Week 120 – Insecurities, Placebos And Goosing Lamp Posts.

I’ve been thinking on insecurities and what fun they are to write about. You can have a laugh and rip the pish out of other folks and you can do the same with your own but that isn’t funny.

I would rather use it as a self-help exercise, ’cause lets be honest, if you can write about them and put them out there, you will never need to pay a therapist.

Now paying a therapist seems to be something people in other countries do. We don’t. Us Scottish people would never dream of doing this and that has sod all to do with the very false stereotype of us being mean.

We wear our madness as a badge of honour. To be sectioned is the top accolade but it very seldom happens. The only way this can happen is if you sexually assault a lamp-post and it complains to the authorities.

If any of us have an ‘episode’, we just eat wallpaper belonging to someone else and they phone an ambulance. We then fight with the ambulance folks who call the police and they take us to Accident and Emergency. We are assessed while trying to bite the doctors, stating that we are The Emperor Of The Universe and that our toenails are telling us to hurt people.

The doctors’ diagnosis is that we are either pished, our conduct is behavioural or we are mad. None of those is a reason to admit us, so we are set free to hopefully kill ourselves or people we know because they will be mad too.

This is the way that our Mental Health System gets their numbers down. It is very effective. So if we aren’t sectioned you ask, what becomes of us? Well, most of Scotland is given the drug Citalopram and told that this will help. Our badge of honour is then how many mgs of that specific drug you are taking. But to be truthful, I think Citalopram is a fancy word for ‘Placebo’.

You may begin to understand why we need to be comfortable with our insecurities. There is no other way to handle them.

We all have issues as children. It still makes us smile thinking back to when we wondered who our mum or dad hated more. Who our creepy uncle fancied more and what would happen to us if anyone found our collection of dead old people.

We moved on from those childish thoughts to the teenage years and our insecurities took a vile and nasty turn that none of us could handle.

We worried about our appearance and whether or not our genitalia was a funny shape. We stressed over saying hello to someone of the opposite sex / same sex / sometimes both sexes. We dug up the old people just to feel good about ourselves and to take us back to simpler times.

But then the day of clarity happened. Normally after twenty pints. We realised that we were who we were and we had to embrace our funny under-arm hair and turtle-lips. We had finally grown up and become well-adjusted adults. That was also when I realised never to mention the dead old people except in a story-type situation.

Insecurities give you so much material. But never sign the bottom of a ‘story’ about this as it can be counted as a confession. (You’ll never get those thirty years back, but on the plus side it gives you a lot of time to write!)

 

Now onto our stories for this week. We have offerings such as wine, two sides, expectations, a sacrifice and an entrepreneur.

We have two new folks to introduce, so we welcome both Tim Gorichanaz and Doug Rudoff. We extend them the usual greetings and hope that they send us more stories very soon.

As always, our initial comments follow.

 

First up on Monday was the multi-talented and unique Mr Adam Kluger. He started off the week with ‘Pooboogle‘.

‘This is something undefinable and I have to say Yes!’

‘Adam’s got that little bit of unexplainable magic.’

‘Adam is one of the best at writing a character very quickly.’

 

It was a pleasure on Tuesday to publish Tim Gorichanaz’s first story for us, ‘Luisa‘

‘There is a lot of hidden depth within this.’

‘A creepy, sad and arrogant character.’

‘A well constructed story where the MC was painted very well.

 

I was next up on Wednesday with a tale of opposites. It is a continual pleasure and honour for me to have my stories included, especially with the writers that we have.

As always, I thank all my fellow editors for being there and helping me.

‘The Glebe‘ broke the back of the week.

 

We had our second new author on Thursday. ‘Who Weeps For Cthulu‘ was our penultimate story penned by Doug Rudoff.

‘Appeasing by sacrifice that is sponsored is clever and perceptive.’

‘Doug has tapped into modern life very well for this.’

‘Quite a mix. Even though the beastie was referenced, this was still very intelligent and original.’

 

On Friday we finished off the week with Ashlie Allen and her latest offering, ‘Merlot Is A Monster‘. There is no way that anyone could say that this fantastic author is ordinary! It is a continual pleasure to read her work.

‘Ashlie has written similar content but what is brilliant is the outcome is always inventive and unique.’

‘Deep, tragic and dreadful.’

‘What a piece of work!’

 

 

I was just reading the first section back and there is more truth in it than ever should be.

If any of this resonates with you, I hope that your therapists are on speed dial.

As for me, I don’t take Citalapram. I am a well-adjusted sweaty, irritable and restless individual who developed a Librium habit at the age of ten!!

 

Hugh