New metaphor : the gap between me and the world has now been reimagined to be a wall, just like the one Pink Floyd did a whole conceptual album about.
I got thinking about the subject when I was looking at a pleasant summer day that was right outside my window, mere inches away, that I knew I could not enjoy.
In theory, there is nothing keeping me from throwing on some clothes and going outside to enjoy the sun and the warmth of the sort of day we humans dream about.
In practice, however, that just plain can’t happen. My goddamn damkage prevents it. I have certain ways I can convince myself to overcome my social anxiety and go out into the world, but “just because I want to” is not one of them.
And that hurts. It really does. Wanting to do something – craving it, even – but being blocked by your own mind is a terrible, terrible thing.
There was also this on Facebook :
That’s the hard stark reality of it, yup. The fact that I am compelled to isolate myself does not mean that I am not lonely as hell in my cramped little cell.
Just like how the fact that I am gay does not mean I have no biological clock. Part of me really feels like I should be raising children by now.
Obviously, that’s not going to happen.
What I want to get into today is where that pain goes and how I interpret it. The pain and frustration I feel at all that I want to do but cannot is one thing…. anyone might feel that in their life.
The troublesome part is that it then makes me sad – which is bad – and more depressed – which is worse – and makes me hate myself – which is the absolute worst.
In fact, I think this whole frustration to sadness to anger to self-loathing pathway is very well established in me and that if I wish to speed my recovery, I need to take it apart and figure out a healthier outlet for these feelings.
Self-pity would be a nice start. Feeling sorry for myself sounds one hell of a lot better than hating myself.
But as I have mentioned before, I am a stranger to self-pity because in order to pity oneself, one needs to believe that their negative circumstances are undeserved.
And I have a problem with that. I find even trying to think about what I do and do not deserve very trying. It’s simply not a mode of thought I engage in much.
Part of me is at least marginally capable of viewing myself as the victim of a lot of bad shit I did not deserve happening to me and putting me in a position where I can’t help myself and I can’t ask others for help either.
I am just too weak. Too broken. Too god damn damaged.
But for the most part, I simply default out of the whole question. I used to think that my extremely negative biased mind meant I thought I deserved anything I got.
But I don’t. Deserve, not deserve, whatever. Whatever I decide, it won’t change anything, so who the fuck cares?
The whole topic just makes me feel incredibly tired.
So the self-pity angle is problematic. In my better moments, I can see myself as a victim of cruel circumstance and a lot of people failing me utterly, but even then, that is less self-pity than a deep and vituperative bitterness.
It’s sort of the same thing, but then again, not really.
Ran out of words. Took a nap. Now I’m back.
Well, if self-pity is, at best, an incomplete solution. what else?
Anger, I suppose. As patient readers know, I have a very hard time expressing anger, especially on my own behalf. My basic nature balks at the thought of getting that up close and intimate with it.
I feel a little ill just talking about it.
But I cannot deny that I have vast amount of latent rage. And as ugly and destructive as said rage can be, anger is energy and energy is what I need.
Seems weird to get mad because I can’t go out in the sun, but it might work. Rage can melt through walls when focused. Maybe that rage can get me out in the sun.
Maybe that’s why it scares me so.
I know that I have done some good for myself by summoning and unleashing my rage. There was a time when getting good and fucking mad at my depression sustained a furry of positive actions.
But my depression adapted. Fucker. It moved closer to the core of my mind, where it was harder to seperate it from myself, and as it stands right now, trying to focus my rage on the depression feels like trying to look into your right eye with your left.
I am working on making a new seperation, but it’s way harder this time.
There’s also rage’s cozy cousins, arrogance. That, at least, seems fun. More fun than rage, anyhow. I have all the material in the world to sustain a pretty stratospheric opinion of myself.
There’s two problems with that, though. One, my extremely highly developed sense of irony makes me downright nauseous when I imagine taking myself that seriously.
Comedy and self-seriousness are mortal enemies, after all.
But I think I can dodge that problem by re-framing it as not arrogance but cockiness. It’s a sublte shift but it makes a big difference.
Comedy and cockiness get a long way better.
My other problem is a long-standing fear that if I open my mind to that kind of ego rush, I will end up going too far in the other direction and end up a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur in a loony bin somewhere.
And that could go in a pretty dark direction. I get glimpses of that darkness from the occasional thoughts about my own superiority and other people’s inferiority that manage to make it through my internal filters.
There are times when I want to stand on a tall building with a bullhorn screaming mad scientist shit like “None of you idiots are worthy of even licking my boots! I am so much more than you that it’s like you are mere barnacles on the tail of a whale and I am the ocean the whale swims in! You are all pathetic worms who should be begging me to solve your problems instead of leaving me to rot on the bootheel of society!”
And so forth and so on. I don’t like these thoughts. I don’t want these thoughts. They make me depressed and sad and freak me out because they make me feel like I am on the edge of utter madness.
But they exist for a reason, and it’s because my id is struggling to emerge and lacks the sophistication to modulate itself in a balanced and sane way.
It’s a direction I need to move in.
I just hope I don’t go totally batshit on the way.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.