Feeling pretty crappy at the moment.
Physically, I have what the used to call an “ague”. In other words, my muscles ache. I have this dull hard ache throughout all the major muscles in my body as well as my wrists and other joints.
Feels like they have petrified just a little.
And emotionally, I’m at a low ebb. I feel disgusted with life and tired of myself and sick of this sad pathetic existence of mine.
So as you can see, correcting my internal narrative to be more positive is still a WIP.
I suppose no amount of good intentions and/or willpower can entirely overcome a whole lot of negative emotion.
And the thing is, I really am disgusted with my life and how it’s turned out and I am deeply frustrated with my inability to advance my own cause and move into a state of greater happiness and fulfillment because mental illness is holding me back
It rankles me on a fundamental level that I have all this power and ability just waiting to be used to make a better life for myself but it’s worse than useless because there is something deeply broken about my mind that makes said power impossible for me to access. My systems just can’t bear the strain even for a second.
And yet, it’s so easy to convince myself otherwise. To fall back into thinking that any minute now, I will give my head a shake, snap out of it, and get on with life.
Yup. Aaaaany second now.
And of course, failure to do so proves how much I suck. That’s standard depressive bullshit thinking . But it masks a deeper, darker, denied truth, because it hides the brutal truth that there is literally nothing I can do against this illness.
No act of will or summoning of courage and resolve will let a blind man see or the lame walk. Nothing I can do with this mighty and massive mind of mine will overcome the terrible Wound I carry inside me. I can’t just crush it with overwhelming mental force like I do everything else.
I am truly and deeply limited by my illness. And that’s the dark truth I work so hard to deny. I am utterly trapped in this tiny life of mine and it’s high time I faced that fact.
And learned to work within my limitations instead of simply ignoring them like I do with so much of life. If I am going to get closer to the life I want to lead, it will be with the mind I have now, crippled though it may be.
And that means no longer waiting for a healthier mind that might never show up. Or if it does show up, it will be far too late to do me any good.
No more waiting for my crippled legs to magically start working again.
Time to grab a goddamned cane and learn to hobble.
I may not get there fast but at least I will get there.
More after the break.
The kidneys of the soul
Clearly, I have a need to vent my pent up negativity occasionally.
Luckily, I can do so here. I have the platform and the audience (thank you so much for reading) and the verbal skill to pour my negative thoughts out in words on this blog of mine instead of having to work them out some other, unhealthier way.
Like I think I have said before, I am positive that have I been given a more working class childhood, I would have become one of those guys who goes to bars and picks fights on the weekends.
I might not know why I do it, but I would do it.
Anyhow, the fact that I accumulate this toxic gumbo of self-loathing, rage, bitterness, and raw aggression that I need to void like a bodily function onto to page now and then strikes me as both inefficient and unhealthy.
Sane persons must have healthier ways of dealing with this stuff. Some way of working this stuff out via physical activities and/or talking with friends and/or some other healthy thing a degenerate like me can scarcely imagine.
Religion, maybe? I am pretty sure some people are helped by it.
But me, I don’t have those healthy organs of the soul. The only way I know of process my emotions is by writing about them.
Like I always say, in order to be an artist, there has to be something wrong with you. Something that keeps you from expressing your emotions another way.
At least this moment has provided me some perspective on the nature of my mood cycle. Clearly, any attempt to “stay positive” is doomed to failure because eventually the unfiltered toxins of my unwholesome spirit will overwhelm any positive resolve and drag me down into depression no matter what I do.
The key, then, is to stop trying to fight the cycle by trying to stop it in the happy phase, and instead learn to accept that my life will always cycle between the light and the dark, but this doesn’t necessarily mean being happy then sad.
It can instead simply be a cycle between energized and dormant. Falling energy levels do not have to be interpreted as a slide into depression. They can instead be viewed like getting sleepy after being active – a normal natural thing that can actually be quite pleasant as long as you accept it and structure your life to accommodate it.
After all, we all get sleepy every night but most of us don’t interpret that to mean we are dying on the inside.
We know it is going to happen and that it is perfectly normal and that we will get sleepy, sleep for a while, then wake up and go on with life.
That seems like the wise path to me. Ergo…. ahem….
I hereby declare that I will no longer fight my mood cycle and will instead relax into it and learn to love every little step along the way.
And now, I will accept that I need a nap.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.