Currently stuck in my head :

At first it was the last few lines :

Living lives of quiet desperation is the English way
The race is run
The song is over
Thought I’d something more to say

That expresses the thought so well, it makes me want to cry. Thought I’d something more to say. ” You did, Pink. But then your British-ness kicked in and scrubbed those thoughts from your mind because who are you to think you have something worth saying? What could you – you in particular, you pathetic little git – possibly say that anyone would care about?

Shut up and drink your tea.

You can see how, while as a Canadian I am only slightly British, in the way that a second cousin is slightly related to you, the theme of quiet desperation nevertheless has a certain resonance with me and my own problems.

But my desperation isn’t totally quiet.

After all, I blog about it.

But the lines that got me here blogging are these ones :

Run, rabbit, run! 
Dig that hole
Against the sun
Then, at last, the work is done
Don’t sit down, it’s time to dig another one

Now that, I identify with fully. because that is anxiety/depression.

I’ve talked before about how my anxiety makes me want to dig the deepest darkest hole ever then pull the hole in on top of me.

It’s essentially an urge to hide taken to its logical extreme. Infinite concealment. And once hidden, to stay absolutely quiet and still because that is the only way to be safe from whatever it is that is chasing me.

Reality, I suppose.

Having to grow up and face the facts.

My bullies,  on some level. And at some points in my childhood, that included every other student in my school.

And of course, my rapist.

I never even got the chance to run away from him.

Anyhow, so I have this urge towards infinite concealment, to the point where I almost don’t exist any more.

But the anxiety is still there too, and its message is the opposite of the urge to hide. TO anxiety, the only safety lies in constant movement in activity. In running away. That releases a lot of energy and that energy has to go somewhere.

So you dig that hole. And then you dig another. And another. And another.

You can never stop digging, because the anxiety tells you that the wolf is nipping at your heels and if you stop for even one second, it will get you.

At the same time, the urge to hide is telling you that to move is to be exposed  and that will be when that mean ol wolf gets you.

This creates an enormous tension within the individual as they try to obey two mutually exclusive imperatives at the same time. It’s like an engine turned against itself, like being squeezed between two angry giants, like gunning a seized engine.

This terrible tension, unsurprisingly, produces incredible psychological pain.

And this pain has a name.

We call it depression.

The exact form the depression takes depends on which side of the tug of war is dominant in the individual.

If the anxiety side is dominant, the person is an anxious depressive, prone to spontaneous anxiety attacks as well as ones that are triggered by stressors like pressure or fear. This person is permanently tightly wound. At any second, they may get the urge to run like hell and never stop.

If the concealment side is dominant, you get the dysthymic depressive, like myself. This person seems fine on a superficial level but experiences very low levels of motivation, energy, and willpower, and tends to have a very low activity level centred around a few trusted high-reward activities they use to combat the crushing weight of their depression. They isolate themselves in order to minimize uncontrolled stimulation.

Those seem like distinct types of depression, but they are really one and the same. My dysthymic manifestation of depression is derived directly from my anxieties because all my patterns of behaviour are based around minimizing it.

Hence the low stimulus lifestyle. Any uncontrolled, unpredictable stimulation might set of my anxieties. So I spend all day in the same room in front of the same computer living in a virtual world where I have total control over my stimulus level.

The lack of motivation and drive is similarly a result of anxiety. In order to combat that anxiety, my mind creates an overall drag effect on every thought and impulse in order to keep things from going too fast.

It’s like living on a high gravity planet. Even the simplest of things takes an enormous effort of will and spirit. More ambitious things are completely out of the question.

So in the dysthymic, the anxiety has essentially won. In my life, that anxiety – that fear – rules. I do whatever it takes to keep it happy because if I do not, it will rise and make my life a living hell. Everything I do has to be tested against it to see if said activity will rouse the sleeping giant, and if it will, that shit is vetoed HARD.

Very few actions can meet that test.

That giant is a very light sleeper.

And this is not something I can explain to people. It’s too personal and complicated and it comes from a reality entirely unlike their own. And because I can’t justify myself to others, I feel like I have no excuse for how I am and that fills me with shame.

I go through life in thick, heavy armor that nobody can see and that not only weighs me down but keeps joy, love, and happiness from getting in.

And I dream of the day that I can take that shit off and breathe the fresh air and feel the warm sunlight on my skin and finally be free.

But that won’t happen until I can convince my scared little rabbit that it’s safe

And that might take a long, long time indeed.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.