For the record, I feel a bit better than normal today.
I want to record that fact because I know my depression has a way of erasing and/or negating that kind of truth. It hijacks the cognitive function that keeps the contents of our mind balanced and consistent to negate the truths that are not consistent with its darkness maximizing agenda.
It’s quite obscene, really. That there is a very strong function in my mind dedicated to killing anything that might make me happy or improve my self-esteem purely to protect the evil regime of my depression.
Well fuck that. I am burning those foul circuits out of my brain. And I am doing it with pure, potent, implacable contempt.
Hmmm. Once more, I set out to talk about something positive and instead a whole bunch of negativity came pouring out.
Well like I said before : better out than in.
I felt especially good this morning. Apparently,. playing Fallout 4 for six hours really hit the spot. I felt a lot more alive, awake, and emotionally warm than usual.
I think it was the result of simply expending enough of my pent up energies to clear the blockage for a while.
And that’s another thing I need to remember despite my depression’s evil agenda to make me forget : large quantities of energy expenditure are actually very good for me and when I feel down, I should look around for something I can really sink my teeth into.
Depression wants the opposite. It wants me to respond to feeling down by doing less, usually in the form of sleep.
And if depression wants it, it has to be bad, and I want to go the other way.
Another possible plus if that I had a very meaty meal last night. And it’s possible that this eventually corrected my extreme vitamin B-12 deficiency for a time.
Admittedly, that’s a long shot. The meaty feast and the feeling fab were like nine hours apart, and according to my doctor, my B-12 is so low because of a digestive issue and that means that no matter how much I take orally, it won’t get through.
That’s a depressing thought. Moving on.
That other world
I got this song recently and I really like it :
What’s more, it has given focus to my thoughts about that other world – the one where the happy healthy people live.
It first came to me as the thought that whatever universe John Denver songs take place in, I want to go there and live there forever.
I know why his music has such power over me as I age – it is an extremely strong dose of the exact opposite point of view from my usual dark musings.
Concentrated sunshine for the night-clad soul.
Plus, his music embodies the positive, wholesome, celebratory and joyful aspect of the Seventies, and that evokes those enormous waves of pure uncut nostalgia in me that overwhelm my defenses and swam my mind.
And that’s some powerful mojo there.
Especially when you consider that it is that very era in which the life-spring of my recovery – those precious first four years of my life before the rape – took place.
I am positive that it is those years that generate those sweeping waves of nostalgia. My mind is trying to heal itself by drawing on the one time in my life when I was not depressed at all.
That’s the one time when I lived in the sunlit world, before a stranger’s cock drove me deep underground into the sunless subterraneanTartarus that is depression.
So I find myself having a better notion of that sunlit world on an emotional level lately, and that might also be why I feel a little better today.
Because the stronger my connection to that other realm, the easier it is to imagine myself as not only being there but belonging there.
And that is super important.
Because as we’ve discussed before, I have a deep deep sense of shame and unworthiness, as if I was some horrible living toxin that doesn’t eve deserve to live yet alone stain the world of the healthy and the strong with my existence.
And that shit has to go, and that means opening my heart and letting the sunshine in.
And the thing is, that will hurt. When you are as sick as I am, the toxins of the soul do not go quietly, and the holy fever that burns the infection from my blood does not come without a certain amount of suffering.
It hurts to have this crap burned out of your blood and purged from your flesh. And the depression will protect itself by trying to convince you that said pain means it’s something that is bad for you and you should flee the light post-haste.
Thus, the disease convinces you to avoid its cure.
Well there are worse things than pain. I will gladly and proudly burn like a Roman candle on a starless night if that is what it takes to make myself whole and clean and strong again, like I was before the rape.
Bring the pain. I welcome it. I have seen beyond the illusion and now know that what hurts is not always what is bad and that even the pure clean sunshine of total love can be painful without it meaning that it was something bad pretending to be good.
Transcending pain is, I think, the beginning of the liberation of the soul. I’ve talked before about how maturity starts with the ability to choose pain in order to get the results that you want.
My go-to example being going to the dentist when you have a toothache. You know being at the dentist will be unpleqasant and painful, but it is the only way to get rid of your dental pain, so you go.
Well I think I understand that better now. It’s not just a matter of serving your long term best interests – in order to become truly human, we must move in the direction of our higher selves, and thus transcend the animal world of fleeing pain.
Some pain is worth it. It’s a truth many do not want to hear because they are trapped in the fantasy of a world where everything is easy, non-scary, and painless.
Liberation, therefore, begins when you can slap your chips down on the table. look life straight in the eye, and say “I know this will hurt. DO IT ANYWAY. ”
Life is suffering, as the Buddhists say.
So suffer. And live.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.