Been thinking about the fog I live in lately.

Because it really is at the root of all my problems. It’s the reason I am absentminded, because things I am supposed to remember disappear into the fog. It’s the reason I am so clumsy, because it’s hard to be precise when you are suffused through and through with a depressive fog. It’s the reason behind my general helplessness and cluelessness, because the fog interferes with my executive function and makes it hard to pull myself together and concentrate, as well as sapping my confidence in my ability to handle things.

All my major person hurdles stem from this ice cold clinging fog. And I have no idea what would happen if it was gone.

Because the main function of this fog is to protect me. It keeps life at a safe difference and cools down my emotions and allows me to take a detached and intellectual attitude towards life, one based almost entirely on mental stimulation alone.

And smart but stupefied is no way to go through life, son.

Life is real. Life is present. Life is hot. Life is NOW. My only hope lies in refusing to be seduced by the fog’s siren song which tells me that all emotions can be escaped by freezing them in their tracks and then pretending they don’t exist any more.

But it’s hard to do because I have lived my life in the cold and dark for so long that I can’t remember anything else. I don’t even know how to feed anything but my mind. My soul cries out for nourishment but I honestly don’t know what to feed it, or how.

Because of this, it tends to get nourishment at random intervals, and never on purpose. The best I can say for myself is that sometimes, the fog thins enough for something I watch or read to get through to me and truly touch me. And in those moments, I feel warm and alive and connected, and I want those moments to last forever.

And I get real healing in those moments. Warmth has reached my frozen emotions and, for an all too brief time, I am a living, feeling, real human being and not the walking dead.

It’s a lot like Anne Rice’s description of what a vampire feels like right after they have fed. But I’m no vampire. Baby, I’m the walking dead.

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/NFc2Qs49VkA” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

I don’t have it in me to feed on others. What right do I have to deprive them of their life just to sustain my own? Where is the net gain in that?

Still, in those brief times when I am alive, the ice pack around my heart melts some and I get that little bit closer to being able to feeling the sun on my soul.

I can imagine the fog going away in the abstract. I can dream a dreamy dream of the fog lifting and my standing naked and whole before the world, wet like I was freshly born but rapidly drying in the sun’s warmth, free and proud and strong.

But when I try to imagine it actually happening, I freeze up. How appropriate!

Is it just fear of the unknown? Perhaps. It’s certainly the case that I have no idea what life would be like without it. It would be greater to have the increased mental clarity, active memory, coordination, and competence, but at what cost?

I have no idea.

As far as I can tell, the fog has always been there. Maybe I was born with it. Or maybe it’s just been there for so long that I can’t even conceive of it not being there, whether it was there during a certain memory or not.

So I can’t tell you when it arrived. Maybe that day I laid down in the snowbank and willed myself to die. It would make sense on a metaphorical level, anyhow. Ice and snow on the outside, ice and snow on the inside.

I guess I should be glad I was too young to think of suicide. Imagine a seven year old contemplating suicide because he feels like he has no way out of his pain.

Jesus fuck, that’s tragic. My childhood is almost unbearably poignant. I wonder what would happen if I wrote it all down in an autobiography. Would anyone want to read it? Would it be too sad for anyone to enjoy? Would people even believe me?

Some day, maybe I will do exactly that. But right now, I have too many stories left to tell.

At this point, I don’t know how much of the fog is my illness and how much is my medication. It might very well be that I am overdue for a reduction in my meds in order to enable me to have more access to my emotions and speed up the healing/thawing process. But that would be too risky for me right now.

After all, I am in the middle of getting myself a practical education.

Today we went over the last bit of my Bob’s Burgers script, and the substitute teacher said there was a lot of really funny stuff in it. Bonus! I am slowly gathering evidence that I am a very funny writer.

So I have that going for me, at least. Makes me wish print wasn’t dying so that I could be a funny columnist like Dave Barry. All he had to do in life was to write one 750 word column a week. I could totally handle that.

Then again, what would I do with the rest of my time? What I really want is a job that pays well and keeps me busy. I have read about the hard driving pace of television,and it sounds fab to me.

I would love to have the luxury of getting really, honestly tired. Not fat-guy tired. Not depression tired. Not messed up blood sugar tired.

Well and truly tired from working hard all day.

To some people, that would be a nightmare, but for me, it’s the dream.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.