Been dodging a big dose of sadness for a few days now, and sooner or later, it is going to get me.

Not sure where it is coming from, but as I have not had any life trauma, bad news, or underprocessed food lately, I am just going to assume that it is part of the long digestive process of recovery. I have reached a point in the process where it is necessary to process some sadness on a conscious level, so I am stuck with it.

So some quiet moment soon, I will consciously let go of all resistance and try to just let this shit happen. Resisting it is still my default position. I automatically shove it back into the outer darkness when it dares to set one toe into that terawatt spotlight of my conscious mind. It’s instinctive.

But not good, not int he long run. We might have to suppress our emotions at particular moments because there are things we just plain have to do on any given day, but you can’t afford to let that kind of thing build up or before you know it, you’re like a hoarder buried beneath your hoard of emotions.

But you are not your hoard. That’s the vital distinction all hoarders of all sorts need to make. You could lose it all and be just fine. Better, even, because losing all that garbage has freed you to truly be you, the you that you were before the hoard, the you that you still are, under all the junk.

The secret is to learn to let go. Like Zen mastery, it is a most difficult simplicity. When you learn it, it can be as simple as releasing a balloon and watching it float away, over the horizon, never to be seen again.

That’s the difference between expression and repression. Expressed emotions go away. Repressed emotions stay.

Another thing contributing to my sadness apart from emotional processing is that pent-up, crazed, caged tiger feeling has been creeping up on me. I have been trying to deal with it, but it builds nevertheless.

And it’s begun to have physical symptoms, like joint pain, muscle twitches, and headaches. Isn’t it cruel how the symptoms of stress can be so… stressful?

I think the problem is that I am reaching the manic-ish part of my cycle, the opposite end from the one where I sleep all the time and have weird, intense dreams. My body needs exercise in order to excise these demons, and yet it is still very hard to convince myself to exercise of my own volition.

The anti-action bias is strong in this one. I associate stasis with safety. When I am still of body, my emotions settle and become quiescent and easy to ignore. I can sit there with my tablet playing video games and live in a world almost entirely of the mind, everything else shut out Not one little bit of myself experiencing the real world in any meaningful sense. A sort of poison paradise, my own private dystopia.

It makes me sick and I hate it, but I hate it like a junkie hates junk, knowing that it has power over me, that it is my addiction, my god, my escape, and my doom.

I wish I could just crush this sell of mine, take a sledgehammer and smash it into dust, and hence destroy my lines of retreat and force myself to go forward.

But I am too scared. Getting out of my shell for a little while feels good, like taking your winter clothes off ont he first day of spring. You get to air yourself out and breathe free for a change. You stretch, look around, and enjoy the sunshine on your skin.