I call it my being absentminded, but really, it’s brain fog.
My mind is a very foggy place. Things can get lost in there very easily. Things appear out of and disappear into the fog seemingly at random, and on a bad day things can get rather pea-soup like in there.
And I won’t pretend I don’t know why it’s there or what it’s doing. It’s a simple manifestation of the general numbness that comes with my depression and its function is to keep me anesthetized so that I don’t have to feel my pain.
Or my joy, or my sorrow, or damn near anything else.
I suppose that on some deep and mindless level I have “decided” that it’s worth not feeling anything in order to not have to feel the terrible pain of my deep Wound.
But up here on the conscious and directed level of consciousness, I can tell you for certain that it ain’t.
That’s why when something I read or watch or listen to stirs big emotions in me, I am almost pathetically grateful for it because at least I am at last feeling something.
Even if it’s painful or negative or even bad, the relief I feel at a break in the numbness of my existence is enough to make me want to cry with happiness.
You would think that this would teach me to seek out those experiences, but no. Not yet, anyhow. Most of me is still in the “it’s bad to feel bad” phase where the idea of deliberately looking for something that will make me really emotional in a negative way seems like the definition of insanity.
Hell, even deliberately seeking out things that make me feel really good is far rarer than it should be. Like I recently pointed out, there are galaxies of pictures and video online that could make me feel a lot better.
Like pictures of kittens.
I mean, just look at this!
Doesn’t the world seem like a better place for having such delightful things in it?
Any universe with snuggly cuddly silly cute kittens in it can’t be ALL bad.
But it’s like deliberately seeking out positive emotional inputs is cheating somehow. Like at some point I made a deep and terrible decision that my emotional state must always reflect the real world and therefore to deliberately push it one way or another would be to dangerously delude myself.
And how’s that working out for ya?
I am definitely more than ready to delude the hell out of myself if it means that i am a happier and healthier person in the long run.
Because fuck reality, man. When reality does not give us the emotional nutrients we need, we need to be able to synthesize them for ourselves or find ourselves sliding into the depths of the emotional malnutrition state known as “depression”
Something has to set a limit for how low we can go before the emergency system kicks in and gives us whatever the hell we need without asking reality’s permission.
And that is what people get out of faiths of all kinds, from organized religion to tarot cards to a deep and abiding love for the Dukes of Hazzard.
It’s like religion, when it’s operating properly, gives the individual a massive battery of positive emotions to draw from when they need them and these act as a sort of emergency power supply for one’s mood.
We depressed types don’t have that. More fool us
Maybe we all could use a little more delusion in our lives.
Because reality SUCKS.
More after the break.
My deep dark terrible shame
Don’t get too excited, patient readers, I haven’t done or discovered anything new.
I just feel like it’s time to take another crack at one of my biggest issues.
As you know, dear reader, I carry an enormous, crippling burden of shame about how my life has turned out.
You know, the whole “never had a job or been in a relationship or really done any adulting at all” thing.
i mean, I’m about to turn 51 this Sunday and I have done next to nothing with my life except play video games and masturbate.
Not at the same time, obviously. That would be tricky.
Plus I have yet to find a game that is sexy enough.
Anyhow, yadda yadda, I am a colossal loser. The biggest, really. Even the previous failure to launch record holders of the zeitgeist, the “still working at McDonalds at my age” set, have it way, way over me.
And it really, really hurts. Knowing that the entire 30 years of my adult life has gone completely to waste leaves me not just mortified but horrified.
But no matter how “true” this outlook on my life may be (debatable), it is extremely unhelpful and toxic to my wellbeing to the nth degree and if I want to move forward I am going to have to change it.
And I want to. But I have yet to figure out how to get over it. In fact, right now, it feels like a giant craggy pointy mountain in my path, with a summit way up in the clouds.
Talking about it like this helps a little bit, though. Getting some of that spine-cracking burden of shame out in words helps me to feel a little better about it.
And I know I am an amazing creature, brilliant and unique. There is nobody else like me in this world. I am a delicate gossamer hothouse flower blooming in the dark.
And that knowledge can compete with the shame but so far it can’t overcome it. The shame is so much bigger than whatever pride I might have in being uselessly unique.
I need to accomplish things in order to become more sane.
I am too insane to accomplish things.
I need to work on that.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.