Or am I? It’s a hard question to answer.
Clearly, the most psychologically healthy answer is “yes”. Yes of course I am doing all I can to get better. Of course I am doing “enough”. I am doing my absolute best with the hand I have been dealt and my overbearing superego can take all its fretting and feelings of indecision and inadequacy and shove them up its anal stage.
Yeah, I play video games most of the time. I’m not happy about it but it’s my refuge from anxiety, fear, and depression, and I need it.
When I am ready, I will start making the moves that might lead to having better things to do with my time than rot my brain with video games all day.
But I am not there yet. The fear is still too strong in me. The fear of exposure, the fear of the world, the fear of having to deal with that seething mass of danger and possibilities and overstimulation out there beyond my prison walls.
Honestly, I could really use someone to hold my hand through the whole thing. But I can’t imagine anyone who would be willing to do so.
I will think about it though.
Anyhow, the problem with “I am doing all that I can”, which is neutral/positive, is that it’s only one tiny shade of meaning away from “I can’t do any more than that”, which is actually a very depressing thought.
It seems, on a prima facie logic sense, to eliminate all possibility of growth. I literally could not be doing more. Whatever rate of progress I am currently maintaining is the absolute upper limit. No sense in even trying to try harder.
And I need growth. Progress. Evolution. Stasis is not an option. I grow or I die.
So the idea that I am doing all that I can clearly needs some fine tuning.
I suppose I could say I am doing all I should be doing. I am not screwing up or failing myself and there is nothing I am “supposed” to be doing that I am not.
It sometimes feels that way, granted, but that’s just a negative interpretation of a frustrated growth pattern and not to be taken as literal truth.
It’ll sure be nice to be healthy enough to go out into the world and pursue my fortune and find my way in this crazy old world, but until then, all I or any other victim of serious illness owe the world is doing what one can to convalesce.
And that’s kind of what all the blogging is about. Sadly, mental illness can’t be solved by a pill or an operation or putting your psyche in a cast for a while.
The human brain is the most complex thing in the known universe and when things go wrong on the software level, as with all forms of mental illness that do not result from organic brain damage and/or malfunction, all you can do is keep digging through the detritus in ones brain so you can throw out the bad stuff and let the good stuff shine.
So I will continue to strive to sort my head out, and it takes as long as it takes.
It sucks, but it’s what I am stuck with for now. After all….
I’m doing what I can.
More after the break.
Where I belong
In theory, I could be attending R. Graeme Cameron’s weekly fannish Zoom meeting for us older fen right now.
Joe’s there. I can hear his laptop from here. I hear the voices of people I like talking about things which interest me. In theory, it’s an ideal environment for me to stick a baby toe into the white water rapids of actual socialization.
But I can’t. I just…. can’t. No combination of the moves available to me will get me there. Something I very much want is tantalizingly close and yet I just… can’t.
And I don’t know how to feel about that.
It upsets me. That’s clear. Makes me want to close my eyes and pretend it isn’t happening. Block it out of my mind.
After all, that’s what I do with damn near everything out. It’s a highly developed skill.
I want to be there. And the “so close and yet so far” pain of it all is excruciating. If I was even remotely functional, that would be more than enough motivation to get the fuck over myself, get out there, and have fun.
But it ain’t. My depression gives me enormous motivation resistance. It takes inputs of extraordinary power and influence to so much as activate my motivation center, let alone actually rouse it to action.
It’s this resistance – this numbness – that is the real enemy here. Depression’s twin heads of anxiety and despair are the obvious threat and fighting them can lead to some good results, but ultimately it is the hidden third head that causes adrift in the Arctic Ocean level numbness that must be defeated if the beast itself is to die.
It’s that numbness that cuts off all feeling of hope and love and joy and basic human connection and leaves us shivering in the dark.
It’s that numbness that makes it so hard to move with precision, either physically or emotionally, or even mentally. Who can be agile when they are mostly paralyzed?
It’s that numbness that makes you subconsciously seek out pain and suffering because there is a voice inside you screaming from the wound created by that space where your hotter emotions should be. Your mind knows what should be there, and the absence of those things makes you seek out something, anything, that might cut through the frostbite and actually make you feel something.
And it’s that numbness that creates the inner silence that makes every little thought and idea and emotion seem to roar like a demon and send your poor head rocking.
That’s why getting better means waking up.
And like rubbing a limb that’s gone to sleep back to life, at first, it’s really going to hurt.
But it’s the only cure for the phantom limb pain of the mind.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.