2) I really struggled thinking about this post. I know what I want to say, but I'm not sure how much detail I should divulge. In the end, I chose to be careful while also sharing what I'm thinking, because this really only involves me. So, that makes sense, right??
I was recently invited to a party. Now I am not a party person, dear reader - I do not number myself among the 'party people' so often invoked among the youth. I whole-heartedly prefer an evening with seven-eight good friends having a good time than going to hang out among thirty screaming college kids, only four or five of which I know. I'd have to be really drinking heavily to enjoy that kind of thing, and that sort of alcohol is expensive. I'm not made of money.
Now I'm sure my invitation is more-or-less a formality; people know I'm not a partying type, despite how entertaining and fun-to-be-around I am virtually all the time. Am I a big hit at parties? Always. But I've also grown out of that phase, and I no longer have to be at a party to be the center of a group's attention. I'm a MOBILE party! So I said maybe, as I usually do - because I really do think about it - and that was that. Leaning towards probably not going, I'm sure I'll be busy that night, but hey, never say never, right?
Then I checked back, and (as this is Facebook and on Facebook everything is always everywhere), I found that someone I really do not want to see in-person - certainly not in a party environment - is going. You know what that means? That means I'm definitely not going. That means I actually can't go.
And in the long run that's fine, because it's unlikely I would have attended anyway. But I'm angry. I'm angry at this person, for no real reason - I can't expect people to stop having doing things because I don't like them to - and I'm angry at myself. Not for choosing not to go because of it; I think that's a fine choice, and I would stand by it regardless of any other factors. No, I'm angry with myself because I still got upset over it, and thus I didn't have a choice. Or don't have a choice, I should say. My hand is forced; and even though if I had no emotional reaction to this situation, and was making decisions completely clearheaded, I would choose the same course of action, it's still not okay; the absence of choice still really bothers me. I don't want to be around this person, particularly not there, and that's an objective decision; my emotional response is "no no no no no not good don't no no way uh-uh nope," and that is not.
And atop everything else, I feel angry that I'm still getting even somewhat worked up, because I thought all the feelings were gone and away (thank God). It's been a really peaceful and anxiety-free week or two, and what a relief that has been after the past few months. I guess it takes a little longer for those ghosts to completely fade away, which is frustrating. Where's my self-neuralizer? Plz, MIB, plz.
Showing posts with label self-reflection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-reflection. Show all posts
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Monday, August 17, 2015
Sometimes you get Weird Feelings (Part 1/2)
I have a lot of more interesting, less angsty posts coming down the pipe, but for some reason this came out first. I only thought it up a few minutes ago, but here I go. I guess there's something involving the immediacy of complicated emotions and a need to express them in some cathartic way which prevents me from procrastinating on more visceral posts like this. If only I could harness that power for some good...
Anyway, I actually have two different topics today. Each can be their own post, so that's what I'll do! I gotta get mileage out of my issues somehow, and this is the way I'm doin' it.
So, two recent events which made me feel.... weird:
1) A friend of mine told me some news the other day, about something which was somewhere in the vicinity of casual sex. Very minor, for all that, and something that I'm sure most everyone in college has done. And yet, my first reaction was... I still can't quite put my finger on it. There was some anger, and a little bit of disgust, and maybe a hint of sadness. All of these little pieces formed one big ball of some new, confusing emotional state, and it really threw me for a loop. I was trying to dissect it and, though I identified some of the component parts, it remained mostly a mystery - like trying to identify an alien metal (this happens in every superhero/sci-fi story everywhen). In the end I identified the feeling as discomfort, but being uncomfortable without knowing the reason why is a confusing and frustrating experience.
So I've been trying to figure out why, exactly, this news bothered me so much, when in reality it was precisely nothing - a blip on the radar, a cloud passing high overhead. I was having a tough time, so I reached out to one or two trusted friends - specifically the v. helpful Kim - to try and work through what exactly my problem was with this unproblematic news. And I think I got it! I think; there's really no way to know for sure, because our brains are all liars, but I think this is the reason:
I tend to be friends with a certain Type of person. We all have our Types that we naturally gravitate to, of course, and I am acquaintances with a lot of different Types of people. But real friends - the people we don't just get along with because we're placed together, but seek out even when we're not together - tend to be Types like me. And that's just the way things are.
Now, if you accept that assertion, it goes to follow that the opposite would be true: people wholly unlike those friendship Types are the kinds of people I'd rather not spend my free time with. Prrreeeetty easy, right? Except there's that whole middle area, where people are like A Type in some ways and B Type in others.
My friend (Steven) is like me in a lot of ways. And though we've hung out in-person on several occasions, we mostly talk online these days (it being summer). When talking about common interests, or daily events, or whatever, it's easy to fall into a comfortable rhythm. However, while I greatly enjoy Steven's company, I know that he is also another Type, one that I treat with indifference but find wholly perplexing. It's moments like this - when I hear some (slight) excitement about a brief and casual encounter - which remind me oh, hey, that's right, we're different. I don't really understand that side of him, and so when it crops up suddenly like that, it can be a bit jarring. It's like learning your best friend since preschool is a robot: in the end he's still your friend, and that part of him that's a robot is completely separate from your interactions 99% of the time. But sometimes he'll talk about having to go plug himself in or eat aluminum foil, and in that moment the reality you've convinced yourself of - that he's a guy just like you - is stripped away.
I think that's the source of my discomfort. I don't have a problem with that side of Steve, I really don't. I'm just not used to interacting with friends who do have that side, and when I'm reminded of it in casual conversation it's like missing a step. You trip a little bit, and regain your balance after a second, but it was still a scary moment. You're walking along and suddenly - "that's right, I'm mortal, I could really hurt myself here - okay I'm back on track I'm invincible *phew*." It's an unpleasant feeling. It yanks you back to reality, and reality is not a place you want to spend much time. It's a hint of his similarity to people I don't really enjoy spending time with, and that causes a bit of negative feedback, even though I've made peace with it the best I can.
Do you ever have those moments when you're talking to people? When they'll make a comment or do something and you're reminded of just how different you are from each other?
Anyway, I actually have two different topics today. Each can be their own post, so that's what I'll do! I gotta get mileage out of my issues somehow, and this is the way I'm doin' it.
