A little less depressed than yesterday. When I was a little less depressed than the day before. So at least the trend is in the right direction.

I still feel really sad inside, though. What I probably need is a good long cry, but being a North American male, my ability to cry was culturally removed from me at an early age and now it’s not something I can actually choose to do most of the time.

Guess I should go looking for sad movies, then. Or something profound. We tough and rugged emotionally constipated self-destructing men need some kind of emotional laxative before we can let the tears out.

And I am luckier than most. Having very little invested in any sort of macho image and being an open-minded liberal kind of homo, I have vastly more cultural “permission’ to be vulnerable and open and “girlie” than most men.

Nor do I feel shame when I cry. Usually, what I usually feel is relief, at least once the storm is over. Crying is built in to us for a reason. It’s probably the most potent form of emotional release we have except maybe sex.

And that releases an entirely different set of emotions. Although some people do cry after sex, so there’s that.

Once those floodgates are opened, all kinds of emotions can sneak out. A lot of people “store” repressed emotions as physical tension. Release the tension, and whoosh!

I suppose the obverse is possible – people who have sex (or just get super horny) aftert crying. Again, once those doors are open…

Still, that one strikes me as unnerving. Not judging…. just sharing.

Anyhow, back to crying. So I don’t feel ashamed of crying and I am not trying to prove what a hardcore macho stud I am to the world and I have “permission’, and yet the tears do not come from me very easily.

I guess the waterworks don’t work when so much inside of you is frozen. I am so emotionally repressed and alienated that often feels like my emotions and I are in different rooms. That emotion-repressing circuit in my mind is way too strong for my own good and someone needs to teach that thing when to lay off already.

Still, writing about it helps. I  can feel emotion rising within me as I drill down towards it. I want to “let it all out”, like people say to crying people in movies, but everything is so damned cold inside me and my taps are all frozen shut.

Oh well. If I keep working the system like I have been doing by writing stuff like this, eventually I will reach the state of holy fragility where it will take very little to break things open and let all those good, healthy tears out.

It’s happened dozens of times in my life. Usually I do not see it coming. But I can recognize it in hindsight.

Subjectively, everything is going along as usual on the conscious level. But something is building down below. Then something I watch or read will be the pebble that starts the avalanche and out come the tears.

It often seems cosmically ordained – like the universe gave me just what I needed when I needed it.

But of course, that’s got it backwards. The universe didn’t give me anything. Once I was in the state of readiness, the next thing that came along and was apropos was going to set off the reaction.

But it is still a comforting thought to entertain. It would certainly be nice if the universe did me a solid instead of mostly ignoring my shy and broken self.

Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to you is nothing.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. Day in and day out. I am so good at staying out of the way that very little has even the slightest chance of happening to me. That’s how low my level of involvement with life has become.

And I think that damages me in ways beyond the obvious effects of social and emotional isolation. I think the lack of event and content itself has a corrosive effect. Our minds are not designed for a virtual life that only exists inside a computer.

I think on many levels, my body is starved for stimulus. It’s like I am in solitary confinement of my own devising. All I “see’ are the same four walls around me in this same bedroom all day.

Of course, that’s not what I am looking at. I am staring intently into this here monitor of mine. I am fixated on the flashy colorful world inside my computer. The place where I really live, not the space time coordinates where my meat puppet happens to reside.

So it’s not exactly like the tortuous and barbaric conditions prisoners in solitary face. But I think it has some of the same effect.

For one thing, all I get from this here computer is sight and sound. Taste and smell I can get from the food I eat, but touch is something I get precious little of.

That’s part of what makes going Outside so stressful to me. Suddenly, the stimulation to my skin goes from peaceful to turbulent as the air currents of the outdoors swirl around me and  create temperature differences and all sorts of other things that normal people who don’t spend all their time indoors never even notice.

I am making progress, however, because some of the time that extra stimulation is actually quite soothing to me. It feels so good to feel something there, and to be out in the fresh air where my skin can truly breathe.

Yes folks, my skin has breathing issues too.

Now if only I could feel the same way about how much louder it is outside. Lounder and more chaotic. Noise of any kind can come at you at any volume from any direction at all times, and that freaks me out sometimes.

Oh well, baby steps.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.