As I mentioned at least in one previous entry, ever since I returned to work after my six-months-long break, the vibe at the office has changed for me. Beyond objective changes like the main boss refusing to greet me nor look me in the face, and some other coworker doing pretty much the same (in addition to whispering and murmuring about me from two meters away), I’m getting the feeling that something else is at play: last Friday, as a different coworker was whispering nearby, I caught a glimpse of him glancing at me, and I felt myself going into fight-or-flight mode. What’s your beef with me, motherfucker? But that same guy had been talking to me normally the previous day. To this minor incident I had to add numerous other impressions I have gotten at the office since I returned to work. I feel that plenty of the coworkers, as they pass me by, are projecting malice at me.

On top of that, there was a moment when I realized that my bowels weren’t complaining as much as five minutes ago. But I didn’t go to the bathroom, did I? My rotten guts never stop hurting spontaneously. Yes, I recalled having taken the decision to get up and walk to the bathroom, but I hadn’t retained any single memory of having done so. I don’t remember any other recent instances of such clear-cut short-term memory loss.

Something else had changed in my life ever since my last contract ended: due to my heart injury (I got diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, which is the least dangerous kind of arrhythmia), caused by Moderna’s so-called booster, I’m now taking beta-blockers in perpetuity. They were a good fit for me not only because they would prevent my heart from going haywire like it did during my latest episode of arrhythmia, when my heart rate got as high as 190-200, but it also helps with migraines, tremors (I don’t have them yet, but both my father and brother do), anxiety and PTSD, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, which affect me to different extents.

Regarding migraines, I suffered them at work so bad that I couldn’t understand anything I was reading, and could hardly string sentences together. Migraines terrify me, as they offer a taste of how a stroke might affect a person permanently. In fact, migraines increase the risk of suffering one. John Fowles, a writer whose work I respect a lot (at least two of his novels), suffered a stroke that wiped out his need to write. He never did again. He said in an interview that the stroke had killed his imagination. If it happened to me, I can’t imagine myself living past that point.

Anyway, I have become addicted to these beta-blockers the same way one does to any such drug that he or she has to take in perpetuity. There are serious risks involved with cutting back. And as I was reading up on the long-term effects of this drug, I came across this page, paper or whatever: Neuropsychiatric Consequences of Lipophilic Beta-Blockers.

Over time, common side effects seem to be:

• Fatigue: for sure. I can barely walk upstairs and by four in the afternoon I’m done for the day, which is why I have moved my writing time to five in the morning. I’m having a very hard time returning to weightlifting; I have found myself much weaker than I used to be.
• Depression: I wouldn’t know. I think I have integrated depression to such an extent that I only notice the worst cycles. I’m not sure I know how the world feels like without some level of depression.
• Sleep disorders and nightmares: I experience very vivid nightmares, or what others would likely consider nightmares, but that feel like more vivid versions of my usual OCD-induced intrusive daydreams. I’m somewhat immune to them.

Last of all, hallucinations and delirium. That’s part of the issue here: I may have become delusional, have slipped into psychotic thinking, and it’s very hard to prove your way out of that when plenty of elements in your surroundings contribute to those impressions. I endured through my late teens in full-blown psychosis accented by a couple of guys who were genuinely trying to ruin my life, along with a physical fight I got into with an older drug dealer who wanted to prevent any classmate of his stripper girlfriend from talking to her. I made the mistake of trying to mediate, as my mother taught me. I didn’t fully understand back then that some people just want a target.

I was pretty much raised by a single mother (my father is around, but has brain damage from abuse and possibly some degree of autism). I was taught that you can solve every issue by talking, that two people won’t argue unless both of them want to, that violence is never the answer, and that the worse someone behaves, the more justified they must be in doing so. A let’s say feminine mindset that she has never grown out of despite the constant evidence to the contrary, a mindset that I had to shed in order to survive in the real world. That’s the kind of bullshit that produces societies in which criminals rule and decent, now castrated people are persecuted, while those in charge of ruining everything believe themselves to be great human beings.

Anyway, this last month I have been getting an updated taste of how it feels to stew in impressions and feelings that you suspect may not have interpreted reality correctly, no matter how much your brain emphasizes that they did. Due to autism, I have always known myself to think and react differently, which has led me to question plenty of my internal processes; this is the cherry on top.

How could I solve this issue? I can’t stop taking the beta-blockers, so I may need, like during the worst periods of depression, to sit tight and get used to the dark. An expression that I’ve had to use plenty of times, and that also reminds me of those many hours I spent in the dark, sitting on the stairs of random apartment buildings, waiting for the school hours to pass until I could return home, because I didn’t think I would survive high school otherwise.

I haven’t started writing the next scene of my ongoing novel, that four or five people care about. I have spent the whole weekend playing Baldur’s Gate 3. What a masterpiece. I would have never expected a RPG to offer fully motion-captured dialogue for every single character you come across, and generally very well acted too. For example, the compelling first encounter with a shady devil, one of the many people in this game who offer you help in exchange of potentially even worse consequences.

Too bad that this player has his or her avatar walking around with that mask on; I always take it off the moment I stop disguising myself. This is a game in which you can talk to certain dead people, but they will refuse to answer if you were the one who killed them, so at times disguising your form comes useful.

The companions that make up your team are fascinating as well. It had become a trope in such grandiose RPGs, like the Mass Effect series, that you would grow closer to your companions only to end up having sex with one or more of them close to the climax of the story, and afterwards the relationship would stop growing. In Baldur’s Gate 3, the first intimate moment for me involved my female fighter pursuing my character for sex, which for that relentless alien only means physical relief. This is the alien in question:

I grew tired of that “fling” quickly (she’s too abrasive for me), but I delayed telling her that I wanted to stop having sex; I wasn’t ready to find out how she would react. There was also an uncomfortably intimate moment with my male wizard, involving magic. At the moment I’m considering getting burned by a half-demon barbarian who escaped from the hells.

You can tell that this game was made by people who love their craft. Best RPG-makers in the business at the moment, above and beyond and all that. They even designed every goddamn goblin individually. I’m about forty hours in, but it feels like I haven’t gotten through any significant quest yet. Those who have finished the game claim that the experience only improves after act one.

Along with Starfield, that comes out in a month, I feel that we may be in the best year of gaming since 2015. I can’t wait to get home and keep discovering the strange stuff that this game will throw at me. That first encounter with a beholder nearly made me shit myself.