So, two recent events which made me feel.... weird:
1) A friend of mine told me some news the other day, about something which was somewhere in the vicinity of casual sex. Very minor, for all that, and something that I'm sure most everyone in college has done. And yet, my first reaction was... I still can't quite put my finger on it. There was some anger, and a little bit of disgust, and maybe a hint of sadness. All of these little pieces formed one big ball of some new, confusing emotional state, and it really threw me for a loop. I was trying to dissect it and, though I identified some of the component parts, it remained mostly a mystery - like trying to identify an alien metal (this happens in every superhero/sci-fi story everywhen). In the end I identified the feeling as discomfort, but being uncomfortable without knowing the reason why is a confusing and frustrating experience.
So I've been trying to figure out why, exactly, this news bothered me so much, when in reality it was precisely nothing - a blip on the radar, a cloud passing high overhead. I was having a tough time, so I reached out to one or two trusted friends - specifically the v. helpful Kim - to try and work through what exactly my problem was with this unproblematic news. And I think I got it! I think; there's really no way to know for sure, because our brains are all liars, but I think this is the reason:
I tend to be friends with a certain Type of person. We all have our Types that we naturally gravitate to, of course, and I am acquaintances with a lot of different Types of people. But real friends - the people we don't just get along with because we're placed together, but seek out even when we're not together - tend to be Types like me. And that's just the way things are.
Now, if you accept that assertion, it goes to follow that the opposite would be true: people wholly unlike those friendship Types are the kinds of people I'd rather not spend my free time with. Prrreeeetty easy, right? Except there's that whole middle area, where people are like A Type in some ways and B Type in others.
My friend (Steven) is like me in a lot of ways. And though we've hung out in-person on several occasions, we mostly talk online these days (it being summer). When talking about common interests, or daily events, or whatever, it's easy to fall into a comfortable rhythm. However, while I greatly enjoy Steven's company, I know that he is also another Type, one that I treat with indifference but find wholly perplexing. It's moments like this - when I hear some (slight) excitement about a brief and casual encounter - which remind me oh, hey, that's right, we're different. I don't really understand that side of him, and so when it crops up suddenly like that, it can be a bit jarring. It's like learning your best friend since preschool is a robot: in the end he's still your friend, and that part of him that's a robot is completely separate from your interactions 99% of the time. But sometimes he'll talk about having to go plug himself in or eat aluminum foil, and in that moment the reality you've convinced yourself of - that he's a guy just like you - is stripped away.
I think that's the source of my discomfort. I don't have a problem with that side of Steve, I really don't. I'm just not used to interacting with friends who do have that side, and when I'm reminded of it in casual conversation it's like missing a step. You trip a little bit, and regain your balance after a second, but it was still a scary moment. You're walking along and suddenly - "that's right, I'm mortal, I could really hurt myself here - okay I'm back on track I'm invincible *phew*." It's an unpleasant feeling. It yanks you back to reality, and reality is not a place you want to spend much time. It's a hint of his similarity to people I don't really enjoy spending time with, and that causes a bit of negative feedback, even though I've made peace with it the best I can.
Do you ever have those moments when you're talking to people? When they'll make a comment or do something and you're reminded of just how different you are from each other?
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Crisis Alert!
This is going to be an extremely short update. I just want to let you know, dear readers, that I remain alive and... well, not 'well,' but alive. There is a lot of chaos in the air right now, and to say that emotions are running high across a wide variety of spectrums is an understatement. I'm concerned for more than a few people, and (at least it seems like) more than a few people are concerned about me. It's a very concerning time, if I'm honest. Then of course there's the requisite confusion of the Self which goes along with all of that.
A lot of existential questions and conversations. A lot of total blanks, half-truths, and non-answers. I feel like I'm regressing. More on these and other topics when it's not almost four a.m. I had a nice, interesting topic planned out and partially written, but I'm not sure it's the thing to talk about now. Strike while the iron is hot, I suppose.
I've been doing a lot of creative things, lately. Which is good: it helps keep the crazy under control. Or, at least, I think it does. Today a chapter of my life will be finished, signed, and sent out for publication. I thought I'd feel more liberated; instead, I just feel sad. Sadness seems to be a recurring trend these past few months. Much less fun than the ambivalence I had courted for so long. Regression, I tell you.
A lot of existential questions and conversations. A lot of total blanks, half-truths, and non-answers. I feel like I'm regressing. More on these and other topics when it's not almost four a.m. I had a nice, interesting topic planned out and partially written, but I'm not sure it's the thing to talk about now. Strike while the iron is hot, I suppose.
I've been doing a lot of creative things, lately. Which is good: it helps keep the crazy under control. Or, at least, I think it does. Today a chapter of my life will be finished, signed, and sent out for publication. I thought I'd feel more liberated; instead, I just feel sad. Sadness seems to be a recurring trend these past few months. Much less fun than the ambivalence I had courted for so long. Regression, I tell you.
Sunday, July 19, 2015
What to write about now??
Hello there, gentle reader.
I've been remiss in my updates for a while, which is something I told myself I'd try to avoid with this blog. This is for a few reasons:
1) I've been less miserable of late. I'm finally starting to put the past in the past and not let it bother me anymore. Notice I said starting to; I'm not even close to being back in my usual tip-top (?) shape, but I've come a long way from the beginning of summer, and that has made such a difference I can't rightly put it into words. Which means that, the fewer emotions (primarily negative) that I have about X, Y, or Z, the less I'll feel the drive to use this blog as an outlet.
2) I've very nearly run out of 'general' things to say about my situation. At any given point there comes a time where, in order to really dig into something, you have to stop making large extrapolations from hidden data and start to discuss the data itself. Which is far too personal for this blog. At least, it is for now; I'm sure there will come a day (fairly soon) where no Party will care/be concerned with what I write wherever I write it. Even were names and situations changed, I worry that maybe... well, we'll see. There's some possibility there, if I keep it encoded enough. Stay tuned.
I was going to try to continue on longer with this list, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder - why not? Why not just go into some stuff, if it's bothering me and/or I've learned something from the experience? With names changed to protect the innocent it seems like that would be a no-brainer. I really don't believe I have to worry about anyone I mention seeing my writings, and this is a place where I'm supposed to be able to drop the act and cough up some Truth.
So yes, I have now made up my mind. I'll get into a little more of the specifics that have been worming their way through my cortex lately, and assure myself that this will not lead to any sort of dialog, accidental, angry, or otherwise.
