That’s what life feels like to me lately, more often than not. Just a slow trip down a long, dark, silent corridor. No sign of a beginning or an end. Just silence, and darkness, and the sensation of unwilled movement. And a feeling of eeriness and dread.

I don’t know where this feeling comes from. But I have learned that asking such questions of depression can be depressingly futile, because sometimes, there is no reason apart from one’s on messed up brain chemistry. Guess what, your chemicals have decided that right now, you will be depressed.

And you are free to make up any reason for it you like. Some of them might even be vaguely accurate. But underneath it all are those messed up brain chemicals.

On a deep level, I feel like there is a key to escaping that long dark corridor. Like I could just turn my head and, like in a dream, I would be someplace warm and happy and alive.

Real bucolic Disney meadow stuff. And yet, somehow, also the 1970’s, because that’s where all my happy childhood memories lie. Times with the family all around, when I got plenty of attention (sometimes a little too much) and adults were charmed if a little nonplussed by this adorable precocious kid with the red hair and freckles. Times where it’s always summer, because that’s when my mother would be home (she was a teacher) as well as my siblings, and we would sometimes go places as a family, and everything was pretty peachy keen, honestly.

Times before I ever went to school.

It’s good for me to remember those times because it’s good for me to remember that my life was not always hell. There were some golden years. And it’s those good memories that I want to draw upon when trying to purify myself.

One can return to innocence, but you have to let go of so much of what seems important (but isn’t) first.

We all have a deep identity. The person we would be if we didn’t know who we were. Mine is friendly, enthusiastic, very expressive, caring, sensitive, and extremely charismatic.

At least, that’s what I have figured out so far. When I imagine the purified version of myself, free of my burdens and my scars, I picture a vibrant happy person filled with optimism and enthusiasm and charm.

Intelligence works in there some way too, I would imagine. But it wouldn’t be the central point of my being, like it is now. It would be integrated into all the rest, supporting and informing it, but not being this giant overgrown unbalanced thing like it is right now.

Integration. I talk about that a lot. It’s a tricky thing to explain to those of you who live outside my head (you know who you are). The word compartmentalization might work. My mind is highly compartmentalized, with different parts of it spread far and wide with only that icy cold void of the intellect connecting them. These parts are supposed to be working closely together but instead they barely know each other exist.

Integration, then, is the process of bring them back together. But it is a long and tricky n-dimensional jigsaw puzzle to put oneself together again. You can’t just click yourself together like a Kinder Egg toy. The parts have to be delicately maneuvered around and into each other, like you are assembling a space station in zero gravity, and that takes time.

Still, I have faith that progress is possible, and indeed, is happening. I am a vastly different person than I was even a year ago, and I expect that I will be even more different (differenter?) this time next year.

This would all be easier if I could just surrender myself to God. I totally understand why that works. By doing so, you return to innocence because you basically return to childhood. It’s not just you against the cold and cruel adult world any more. You can be a child in God’s house, and that is powerful because it fulfills our deep and largely unrecognized need to feel like a powerful Alpha is in charge, and they have the big picture covered, so you can relax and just live your life.

People without that kind of leadership tend to become nervous, fearful, and even violent. That’s the sort of thing where mob violence is a possibility. When people feel like their leadership is incompetent or corrupt or both, our status instincts tell us to agitate and create chaos until new leadership is in place.

The human animal is only truly content when ensconced in a solid, stable, predictable hierarchy in which it has a clearly defined role and total faith in the people above it. Hence the appeal of fascism and other totalitarian forms of government. They would seem to provide that sort of thing, and if they could actually deliver it, they might have some merit.

But they can’t, so they don’t. No system can survive unless its citizens feel safe, and those kinds of government, being paranoid and sadistic, vehemently oppose the idea that any citizen should feel safe from their governments.

So these governments always end up with the secret police and the political officers and all kinds of other ways to make sure no citizen can ever just relax and enjoy life, but instead has to always be on guard against the forces just waiting for them to screw up so they can pounce.

Amazing how I can start from my own problems and end up in political analysis, isn’t it?

Tonight is our little Xmas at the apartment. We’ll go out to dinner, then come back and exchange presents. And, of course, watch lots of video together.

It’s our thing.

Still considering the Xmas cheer option. I know, roughly, where the closest liquor store is. Get myself a little bottle of spcied rum, or maybe just by some tasty looking bottled beverages.

