Not in the Sunset. The gears.

Been pondering my seemingly irresolvable psychological deadlock today. It and only it is the real issue in my life because it is the thing that is keeping me from moving on with my life and seeking to make my fortune with my skills.

My mad, mad skills.

So let’s slow the whole syndrome down and try to figure what the fuck is actually happening when this thing is actively blocking me.

First, I cast my mind outside my tiny and ultimately very sad little kingdom here. And not in an abstract, theoretical way – the “I could….” way.

No, it has to be in the mode of the actual contemplation of action – “I will… “.

And it has to be immediate. Not “Someday, I will” because that’s total bullshit and worse than useless. It has to be “I will do this thing right now or quite soon”.

Next comes the reaction. This is the crux of the matter and deserves specific attention. It is the primary enforcement mechanism of my mental illness and in theory, if I could detroy or disable it, I would be free.

During said reaction, two things happen : a wave of icy cold fear rises up from deep inside me like an arctic wind and plunges my heart into the blood chilling water of the North Atlantic where it nearly dies (or at least that’s how it feels).

At the same time, I feel a profound psychological pain that feels like it is going to rip my skull open from the inside. It also grates on my nerves like squeaky chalk, and most of the time it also jangles said nerves.

The only time it doesn’t is when I am too depressed to care.

Finally comes the effects of said reaction : I shrink back from the disturbing thought and immediately and powerfully blot it out of my mind and then erase the evidence that it had ever been there in order to keep the disturbance from upsetting me any further and possibly spreading till it becomes like a panic attack, but far worse.

An existential panic attack, more or less. The kind where it feels like your whole world is about to fall apart and then you will be cast into a void of pure chaos where nothing makes sense, there is no such thing as predictability, and ordered minds die gibbering like the lunatic you now are.

Looked at like that, it’s no wonder this shit has been kicking my ass for so long. There’s some powerful mojo going on there. My mind has perfected ways of keeping me whipped and docile and deconstructing and disabling that kind of thing is going to take a lot more than a handful of insights that bring no real change.

Back to the reaction. The fear part of it is relatively easy to apprehend. As my colorful use of language implies, deep down it’s really the fear of chaos and the unknown. My depression has trained my mind to react to even the slightest idea of real personal change like it’s a holocaust inside a hurricane and will surely cast us – or rather, me – down into the oblivion of madness and hysteria.

Seems a tad overdramatic, n’est-ce pas?

So that’s an area that could be worked on. There must be a way to desensitize my mind enough so that it doesn’t freak out so easily.

Hmmm. I think that would take a deeper structural change in my psyche. One that would increase my feeling of stability and safety and give me some solid ground to stand on when my inner storms are howling for my blood.

The pain component of the reaction is more complex. Certainly, the pain of trying to force a jammed mechanism is a big part of it. This overdeveloped mind of mine is a very powerful engine and when an engine that powerful gets jammed, all its power goes into the structure of the mind itself, and that really fucking hurts.

If you are having trouble with that metaphor, imagine a huge clock like Big Ben. Now imagine someone throwing a literal wrench into the gears. All the power that normally moves those huge hands around is now being applied to that tiny spot where the wrench is jammed in, and before long, Big Ben would rip itself apart.

I saw a cartoon once where something like that happened. It was extremely upsetting.

But I feel like there is something more to this pain. There is also a short circuit kind of feeling, like I am plugging something in but the power cord is broken. Like some part of me is trying to wake up but can’t quite make it.

The sleeper must wake. But its attendents won’t allow it.

Five more minutes, Ma!

I think this feeling of painfully incomplete connection is the most direct form of what I have be calling The Damage.

Yes, it’s capitalized now. Deal with it.

It is this Damage that is the real barrier between me and the world of humanity. It is what keeps me from being able to truly connect with others and draw on them for strength when I am feeling down. It’s what keeps me so profoundly psychologically isolated that I feel like I am always wandering naked in Siberia, with only my constant motion keeping me from freezing to death.

Hmm. No wonder I never stop. Always forward. Never stop. Stopping is dying. Keep going. Something terrible will happen if I stop.

I might never start again, for one.

The Damage is the exact kind of emotional scarring that turns some people into victims of Asperger’s syndrome. I am not sure why it did not do so with me.

Presumably the first four years of my childhood were stable and healthy enough to give me some kind of fundamental strength that pulled me through when my world was shattered by a rapist.

Amazing the damage one penis can do.

I was quite happy as a kid up until that point. That must be what saved me from the terrible conclusions that Aspeger’s patients come to about the world.

And I thank Dog for that. My world is cramped enough without a lack of/fundamental rejection of/ irrepairable damage to my empathy to deal with.

My body might be stuck to the spot and my mind might be locked in a feedback loop, but my soul can fly.

And that’s a big part of what keeps me relatively sane.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.