The last few days have been quite trying. Yesterday, I had one of my sleepy days. Did very little but sleep for the whole day. Those days don’t get me down like they used to, but they are still very draining and somewhat of an ordeal.

Because this is not normal sleep, this is amazingly deep and intensely dream-filled sleep. It’s like high-density sleep, and while I am in the throes of this process, sleep does not refresh me, it drains me. When I manage to wake up long enough to pee and eat a meal and so on, I am like a zombie, barely able to coordinate my limbs in nonfatal ways, let along actually coherently think. And when I can’t think clearly, there’s a real danger of my becoming stressed and depressed and freaked out. I rely (far too) heavily on my ability to think clearly and rationally as a vital part of my emotional coping, thinking my way through problems and trying to figure out what is really going on, and when that is compromised, I feel cut off, confused, frightened, and abandoned to chaos.

I have a deep intuition that, while having a very strong and agile mind like I do has a lot of benefits, this rigid insistence on clarity and logic is not without its problems, and a more rounded and balanced approach to life would lead to my gaining a little trust in the universe and therefore enable me to ease up on the paranoia, fear, and insistence on vigilance that underlies my usual relaxed and easygoing demeanor.

Because if you are truly without faith, if you have absolutely no sense of safety or security in the world and therefore you believe that you can only trust that which is known or knowable, then you have no choice but to maintain a hostile attitude towards the world, and that is very very damaging to your psyche. You are in a constant state of stress, like a shellshocked Vietnam vet, and you are wracked by doubt and worry about nearly everything, because deep down, you feel like reality, the world, will stab you in the back the minute you turn your back on it. Metaphorically speaking.

It’s not a healthy way to live, and it’s only recently occurred to me with clarity that this is what separates normal people from people like me. Somewhere deep in their psyche, they have a sense of safety and wholeness and faith that carries them through life and helps them through rough spots. To them, it’s so basic in their psyche that they are never aware of it except, perhaps, in times of great trouble. But it acts as a buffer, a blanket, a refuge. All I have is the poor substitute of a very bright and sharp mind.

And people like me say pretty things about how you’re better off without faith because it’s better to build your castle on a solid foundation of truth and fact than the shifting sands of faith or religion, but to be honest, it’s sour grapes. Having no sense that things will be OK is a cold and deadly thing, and feeling clever is no substitute for feeling safe.

So after yesterday’s megasleep peak, today I get the trough of the opposite extremely, being unable to sleep at all, more or less. In the last 24 hours I have had roughly four hours of very light, very brief, very uncomfortable sleep. I wake up feeling pretty much exactly like I did before I went to sleep, and in general I feel restless, tense, and irritable. When is the part when I get to feel good?

In general, I have been feeling rather off lately. I have been getting certain minor symptoms that suggest that whatever it is that happens to me now and then that makes everything worse and generally leads to bad things until the fever breaks is happening to me now. It feels like some sort of mysterious toxin builds up in my bloodstream, and until it works its way through me, I am in danger of becoming ill at any moment, and especially if I am not careful with what and how I eat, and staying hydrated, and so on.

Ironically, these periods are often punctuated by brief periods where I feel energized and excited and become somewhat more active than usual. You know, just to make the illness stand out in sharp relief.

One thing is for sure : it sure as fuck ain’t easy being me.

Anyone want to swap for a while?