I feel all thick in the head today.

It makes it hard to think, let alone write. I was around 200 words in to a piece about the anti-freedom reactions people are having to the incident in Charlottesville when I realized that I was totally lost and could not get the words out, so I started over.

Dunno why I feel this way. I know it’s not lack of sleep. I’ve had lots. Too much, maybe.

It’s probably a sinus thing. I just took a Reactine Sinus and Allergy. Let’s hope that does the trick. Because I am really hating this mental fog.

It’s so much worse than my usual mental fog.

What’s worse is that I am feeling very depressed right now. At least physically. I am feeling a very strong urge to crawl back into bed and hide from reality right now. I feel tense and anxious and very vulnerable. I feel tiny and scared and completely overwhelmed by damn near everything.

I mean, here it is, in the middle of the afternoon in middle of August, and I am shivering. I actually feel cold. That’s how ratched up and raw my nerves are right now.

Hopefully things will improve once I get the sinus thing resolved. I can endure this mental state for a while if I think relief is in sight.

Let’s check a few more things. I know it’s not low blood sugar because I ate a substantial meal two hours ago.

Although…. low blood sugar does often leave me feeling cold and shaky. Hmmm. Maybe I should drink a small amount of apple juice and see if it helps.

And I know it’s not a question of medication, because I took my full suite of morning meds with my meal. So I have plenty of Paxil and Wellbutrin in my bloodstream.

In theory, that means that my chemicals should be in balance. But that is clearly not the case, given how I feel.

Reminder : I feel like shit.

In fact, right at this second, I feel so delicate and vulnerable that all it would take is a light touch and I would crumble into dust like an ancient book.

I think the sinus meds are helping, though. I feel calmer than before.

Maybe the nap I took after eating lunch was a bad idea. For some reason, sleeping at that particular time often leads to me waking up feeling a lot worse than when I went to sleep. Perhaps it’s the afternoon heat.

But the alternative is to try to force myself to stay awake despite feeling very, very sleepy And that can be very stressful, and also not good for my mood.

So it’s catch-22 yet again. No good options. No way out.

But whatever. This too shall pass. Writing about it helps. Pathological anxiety comes from unresolved energies trying to find a way to express themselves.

Simply giving those energies a way out does wonders for the mood. All it takes is a little patience and focus to get the process started.

And the self-knowledge to know that the depression and/or anxiety will make releasing the energy seem terrifying. It will try to convince you that if you open up even a tiny bit, the whole system will explode like an overfilled balloon.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Slow release is possible. You can let the air out of the balloon in a controlled and healthy way.

You just have to be patient and willing to do the emotional work it takes to get to the point where you find your emotional release valve and ease it open.

Everyone needs an outlet.

The good thing about being an experienced depressed and/or anxious person is that I know not to panic just because I am panicking. I am sufficiently detached from the random fluctuations of my goddamned chemicals to be able to sit outside them and say “Oh, it’s this again. I will do what I can to fix it, but if that fails, I’ll just wait it out. ”

It doesn’t make these periods of instability any more fun, but it makes them a lot more endurable. I know that, emotionally speaking, the rains will end and the sun will come out again and all I have to do is keep it together till that happens.

Beforte this evolution in my metaconscious mind, the state of my chemicals was the state of the universe, subjectively speaking. And living in so unstable a universe is a scary scary thing.

Imagine how bad it is for schizophrenics. Their reality is even more subject to their chemical instability than mine.

When I say I feel like a light touch would make me fall to pieces, I know that I am speaking metaphorically. A schizophrenic might believe it to be literally true.

It’s a terrifying thought.

Sometimes I wish I could just get comfortable in my bed, let my mind defocus, and open all my emotional floodgates so that everything can finally resolve itself and the slow dance of recovery would be resolved in one huge apocalyptic cataclysm.

Sure, it would be absolutely horrible while it was happening, but should I survive, I would feel so much cleaner and lighter afterwards.

Instead, I am stuck trying to learn to be content with the steady slow drip of release I get from the process of recovery, and the larger (but still a tiny proportion of the mass) releases I get from writing in this blog and, occasionally, therapy.

At least I have learned to treasure and encourage my restlessness. I used to quash it ands quash it HARD, treating it like it was some alien agent causing me nothing but pain when all I wanted was to be left alone.

Now I know that my restlessness comes from my life force trying to express itself. It’s the part of me capable of overcoming my lack of motivation. In fact, it’s where motivation lives. I want ot learn to let the spirit move me, so to speak.

But first… I have to let go of my current life and world.

And that scares mne.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.