Disclaimer

Hey gents (I’m also addressing Fallon here),

I hope that, once the Internet does its thing and gets this to each of you, that you at the very least didn’t open it while actively in the throes of IC (assuming I am right).

There are less than fifty minutes until the big announcement video thing is posted as I write this, and I’m actively wrestling my own brain trying to not let fear get in the way of excitement.

On the one hand, I’m very optimistic about how this goes. On the other, there is a lot of very potent emotional fuel my IC has to work with here. I have a shitload of respect for each and every one of you, and the absolute last thing I want to do is to upset you or embarrass you.

In case it isn’t immediately obvious, there is an enormous ethical gray area I’m treading in right here. I am not a mental health professional, which means that I don’t have to worry about a license getting suspended by doing this. And ideally, you’re going to get this, see that I was right without being annoyed, and then do whatever you need to get better—despite the fact that the treatment you would likely most benefit from is virtually unheard of (it’s Inference-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy [ICBT], by the way), which is half the reason I’m trying to get this movie made. Unfortunately, “trying to get this movie made” is also a conflict of interest.

I could also be wrong. I’m crossing my fingers that I am not, and I have a fair amount of confidence in my educated guesses. For example, because I essentially spent more time being shuttled to the therapist’s office than school growing up, combined with my hyper-empathy, I am really, really fucking good at reading people despite having next to no social experience (relatively. there were times I was able to go to in-person school just enough to get a taste of what I was missing out on).

The result? In college, I scared away the first two crushes (ever) that liked me back because I (1) knew intuitively they liked me back after barely two weeks in the same class and (2) stupidly asked questions with such piercing specificity they began to worry I might be stalking them. With the first of them (which I wrote Jimmy about), I began to vacillate between “What kind of dumbass would think I might be a stalker?!” and answering my own question by being said dumbass. (Shockingly, she did not find this pattern in my unwarranted text messages reassuring.)

Fuck. There are now 15 minutes left. Let’s assume this succeeds, and things go the way I’m hoping…

The media are going to want to report this as though it was an “overnight” success. It was not. They will want to put it as though it was all me, which it wasn’t. This was the result of many things aligning at the right place at the right time so that, despite being born buried alive, I was able to grow—the result now feels both like crawling out of a grave and seeing sunlight for the first time.

I am not destined for a normal career or life. I have long since accepted this when my professors started implying I should already be in graduate school—I was a fucking junior when I dropped out. Apparently, everyone I meet who has a lick of sense quickly begins to see that something extraordinary is happening, which certainly did not fuel the creation of one of my feared selves. There will be people who nevertheless see me that way, I’m certain, and part of my mission at this point is educating people to please fucking stop that.

10 minutes—practically, five. This shit killed Steve Jobs. I know he died of cancer, technically, but he had all the hallmarks of a case of IC with themes of spiritual contamination and abandonment. Despite strong evidence to the contrary (a trait called overvalued ideation where exposure therapy is unlikely to work as well), he avoided surgery that could have excised a malignant tumor before it was too late. He passed at 56, which is the same age my granddad was when he went three months before I was born. He was the chairman of psychiatry at Emory, so if the buddhists are right, well, there you go.

Does this count as an art piece if it’s a genuine spur-of-the-moment thing? At what point did I stop using this as a disclaimer and start using it to cope with this shit?

Bo, did you ever square that circle? I may have taken just a bit of inspiration from Inside—but basically take that whole special, add more mental images of blood and guts, and then you get the last 14 years. To be fair to myself, your early career was basically just Tom Lehrer with extra swearing. Mine is like. Your shit but with more scary

We should start a band. Start brainstorming names, fellers. We gon change the world

ok i gotta publish the site now peace out

i’m assuming you won’t sue or send cease and desists because then you’d look like huge pricks which doesn’t sound right

lol now people are gonna feel bad for criticizing you Jimmy