This update has been more of an update about updates, gentle reader, hasn't it? Yet fear not, for I shall soon return with tales and puzzles of a most curious nature for your reading pleasure. And maybe more real honest-to-god writing one of these days.
Look to the skies a day hence....
I've been remiss in my updates for a while, which is something I told myself I'd try to avoid with this blog. This is for a few reasons:
1) I've been less miserable of late. I'm finally starting to put the past in the past and not let it bother me anymore. Notice I said starting to; I'm not even close to being back in my usual tip-top (?) shape, but I've come a long way from the beginning of summer, and that has made such a difference I can't rightly put it into words. Which means that, the fewer emotions (primarily negative) that I have about X, Y, or Z, the less I'll feel the drive to use this blog as an outlet.
2) I've very nearly run out of 'general' things to say about my situation. At any given point there comes a time where, in order to really dig into something, you have to stop making large extrapolations from hidden data and start to discuss the data itself. Which is far too personal for this blog. At least, it is for now; I'm sure there will come a day (fairly soon) where no Party will care/be concerned with what I write wherever I write it. Even were names and situations changed, I worry that maybe... well, we'll see. There's some possibility there, if I keep it encoded enough. Stay tuned.
I was going to try to continue on longer with this list, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder - why not? Why not just go into some stuff, if it's bothering me and/or I've learned something from the experience? With names changed to protect the innocent it seems like that would be a no-brainer. I really don't believe I have to worry about anyone I mention seeing my writings, and this is a place where I'm supposed to be able to drop the act and cough up some Truth.
So yes, I have now made up my mind. I'll get into a little more of the specifics that have been worming their way through my cortex lately, and assure myself that this will not lead to any sort of dialog, accidental, angry, or otherwise.
This update has been more of an update about updates, gentle reader, hasn't it? Yet fear not, for I shall soon return with tales and puzzles of a most curious nature for your reading pleasure. And maybe more real honest-to-god writing one of these days.
Look to the skies a day hence....
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
What Gaia taught me about grief
I've mentioned several times on this blog that emotions and I have not been super pals throughout most of my life. Everyone remembers that great (terrible?) cave and wall metaphor - something which now certainly is reminiscent of the Cask of Amontillado - and I like to think that I was at least somewhat clear in that post. Particularly when talking about the positives and negatives of opening yourself up. Most of the people who have commented on it to me have said how happy they are that, for me, the wall lies in a pile of rubble.
I wish I could share their enthusiasm, but as I also said in that post, it's a double-edged sword at the best of times. I recently ran into a situation where, again, I reacted quite differently than I have in the past. And while I feel like a large part of that is the different factors involved in this scenario, I can't deny that the wall-shaped hole in my brain may have something to do with it.
I don't want to spend too much setting the scene. At my step-mother's house there are many cats. Or at least there used to be; it seems like that number is shrinking almost daily now. I lived there from summer 2008 to winter of 2013, so a fair amount of time spent in one place. And in that time I got to know all the cats and dogs, like you do. Gaia was one of these: a rescue together with her daughter, Luna, she was a tortoiseshell who was pretty round, kind of like a meatball, and had a real attitude. It used to lead to some stand-offs with her and one of the cats we brought, Ricky, a Scottish Fold who was just super-awesome (and also had a real attitude).
Gaia was nuuuuuuuuts about me. This was often annoying, as cats so frequently are: she would hear my voice in the kitchen and come running, then lay over my feet/in the middle of the kitchen and attack me (playfully, but still) as I tried to walk by; she would follow me around meowing with this urgent cry that made you wanna shake her; she liked to go into the basement (where I spent most of my time) and then refuse to get off the steps, either deciding she wanted to leave immediately or just generally getting in the way of everyone trying to get up and down the stairs all the time. You know - annoying.
But she was also adorable and lovely, and a little nuts (as all torties are). She would lay on my feet, as I already mentioned, and I'd pet her rough and she'd make hilarious noises and rub against my shoes so hard she fell over. She would then attack the shoe, often clinging to it as I tried to walk away so I would be half-dragging her across the floor. Among many other awesome and excellent things she did, but that's the most immediate one. Oh, sometimes after getting her all worked up she would scratch her face/neck and go "mrow-row-row-row-row" VERY loudly. Hilarious.
In the past year or two, however she's been looking worse. She lost a lot of weight, and last year she was in real bad shape - in fact some people already wanted to dismiss her as 'old and dying' and put her to sleep - but through the intercession of my sister she was taken to the vet, they looked her over and helped her out and she was back to her old self. More-or-less, anyway; she never quite regained that lost weight, and Meatball Cat became more of a parody name than a truism.
Fast-forward to this past weekend. I hear from my brother (who is the only sibling at the house right now - my sister is pet-sitting for another family) that she's in bad shape, and will probably be put down soon, so I get ready and I go over there to see her one last time. We spent some time at the pet-sitting house hoping that my sister would get the green-light to come over and leave the pets there for a while, but that never came so my brother and I went home without her.
I can't really describe what it was like. She was in my brother's room; she had crawled under his desk, as cats are wont to do, and was laying there. Stretched out, arms and legs straight out, like she had just fallen over sideways. Her eyes couldn't close, and there was a large amount of liquid issuing from the one, which didn't stop while I was there. She couldn't move or focus the eyeballs themselves. There was a dish of water next to her which she had not touched because she couldn't. I put some water on a finger and tried to get her to drink at least a little, but to no avail. Her breathing was shallow and labored.
But she was still alive, and as I spoke to her and pet her and tried to reassure her however I could over the next two hours and change, I would see glimmers that she was at least somewhat conscious of what was going on. Her face would twitch, the muscles around her eyes moving slightly. Sometimes her paws would twitch. They were cold, so I asked my brother to provide a shirt to throw on over her. It was a small gesture but at least it made me feel like I could do something.
Now, this isn't a post about anger. Anger comes much easier to me than grief, and I right now recalling events I'm feeling a pretty even mixture of both. I learned that she had been virtually unable to walk since Friday - this was on a Sunday evening, I should mention - and that no effort - none, zip, nothing - had been made to get her to a vet. Nothing. So she had laid there, slowly starving and/or thirsting to death, if whatever had happened to her brain wouldn't kill her first, for literally days, with those who could have done something waved it away with, frankly, ridiculous and self-deluding assurances.
