Warning, my metaphors are gonna get grossly medical/biological again.
I have often visualized my many aversions as being like some kind of elastic membrane inside my body that has to be stretched till it breaks in order for me to overcome it.
Yes, kind of like the hymen.
And the thing is, as unhealthy as this membrane is, it’s still a living part of me and is therefore going to be incredibly painful to treat like that.
And that pain is not just a disagreeable sensation. It’s nature’s way of screaming, “STOP DOING THAT!!!” at the top of its lungs, so there is a great deal of white hot anxiety being transmitted too.
Basically, every fiber of your being is telling you not to do that. That anything that hurts that much must be damned near killing us, and not only do our instincts shriek at us to stop, they follow up compliance with a strong compulsion to never, EVER do anything even remotely like that again.
And what do you know, that attempt to overcome it just made the aversion stronger, and insured you won’t try again for a very long time.
The depression and anxiety and avoidance won again. You took them on and not only did you not defeat them, they came out ahead. You’re worse off than before.
Now, can you understand why telling us people with depression to “just keep trying” is a far worse than useless piece of advice?
Tell ya what, Little Miss Sunshine, how about you step into my enormous shoes for a day and try fighting all of evolution and biology day in and day out just to get through a very low challenge day, then ask yourself how much you feel like doing things which make the pain and fear even worse.
It’s not gonna happen. You might as well be telling someone with a broken leg to “just keep jogging”. The sheer scale of what you are asking is staggering.
People like me don’t end up fearful and broken due to a lack of character. We end up that way because we are being conditioned to be that way by our broken brain chemistry that punishes effort and rewards capitulation.
And trust me, nobody is so strong of mind or will or “character” that they can withstand the unrelenting torture of depression for very long.
The truth you’re trying to avoid, Pollyanna, is that if you got depression, you would be fucked too. You could not do a tiny bit better than anyone else with our disease, and that means it could happen to you just as easily as it did to us.
The universe is a cold and callous place and bad shit happens to good people who have done nothing to “deserve” it all the time. If you have managed to stay healthy and happy and strong, it is as much due to pure dumb luck than any virtue of yours.
We are where you would be if you had a neurobiology that acted as the cruelest of torturers 24 hours a day.
Oh, I’m sorry. Is this harsh truth making you depressed? Well I am sure someone as strong and smart and good will overcome that in no time.
Just keep trying!
More after the break.
That was weird
I got into a weird head space in Part 1, and I like it.
One of my favorite things about writing this blog is that I learn things about myself from it. Things I never knew I knew, understanding that feels like it coalesces out of nowhere, deep wells of emotion I had no idea were in there, and so on.
That’s one of the benefits of having a free-flowing format, with no set plan for what the blog is about or what kind of thing I am supposed to write or some distant goal in mind.
The only goal for this blog is for me to keep digging up my fossilized emotions until I reach some sort of tipping point where the dial turns from “crazy” to “sane-ish”.
I have no idea when or if that will happen, but no matter what, I am going to keep on digging because it’s the best thing I can do for myself right now.
Emphasis on can. There’s millions of things the Pollyanna types in Part 1 think I “could” do but I just can’t, and they will never understand why.
Gotta remember that bit about constant torture, though. That’s gold. Really gets the nature of our torment across.
I do manage to think outside the box sometimes. Try to imagine a way out of my depression via things I can actually do. Do my best to dream up an escape route that might actually work. That might actually happen.
But I am not going to be able to dream that particular dream until I face the fact that as much as I desire escape, the idea also scares the organic fertilizer out of me.
This hole I am in is a shelter of sorts as much as it is a prison. It protects me from having to face the infinite corridor of infinite doors out there. It limits me in ways that are brutal to my soul but on some level, my psyche prefers that to having to figure out what the fuck to do with myself.
I don’t know how to generate my own agenda. I don’t have big dreamy dreams to follow. VFS was my one big shot at following my dreams, and that went all to shit.
And yes, I “could” have kept going despite the lack of support from my teachers at VFS.
But no, I couldn’t, because their betrayal of me fatally wounded my spirit. I had done so well at all my assignments at VFS and it seemed like all my teachers knew how talented I was and what an amazing TV writer I would be.
I had hope. They killed it. So much for hopes and dreams.
So I went back to what I knew : video game addiction and a slow descent into medical hell as I fail to do all the things I am “supposed” to do to get healthy.
But I can’t do them. I just…. can’t.
So all I can do is keep on digging. 1000 words a day of self-therapy.
It’s not much but it’s all I’ve got.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.