…another day, another failure.

I am trying to come to grips with this lesson I keep not quite learning : that instead of letting my dark thoughts build up over time til they come out in a huge ketchup bottle burst now and then that frightens my friends, I need to learn to let them out a little at a time all the time.

It’s the same thing I had to learn to do with anger in my teens and early 20s. I used to bottle it all up and then every couple months some minor thing would set me off – like a spark a drought racked forest – and I would blow up and cry and rant and yell and accuse people of having no respect for me and so on.

This was not acceptable.

So I at least got to the level of expression of anger and irritation that mostly kept that from happening any more.

And with both the anger and the depression, the problem is that I am basically a positive person who doesn’t want to deal with the darker side of emotions and therefore keeps them suppressed – and that is always a lousy long term strategy.

And yet, “I’ll just keep this suppressed forever!” remains a very popular game plan.

After all, saying “Not now!” when the subject rears its ugly head has worked so far. So it will keep on working forever. Right?

Not exactly. Nice try, though. But you won’t be leaving here empty-handed. Tell them about our fabulous selection of parting goods, Johnny!

So what I need is a path towards integrating the less sunshiney parts of my psyche into my main identity so we can prevent these little stack overflow issues.

Maybe then, I wouldn’t be like an idyllic volcanic island, very pleasant and peaceful and friendly on top but with a raging, boiling reservoir of molten lava down below just waiting to erupt and wipe out all life on the island yet again.

Except it doesn’t ever erupt, does it? IT just eats away at the island’s substructure, causing parts of it to explode or erode or just slide into the sea.

You know, maybe having intermittent explosive rage wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

At least I expressed the fucking emotions. Better than just repressing everything and letting it eat away at me for decades, making me depressed and self loathing because now I only vent internally.

This is not acceptable.

Only a fool would live like that. I tell myself that it’s noble and romantic that I keep all this madness locked up inside myself rather than letting it hurt anyone else, but if that comes at the cost of my chance at happiness, that’s too high a cost to pay.

And surely there are ways to let my beast get some much needed freedom and exercise (and maybe even some validation) without my having a total meltdown and going on a murder spree, right?

That’s just catastrophic thinking, a well known piece of depression’s arsenal of bullshit.

And I am just plain not putting up with that shit any more.

More after the break.

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I miss toast

Of all the things I have lost the ability to do for myself, I miss making toast the most.

Or rather, I miss eating toast the most.Making it was meh.

See, because I can’t remain standing for very long, I can’t hang around waiting for the toaster to do its thing. Even if I put the toast in as the very first thing I do when I enter the kitchen, by the team I leave with my food du jour, it’s barely warm bread.

So I either need a way faster toaster or way better legs.

And yes, I know there’s workarounds. I could put in the toast, hobble over to sit on the couch, and then get back up when I hear the toaster pop.

Or I could ask Julian to put in some toast for me then wait a little while before I drag myself out to the kitchen.

Or I could say “fuck it” and buy myself a toaster for my room.

There. Problem solved. I bring two slices of bread with me when I come back from the kitchen, pop them in my toaster, and wait.

Then again, all the stuff I would want to put on the toast would still be in the kitchen.

So maybe I would have to make the toast in my room then bring it to the kitchen with me for the application of condiments et al.

That would mean keeping bread in my room, though.

This is getting complicated.

Wow, 1968. Just…. wow.

My point in bringing up the toast thing, other than to bitch about my sadly toast free life, was to give myself a space to talk about what I have lost.

I have realized that I am so adaptable that it gives the impression that I can take nearly anything in stride and barely even break my stride.

And the person this fools the most is me, and that’s very damaging because I never stop and take the time to acknowledge the loss and grieve it.

I mean, my legs stopped working right.

That kinda sucks.

A deep and lifelong pattern of denial is emerging from my supposedly veritas uber alles life. Whatever happens, I just keep going, never giving myself time to process the events of my life. And over the years, I have accrued a lot of emotional damage.

And I want to change that. I want to figure out how to slow down and give myself the time and space to feel sad and let go and do all the other emotional self-care things healthy people who are in touch with their inner selves do.

Oh, but not Mister Big Brain here. I have to always be “in control” and able to override my emotions and shove them into my deepest darkness closet whenever they become unpleasant or inconvenient or just plain icky.

And that’s extremely unhealthy. You have to let the emotions make the decisions some of the time because they know what you need to feel better. All you have to do is listen to them instead of locking them out of the conscious mind.

Feel more, think less.

I think I am starting to really get what that means.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.