I don’t feel that great today.

That restless and irritable feeling is back. I just don’t feel like living my life right now. I feel like doing anything but, to be honest.

And so I have been taking refuge in sleep. Naughty naughty! I have been trying to avoid doing that. It is a bad habit that only hurts me in the long run.

But it is the easiest and safest thing to do when I just cannot deal.

Oh well, at least I am aware that I am doing that now. Both before and after I do it. I am choosing to sleep the day away and fast-forward my life, with eyes wide open (so to speak) and with full intent.

I had a disturbing moment earlier. I was watching something on TV in which an old man falls asleep while waiting in his doctor’s waiting room.

And I found myself thinking “Gee, that must be nice, to be able to go to sleep at any time, anywhere you are, no matter what. ”

Then suddenly I froze that thought in place and examined it with horrified fascination. Why on Earth would I want that? That actually sounds very bad. If I had that ability, I would probably sleep everywhere and barely stay awake at all. That’s the last thing I need.

So I forced myself to really look at that sentiment so I could find its root. What exactly was it that appealed to me about that thought, at heart?

I think it was the idea of never being very far from the soft and comfortable escape of sleep. The notion of being able to fall asleep anywhere, any time is really the notion of never having to be fully awake. And I have been living life half asleep as a way to (fail to) cope with my emotional problems and my dissatisfaction with my life in general for a long long time.

Having sleep always right there when and where you want it would just be a further extension of always having my bed less than a yard away from me. Sleep as an easy to reach safety blanket that takes all my troubles away and gets me closer to the next interesting thing to happen in my life, which more often than note is a meal.

And all without having to somehow make it through the lonely, anxious hours in between.

Of course, that means I have been sleeping through my life. No wonder it feels like 40 is barreling down at me far faster than it should. It is! I am deliberately bringing it closer with every nap.

And I want to stop doing it. I will not learn who I truly am, or heal my deepest problems, if I just go to sleep whenever things get rough, and avoid situations where sleep is not an option, which is, quite frankly, most of them.

Sad to think that I am that addicted to sleep. It is arguably my primary coping mechanism. I actually find myself getting tenser the longer I have gone without a nap, especially if I lack something at hand into which I can pour all my energies. Like the Internet.

Hello, Internet! I love you, you bitch goddess you.

This is clearly the wrong way to go through life, and if I am going to get anywhere against this vast reservoir of shame and fear and anger that is holding me back and holding me down if I do not force myself to deal with it.

Oh well. There is an OA meeting tonight and I am going (no really, I am!), and that is an excellent exercise in leaving my comfort zone entirely and dealing with the real world.

For an hour and a half. Oh well, it’s a start.

Another depressing but useful realization : the happiest parts of every day are when I am eating.

This realization has been hovering around in my brain for a long time, never quite making it into consciousness because it represented a truth I did not want to face.

And even when it did manage to make it into my conscious mind, I quickly buried it again. But this time, I am bring out into the light and giving it a damn good look.

Given my massive obesity, this should not exactly come as a surprise. If eating did not make me happy, I would probably be skinny. Or at least normal.

But there is a lot of difference between “eating makes me happy” and “I am literally happiest when eating”. It is the difference between being an enthusiast and an addict.

And being an addict is never a good thing. It means you are not fully in control of your life. It means you have that monkey on your back that will kill you if you do not kill it first.

And I know what is going on. Being a depressive, I really need something that hits that reward center of the brain just to keep my head above water and not end up in catastrophic depression.

The kind where you just stare at the wall for hours because you don’t have the energy to kill yourself.

So if I want to free myself from my twin addictions of sleep and food, I need to tunnel through all this pent up resistance and find other things which I will find rewarding in life.

Things that will probably be a lot more work, which is something I will have to learn to deal with. Still working on that whole “you will be happier if you do more things” concept.

Being happier when I expend more effort and not less… sounds weird, but what the hell.

So while these realizations are kind of depressing, they are also heartening, because they at least give me a greater understanding of just what my problems are and what I need to tackle if I want to go forward.

And I do.