Oh my baking yak

It’s a Spoonerism.

So yeah. As covered in yestereday’s blog entry, I’ve been pretty depressed lately. I keep getting th urge to just stay in bed and sleep as much as I possible can in order to avoid having to deal with reality altogether.

Like I always say, sleep is like death without the commitment.

And I feel so damned small. Like I am a tiny mouse trying to face a world that is far too big, scary, dangerous, and loud for him so he just stays in his mousehole alone.

There’s a children’s book in there somewhere. Something that has a positive message and a cheerful tone but is also kind of depressing.

You know. For the sad kids.

When I even contemplate turning to face reality even slightly, I shrink away from it like I am a mimosa plant.

My theory is that they named the breakfast cocktail the Mimosa because that’s how most people feel in the morning.

And with the smallness and the shrinking away comes the coldness. The terrible, life-destroying coldness that brings the layers on layers of frostbite that turns the surface of my soul into raw, pockmarked  hamburger meat.

And the flesh underneat isn’t doing much better, either. Especially my poor heart, scarped raw by glaciers and pierced to death by a million icicles.

And all because of an over-active parasympathic system. It’s supposed to balance out the sympathetic system, aka the adrenaline response system. Something produces an adrenaline response, like fear or joy or sex or anger, and the whole adrenal response system kicks in. Adrenaline floods into the system, blood vessels dilate,  the liver dumps whatever sugar it’s got on hand into the bloodstream, and basically everything mans its respective battle station.

Then once the situation is resolved, the parasympathetic system is supposed to scrub the adrenaline out of the bloodstream and put everything back to normal.

The parasympathetic system is also responsible for other situations in which calming and a reduction in sensitivity is required. The specific response I am talking about is the one that produces pain-dampening chemicals in the brain.

As patient readers know, I think that depression stems from psychological trauama too severe for the mind to heal on its own causing the pain-dampening switch to get stuck in the on position and thus leaving the patient constantly awash in numbing chemicals that make it impossible to feel damned near anything that would produce an adrenal response, even the good stuff.

Worst of all, it numbsI feel d loneliness.

That’s very bad for a member of a social species like humanity.

And the fact that I phrase things that way – that I express the pain of depression’s isolation in such clinical language – is a pretty good indicator that I onbe of of these patients and that one of the only ways I know to relate to the world is through the language of scientific analysis.

I am always more comfortable analyzing than emoting.

So where was I? Feeling small, shrinking away from everything, wanting to stay in bed and sleep all the time and not deal with reality at all, the terrible cold fear that keeps me from living my life, feeling frostbitten and fucked up and raw.

And how do I get out of this negative state into a happier one? Fucked if I know. Maybe I just can’t get there from here. Maybe I am helpless before the oscillations and vacillations of my turbulent brain chemicals and all I can do is hang in there and hope for the occasional reprieve for my torment to emerge from the chaos.

It would be nice to be free of pain. Even for a little while.


I feel so lost sometimes.

It’s a hard feeling to describe. It’s not just a feeling that I have no idea where I am, although that’s bad enough. It’s also a feeling of having no idea where to go and not even the slithest feeling that there is a way to figure it out.

It’s a feeling of being as lost as lost can be. Total disorientation. I feel like I am lost in an infinite landscape of mirrors, halls, doors, symbols, arrows, flashing lights, smoke, pains, tortures, and booby traps.

In such a mess, is it any wonder that I end up sitting down and doing nothing? At least when I am stationary, I am not bumping into anything or setting anything off or otherwise making things worse just for daring to move.

It’s a wonder I can do anything at al. I must have some way of making it through the Maze that does not rely on the usual sort of sight.

I assume it’s the Force.

Okay, maybe not. REal answer : I assume I make my way through life via insight instead of the usual kind of sight. Because as far as I can remember, I’ve always had this layer of internal chaos in my tempetuous mind. I have to overcome, via sheer grit and wit and all that shit, a large wall of tumult and chaos just to get my eyes to focus properly, let alone interface with reality competently.

But try explaining that to a doctor. I would never be able to get the idea across. I can’ even explain much simpler things in a way that doctors understand. They are listening for certain key words and if they don’t hear them, they look at you like you just came in and spoke to them with great passion and engagement in the language of the Kalahari Bushmen, the one with all the clicks.

So every day and in every way,  I fight battles nobody else could even comprehend, let alone help with. Bttles I can’t explain in ways people will understand. Battles that are totally invisible to the world outside my skull.

Battles that sometimes take everything i have got to win and have nothing left for coping with anything real at all, so all I can do is muddle through my day in the most minimal way I know and hope tomorrow I get to actually do something.

But with how things are going lately, I ain’t holding my breath.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

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