Historically, one of the nightmares that I’ve had the most frequently is some variation on being way up high on a mountain on a cliff that is barely big enough to fit me and if I move at all, I will fall.
That’s a fairly good representation of what my depression and anxiety feels like.
Like I am always just barely hanging on. Like I am always dangling by my fingertips over a thousand foot drop into the screaming void that waits to devour me. Like I am a character with a horrible abdominal injury who’d had to jam his fist into it just to keep his intestines from falling out.
Sorry for that harsh image, Probably should have warned you or something.
Now there is no point in debating whether this feeling is “real” or not. Obviously iy’s delusional. In reality, my guts are fine where they are and I am not on the edge of any kind of steep drop.
It’s just a way to characterize how I feel. And I am going to feel that way for the near future whether or not it is based on anything real, so I have got to deal with it.
Kind of explains my extreme aversion to risk.
People dangling over cliff edges are notoriously conservative.
Obviously, I don’t like feeling like this, though I am sure it serves a purpose in my depression’s dark plans for my humiliating and futile death.
Keeps me in line, dunnit?
I want to be able to climb down from this cliff edge and sew up my gut wound and be able to walk around like a normal person without all this terror.
But I still have all that damage inside me. All the good intentions and wise self-talk in the universe can’t make that go away.
I need genuine healing and that is not something I know how to give myself. I deeply intuit that somehow my bright and shiny intellectualism, with all its laser blades and complex analysis engines, interferes with the natural recovery processes that, without the rational mind’s meddling, would have healed me a long time ago.
By trying to stop the wheel from spinning, we only delay our own renewal.
I read that somewhere once. New age language aside, it seemed wise.
Fits with that Churchill quote I love so much, “If you’re going through Hell, keep going!”
Words of wisdom for those of us whose instinct, when facing peril, is to freeze up.
That’s great if the problem is you’re being stalked by a predator, not so much if the problem is that the house is on fire.
In that case, you best get your ass to movin’.
But some of us are so stuck in “freeze” mode that even something like worsening health problems doesn’t stir us into action.
Instead, we freeze even further.
Keep that up, and you might just end up freezing to death.
It’s like that old chestnut about horses running back into a burning barn because the barn is where they feel safe.
Fun fact : horses ain’t that dumb.
So to my deepest self : hey, stop doing that!
Do the other thing! The thing where being scared makes you do stuff!
The train is coming! Get the fuck off the tracks! NOW!
More after the break.
So damned tired
This sleepiness thing is getting to be a real drag, man.
Right now, what I really want to do is take a nap. But I kind of need to eat and blog first. If I was to nap now, I might not have my “supper” until like, 11 pm.
And that’s just plain dumb.
So instead, I have put in my order for an eclectic assortment of edibles from 7-11 then immediately started doing the blog thang.
Normally, I would have gone back to playing video games while waiting for my food to arrive. But tonight, I want to be done with this whole shebang ASAP.
Holy crap, Windows Dictionary recognizes “shebang” as a word. And here I thought “the whole shebang” was an Atlantic Canada colloquialism.
Meanwhile, back at the point.
It’s the unpredictability that is the real bummer part of the sleepiness. Sleeping a lot is only mildly annoying. It’s something I could easily plan my day around.
But not knowing when I will be sandbagged by Mister Sandman is real stressful.
Maybe I should consider a policy of going right back to bed after I am woken up by the need to pee instead of taking that as a cue to go do things.
I developed that habit after a period where I always, always woke up very agitated and sometimes very anxious as well, and so going right back to sleep was impossible.
I had to stay up long enough to calm back down.
I suspect sleep apnea played a big part in that phenomenon.
But I wake up semi-normally now (apart from when I have crazy nightmares of my ogre-brother chasing me), and I could probably go right back to sleep and maybe actually improve my sleep quality to the point where I don’t get mugged by ersatz narcolepsy.
Wow, my vocabulary is downright frisky and ambitious tonight.
Because of the sleepiness, today’s been a bit of a haze. Just another action packed day in the life of a unemployable reject who fell through the cracks so fast it bent time.
It really is tragic how someone with my kind of ability and potential got sidelined by mental illness and ended up wasting his life playing video games.
I could do so much for and in this world if I could just get out of this cage of mine.
I dream of productivity. I long for purpose. I want to get things done and get paid for it.
I want a normal life, god damn it, and I am not ashamed to admit it!
A job, a man, a plan, a canal – Panama.
A job, a man, and a place of my own. Is that too much to ask?
But I have to deal with my damage before I can set myself free.
And there’s just so much of it!
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.