This was almost “Slip Slidin’ Away” by Paul Simon, but I think I used that one before and I hate repeating myself.

Repeating myself. I hate it. I hate repeating myself.

I’ve been feeling better lately. I still have a lot of anger and bitterness and darkness floating around in this capacious cranium of mine, but I don’t feel so helpless against it.

Things got pretty bad there for a while. In fact. I have a secret to tell, and you’re going to have to promise never to let Joe know this, but…

I was utterly miserable for the whole time I was at his parents’ place for Xmas dinner.

Not their fault. They were lovely people as always. The food was wonderful. I had some very nice champagne and a glass of surprisingly deep and complex white wine.

Sharp start, slow sweet finish, with an elusive suggestion of something mysterious. Quite nice. And I’m in general a red wine guy.

Oh, what the heck.

The alcohol didn’t help with the depression. It never has, which I suppose is a good thing. I know I can’t drink my sorrows away.

In fact, liquor usually makes them worse because instead od being merely depressed. I end up depressed and stupid.

And I hate being stupid.

And I am sure that on the outside, I seemed to be having a good time. I am, of course, a master thespian when it comes to hiding my pain.

After all,. I wouldn’t want to make anyone else feel bad by exposing them to my pain. It’s bad enough to be miserable on my own.

To have my pain reflected back at my via empathy would be much too much.

Besides. it’s not like people can handle the real me anyhow. M darkness is deadly because it devours. It would eat people up and barely even notice. I have such an enormous void within me and it is composed of so many desperately unmet needs that to touch it is to have the life drained right out of you in less than a heartbeat.

Or so I believe.

And so I wear the mask even in the worst of circumstances. On the outside I was normal enough. But on the inside I was in a lot of pain.

And yet, I think this is something I have to go through. It’s the next phase of my recovery. I have to once more pass through th eye of the needle in order to burn away yet more of my emotional debris so that I might be free of it.

Or so I hope, any way. We all all want our suffering to mean something.

I have found myself turning back to the subject of people who act on their emotions lately, and how hard it is for me to even imagine that.

And yet. presumably, that’s how a lot of humanity lives, at least partiallty. Like I have said. I know my incredibly high standard of self-control is inhuman and unhealthy.

But I can’t see my way to lowering it. Because I know.  I know that I would be deciding to hand over power to forces I do not trust or understand. I lack the innocence of blind emotion, aka “not knowing any better”.

I aways know better. That’s part of the problem. I have always seen too much and known too much for my own good. The idea that superior clarity and perception could prove toxic is highly alien to someone like me who is always striving to see more. anjd know more and understand more of the big picture.

But maybe the human pysche can only take so much of life outside Plato’s cave. at least on an emotional level. Maybe I have spent a lot of time making my mind happy at the expense of my soul.

In fact, maybe in addition to my overactive superego, I have a vaslty overindulged ego, and it’s my poor little id whimpering in a corner that suffers as a result.

Almost like I was raised by one angry and punitive parent and one highly intellectual parent in a household intolerant of many normal human emotions.

I feel like I am forever falling into myself. Perhaps that’s my touch of dizziness talking. But I feel like I am spinning as I fall down an infinite hole that gets smaller in diameter at regular intervals, and as it gets smaller. my soul shrinks and weakens in order to fit.

Until one day, presumably,. when I disappear entirely.

The prospect in not entirely unappealing.

I feel so tiny and helpless and weak sometimes. The fact that on the outside, I appear to be none of those things only makes it worse. As hard as I work to conceal my pain from all. I also long to be able to share it with someone so I don’t feel so alone.

Perhaps that is part of the British Disease we inherited from our colonial parents here in Canada : being filled with emotions you long to express. but reserve and politeness keep them locked inside you.

At least I have this blog. I try my best to empty out my emotions onto this page faster than they accumulate so that I get ahead of the game more often than not.

And with everything I write, I learn to put more and more of myself and my emotions into every word. It’s like I am trying to escape my mentla prison via my words, and when I am done, I will be reborn as someone who is a lot more whole and strong and happy than the pathetic wretch who types at you every day.

FOr the slow kids at the back of the class, that’s me.

I am going to try to put myself back together in the New Year. I have lost a lot of ground in the time since I left VFS and it’s going to be a pitched battle to get it back.

But as long as I stay mad at the whoe situation, there is hope.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.