Today, I made a little bit of progress.

Specifically, today I recognized that I was becoming depressed in the afternoon, and deliberately got up and moved around some to try to shake it off.

It worked, more or less. It didn’t exactly fill me with coruscating torrents of everlasting joy, but it kept things from getting worse. Next time I will do a little more than what I did today, which was to get up from the bed, go get a glass of water, and then sit myself at the computer without permission to go back into my bed for at least half an hour.

It’s a baby step, but that’s one big baby.

Like I have said before, the idea that I can change my mood through action is weird to me, alien even. I have spent so long just treading water that it never occurred to me that I could swim. (More water imagery!)

And it’s more than just weird. It means taking responsibility for my mood in a way that is entirely new, and more than a little scary, to me. After all, if you accept that you can affect something, you automatically assume responsibility for it. The two things are not separable, as much as some people would like to think they are.

Power equals responsibility.

And a big big part of me does not want that responsibility and would actually prefer to go back to acting like there is nothing I can do against the swelling tides and riptide currents of my internal maelstrom. That part of me is so scared of taking an active part (and hence responsibility) in my own life that it is willing to dive deep into the pit of oblivion in order to escape it.

And the thing is, I don’t understand why. What it is about having the power to change my own mood that scares the hell out of me? Why is that part of me so scared of responsibility that it actually prefers depression?

And what does that say about the nature of my depression?

Well it certainly indicates that my depression, as awful as it has been on literally every level of my life, is an escape mechanism. A way to avoid having to deal with the world and accept responsibility for myself. This is not truly a shock and runs concurrent with my previous theorizing, but it really underlines the nature of the problem.

See how my language becomes all precise and science-formal when I talk about really deep stuff? Intellectualize much?

Anyhow, the fundamental question of why I fear responsibility remains. When I try to examine the subject (not easy, girt with fear as it is), the concept of “attachment” springs to mind. Responsibility ties you down, limits you, weighs you down. A deep part of my fundamental emotional nature equates freedom of motion with safety and limitations as traps.

And traps, of course, as DANGER.

But that doesn’t really explain an aversion to self-responsibility. It’s not like taking responsibility for a home or a task at work or being the treasurer of your local polo club. It makes no sense to fear being tied down to yourself.

And yet, in a way, it does. If I take full responsibility for myself, that actually comes with a whole lot of new, scary things and a fair bt of change in my life. I would have to stop fucking around and grow up and actually take charge of my life and where it goes instead of that eternal drifting in the mist that has been my life for twenty years.

And deep down, there’s a part of me that, it shames me to admit, just does not want to grow up.

Maybe it has something to do with my incomplete childhood. My inner child still feels abandoned and unfinished and broken, and refuses to grow up any further until it gets what it feels it needs, like the love, affection, attention, acceptance, and validation it never got in my actual childhood.

And maybe that is not negotiable. Maybe love is a vitamin and without it you just don’t grow right. You have to either find it in the world or somehow provide it for yourself, like plants manufacturing their own food from sunlight and water.

And my inner child feels really ripped off by life, and thinks that even having to go find it or make it myself is a grave injustice, and Someone owes it all that it has not gotten for life, and it is perfectly willing to hold out for that, like a child holding their breath till they turn blue.

Well I’m forty one years old, and clearly, I ain’t gonna get it. At least, it’s not going to show up on its own. So I have to ask myself what stubbornness and being “right” (ha!) are worth, and if I can give up my hunger strike and go out into the world and get something to eat.

The only person I can rely on to be that caregiver that I need so badly is me. I am going to have to accept a duality that normally I would avoid, namely of being child and parent at the same time.

I loathe binaries, but sometimes you have to separate things for a while in order to be able to recombine them into a greater unity. Maybe it takes being two people to learn to be one whole one.

Metaphorically speaking, that is.

I want to love my inner child. And my inner child wants the love. But I guess that inner child wants the love to come from somewhere else, and feels like if it has to come from within, it’s worthless.

I don’t know. It’s all a very complicated game of emotional chess to play with myself.

I should probably make note of all this in regards to bringing it up with my therapist next session. Seems important.

Anyhow, I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.