But like I said, that's not what this entry is about. I don't mean to offend anyone; that's my interpretation of events, which I feel strongly about and which I believe is justified, but that's another post for another time. See how easy it was for me to distract myself from writing about grief - I don't want to deny I was tearing up while writing those paragraphs describing her last day, because I was - by focusing on anger?
The grief is what hit me the hardest at the time. I couldn't even summon the fire to be angry during those two hours, while I was watching her lay there, so far removed from the animal I once knew. I want to put it out there that I have felt grief. Good God have I felt grief. Our family hasn't been the luckiest in the past few years, and I can't deny that I felt grief when Ricky, our excellent cat we'd had for about 13 years, wandered down to the basement one day, laid down under a desk, made a sickening meowing noise, and then went limp. I was petting him and trying to coax him, but it wasn't working; I then took my dead cat and laid him in a box, to be buried the next morning. Or when I learned our other amazing cat (received all the way back in 2000/2001), Leo, who was Ricky's half-brother (but a straight-eared fold), developed serious issues with his breathing. My brother's girlfriend was handling it at the time, and towards the end it was truly horrendeous - his sinuses had partially collapsed and he just.... I mean I can't imagine. I can't imagine how hard it was for her. Mallory, if you're reading this, I... I mean I thanked you at the time, but I don't think I understood fully. Because it is awful.
Or when our other cats died. Or when we showed up, literally penniless, at a house in New York, rented for the next month, which was coated in mold and was essentially unlivable; a house where we spent the next month, what items we could fit in all thrown into the living room, where we all slept on mattresses and tried to stay out of the other rooms (which always gave me a headache if I spent too long there). Or when we came back from the beach one day in Ocean City to learn that our mother had died in New York. Or at the wake. Or other, also-very-bad things which I probably shouldn't share in a public blog.
The point is, I've felt grief before this. But it had always been like pulling off a band-aid: a quick sting which fades. Some stings take longer to fade than others, it's true, but all fade. That's life, and while I'm not quite sure if Time heals all wounds, it can at least reduce them to festering scabs which sometimes burst open again during heavy exertion or changes in barometric pressure.
But a big part of those moments of grief is that the causes were instant. When Ricky died, he seemed fine, came downstairs, and died. Instant. When we learned our mother had died, it had already been several hours. Instant. When other relatives have died, or pets, or any other horrible thing has happened to us, it's either been at a distance or instant. Or, in the case of the Mold House, as we call it, a long (and difficult) present that we hope will get better.
But with Gaia it was different. I had never sat by and watched something suffer before, with no possibility of recovery. I know that humans are the only animal cursed with their own mortality, but something in the animal mind tells it when it's about to die; elephants have graveyards, gulls have the sea, and cats - well, cats are known for crawling under hard-to-reach places to die, so no one can see them. They don't like revealing weakness, which is maybe another reason why I get along with them so well.
What happens when that instinct goes off, and leads an animal to choose its final place... and then it doesn't quite happen? What if instead of an instant death they suffer slowly, locked in a state between both life and death? In that moment when the instinct fires off, do they realize what's happening? Do they lay there, feeling their breaths become shorter and shorter, their vitals weakening and shutting down, their body losing its heat? Do they know what's happening?
Maybe they don't; I don't know. But it's given me a lot to think about over the last few days, and it was a whole lot to think about Sunday night. The immensity of what was happening was clear, at least to me, though it seemed like most others were either blind to it or numb to it. Which is how I would have been, before, I think. Trying not to feel anything.
Because it was fucking terrible. I was crying for about two hours straight, and while I am not the most masculine man in the world, I don't like crying and I don't cry easily or often. But for two hours I sat there, blowing my nose as the tears fell, and I really thought about all this stuff. And I even recorded a video; I don't know why, but I just began talking to myself and thought this might be a good opportunity to have for future reference. I'll never let anyone see it, I'm sure; though I speak to a third party, it's waaaay too personal. And cheesy: in that moment I was not my most articulate or witty, I'm sorry to say. But I felt like it was important, because it shows me myself grieving, something I have experienced before, but tightly-reined and as brief as I could make it. It shows my reaction to an ongoing incident, one happening right before me, and though I'm mostly incoherent throughout it, or silent, I guess it doesn't really matter.
Just sitting there and being sad is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I really, really, really really really wanted to leave, go distract myself with something, stop thinking about it. Because that would have been easy, at least for me; I've gotten extremely good at compartmentalizing and dissembling. And it's gotten easier the further it's gotten from Sunday, too. I try to think about it at least once or twice a day, just to keep it in my mind, but it is of course a sad memory and my unconscious tries to not dwell on it. Soon, I'm sure, I won't think about it much unless reminded of it by some outside factor.
But I didn't leave, and that's the point. I didn't distract myself, because I wanted to spend the time with her, and be with her. And I don't even know if she knew I was there, or if she felt anything at all. I hope she did, but in the end it doesn't really matter, because I was mostly there for Me. I felt like she deserved, what, at least two hours of my time, after all the years I spent with her. I watched over her because I actually hated the thought of leaving her alone, which I told to my brother (who wasn't sure if he could sleep in a room with a dying cat - and I totally understand that). He eventually decided to stay, otherwise I would have volunteered to sleep there that night. The thought of her in that condition, in a dark room, alone, slowly dying... I hated it. I hated it. I'm not being overly-dramatic; it was anathema to me. I was not going to let that happen, even if she didn't know I was there, even if she was feeling no pain and wasn't aware of anything around her. Couldn't do it. Wouldn't do it.
The next morning she was taken to the vet and put to sleep. My brother said she had begun twitching more violently, so it's for the best. And he not only slept in the room, but slept next to her on the floor, the whole night. Which... I mean, I know it's pathetic, but I'm crying a bit about right now. Lame, lame, I know. But for some reason that meant - and still means - so much to me.
So that's where I am with grief, now. I let it in; or at least, there was no barrier there to keep it out. And it was about as horrible as I expected, and since very few people enjoy feeling grief and sadness, on some level I wish that the wall was still up, that I could have been affected in the moment and quickly scrubbed it from the emotional receptors of my mind instead of tearing up at just the thought of it half a week later. But I'm also happy, because that wouldn't have been fair to Gaia, or my relationship with her, or how much happiness she brought me during a pretty miserable period of my life. Or even the annoyances when I'd trip over her in the dark and she'd meow in reproach at me and I'd shout back "what do you expect you're laying in the middle of the kitchen in the dark!"
