That’s what I am feeling right now.

This, despite my having gotten a fair bit of rest since yesterday. I get the feeling this is the sort of weariness thatyou can’t cure with a quick nap.

Which is a shame, because that’s the only type of sleep I get, most of the time.

Sometimes I manage a solid 3.5 hours at night, after hanging out with J&J and watching stuff. But that’s more the exception than the rule.

And yeah, there are serious physiological reasons for my sleep to suck so bad. Sleep apnea would be the most obvious one.

Smothering in my sleep a thousand times a night does not lead to restful slumber.

Plus there is my ever-needful bladder. That shouldn’t be a problem but it is. The body is supposed to slow metabolic functions way, way down when you sleep in order to give you a chance at some serious Z’s.

Mine doesn’t do that, though.

Moving up from the urogenital region to the brain, there is also the very salient factor that I spend all day stimulating my brain with video games and such and it can be very hard to sleep when your brain is fizzing and crackling and popping like a hardwood fire.

All of those are very pertinent to my lack of decent sleep. But i don’t think they are the real root of the problem.

I think the real issue is that scared, paranoid, and perpetually freaked out little animal at the core of my being, and its hypervigilance.

The deepest part of me can’t ever relax and go to sleep. It is convinced, seemingly permanently, that danger lurks all around and is just waiting for me to relax and drop my guard then it will GET me.

And as I have discussed, this part of me can’t be reasoned with. I know that I have nothing to fear and that my predators (bullies) are long long gone and that I have nothing to fear and that my life is, health issues aside, actually quite safe.

But I don’t believe it. Not way down deep where it counts. That scared little animal deep inside me is like a crazed conservative, treating all evidence that is contrary to its worldview as just another trick to get it to make itself vulnerable.

And deep down it feels like it can’t afford to take the risk of believing. In its mind, the stakes are incredibly high, on the level of an existential threat – or worse.

You’ve heard of fates worse than death? To the insane mind (like mine), the dread of what will happen if I relax is so profound that death seems like a cheerful outcome.

It’s the fear that is bigger than anything else in the mind, possibly because it has been there for so long.

Since I was four, in fact.

And I suppose that as far as it is concerned, it has kept me safe so far, so why change?

Like I said, it’s very conservative.

And once more we end up at the same place : I don’t know what to do to convince it that everything is fine now and it can finally get some much needed sleep.

But I know that “convince” is the wrong word for what has to occur. Like I said, this part of me cannot be reasoned with. The evidence means nothing to it.

It’s not listening.

The only thing I can think of that would do it is a very big and profound feeling of safety, and I can’t yet generate that for myself.

I can imagine getting it from someone else. Probably someone male and paternal and strong, although a strongly maternal mother figure might work too.

They key is that it has to be someone who can make that wild eyed little critter feel like it can finally come in out of the cold and feel safe at home.

Lord knows where I would find someone like that.

More after the break.

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What I’ve got they used to call the blues

I’m feeling depressed right now.

TThere, I admitted it/. Right here in print. I, Michael John Betrand, being of crazed mind and diseased body, do solemnly declare that I feel very depressed right now, as I typed these very words.

But odn’t worry. It’s not the scary kind of depression. I just feel sad and blue. I find myself sighing a lot, and I have the vague feeling like I am mourning something.

And I don’t feel like doing… things. Even fun things. I guess you could say that I don’t feel like coping with reality at all.

But here I am., slogging away anyhow.

That tiny sparkplug deep inside me just keeps goading me forward like a microscopic cattle prod. I might not do a lot that the world world would consider productive, but it’s never nothing at all.

I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not.

I’m not too worried about being depressed, Like I am right now. It feels like it’s just a phase I am going through as part of my healing process.

Sometimes, you just have to be sad for a while. Life’s a rainbow of emotion and you can’t have a rainbow without the blues.

No point in fighting it. I will just stand aside and do my best to give it whatever atttention and energy it needs to get done whatever it needs to do.

I think out minds are a lot more capable of healing themselves than we give them credit for. The secret is to get the hell out of the way and let it.

When I am done here, I will probably lay down in the dark and put on some relaxing music and try to surrender all conscious control of my mind and set what happens.

Let all the stale stored energy in my soul return to the cosmos so I can breathe.

And if that means a good long cry, I’ll try to do that too.

Every day, I get a little bit closer to really being alive.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.