Well, semi-live anyhow.
Just woke up all fried by bad sleep. Dizziness, headache, a little nausea, a lot of disorientation, and a deep, cold, pervasive tingling throughout my entire body to remind me that I have just barely fought my way back from the brink of death.
In my sleep. Kind of impressive, really.
Of course, I wouldn’t have this problem if I could make myself use my CPAP machine. In theory, at least, it would neutralize my Obstructive Sleep Apnea by pumping a steady stream of air down my throat to keep it from relaxing and obstructing my airway with its general flabby flappiness.
It was weirdly fun to explain it out that like. Cathartic too.
It’s a matter of summoning the willpower to force myself to do it. And keep on doing it for as long as it takes for it to become a normal part of everyday life,
Simple. Easy. Reasonable. No problem. Piece o’ cake.
Just like all the other things I should do but don’t.
I’m so inwardly directed that it makes any sort of external effort towards change very difficult. It’s like all my energies go into maintaining the stability of this life destroying pattern that smothers as it supports me.
Like I said once before, a long long time ago, I feel like I am a dog on a very long leash tied up in a very big back yard. I have plenty of room to roam around and explore an I use it to fool myself into thinking I am free.
But I’m not. I just cover the same old ground, over and over.
Dammit, I need a little nap. I will be back soon.
And by soon, I mean two hours later. Sigh.
I hate being interrupted when I am writing, especially by myself.
Anyhow… where were we? Oh right, the complete futility of my existence.
Part of the problem with a safety obsessed mindset is that in most ways, it actually sets the bar pretty low.
Am I safe? Good. Then everything is fine and there’s no need for change, especially change that increases danger and all change does.
It doesn’t matter if you are depressed, stifled, miserable, repressed, hating your life, dying on the inside, or in terrible pain. It doesn’t even matter if your shitbox lifestyle is causing your body to rot away as we speak.
If you are safe, everything is fine, and moving to a less safe state for absolutely any reason, even to save your own fucking life, is impossible.
So I sleepwalk through this zombie life of mine, alive on the outside but numb and gone on the inside, seemingly free but actually buried alive in my mental illness.
Waking up from this state of undead dreaming is not going to be easy. But there is a coal mine fire raging within me and it’s going to burn its way through all that is keeping me locked inside myself, or die trying.
Whatever the consequences of that are, I accept them. Because nobody and nothing is going to hold me back any more.
More after the break.
Stoking the fire inside
Because I want to live, god damn it.
Wake me from this nightmare and let me see the world in the warm and satisfying Technicolor light of dawn.
I don’t care if the light, it hurts my head. Whatever. Pain is bullshit anyway, the fear of pain doubly so. Whatever it is will pass once I relax and let myself adjust to it instead of treating every moment like it’s going to last forever.
Pain comes and goes. And when it’s gone, you’re still there. Fuck pain, man.
It’s not the boss of me.
Dry my eyes as I wake from this long night’s dreaming. Wipe away the salty sadness still clinging to my eyelids. Bid me to blink a half dozen times to clear my vision.
The way out of the maze has always been the same : stop needing it.
Accept a naked reality, with no labyrinth for this lonely old minotaur to hide in. No layer of convolutions and complications and rogue mentations and abstract formations to shield me and hide me from the world and be the backdrop for the absurdist melodrama that is my pretension of autonomy.
See? I am free to go wherever I want to in this maze! I can explore it forever and ever, safe in the knowledge that I will never find my way out.
Because the maze is me and I am the maze.
And that means I can pretend I am making progress all I like. After all, I have been moving forward towards some nebulous goal I’ve painted on the horizon, and therefore I must be getting somewhere, right?
Said the hamster in his wheel.
Wake me gently but for keeps. No more slipping softly into smothering slumber. No more plunging headlong into the next distraction in order to keep hiding from dread reality and all its complications.
No more choosing to be numb rather than deal with the pain.
Get away from me with that needle, Doctor Sleep. I’ve fallen for your deadly charms for far too long. Sure, you take the pain away, but at far too high a cost.
I can’t live with you in the twilight of night’s dreaming any more. This sunrise/sunset existence is rotten to the core.
I want the night.
I want the dawn.
I want the midnight
I want the noontime
I want disaster
I wand acclaim
I want everything your poison pills have denied me
Otherwise known as “life”
I want my world to feel real. I want to have faith in reality – its solidity, its permanence, its independence from my own consciousness.
I want to feel firmly attached to the cosmos instead of feeling like I am always just barely clinging to reality and the smallest slip could plunge me into the darkness below with all its madness and chaos and annihilation.
I am here.
I am real.
I belong here.
Repeat until believed.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.