That’s what life feels like to me lately, more often than not. Just a slow trip down a long, dark, silent corridor. No sign of a beginning or an end. Just silence, and darkness, and the sensation of unwilled movement. And a feeling of eeriness and dread.
I don’t know where this feeling comes from. But I have learned that asking such questions of depression can be depressingly futile, because sometimes, there is no reason apart from one’s on messed up brain chemistry. Guess what, your chemicals have decided that right now, you will be depressed.
And you are free to make up any reason for it you like. Some of them might even be vaguely accurate. But underneath it all are those messed up brain chemicals.
On a deep level, I feel like there is a key to escaping that long dark corridor. Like I could just turn my head and, like in a dream, I would be someplace warm and happy and alive.
Real bucolic Disney meadow stuff. And yet, somehow, also the 1970’s, because that’s where all my happy childhood memories lie. Times with the family all around, when I got plenty of attention (sometimes a little too much) and adults were charmed if a little nonplussed by this adorable precocious kid with the red hair and freckles. Times where it’s always summer, because that’s when my mother would be home (she was a teacher) as well as my siblings, and we would sometimes go places as a family, and everything was pretty peachy keen, honestly.
Times before I ever went to school.
It’s good for me to remember those times because it’s good for me to remember that my life was not always hell. There were some golden years. And it’s those good memories that I want to draw upon when trying to purify myself.
One can return to innocence, but you have to let go of so much of what seems important (but isn’t) first.
We all have a deep identity. The person we would be if we didn’t know who we were. Mine is friendly, enthusiastic, very expressive, caring, sensitive, and extremely charismatic.
At least, that’s what I have figured out so far. When I imagine the purified version of myself, free of my burdens and my scars, I picture a vibrant happy person filled with optimism and enthusiasm and charm.
Intelligence works in there some way too, I would imagine. But it wouldn’t be the central point of my being, like it is now. It would be integrated into all the rest, supporting and informing it, but not being this giant overgrown unbalanced thing like it is right now.
Integration. I talk about that a lot. It’s a tricky thing to explain to those of you who live outside my head (you know who you are). The word compartmentalization might work. My mind is highly compartmentalized, with different parts of it spread far and wide with only that icy cold void of the intellect connecting them. These parts are supposed to be working closely together but instead they barely know each other exist.
Integration, then, is the process of bring them back together. But it is a long and tricky n-dimensional jigsaw puzzle to put oneself together again. You can’t just click yourself together like a Kinder Egg toy. The parts have to be delicately maneuvered around and into each other, like you are assembling a space station in zero gravity, and that takes time.
Still, I have faith that progress is possible, and indeed, is happening. I am a vastly different person than I was even a year ago, and I expect that I will be even more different (differenter?) this time next year.
This would all be easier if I could just surrender myself to God. I totally understand why that works. By doing so, you return to innocence because you basically return to childhood. It’s not just you against the cold and cruel adult world any more. You can be a child in God’s house, and that is powerful because it fulfills our deep and largely unrecognized need to feel like a powerful Alpha is in charge, and they have the big picture covered, so you can relax and just live your life.
People without that kind of leadership tend to become nervous, fearful, and even violent. That’s the sort of thing where mob violence is a possibility. When people feel like their leadership is incompetent or corrupt or both, our status instincts tell us to agitate and create chaos until new leadership is in place.
The human animal is only truly content when ensconced in a solid, stable, predictable hierarchy in which it has a clearly defined role and total faith in the people above it. Hence the appeal of fascism and other totalitarian forms of government. They would seem to provide that sort of thing, and if they could actually deliver it, they might have some merit.
But they can’t, so they don’t. No system can survive unless its citizens feel safe, and those kinds of government, being paranoid and sadistic, vehemently oppose the idea that any citizen should feel safe from their governments.
So these governments always end up with the secret police and the political officers and all kinds of other ways to make sure no citizen can ever just relax and enjoy life, but instead has to always be on guard against the forces just waiting for them to screw up so they can pounce.
Amazing how I can start from my own problems and end up in political analysis, isn’t it?
Tonight is our little Xmas at the apartment. We’ll go out to dinner, then come back and exchange presents. And, of course, watch lots of video together.
It’s our thing.
Still considering the Xmas cheer option. I know, roughly, where the closest liquor store is. Get myself a little bottle of spcied rum, or maybe just by some tasty looking bottled beverages.
Either way, I will talk to you nice people tomorrow.
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