. INFJ — he would get it wrong if he tried to explain it, so just look up the letters. And highly sensitive person, HSP. He is both, and people with that architecture process the world a little differently than most, which is why he gets misunderstood, a running thing through his whole life. He said he was hoping to find a crowd who gets him and wants to share his life with him without trying to change him in any way. Because he is fine. He really is fine, even when he is not fine.
Then the practical close, and the body. The upload would take forever — Tennessee, the signal. He was doing pretty good. Still some withdrawal. For some reason, at night, his right arm turns heavy. It was both arms the first night; this was the third night, and the second and third had been the right one. He thought he would have trouble sleeping again. But he would say it was probably getting better, because he did not feel like he was getting worse, and that was a good sign — he was hoping, because he definitely did not want any more craziness. He had had enough for now.
He wished them a good night, and kept driving toward Kentucky.