As much as I wish it, life can't be just about the good times. Scratch that, because good times for me are in extremely short supply - it can't even be just about the non-terrible times. A lot of it is about the terrible times, the awful experiences, the waist-high lake of excrement I wade through to get to the opposite bank, though the bank keeps getting further and further away, and the lake gets deeper and deeper, and there's something in here with me, and now that I think about it I'm not sure that even is another bank, it could just be an optical illusion of the boiling sunlight reflecting off of the shit that is my life.
And now that I've engaged in my self-inflicted misery, it's time to watch a video or play a game or talk to someone, anything to get my mind off of things. Just because my life is an ocean of loss and pain, and I'm fully committed to acknowledging that, it doesn't mean I can't have a daydream of thunderstorms and northern lights and crisp mountain air, does it?
I wish I could share their enthusiasm, but as I also said in that post, it's a double-edged sword at the best of times. I recently ran into a situation where, again, I reacted quite differently than I have in the past. And while I feel like a large part of that is the different factors involved in this scenario, I can't deny that the wall-shaped hole in my brain may have something to do with it.
I don't want to spend too much setting the scene. At my step-mother's house there are many cats. Or at least there used to be; it seems like that number is shrinking almost daily now. I lived there from summer 2008 to winter of 2013, so a fair amount of time spent in one place. And in that time I got to know all the cats and dogs, like you do. Gaia was one of these: a rescue together with her daughter, Luna, she was a tortoiseshell who was pretty round, kind of like a meatball, and had a real attitude. It used to lead to some stand-offs with her and one of the cats we brought, Ricky, a Scottish Fold who was just super-awesome (and also had a real attitude).
Gaia was nuuuuuuuuts about me. This was often annoying, as cats so frequently are: she would hear my voice in the kitchen and come running, then lay over my feet/in the middle of the kitchen and attack me (playfully, but still) as I tried to walk by; she would follow me around meowing with this urgent cry that made you wanna shake her; she liked to go into the basement (where I spent most of my time) and then refuse to get off the steps, either deciding she wanted to leave immediately or just generally getting in the way of everyone trying to get up and down the stairs all the time. You know - annoying.
But she was also adorable and lovely, and a little nuts (as all torties are). She would lay on my feet, as I already mentioned, and I'd pet her rough and she'd make hilarious noises and rub against my shoes so hard she fell over. She would then attack the shoe, often clinging to it as I tried to walk away so I would be half-dragging her across the floor. Among many other awesome and excellent things she did, but that's the most immediate one. Oh, sometimes after getting her all worked up she would scratch her face/neck and go "mrow-row-row-row-row" VERY loudly. Hilarious.
In the past year or two, however she's been looking worse. She lost a lot of weight, and last year she was in real bad shape - in fact some people already wanted to dismiss her as 'old and dying' and put her to sleep - but through the intercession of my sister she was taken to the vet, they looked her over and helped her out and she was back to her old self. More-or-less, anyway; she never quite regained that lost weight, and Meatball Cat became more of a parody name than a truism.
Fast-forward to this past weekend. I hear from my brother (who is the only sibling at the house right now - my sister is pet-sitting for another family) that she's in bad shape, and will probably be put down soon, so I get ready and I go over there to see her one last time. We spent some time at the pet-sitting house hoping that my sister would get the green-light to come over and leave the pets there for a while, but that never came so my brother and I went home without her.
I can't really describe what it was like. She was in my brother's room; she had crawled under his desk, as cats are wont to do, and was laying there. Stretched out, arms and legs straight out, like she had just fallen over sideways. Her eyes couldn't close, and there was a large amount of liquid issuing from the one, which didn't stop while I was there. She couldn't move or focus the eyeballs themselves. There was a dish of water next to her which she had not touched because she couldn't. I put some water on a finger and tried to get her to drink at least a little, but to no avail. Her breathing was shallow and labored.
But she was still alive, and as I spoke to her and pet her and tried to reassure her however I could over the next two hours and change, I would see glimmers that she was at least somewhat conscious of what was going on. Her face would twitch, the muscles around her eyes moving slightly. Sometimes her paws would twitch. They were cold, so I asked my brother to provide a shirt to throw on over her. It was a small gesture but at least it made me feel like I could do something.
Now, this isn't a post about anger. Anger comes much easier to me than grief, and I right now recalling events I'm feeling a pretty even mixture of both. I learned that she had been virtually unable to walk since Friday - this was on a Sunday evening, I should mention - and that no effort - none, zip, nothing - had been made to get her to a vet. Nothing. So she had laid there, slowly starving and/or thirsting to death, if whatever had happened to her brain wouldn't kill her first, for literally days, with those who could have done something waved it away with, frankly, ridiculous and self-deluding assurances.
But like I said, that's not what this entry is about. I don't mean to offend anyone; that's my interpretation of events, which I feel strongly about and which I believe is justified, but that's another post for another time. See how easy it was for me to distract myself from writing about grief - I don't want to deny I was tearing up while writing those paragraphs describing her last day, because I was - by focusing on anger?
The grief is what hit me the hardest at the time. I couldn't even summon the fire to be angry during those two hours, while I was watching her lay there, so far removed from the animal I once knew. I want to put it out there that I have felt grief. Good God have I felt grief. Our family hasn't been the luckiest in the past few years, and I can't deny that I felt grief when Ricky, our excellent cat we'd had for about 13 years, wandered down to the basement one day, laid down under a desk, made a sickening meowing noise, and then went limp. I was petting him and trying to coax him, but it wasn't working; I then took my dead cat and laid him in a box, to be buried the next morning. Or when I learned our other amazing cat (received all the way back in 2000/2001), Leo, who was Ricky's half-brother (but a straight-eared fold), developed serious issues with his breathing. My brother's girlfriend was handling it at the time, and towards the end it was truly horrendeous - his sinuses had partially collapsed and he just.... I mean I can't imagine. I can't imagine how hard it was for her. Mallory, if you're reading this, I... I mean I thanked you at the time, but I don't think I understood fully. Because it is awful.
