Better than I did yesterday, anyhow, which is admittedly a pretty low bar.
I’m starting to think it’s all about staying hydrated. And that means drinking water more or less constantly for every day of summer heat we will get.
And that means getting up to refill my water glass more often. I will admit, I have been getting lazy and sullen about that. I finish one 1.2 L glass of water and I know I should immediately go and get a refill, but I foot-drag and procrastinate and whine to myself and end up forgetting to do it altogether.
And then I wonder why I end up feeling so damned bad.
I should know by now that the summer heat can’t reach me as long as I keep the hydration coming and always have a glass of water on the go.
And yup, that’s a pain in the ass. Between refilling my drinking glass and emptying my pee receptacle (aka the water cycle) I can end up getting up and going to my ensuite bathroom a dozen times a day.
It would be ever worse without the receptacle. I shudder to think of it.
And I can’t think of a sensible and effective solution for that. I could get some sort of large plastic jug with a spigot on it that people take on picnics and whatnot, but who would refill it?
Water is heavy, man. And my muscles are weak. Ergo any container that could hold enough water to be worth using would probably be too heavy for me to carry, or at the very least dangerous.
And as nice as it would be, I don’t think I will be installing a faucet right here at my desk any time soon. The logistics of that would be a nightmare.
Not to mention having a potentially leaky water source right next to all my expensive computer equipment et al.
The only other alternative would be to move my computer into the bathroom, and that of course would be very silly.
Convenient, but silly.
The ever changing eye
Part of the problem with depression is that you end up seeing the world through a highly unstable emotional filter that distorts and perverts your perceptions as it fluctuates.
Thus, your subjective world is highly unreliable and your sense of reality is eroded nad you withdraw into your inner realm which seems like a safer place to be.
It ain’t. In fact, your inner realm is even more unstable than the external world. At least the world of objective reality has a foundation in what is really going on.
But I guess it feels safe because it’s your home and you are used to it.
The escape hatch for depression suggested by the ever changing eye hypothesis would be to somehow move your sense of reality to something more stable and leave that god damned eye behind.
For me, science is a partial solution to that. I can think my way out of my anxiety sometimes by grounding my emotions in the logic of probability and rational self-examination and sheer muscular deductive capacity.
But that. at best, deals with the anxiety but not the depression. Like I said in a YouTube comment recently, according to the much vaunted CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), I should be completely cured by now because I have mastered shooting down the “bad thoughts” and no consciously recognizably negative idea about myself can make it into my consciousness without my anti-negation guns blasting it out of the sky.
Big fucking deal. Despite what CBT says. bad emotions do not come from bad thoughts. It’s entirely the other way around. And thus, no matter how bulletproof my cognitive defenses become, the underlying emotional pain and damage is still there and still needs to be expressed somehow.
In other words, CBT is bullshit and far less than worthless.
I don’t need to know how to make my illness shut up.
I need to know how to heal it.
And that’s going to take some serious personal magic. The kind that cannot possibly come from rationality or any other form of “playing by the rules”.
Fuck the rules.
I just want to be happy.
More after the break.
Despite all my rage
Mandatory music video link :
I still don’t know what to do with all this anger.
But I can access it now, and that’s a huge step forward. As long as I keep taking it out and expressing it now and then, I can find a way to let it out without ending up in jail and/or with no friends and/or without developing a Hulk-like alternate persona.
I mean, I’m somewhat of an uptight and suppressed intellectual type, but not to like. Doctor Jekyll levels.
Also, the more I meditate and cogitate about my anger, the closer I get to hearing what it is truly trying to say to me and thus figuring out what I am so damned mad about.
Because I am seriously pissed off at the world. Perhaps that is merely a symptom of coming to emotional adolescence at this late of an age, I don’t know.
I am like. 35 too late to be an Angry Young Man.
And about ten years too young to be a Cranky Old Fart, come to think of it.
Luckily, I am Gen X, and therefore don’t really need an excuse to be surly.
And accessing my rage has its benefits. A lot of other emotions, some of them positive, were and are frozen right alongside the rage and they are getting released too.
And crucially, I think I am learning to take all that raw id energy that I have been suppressing for so long and using it to prop up my mood.
It’s not easy. My physical ailments do get in the way. It’s hard to be happy when you feel crappy, more or less.
But slowly, very slowly, I am learning to be less negative and more positive. I am learning to look up to that warm glowing light above my head and draw strength from it when I need it. I am learning to fight back against the darkness with nothing but that bright light and sheer bloody-minded determination.
I don’t have to live in the shadows.
I don’t have to crouch in the dark.
I don’t have to live like I’m just waiting to die.
I can be proud, and strong, and free.
And I can walk in the sunshine, head held high, and smell the fresh air and feel the warm caress of sunshine outside this god damned cave of mine.
Amen and hallelujah.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.