This is always a juicy topic. Let’s take another crack at it.

I will start off by saying : I don’t know why I can’t clean. Why the very idea of it gives me the deep down ice cold willies.

But like I said when I tackled this subject before, I think it has something to do with not wanting to take responsibility for my life.

Cleaning up after myself would put me firmly in the “caretaker” role, like I was an adult or something, and I am just not ready to make that transition yet.

I most likely never will be. I mean, I am pushing 50, for fuck’s sake. If it hasn’t happened yet, it might never happen at all, and I will die without ever really being born.

I’m the one who needs the caretaking. I didn’t get nearly enough in my early childhood and it really feels like I can’t go forward until I do.

It’s a bill long overdue.

Or maybe I could go forward without it, but at a terrible cost. One I am thus far been unwilling to pay. A loss of innocence on a deep and terrible level, perhaps.

And there is always the feeling that if I take over such responsibilities myself, those who were “supposed” to finish looking after me will have “gotten away with it”.

Buddy, if it’s in the past, they already got away with it.

Ah yes, it’s all coming back to me now. I had previously figured out that at some point in my early childhood, presumably when I was raped, my development was interrupted and as often happens in that case, I reverted in age.

Mix in the other factor that I was silently protesting my lack of love at home by letting everyone see how messy and neglected I was, and you begin to see that this issue of my lack of cleanliness is a thorny and complicated one indeed.

Another layer : patient readers know that at some point I withdrew from reality rather aggressively and thoroughly. That involved a retreat from the real world of a severity rarely seen in people outside the catatonia ward.

And well, dirty surroundings are of the world outside the mind. Dealing with them requires a fair bit of time spent OUTSIDE my head, and that goes against the entire gravitational pull of my poor brain.

The whole structure of my living psyche is dedicated to a strenuous and thorough campaign of minimizing the time I spend outside of the world of the mind.

Hence my sedentary ways. As long as I have the electric nipple of computers and the internet in my mouth, I can ignore the real world entirely as I lay in this filthy bassinet and slowly rot away from the inside.

It’s very hard for me to see outside those tiny little boundaries of life. I feel that icy hand of fear squeeze my heart when I even try. The idea of being fully free to pursue a grownup life doesn’t feel like freedom to me.

More like freefall. There I am, the baby bird who failed to fly when kicked out of the nest again. I have no confidence in these heavily atrophied wings of mine.

I hate feeling this weak. I hate BEING this weak. I want to be strong and proud and comfortable in my own skin. I want to be glad to be staying out of my head for a change because for once, it feels good to be alive.

But there’s some serious frigging issues I have to deal with first. The kind that hurt. The kind that bleed. The kind that scare me like a little kid experiencing their first black when it’s the middle of the night and they have no idea what has happened.

That doesn’t mean I have to stop digging, though.

More after the break.

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Try to relax

Actually, no don’t. LET yourself relax. Trying is the opposite of relaxing.

Same goes for sleep too. Sleeping is not something you do, it’s something you let happen. So getting to sleep is mostly about getting out of your own way.

These are lessons I am still learning.

It seems paradoxical that an unemployed and sedentary person with depression like myself could be riddled with stress.

But like I have said before, having depression is like driving around with the parking brake on. Even doing the simplest of tasks requires overcoming tremendous mental resistance and on bad days it’s exhausting just to be awake.

And in a way, that’s why I am pondering getting myself a spa day for Xmas. I want to go where people have many ingenious ways to be nice to my body, including intriguing forms of massage and many ways to cleanse the skin.

My that sounds good.

The theory is that I would feel a million times better if I could get my poor pores cleansed and all my muscular tension released.

And that could do wonders for my mood and general mental health.

I can tell that I have SO much tension packed into every muscle fiber of my being that it might be the only thing holding me up right now.

As for my pores, alas, they are clogged. I don’t sponge bathe nearly often enough. So at this point getting my pores thoroughly cleared would probably count as a form of weight loss. Especially if I also exfoliate.

And brother, do I want to exfoliate.

Barring the spa trip, I might give getting another massage gizmo a try. My Renpho massager that I got myself last year still works and does a pretty dang good job, but it doesn’t get to the really deep back pain from the muscles around my spine.

That would take something more powerful. Like a chiropractor. With really big hands.

Actually, that might be a tad too arousing to me. Might cause an indecorous display.

I’d be shopping for relaxation with a keen eye, though. I’m not going to get a new thing just to get a new thing. It has to be better than the Renpho somehow.

Speaking of which, think I will dig that thing out from the mess on my bed and use it.

Gonna get me some good, good, good, good vibrations.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.