Or when our other cats died. Or when we showed up, literally penniless, at a house in New York, rented for the next month, which was coated in mold and was essentially unlivable; a house where we spent the next month, what items we could fit in all thrown into the living room, where we all slept on mattresses and tried to stay out of the other rooms (which always gave me a headache if I spent too long there). Or when we came back from the beach one day in Ocean City to learn that our mother had died in New York. Or at the wake. Or other, also-very-bad things which I probably shouldn't share in a public blog.
The point is, I've felt grief before this. But it had always been like pulling off a band-aid: a quick sting which fades. Some stings take longer to fade than others, it's true, but all fade. That's life, and while I'm not quite sure if Time heals all wounds, it can at least reduce them to festering scabs which sometimes burst open again during heavy exertion or changes in barometric pressure.
But a big part of those moments of grief is that the causes were instant. When Ricky died, he seemed fine, came downstairs, and died. Instant. When we learned our mother had died, it had already been several hours. Instant. When other relatives have died, or pets, or any other horrible thing has happened to us, it's either been at a distance or instant. Or, in the case of the Mold House, as we call it, a long (and difficult) present that we hope will get better.
But with Gaia it was different. I had never sat by and watched something suffer before, with no possibility of recovery. I know that humans are the only animal cursed with their own mortality, but something in the animal mind tells it when it's about to die; elephants have graveyards, gulls have the sea, and cats - well, cats are known for crawling under hard-to-reach places to die, so no one can see them. They don't like revealing weakness, which is maybe another reason why I get along with them so well.
What happens when that instinct goes off, and leads an animal to choose its final place... and then it doesn't quite happen? What if instead of an instant death they suffer slowly, locked in a state between both life and death? In that moment when the instinct fires off, do they realize what's happening? Do they lay there, feeling their breaths become shorter and shorter, their vitals weakening and shutting down, their body losing its heat? Do they know what's happening?
Maybe they don't; I don't know. But it's given me a lot to think about over the last few days, and it was a whole lot to think about Sunday night. The immensity of what was happening was clear, at least to me, though it seemed like most others were either blind to it or numb to it. Which is how I would have been, before, I think. Trying not to feel anything.
Because it was fucking terrible. I was crying for about two hours straight, and while I am not the most masculine man in the world, I don't like crying and I don't cry easily or often. But for two hours I sat there, blowing my nose as the tears fell, and I really thought about all this stuff. And I even recorded a video; I don't know why, but I just began talking to myself and thought this might be a good opportunity to have for future reference. I'll never let anyone see it, I'm sure; though I speak to a third party, it's waaaay too personal. And cheesy: in that moment I was not my most articulate or witty, I'm sorry to say. But I felt like it was important, because it shows me myself grieving, something I have experienced before, but tightly-reined and as brief as I could make it. It shows my reaction to an ongoing incident, one happening right before me, and though I'm mostly incoherent throughout it, or silent, I guess it doesn't really matter.
Just sitting there and being sad is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I really, really, really really really wanted to leave, go distract myself with something, stop thinking about it. Because that would have been easy, at least for me; I've gotten extremely good at compartmentalizing and dissembling. And it's gotten easier the further it's gotten from Sunday, too. I try to think about it at least once or twice a day, just to keep it in my mind, but it is of course a sad memory and my unconscious tries to not dwell on it. Soon, I'm sure, I won't think about it much unless reminded of it by some outside factor.
But I didn't leave, and that's the point. I didn't distract myself, because I wanted to spend the time with her, and be with her. And I don't even know if she knew I was there, or if she felt anything at all. I hope she did, but in the end it doesn't really matter, because I was mostly there for Me. I felt like she deserved, what, at least two hours of my time, after all the years I spent with her. I watched over her because I actually hated the thought of leaving her alone, which I told to my brother (who wasn't sure if he could sleep in a room with a dying cat - and I totally understand that). He eventually decided to stay, otherwise I would have volunteered to sleep there that night. The thought of her in that condition, in a dark room, alone, slowly dying... I hated it. I hated it. I'm not being overly-dramatic; it was anathema to me. I was not going to let that happen, even if she didn't know I was there, even if she was feeling no pain and wasn't aware of anything around her. Couldn't do it. Wouldn't do it.
The next morning she was taken to the vet and put to sleep. My brother said she had begun twitching more violently, so it's for the best. And he not only slept in the room, but slept next to her on the floor, the whole night. Which... I mean, I know it's pathetic, but I'm crying a bit about right now. Lame, lame, I know. But for some reason that meant - and still means - so much to me.
So that's where I am with grief, now. I let it in; or at least, there was no barrier there to keep it out. And it was about as horrible as I expected, and since very few people enjoy feeling grief and sadness, on some level I wish that the wall was still up, that I could have been affected in the moment and quickly scrubbed it from the emotional receptors of my mind instead of tearing up at just the thought of it half a week later. But I'm also happy, because that wouldn't have been fair to Gaia, or my relationship with her, or how much happiness she brought me during a pretty miserable period of my life. Or even the annoyances when I'd trip over her in the dark and she'd meow in reproach at me and I'd shout back "what do you expect you're laying in the middle of the kitchen in the dark!"
As much as I wish it, life can't be just about the good times. Scratch that, because good times for me are in extremely short supply - it can't even be just about the non-terrible times. A lot of it is about the terrible times, the awful experiences, the waist-high lake of excrement I wade through to get to the opposite bank, though the bank keeps getting further and further away, and the lake gets deeper and deeper, and there's something in here with me, and now that I think about it I'm not sure that even is another bank, it could just be an optical illusion of the boiling sunlight reflecting off of the shit that is my life.
And now that I've engaged in my self-inflicted misery, it's time to watch a video or play a game or talk to someone, anything to get my mind off of things. Just because my life is an ocean of loss and pain, and I'm fully committed to acknowledging that, it doesn't mean I can't have a daydream of thunderstorms and northern lights and crisp mountain air, does it?
Friday, June 12, 2015
Trapped in a Mind send Help
This is kind of a companion piece to my last update, where I was talking about being trapped in my own head and how you can fall into certain cycles of thought. The reason I brought that up, in fact, was due to a conversation I had with my friend/roommate and my brother, where we were talking frankly (because that's the only way we talk, Frank) about the kinds of 'bizarre' mental habits we're afflicted by. It was an eye-opening conversation in a lot of ways. This kinda stuff comes up every so often tangentially, but usually not spoken about at length in such a way. I dunno, maybe you'll find it interesting.
