Still feeling lonely and isolated, although having gotten out into the sunshine and fresh air to go to Wound Care today has helped me to feel a bit more human.
Gee, imagine how much good it would do me to actually spend an hour or two in the fresh air and sunshine instead of just getting little whiffs of it as I get out of or get into the car. I might actually feel good for a change.
I will think about it. There is a forest of phobias in between me and that seemingly simple idea, and I will have to find my way through said forest before I can summon up the will and the courage to actually try to do it.
And I know that’s insane. So am I. It fits.
And of course, it’s not really about the fear. It’s about the pain that underlies the fear. It’s the pain that the fear is trying to protect me from in its heavy-handed way.
It’s that pain from being raped as a toddler that lies at the center of all of my problems and it’s that pain that I don’t know what to do about.
Or rather, I don’t know how to rationally “solve” it. There’s no series of steps guaranteed to cure it. No medicines that can take that pain away for good. No form of therapy that can speed up the healing process and leave me fresh and clean and strong at last.
All I can do is keep on living the only way I know how, as sad as that is, and keep digging through the scar tissue and dead flesh in the hopes of finally excavating and liberating my sad and lonely soul.
Until that pain is dealt with, nothing else I do is going to do me much good. At best, it eases the pressure and the pain a little. At worst, it is just so much mental masturbation designed by my depression to keep me from making any real progress on helping myself get out of that hole by giving me the feeling of progress without the substance.
If you want to keep people in chains, first convince them that they are free.
So I struggle with my almighty Wound. The really big Wound that no amount of going to Wound Care could ever help. The very Wound that has dominated almost my entire life without me consciously realizing it was there.
I suppose I had to make enough psychological progress to be able to see that Wound as something separate from myself and not just a part of how the Universe works, and thus be able to imagine a world in which it is gone.
But I feel like I have a whole lot of suffering to go through first. I feel like this Wound of mine contains a large amount of very potent pain and that only when this pain is fully felt and dealt with will I be able to heal said Wound for good.
And obviously, I am not eager to do that. Suffering hurts. That’s like its primary characteristic. It is so much easier to just quietly rot away in my tomb.
Not better. Just easier.
Still, I am willing to suffer quite a bit to set myself free. Right now I feel like I am squashed flat under a massive burden of pain and fear and anger and aversion.
And not all of me thinks that’s a bad thing. There is a sad, sick part of me that likes the security and comfort of utter helplessness and which therefore passively resists any kind of personal progress that will disturb its sorry little scene.
In general, the struggle between my sick self and healthy me is one that never stops, even when I am asleep.
My soul is a battleground, and I am its sole refugee.
More after the break,
Contract and expand
For a very long time, I have felt that I go through an expansion and contraction cycle like a living creature’s lungs.
Unfortunately, so far I have been too linear in temperament to adjust to this truth and learn to accept this cyclical truth and even learn to ride the waves instead of constantly fighting with them to stay afloat.
It’s ridiculous. I can’t stop the waves from happening. So I might as well get used to them by learning to surf them.
There’s no point trying to fight the tide, for fuck’s sake.
Contained within this struggle to adapt to the wavelike properties of my soul is a much more intimate yet inarticulate struggle to stop trying to force myself to be a certain way instead of just letting myself be however I am.
On the deepest level, it really is a struggle for humanity. The fascist AI in my brain thinks it can make me into whatever ghastly horror it thinks I “should” be via sheer force of will.
But no amount of pressure or force can turn a butterfly into a wolf.
This means that a big part of my journey to heal myself has to be figuring out who I really am, and accepting that person, warts and all.
I can’t alter my basic nature, whatever it is. I can only work with it. Anything else is doomed to a very nasty kind of failure.
I think the real, true, deep problem is that I have so many “voices” and forces and emotional current in my mind that figuring out the “real me” will inevitably need me to do something which is normally anathema to me, and that is choose between them.
I hate picking favorites. I loathe being forced to choose between my friends. My love is very expansive and does not submit to such dichotomous judgement easily.
I want to love everybody. Exclusion hurts my soul.
But this is not about friends, it’s about figuring out who I am and that means the various forces within me have to “fight” and reach some kind of resolved equilibrium. I can’t go around being “everybody” forever.
I am legion, for I contain many. Too many.
Some of you motherfuckers have got to go.
And it’s up to me to figure out which ones.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.