A rare sequel! Mark this day on your calendar, folks.

What I forgot to mention yesterday is that this “listening” state is my preferred mode of being. I live my life insuch a manner as to maximize my time in the creative/intelligent mode. i.e. open to mental stimulation but emotionally closed off from the world.

I have talked before about how depression seems to have some kind of relationship with stimulus level. The theory (which is mine) is that by keeping stimulus levels preternaturally low and avoiding as much physical arousal as possible,  the depressive keeps their anxiety in check. But at a terrible cost.

It creates a very strong and destructive anti-vitality bias. The things that normally stimulate people to a happy, balanced level of physical arousal are violently shunned. An artificial, deathly calm is enforced with brutal thoroughness. Nearly all forms of emotion are suppressed lest they wake the sleeping giant of the depressive’s anxiety.

The safe island in all this is mental stimulation. That is a form of stimulation that can be controlled with precision, especially with the Internet available to all. This fine control allows the depressive to keep the emotional stimulation to a “safe” level.

I do it with video games and hanging out with my fuzzy friends, and frequent naps. Another person might do it with TV and junk food. A third person might do it with music, reading, and prayer.

But the game is always the same : substitute “safe” mental stimulation for all the rest of the stimuli that normally keep people feeling alive, awake, and content.

That’s why I live in this bizarre “outside the Cave” way. I live Plato’s philosopher’s life as much as I can, and you really shouldn’t do that. I live in my world of ideas, observations, information, and other cold-circuit things because that’s where I feel safe. Interaction with external reality is kept at an absolute minimum, often at the cost of doing a very clumsy and weak job of relatively simple tasks.

Which, of course, only encourages further withdrawal.

It doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing I can conquer by sheer force of will. I can push myself to spend less time inside my head and more time dealing with reality, but the fundamental pattern of withdrawal from excess stimulus no matter what seems to be very deep set, probably because it started when I was raped at the tender age of three.

I dealt with it while it was happening by taking my mind away. This is not real, this is not happening, I am not here. I basically unfocused my mind to blur it all out, and retreated deep into my mind in order to cope with the horrible reality of what was happening.

And that is what I have been doing ever since. Trying to stay in that tiny room inside my head so that horrible reality can’t get to me. Brutally and desperately minimizing my time outside that room. Restricting my life to only that which is compatible with this regime.

For an agoraphobic like myself, home is a place in our minds far more than it is a place in the real world.

It’s hard for me to even imagine leaving that tiny hovel of my mind for very long. When I contemplate it I feel a very intense sense of panic that shuts the whole thing down. It’s that kind of panic/anxiety that is similar to the nameless dread of the compulsive in that it is a fear so great that it has no object. You are not imagining a specific outcome or a particular consequence of the action. The action itself is far too terrifying.

Even as I type this, I am filled with terror and dread.

So I stay in my teeny tiny safe place and only touch reality with a ten foot pole. Two of them, actually, used like chopsticks. Very clumsy.

It’s not without is benefits. This inner world of mine is extremely well developed. All this time listening to my inner voice in contemplation has given me a deep understanding of many things, such as what makes people who they are and why they do what they do. This understanding makes me a better writer and gives me insight into things which most people would consider an unsolvable and opaque mystery.

That has its drawbacks too, though. It’s not easy being the only fish who knows he’s swimming. I have always “seen” more than others and understood more than was probably good for me about human frailty and the everyday darkness of life from which there can be no escape.

At least, not for me.

Because it’s not just that I perceive things about people that others don’t, it’s that I lack any sort of escape from the reality of it all. I have denied myself denial as a coping mechanism for so long that it’s simply no longer an option.

I am naked to the truth, and dying of frostbite. And I don’t know what to do.

Lately I feel like my superego is this enormous and  brutally judgmental eye in the sky, filled with malevolence and hate and determined to crush me flat and keep me that way. It knows no mercy and no compassion, and with it, you are failing the moment you begin.

And all the time, it stares into me, freezing me in place and keeping me from healing. Things happen in my mind that make no sense. Like whenever someone is waiting for me, I get this intense anxiety the second they begin to wait, as if I am already doing something inexcusable, and need to move as quickly as possible because even one second more than the absolute minimum amount of time it takes to finish what I am doing means I am a horrible, horrible person.

I got that from my impatient Dad. But I am sure that even he would say that it goes way too far. When I am in this anxious state, I truly feel like I have to rush or I will be abandoned. Left behind and forgotten.

And I have felt that abandonment anxiety for a very long time.

Pretty fucked up, isn’t it?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.