Either way, I will talk to you nice people tomorrow.
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This blog entry will come to you a little later in the day than usual because I got sucked into a little video game called 100 Doors 2 on my tablet.

I got it thinking it would be a game where you had to choose one of two doors, which would lead to another two doors, and so on, and the idea is to find the one path that leads all the way to Door 100. I played a game like that once, about a decade ago, and while it did violate my “there has to be a way to get the answer right the first time” rule, I found the game surprisingly fun despite primitive graphics and no sound at all.

But no, it’s a puzzle game in the purest sense of the word. The idea is that you face 100 elevator doors, each of which is opened via a different and unique puzzle. In one, to open the door might take solving a sliding block puzzle, or using objects like the old graphical adventures, or cracking some mathematical code via visual clues and deduction.

It’s a lot like room escape games, but simplified.

Historically, I have not liked this sort of game because when you get stuck, you’re fucked. The puzzles are in sequence and if you can’t figure out Door 30, you will never see 31 or beyond.

In fact, I had almost given up on the game and was about to delete it when I saw there was a “skip door” option. Oh ho! So I was NOY fucked when I was stuck. I could go on to the other doors in the set of 20 and come back to the sticky one later.

That made all the difference. Like a clever test taker, I could do all the easy ones, then come back and focus my mental energies and creativity on the ones I didn’t get the first time around.

So now I am hooked on the game. When I finally crack a tricky one, I get a real surge or victory, like “Yeah motherfucker, you thought you were tough, but I SOLVED YOU. ”

And I know the game truly has me in its claws but good, because I started playing at a quarter after seven and when I looked at the clock again, it was a quarter to nine and it felt like no time had passed.

That would make a good bit of ad copy for the game : So good, you will become unstuck in time.

Otherwise, today’s been quiet. Joe is home for Xmas holidays, and so it’s nice having him around. Some part of my mind still feels like the normal number of people to have around is six, like the family I grew up in. So having more people around, especially at this time of year, makes me happy, even in this rather petite apartment.

Made a white cake with caramel flavouring today. I made one a few days ago as well, but this time I wanted to try out this vanilla icing recipe I had found.

I already having a pretty good chocolate icing recipe, plus a lemon glaze. Adding a vanilla frosting recipe to my cake decorating powers would make me very happy.

Unfortunately, the recipe did not work. Totally inedible. Right consistency but… bleh.

I am not too surprised. The recipe called for powdered sugar made with powdered milk, along with the usual Splenda and cornstarch, and I don’t happen to have any of that around.

So next time I am shopping, I will buy a small bag. I’m not giving up on this recipe yet! If I am willing to keep half-and-half in the fridge for my chocolate icing recipe, I am surely willing to keep powdered milk around for vanilla.

Right now my caramel flavoured white cake (vanilla replaced with artificial caramel flavour) is sitting on the counter, waiting for me to come along and make that excellent chocolate icing for it. I would have done it earlier, but after the failed vanilla icing experiment, I needed some time before I bounced back.

Besides, I really needed to eat. I have fallen back into a very bad habit lately, namely skipping meals. That is never ever a good idea, but old habits die hard (with a vengeance). It;s just so easy to say “Oh well, I know I should eat right now, but it’s only a few hours till suppertime… I will just wait. ”

Right, because it is way better to have my blood sugar crash and get super crazy hungry than to eat at a weird time.

See, it always starts when I wake up hungry and it’s like 9 in the morning. I eat… but then technically the next meal should be at three, then nine again, then three again, and so on ad infinitum.

And that is clearly madness.

So instead of eating at three, I wait till six. And for a normal, non-diabetic person, that’s not too crazy. But for me, that is a terrible idea. And yet, I do it over and over.

Last night was especially egregious, because I did the exact things I know lead to an IBS attack. It’s a simple formula : don’t eat enough during the day, then eat way too much, way too fast.

And that’s what I did. I ate a meal at eight in the morning and a snack at three (so I was trying, dammit), then I went to Denny’s with my friends and stuffed myself with chili and turkey and all the trimmings.

The minute we stood up to leave, I knew I was in trouble. Luckily, I managed to keep everything together long enough to get my shopping done. But when we got home, it was straight to the loo, do not pass go on the way, or anything else for that matter.

It’s a special kind of humiliation to know you have just made a mistake you have made dozens of times before.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.