My roommate, for example, has problems with social anxiety. Among the various ways this manifests itself, two stood out for me at the moment (I'm sure there are many more things he did not mention). For one, I've noticed - anyone who's spent time around him has noticed - that he has a tendency to curse or grumble seemingly at random. Asking him what's up leads to a noncommittal 'ugh, nothing' or something similar. It turns out, in fact, that these moments are frequently brought on by thoughts about mistakes he's made in the past - and not big, life-changing mistakes, but minor mistakes, often social in nature, going back months and years. The way he explained it, just remembering saying something that may have made him seem foolish, or a reaction to something that he wished he had controlled better, is enough to bring his mood down. And it happens a lot. It's a mode of thought that seems to be occurring near-constantly, and is (as he has described it) the kind of stuff that you or I may find completely unremarkable, forgotten almost immediately afterwards.
Similarly, my friend explained that he often second-guesses (and third-guesses, fourth-guesses, etc.) his reactions to people when caught off his guard. An interaction as simple as noticing a person you know walking down the hallway is what he used as an example. His initial instinct may be to nod to the person. Midway through the nod, though, he may grow concerned that the person won't notice the nod, so he'll also begin to wave. Then, as he's switched tack midstream, he'll sometimes attempt to smooth that jump over with a third action (for this example, perhaps a simple 'hey').
Once the person is past, though, he will then go through and repeat all the actions he just did in miniature; as he described it, "if someone could see the whole thirty-second interaction, they would see me nod, wave, say something, then as soon as the person was past nod again, make a little waving motion, and mumble under my breath. They would think I'm insane." He does this because he's going through every action and double-checking that they were all sufficient and/or not weird/creepy/etc.
These are two great examples of the patterns of thought we can get swept away by without even really noticing it. This stuff rises so subtly and over the course of our lives that by the time we take notice of it, it's already part of us. Which means it's really, really hard to let go of, and some people don't want to let go. Because it's normal to each of us, even though we may know logically that it's kinda strange and other people don't have the same exact issues.
My brother does something similar, where he'll sometimes obsess over an upcoming interaction with people, particularly if it's important. Which isn't so strange, I suppose, except he gets very, very concerned with it, and rehearses the way it might go ad nauseum so he's not thrown. Then, when it doesn't go exactly has he plotted it out in his head, he gets thrown off his game. Now, thankfully my brother is a suave enough guy (what can I say, it's in the genes) that this usually doesn't negatively impact him much in the long run, but it is something he's very concerned about.
He also has a very strong tendency to stress out over every possible decision. We make jokes about it, actually, because it is so prevalent and often involves decisions which are just not that big of a deal, objectively speaking. He gets so many points of view from so many different people that I begin to wonder exactly how helpful any of it can be, since he almost always gets a variety of different answers. He also often does this with decisions he's already made, maybe in the spur-of-the-moment.
Much like my roommate's social anxiety issues, I feel like most of us can sympathize with some form of this behavior. It's certainly not super bizarre, and I can say from personal experience that there are aspects of these thought patterns that I share - quite a few, in fact. Because I think most of us have social anxiety to some extent, and regret decisions we may have made, and moments we reacted without thinking and wish we could take it back. God knows I do.
Speaking of myself - my favorite topic, obviously - I'll go into some more specifics, if anyone's still reading, since I'm something of an authority on the subject. I also feel a lot more comfortable sharing details about the way I think versus other people, and then judging myself accordingly.
For one, I talk to myself constantly. CONSTANTLY. When I'm alone I sound like a raving lunatic. I'll hold one-sided arguments, go through past decisions, reevaluate current plans, all of it audible to anyone with a wiretap inside my apartment (or wherever I may be). It's just the way I think things through. I mean really think things through. I have a massive tendency to go off onto tangent after tangent after tangent - now realizing this may have been an ever-present symptom of my ADHD - while speaking, and this is magnified about a thousand times worse when it's just in my head. I find it VERY difficult to think in a straight line for an extended period of time (2-3+ minutes) keeping it all up in the ol' noodle. I also often find myself thinking faster than I'm capable of processing information. Does that make sense to anyone?
Have you ever had racing thoughts? Due to a bad trip or drug reaction, or overwhelming stress or something like that? I have. Boy oh boy, that was a bad two days. If you're fortunate enough to never have experienced this, the best way I can describe it is... it's like tripping over your own thoughts. You begin thinking very, very quickly, and the problem is that they're frequently disjointed thoughts connected by only the barest thread - because by the time you're about to formulate a singular notion, you've already jumped onto three more thoughts springing from that idea, and it goes on and on like a runaway train. It is awful.
That's not how it is for me most of the time, however; or should I say, it's an extremely minor version of that very awful experience. How often do you forget what you were about to say? That's essentially what it's like - a thought was fully formed, ready to come out, but somewhere on its way out of the mouth it gets lost. Sometimes you track it down and bring it home, and sometimes it freezes to death in the woods and is eaten by raccoons. Thought-raccoons, I mean. They might stand for, ah... no, I'm not going to waste your time by trying to make this into an extended metaphor, because that would be a real shitshow.
However, when I talk to myself, it forces every part of my brain to hold on a minute. Translating the thoughts into words and then speaking of them is so much less efficient that it slows the whole process down, and in turn allows me to focus better on one idea for longer. Do I still get distracted and forget what I was talking/thinking about? Yes, yes I do. But by processing my thoughts that way, and then hearing myself speak them, I'm able to pick up where I left off soooooo much more often.
This brings me back to my last update, where I was talking about being alone trapped inside my head. One of the reasons I have always valued solitude is that it has provided me with that very opportunity to think things through more clearly. Which is extremely important for me. However, much like my brother and roommate, what may seem normal (and even useful) to me when used in moderation becomes a sort-of nightmare when left unchecked.
Because I will just keep talking. Sometimes I'll be watching a show/movie or listening to music while alone and I will pause whatever it is just because I feel the need to talk. Talk talk talk. Talk some more. And a lot of times, I'm dealing with issues I have already dealt with. They're already done! I will not have received any new information, and often will have already made a decision (if I haven't already put said decision into effect). It's just a retread of what I've thought about before. I have the same arguments with myself, come up with the same solutions, and in general just repeat myself. Over and over and over again. Depending on what I'm thinking about, I can do this for weeks or months - and a few times, for years. YEARS! Of having the same exact conversation with myself.
