Ten Tips for Living Petulantly

If you and your favourite person are afflicted with Borderline Personality Disorder, situated in the Greater Sudbury Area no less, then liquidate assets and purchase waterfront property alongside a meteor crater from the Eocene era now called Lake Wanapatei.

One: Copulate extensively. Experience heights of unimagined bliss. Observe a visible field of blue energy during the sex act. Belhieve, with the externalists (Manzotti, Chalmers, Clark) that consciousness exists external to the nervous system and can integrate with externalities such as Catherine’s consciousness. Experience splitting. Experience anticipatory nostalgia. Miss the present in the present. Agree with Zeena Schreck on the lone point, “that nostalgia is an illness for those who haven’t realized that today is tomorrow’s nostalgia. ” Fight without apparent end or resolution. Laugh in her face. Have your own face laughed into. If you are more frequently depressed than your sister, and so-accused of being ‘moody, ’ moodily quote William James, “Does it not appear as if one who lived on one side of the pain threshold might need a different sort of religion from one who perpetually lived on the other?90”

Two: If Catherine responds, “Enough with the quotes already it doesn’t make you smart anyone can leaf through a book like you do, ” realize she is correct and that you are a fraud. Weep violently in the shower for eighty minutes.

Three: Resume old hobbies. Play No Man’s Sky and No Hidden Variable on PlayStation VR. Survive in the game. Exist in the game. Harvest carbon to repair a fuel cell. Use the fuel cell to repair a space cruiser. Cruise to a carbon-rich planet to get more carbon. Wonder why your simulated self needs all this fucking carbon? Wonder if Majthenyi ever peeks in on his simulation to observe you mired in your own shitty low-rez carbon-mining simulation, before turning away depressed to offer Klaas a Moscow Mule or something, and says, “Appears David has chosen to mine carbon. ”

Four: If Catherine refers to her frequent lucid dream experiences as “being lifted, ” roll your eyes at how new-age-idiotic she sounds.

Five: If you track with Millon’s ‘petulant borderline’ category while Catherine tracks with Millon’s ‘impulsive borderline’ category, scoff your own petulant plosives when Catherine announces her impulsive intention to study Jungian Psychology at the University of Sudbury or whatever it’s called.

Six: If Catherine defines Jungian synchronicity as “the hypothesized principle of an acausal but meaningful ordering 90 The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) of events within a ‘psychic relativity of space and time, ’” and drones on about supra-personal organizing principles organizing your boorish behaviours, and if she mentions the anima and animus, then in addition to the mysteries she’s also contemplating the purchase of a strap-on.

Seven: If she’s hip to what supra-principles organize your low-value regurgitations, do not describe the naked theatrically of her big hero’s dissociative trances: “Jung, standing with his arms outstretched like the crucified Christ, a big snake wrapped around his body, suddenly turns into a god. He develops a lion head: becoming the lion-headed god of the ancient Mithraic religion – a mixture of Mithraic Kronos (Aion) and Christ.91, ” and then scream, “Trances you roll your eyes at whenever your own brother is thusly dissociated!”

Eight: If Catherine stays late at the library each night, abuse Tums to quell the time-symmetric somersaults in your stomach.

Nine: Text in terror to ask if she is having an affair with Richard Izdubar, Dean of Jungian Psychology. Wonder how long until Richie Iz, whom Catherine doesn’t even really like, whom Catherine appreciates for the sole reason that he is not you, rolls out that old Ravalian chestnut: “Why are you always running away from things?”

Ten: Alternate between scoffing “Please stop!” consonants and affricating anger towards jars and chairs, a bad combination. Say simple consonant things like “We are finally free to be together. ” Build walls. Try to sing harmonies. Shout at your asshole borderline neighbours through a megaphone 91 (Tyrrell, 2018) Russian-dolled into another megaphone. Plant trees along the perimeter of your property line. Take up dialectical behavioural therapy with Dr. Maya. Have a half-hearted affair with Dr. Maya. Fixate on her feminine wiles while feeling entirely empty inside. Look in a mirror and fail to recognize anyone you’ve once known. Spend up all of your time. Run into Catherine and Dean Izdubar at a Coffee Time one time. Cry out,

“Jezebel!” Weep into your peach-green tea in the all-gender bathroom, under its fluorescent lights, under excessive wattage, so close to Catherine and yet she’s already gone.