Well, right now I am about as depressed as I get on a regular basis.
I feel very cold and dead inside. And with that numbness comes the sussurations of a silent scream that is bourn on the wings of a terrible and terrifying sense of wrongness.
Like a foot that has fallen asleep when it’s just woken up. my psyche cries out for what it knows should be there but is not.
As a result, I feel small, and scared, and vulnerable, and so very very cold.
And the bad thoughts come unbidden, even though I never let them in. But I suppoose they serve a purpose : to let some of the insanity out and make things just a little less claustrophobic in this pent up worn down soul of mine.
Well, if there is ever a time for birthing my pain, this is it. It’s close to the surface anyhow, so all it takes is a little push and yet another bucket of ice cubes comes squirting out my virtual cloaca.
Gross, but there are worse metaphors. Trust me on that one.
I just feel so dead inside. Clearly the forces of life-destroying numbness have the upper hand in my psyche right now. Lord knows why.
Doesn’t really matter why. Whatever the reason, it’s mine to deal with right now.
I think I am going through a season of change lately. The sort of deep, lasting change that’s as painful, bloody, and unpleasant as an elephant’s breech birth but that – hopefully – will leave me stronger and more sane for having gotten rid of the stuff.
Emotional emesis strikes again. Seems like it’s all I ever do.
I feel anger and frustration underneath all the numbness as well, but it is a dark and dead thing. I picture it as a huge hulking zombie filled with nothing but mindless. undirected hate senselessly hacking away at anything and everything that comes near with no more sense of purpose or reason than a muscular reflex.
It kills because only in acts of brutal violence does it find a moment’s relief from the terrible screaming pain inside.
Somewhere inside it there is a void that bleeds and it gnaws on the zombie’s heart like terminal frostbite and the only way to stop it is to feed it someone else.
The zombie can only experience life in the act of destroying it.
At least I retain the awareness that this too shall pass and that I am not being punished for anything and this pain does not change who I am as a person.
It’s just the weather.
This awareness is as cold and dead as the feelings it protects me against, and maybe that’s not a coincidence. It is no source of warmth and light in the tortuous taiga of my inner world right now.
It;s more like a numbness against the numbness – a dead zone around the last scrap of live gristle and flesh left in the deep freeze that is my zombie’s raw and bloated flesh.
I am just chock a block with charming imagery today.
This is the sort of mood which causes some people to cut themselves, I suppose. I have never wondered why. To me, it is obvious that when you feel this numb and that silent screaming gets to be too much, you can become so desperate to feel something and shut that damn scream up that pain and bleeding can be a blessed relief.
Luckily. I am far too squeamish for that kind of thing. And I think it occurs more in people whose depression has more anxiety in it than me. I am too phlegmatic for that kind of thing.
After all. someone might take that as a cry for help, and then they’d KNOW.
And if they KNOW, they will come and GET me and take me AWAY.
And that would be the worst thing ever. according to my emotions. That would be the unthinkable horror, the sum of all fears, the Thing Most Dreaded, the apocalyptic apotheosis of all my pain, the outcome too frightful to imagine.
Because deep down I am still that scared little animal, the fox only seconds ahead of the hunt, the kid who laid down in a snowbank and willed himself to die so that it would all finally be OVER.
And that scared little animal is absolutely sure that to be found and caught is to die. Or worse, will make him want to die.
And that’s a setting that cannot be changed. I am permanently frightened. Some day, I might get the sorts of emotional inputs that would let me thaw that scared little fox out and rescue him from the hounds of his own creation.
But I don’t think I will ever lose the fear. Not entirely. There will always be the dark and dirty knowledge, deep in my soul, that my fellow humans can be the enemy and that the only real safety comes from invisibility.
And that’s the feeling that keeps me from promoting my own work. No matter how much I crave money, acclaim, acceptance, and the power to share my dreams with the world. there is always that voice deep inside me that insists that I can’t afford to draw attention to myself because that will surely doom me.
It’s basically a war between the forces that cause me to isolate myself so heavily and the loneliness and vast unmet ego needs that such isolation brings on.
It’s like being a very hungry anorexic. I’m starving but I’m too scared to eat. And it doesn’t matter how much I tell myself that this is crazy and that I should go out into the world in search of food, that fear always wins.
It always has its thumb on the scale and can summon up as much ice cold life negating force as it takes to completely overwhelm and suppress any impulse I have to act.
And I am fucking sick and tired of it. There has to be some way to tilt things in my favour for a change. A way to beat the rigged system.
And some day, I am going to find it.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.