I’m still trying to wrap my head around this whole idea of elevating your own mood.
The very concept of being able to do things that make you feel better for longer than the thing itself lasts is alien to my excessively introverted mind.
All I know how to do is keep my mind too stimulated and busy for me to be sad. While I am blogging or playing a video game, I’m not depressed and I don’t hate myself.
Maybe because I am actually using a substantial fraction of my energies by doing a task and that leaves precious little room for my dark ruminations.
Either way, I guess you could say I self-medicate with video games. And like all non-prescription ways of treating the chemical imbalance in the head of a depressive, it has become a paralyzing addiction.
Could be worse. I could have taken up drinking.
Anyhow, back to the supposed topic.
Of course, I know that other people do things to make themselves feel better all the time. It’s one of the most basic forms of taking care of your own mental health, Or, put less cerebrally, making life not suck so much.
So the fact that the concept is alien to me personally is just plain weird.
Somehow, my mental malfunctions make it seem beyond impossible for me to take responsibility for my own mood.
I guess I have deeply internalized the idea of my mood being a thing that fluctuates all on itself own, and all I can do is deal with wherever it goes.
Like it’s the weather.
To be honest I do not take responsibility for much in my life. I am stuck in that “helpless and hopeless” mode of just reacting to whatever happens to me (mostly nothing) and doing next to nothing to actually pilot my own vessel.
It scares me to even think of taking full responsibility for my own fate because that would me the horrible mess I have made of my life is all my fault and I don’t think I could survive the spike in self-hatred that would trigger.
I mean, obviously it’s my fault, or at the very least, my responsibility, because who else’s fault could it be?
I don’t even have a boss or a parent to influence and control me.
It’s all me, baby!
But knowing it’s my fault and actually taking on the responsibility for the sad state of my wasted fucking life are two radically different things.
They shouldn’t be, but they are.
I guess I’ve lived my life like I am a helpless leaf in the wind. Which must be a spiritual issues on some level. Some part of me is bone-chillingly scared of taking control and that’s why my strength and energy seem to just fade away when I try to get going.
I feel weak in spirit. Like my soul has a fatal flaw, or maybe just a terrible disease. Something at my core sinks me far faster than I can bail and swamps my boat any time I try to get anywhere.
If I could only plug that metaphorical leak, I might be able to get somewhere in life. But I am clinging to my current life with too much of a death-grip for that, I guess.
If only I didn’t feel so very alone all the time. If only I could make myself believe both that I can be helped and that help is available.
But that will take a lot more thawing out on my part.
And the ice gets denser and colder as I get closer to the heart of things.
But the fire is getting hotter too.
Spring WILL come.
More after the break.
The paralysis of helplessness
At some point, I guess I just kind of gave up on life.
Must have been when I was crawling out of that deep dark hole I fell into when I was in my early 20’s and my parents took me out of college and made me move back home.
The version of me that emerged from the rubble of that total breakdown was built to survive what was the current conditions at the time but nothing more.
So I can watch TV, play video games, and read, and keep myself from going utterly insane that way.
Those were the resources I had at my disposal back then.
Clearly I need to reconstitute myself again. Only hopefully without having a total nervous breakdown that leaves me malnourished and dehydrated and miserable on the couch for four months this time.
Although I dunno. Might be worth it.
I don’t think I could let myself completely fall apart again. I would be far too scared that I would not be able to put myself back together again.
But it may come to that anyway. I’ve spoken before in this spot about how the path to greater sanity might take me a lot closer to insanity than my current static safety system would normally allow, and that is why.
Sometimes the only way to remake yourself in the needed way is to first shatter yourself into a million pieces and make the new you out of those.
And I hate that idea. It seems like such a waste of existing human potential. And if that’s the only way to get better, the case for going on exactly right now gets much much stronger because at least I won’t get worse.
But I need to grow. I need to change. And that change may have to be radical, not incremental. At the very least, I may need to let go of everything I think I know about myself in order to make way for the new me to be born.
Death to the false self, and all that.
Too bad I am too old, sick, and poor to go backpacking across Europe or to go climb Machu Pichu or whatever.
That seems to be what other, healthier people do in order to “find themselves” and presumably build a solid foundation for their lives as adults.
I’ve built my house on shifting sands and then wondered why I am so unstable.
I have so much I have to unlearn.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.