The usual one. Sleep.

I came face to face with my madness this afternoon, which is always an emotionally unpleasant but existentially revealing and potentially spiritually stimulating experience.

What happened was this : I woke up at around 10:30 am. I was extremely hungry, because I had not eaten in something like nine hours. I ended up eating lunch a half an hour early because of this, at 11:30 am instead of noon, which for me is a huge deviation from both plan and habit, and noteworthy because of that.

So I watched an episode of Bones, and ate lunch, like usual. Then afterwards, at around 1 pm, for lack of a better thing in mind, I laid down for a nap.

I was not tired in the slightest. And as I lay there, I was thinking to myself, “Why am I here in bed? Why am I trying to force myself into a nap that I know damned well I do not need? What the hell is wrong with me that I am doing this?”

And yet, I napped. In fact, I slept through the whole afternoon, only waking up in time for supper. So I basically skipped the period between meals, which is extremely sad and worrisome on a few levels.

One, the thought that meals are the most interesting thing that happens to me most days is profoundly depressing. The idea that I would rather sleep than be awake actually doing things is more depressing still. And I definitely feel that my nap today was motivated by a desire to retreat from reality.

A desire to not have to deal with things. To not face the meaningless void that is my life. To not face having to figure out what the hell to do with myself.

I caught myself in the act, in a sense. A lot of the time, these things happen so fast in my mind that it is hard for me to confirm my theories as to my own behaviour with direct observation of my mentation.

But this time, I had reached the point of self-awareness where I could confirm. Yup. I am definitely afraid of reality and having to deal with it. And when I am low on ATC, or Ability To Cope, I sleep.

Even when I am not tired at all. I think there is an element of another problem of mine in there too, the strange compulsion to fulfill intentions even when they are no longer relevant.

So when I am waking up and still feel all tired and reluctant to leave my nice warm bed, I form the intention “I will get back to bed ASAP because I am still sleepy”, and that becomes “the plan” that I find it very hard to deviate from even when I get up, get moving, and am clearly not even sleepy any more.

But it is so hard for me to change plans once I have made them. This compulsion is very strong. It really feels like something terrible will happen if I do not follow it. If this is the sort of thing people with OCD go through, I completely empathize with them now.

It does not matter if I know that my intention is stupid or inane or no longer relevant. If I planned on doing it, I will do it, and in a way, I feel like I am not truly in control of it. That is the nature of compulsion, I think. It operates on the same machinery in our brains that superstition exploits, as well as phobias, PTSD, and OCD. That nebulous but overpowering deep pattern recognition that we share with all higher mammals that links action to stimuli without the necessity of high brain function.

The deer does not have the time to stop and think of why the sound of a human footstep makes it instantly panic and flee.

But we human beings lead complicated lives. The simple machinery can’t handle it, and yet, there it is, operating at the foundation layers of our consciousness.

And so I have this strange “intention compulsion”. Contrary to what I just said, I suspect that if my life
was not so simple and devoid of external structure, I would not have this problem. The compulsive part of my brain would be too busy with real actions to coordinate and execute with an external structure (like, you know, a JOB, or a LIFE) to get caught up in little petty intentions.

And all of this just serves this sleep habit I have. Which is what I set out to discuss.

I am hoping that, as I confront this compulsion of mine to use sleep to avoid reality and do my best to face it head on instead of just avoiding it (this avoidance shit is complicated), I will master and conquer it via defusing the emotions involved and confronting the need that drives them.

A lot of my therapeutic thought lately had centered around “staying with” things. My nature is so avoidant that the only way I can proceed is to force myself to stay with negative emotions, practically tying myself down and forcing myself to experience them fully and hear what they have to tell me.

That is the only way I will be able to untangle all the incredibly complicated knots I have tied in my skein of existence in trying to avoid having to deal with my shit.

Well, enough of that. Way past due for an internal cleanup. I want to build a giant pyre of all the garbage in my soul and then set it ablaze as an offering to the sky.

How is that for some mystical imagery? You don’t have to actually believe in mysticism to be a mystic.

You just need the soul of a poet and just enough self-absorption to write your soul on the wind with a pen of cold carbon steel and words of delicate fire.

See, there I go again. Another attack of poetry.

Screw this, I am going to go take a nap. (Joking! Probably. )