✓ I definitely would not want to be "anybody but me" because most (albeit not all!) the people aka: "the Them" I have encountered in my life have been even far worser than the thing the conscious life writing these words was stuck with because it never fully capitulated to become a them. Some of the Them never should have been born, or, having had the misfortune to see the light, gone back swiftly whence they came. (paraphrasing Sophocles from a slightly different context) the Them is the real H. Lacks cancer. The remainder of the Them that is not toxic to come in contact with is just in the third person: more or less Potemkin people.

✓ I would have preferred to be an attractive [preferably "barren"] female, but at least I am not stifled in a minotaur's body, like some male hominds, Each day, I more resent the Them that, as they politely call their male genital mutilation social custom: "circumcised" my body and my soul to make my capacity for sexual pleasure even less than it already had to be by being male in the first place but then the Them ignoranced me of what they left (It is imperative for the Them that males retain biological capacity to produce more thems!).

✓ the Them lacks the faculty to appreciate anything, but a them can smile. (Viruses are parasitic: they cannot exist except in host cells they colonize.) the Them bodies emit words from their oral orifices, but do[es] the Them instantiate discursive language? As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: "the Them" have sunk so low that they cannot even despise themselves. (Higher mammals such as cats and dogs lack language, too, but cats and dogs can love me and play with me; cats and dogs do not consume me for headcount / bodycount, without even being decent about it like carrion birds and waiting until after I die a natural death. After I am dead, I welcome the Them to enjoy my corpse tartare or to cook me however they like for whatever meal they want. Bon appetit!)

Persons I wish were still alive to ask them for help

Maxine Greene	Teachers College professor who respected an essay I wrote. If I had asked for help would she have halped me in the academic world?
[Name forgotten]	When I wrote and complained to the director of The Hudson Institute about just being a member of the audience, he wrote back and invited me to come talk with him and I didn't do it.
Charles Siegel	USF&G data processing manager who gave me an opportunity to rise in the company as fast as I could produce, but I was distracted by fantasy of computer programming as pure logic instead of as tool for productive endeavor.
Mitch Tullai	Famed St. Paul's School athletic coach. Potential helper if I had asked him to work up an apprpopriate physical fitness program for me? (Long shot)
There's a limit to what a person can expect from others. They have their own problems. It's the parents' responsibility to provide their child what he (she, other) needs. It's the society's responsibility to see the parents have what they need to do it. It's not the "alma mater"'s responsibility, but if the parents fail, the school should be step up to the plate. America failed my parents (and St. Paul's School). Consequently, my parents and St. Paul's School in turn failed me.

⇒ Some persons who harmed me

Specific things "the Them" deprived me of and that cannot be undone

☒ I cannot undo the Them having circumcised me and the loss of sensitiity in my penis and the enhance opportunities for erotic stimulation foreskin offers.

☒ I cannot undo the Them having haircutted me so that I cannot graciously feel my hair is a natural part of my life.

☒ I cannot undo the Them not having removed the foul "birth mark" (aka: "mole"; see right) on my chest. This led to me being chronically plagued, distracted and mentally debilitated by OCD fears. It corroded my whole life: the Them should have cut out that mole instead of cutting off the end of my penis.^[2]

☒ I cannot undo the Them having made my pervasive experienece of things be "black and white" not gray scale, and each item just what is appears to be and explanation needed. no nuances and no context ("notes by rote"). I was childreared in a Potemkin world.

☒ I cannot undo the Them having wrecked my reflexes to prevent me from immediately recognizing how much I disliked things done to me. I still am able often eventually to figure these things out, but it's almost always esprit d'escalier → after I've made a fool of myself and the perps have got away.

☒ I cannot undo the Them having made me ashamed of myself, including ashamed to tell the embarasssing things they have caused me to do.

☒ I cannot undo the Them having made me a danger to myself and to others by having internalized the model they set of living as harming not gentle caring.

Go on to: who/what I got stuck being...

+2024.02.16 v182

"Why reinvent the past with the assets of the future? The times are rotten, the culture sick. Fools rule. Capacity weakens. Let's turn our imagination to nobler possibilities." (ROM)

"Tenebrae mentium tenebra orbis."(BMcC[18-11-46-503])

Footnotes

↑ Where I would like to be: Of course not anywhere not "privileged". But the reason I would put up with being rich in America is to not be not rich in America, or England or India or Russia or South Africa or a lot of other places. I would like to live in the northern Italy of "La dolce vita" and Michelangelo Antonioni's 1950s "Monica Vitti" films. Second best, Japan. Luxemborg? France? The Scandanavian countries? To quote a certain architect: "I like white walls, don't you?"
↑ Despite my fear of doctors, I seem to recall I very trepidantly once got up the courage to ask my father to get this taken care of. He did nothing.^[3] I should not have had to prod their asses about this, but I should have got it done. It would have made my life a lot less worse even if still not good since there were big "positive" things I needed but did not have even had I not been burdened by this big "negative" thing. ~ Thank you, Dr. Rossi of the Yale Health Department. for saving me from probable melanoma, but by then it was too late to save me from fear of it. Damn you The United Staes of America for producing defective people such as my parents and StP teachers; they might have been more adequate human persons had America raised them better.
↑ I have alawys remembered the context here: One of our neighbors at 100 West Cold Spring Lane's daughters had had some moles removed and apparently told my motther about it. She had told me about it. Why I do not know. I was worried about this thing on my chest from which a piece had fallen out and it had slightly bled. All my mohtre did was tell me to not pick at it. My parents' general ignorance about a lot of things cannot compterly account for this failure on their part which was t prove prove so tragic (or pathetic if you wish to call it that) for their frightened child: me. this was not the only time my mentally ill mother said something that "had no relation to anything" to me. A different time she said that sex could be beautiful when you were married. GKW.
↑ Some persons people get off on that I do not, nor would I want to be: The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Joan Baez, Mr. Socrates.

Barak Obama entering the conspicuous comsumption class.

Some persons I would like to be instead of the who's-not-really-me I'm stuck with due to the: "the Them"[4]

Persons I wish were still alive to ask them for help

Specific things "the Them" deprived me of and that cannot be undone

Footnotes

Some persons I would like to be instead of the who's-not-really-me I'm stuck with due to the: "the Them"^[4]