Feel fairly chemically depressed lately.

That means that I have a strong feeling of there being a cavernous void at the center of my soul that devours everything but the barest amount of energy needed for me to survive and maintain my current crappy lifestyle.

And even that take a sustained effort of will.

Were I a different sort of depressive, I would be staying in bed all day and not dealing with anything or anybody and crying a lot and possibly even harming myself.

But that’s not me. I am not that kind of person. I keep going no matter what.

And who’s to say which is bettert? Perhaps that other kind of depressive, by falling to pieces and losing all hope, hastens the process of depression and that speeds them towards some process of renewal that leaves them feeling a lot better.

More importantly. by falling apart, they stands a decent chance of clearly signaling their distress to the world and attracting some kind of nurturing from it. People in their support network might even support them, emotionally and otherwise.

But not me. I keep it all to myself. An ironic thing to say in my tell-all (well, tell-most) blog,, but it’s true. That’s what the biggest revelation in my entire recover was about.

I can talk about my depression all day long. That’s easy for me. I’m chatty.

What I have so much trouble doing is actually expressing it on an emotional level. It took me five years of therapy before I could share my dark and bitter emotions with my therapist. Before that, it was all just talk.

I just realized that this ease of expressing words but not actual real live current emotions is the trick behind my illusion of total openness. I will talk about damned near anything about myself to anyone – whether you call it being an open and honest person, or call it being a social retard with no sense of boundaries.

But if they asked me, “What are you feeling right now?” I would be shocked and stumped for a few seconds. Because that would mean someone had pierced my disguise and was asking to see the real me.

Talk about a feeling of exposure.

I would probably end up saying “Fine” or “okay” or “not bad” or the equivalent. Something that answers the question without actually revealing anything. The response thus accomplishes the goal of making the person go away, either literally or by changing the subject to something less difficult for me.

So now that you know how the trik is done, dear reader. you will recognize it when you see it again.

And the thing is, I am a good enough conversationalist that I can keep people distracted with all my magic tricks so that they never realize that I am hiding something.

I’m hiding the real me. Shhh, don’t tell.

So expressing emotions in realtime is a very big challenge to me. Realtime is just too… real. And I can talk about my depression in detached academic terms all day.

But get into the emotional heart of it and I am uncharacteristically mute.

It all comes bacjk to that old bugbear of mine, intellectualization. Emotions in realtime are raw and immediate and I have had no time to detach myself from them and thus intellectualize them. That means I have to deal with them in their unprocessed state and that makes me feel like I am going out of control and we can’t have that, can we?

Next thing you’d know, I would be doing and saying spontaneous unfiltered things and dealing with things head-on instead of when they have been converted into symbols in my head and thus defused.

That can only lead to disaster.

Or finding out who I really am. Either or.

Because it only just occurred to me that the real me has to be the person I am when I am not in control. It seems intuitively obvious to me now. The real me must be the sponaneous me because that’s the version of me that flows from my full being, emotions and all, and not just the icy reaches of my intellect.

It’s the me that squats in his high tech hog wallow and plays video games all day that is the fake me. I have been making the classic mistake of thinking the person I happen to be at the moment is who I am, and that’s just not true.

The real me is the person I am when I am out with my friends and enjoying their company and conversation. The funny, weird, sweet, fascinating, warm  person with the sparkling wit and goofy sense of humour, both turned up to 11. The guy with the big brain and even bigger personality. That’s the real me.

That explains why, when I come home from being out, I get this feeling of deflation and despair, and a little voice inside my head says “I don’t want to go back in the box!”.

Because once I get over the initial anxiety reaction of being out – no prob, it’s pretty mild when I am with friends – I relax, lose my self-consciousness, and start actually living.

This is, to put it mildly, an epic revelation. All this time, I have been thinking that the depressed shut-in version of me was the real me and the person I am when I have ot leave my lair is the fake one.

But that was just the depression talking, convincing me that the part of me that longed to be home safe again proved that home was where I belonged.

But no. That feeling is an illusion enforced my anxiety, and I am not my anxiety.

I am that which experiences the anxiety….and therefore I can choose to experience something else with absolutely no violation of self.

So fuck anxiety. Time for IT to back into ITS box. It’s played its part and now needs to get off the fucking stage and let a legitimate show perform.

Man. I just blew my own mind. Several times. Impressive.

I will leave you with this thought, dear readers : I am Fruvous. Fruvous is me.

And everything else is just dust on a diamond  – something meaningless to its inherent value and unworthy of consideration.

Time to wipe it off and let it shine.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow/.