I ran away from everything the past five years. The diagnoses, the confirmation of psychopathy, all the Cluster B connections I made … ran from them all. Even ran away from psychotherapy. I’m not sure those five years away from the daily musings and collaborations helped however. I seem to have lost – if I ever truly had – my ability to be mindful.

A constant refrain of the past five years has been that I’m mindful enough to know what’s going on, but not nearly mindful enough to enact meaningful change. I’m not saying that I am better off not narcissistic or antisocial, but I could be much better off without the impulsivity of extremity. For instance, dealing with the eternal ennui by going to the casino and hitting double digit dollar spins on the slots? Probably (and most definitely) not the most productive behavior, one that I seem to realize as I leave empty handed, but never before or during the chase for feeling.

My immediate focus for this next stage of psychotherapy is to better understand when I’m about to engage in foolish behavior and to short-circuit those desires. There will be other topics for other days, but I most certainly will be better off if I’m not making the inwardly or outwardly destructive choices at what seems to be all times. I need to take the next logical step in my well-being and evolve. This need not mean returning to a 24/7 state of masking, but it does mean that all the bullshit I engage in needs to be thought out beforehand before I or someone else gets truly irrevocably hurt. Masking without changing behavior is basically the old saying about the tree and the woods and whether it makes sound if no one is around to hear. But, changing behavior while remaining masked will continue to damage my very soul, as that becomes a life lived unauthentically.

It’s time for a mental revolution, where I take back my bloody crown of less-masked psychopathy but more wisely wield the mental state that it has given me. Whether I am truly good or bad is somewhat irrelevant. Whether I am standing still, or even falling behind is the more pressing question. I do believe that I can better myself and, by proxy, others.

Everything in the psychopath’s life is truly connected, even if it may not seem so on the surface. Regaining (or finally truly obtaining) my mindfulness is the first step in both honoring that connection between symptoms and becoming master over the cognitions those symptoms beget.

We will revisit the entire gambit in time, but for now, do believe when I say that what separates the productive psychopaths from the feral comes down to mindfulness, and I’ve straddled that line too closely for a while now. It’s time for me to evolve and take back what’s upstairs.