Taking self-inventory is important, and I feel like I spend a lot of time in introspection. And this process helps me with that, and that's super-great. But once it begins to seem obsessive to me, it becomes something I want to turn off. But I can't. It's always there, and I know it's an exercise in futility and it actually takes up a fair amount of my time, and I want to stop it. But I can't. It's extremely frustrating. I can squash it if I put my mind to it, but it always creeps back in. I'll realize I'm mumbling to myself while walking to class or washing my hands in the bathroom at work, and ffffffff I mean it's just real annoying. Real, real annoying.
Now I don't know if you've seen the link between all these worthless ramblings, but it's basically 'uselessness.' Or futility, I suppose, or whatever you might call it. It's about how your mind can take things that are, more-or-less, healthy and/or helpful - asking those you respect for input/advice, taking care of how you come across to others, giving yourself time to think matters through - and turn them into crutches, and eventually labyrinths. Run through the maze, mouse. It's the same maze every time, and we all know that, but we also know that you're still going to run through it.
On a more uplifting note, however, my point is that we all have these kinds of things. At least, this small sample size does, but I would be highly surprised if most everyone didn't have certain mental prisons they've constructed for themselves. I don't get trapped inside my head the same way my roommate does, or my brother does, or you do. But we all do get trapped up there sometimes, and it can make us feel a little crazy. And frustrated, and useless, and just bad. Bad bad bad. Sometimes we might ask other people if they ever feel the way we do, and if they say no we go 'heh alright nevermind' and drop it.
But while the people you ask may not know exactly what the dimensions of your cell is, or the material the bars are made of, or how many excrement buckets there are (are there excrement buckets? Did you luck out enough to get a functional toilet? You are literally killing me here), I can bet with a good deal of confidence that they have their own prison. Maybe you even know about it. One of them, at least. You now know about one of mine, but the mind is dark and full of terrors. There is plenty of space for a whole Panopticon in there.
I'm thinking I should start breaking these walls of text up with pictures. What do you think. Would that help with the boredom?
My roommate, for example, has problems with social anxiety. Among the various ways this manifests itself, two stood out for me at the moment (I'm sure there are many more things he did not mention). For one, I've noticed - anyone who's spent time around him has noticed - that he has a tendency to curse or grumble seemingly at random. Asking him what's up leads to a noncommittal 'ugh, nothing' or something similar. It turns out, in fact, that these moments are frequently brought on by thoughts about mistakes he's made in the past - and not big, life-changing mistakes, but minor mistakes, often social in nature, going back months and years. The way he explained it, just remembering saying something that may have made him seem foolish, or a reaction to something that he wished he had controlled better, is enough to bring his mood down. And it happens a lot. It's a mode of thought that seems to be occurring near-constantly, and is (as he has described it) the kind of stuff that you or I may find completely unremarkable, forgotten almost immediately afterwards.
Similarly, my friend explained that he often second-guesses (and third-guesses, fourth-guesses, etc.) his reactions to people when caught off his guard. An interaction as simple as noticing a person you know walking down the hallway is what he used as an example. His initial instinct may be to nod to the person. Midway through the nod, though, he may grow concerned that the person won't notice the nod, so he'll also begin to wave. Then, as he's switched tack midstream, he'll sometimes attempt to smooth that jump over with a third action (for this example, perhaps a simple 'hey').
Once the person is past, though, he will then go through and repeat all the actions he just did in miniature; as he described it, "if someone could see the whole thirty-second interaction, they would see me nod, wave, say something, then as soon as the person was past nod again, make a little waving motion, and mumble under my breath. They would think I'm insane." He does this because he's going through every action and double-checking that they were all sufficient and/or not weird/creepy/etc.
These are two great examples of the patterns of thought we can get swept away by without even really noticing it. This stuff rises so subtly and over the course of our lives that by the time we take notice of it, it's already part of us. Which means it's really, really hard to let go of, and some people don't want to let go. Because it's normal to each of us, even though we may know logically that it's kinda strange and other people don't have the same exact issues.
My brother does something similar, where he'll sometimes obsess over an upcoming interaction with people, particularly if it's important. Which isn't so strange, I suppose, except he gets very, very concerned with it, and rehearses the way it might go ad nauseum so he's not thrown. Then, when it doesn't go exactly has he plotted it out in his head, he gets thrown off his game. Now, thankfully my brother is a suave enough guy (what can I say, it's in the genes) that this usually doesn't negatively impact him much in the long run, but it is something he's very concerned about.
He also has a very strong tendency to stress out over every possible decision. We make jokes about it, actually, because it is so prevalent and often involves decisions which are just not that big of a deal, objectively speaking. He gets so many points of view from so many different people that I begin to wonder exactly how helpful any of it can be, since he almost always gets a variety of different answers. He also often does this with decisions he's already made, maybe in the spur-of-the-moment.
Much like my roommate's social anxiety issues, I feel like most of us can sympathize with some form of this behavior. It's certainly not super bizarre, and I can say from personal experience that there are aspects of these thought patterns that I share - quite a few, in fact. Because I think most of us have social anxiety to some extent, and regret decisions we may have made, and moments we reacted without thinking and wish we could take it back. God knows I do.
Speaking of myself - my favorite topic, obviously - I'll go into some more specifics, if anyone's still reading, since I'm something of an authority on the subject. I also feel a lot more comfortable sharing details about the way I think versus other people, and then judging myself accordingly.
For one, I talk to myself constantly. CONSTANTLY. When I'm alone I sound like a raving lunatic. I'll hold one-sided arguments, go through past decisions, reevaluate current plans, all of it audible to anyone with a wiretap inside my apartment (or wherever I may be). It's just the way I think things through. I mean really think things through. I have a massive tendency to go off onto tangent after tangent after tangent - now realizing this may have been an ever-present symptom of my ADHD - while speaking, and this is magnified about a thousand times worse when it's just in my head. I find it VERY difficult to think in a straight line for an extended period of time (2-3+ minutes) keeping it all up in the ol' noodle. I also often find myself thinking faster than I'm capable of processing information. Does that make sense to anyone?
Have you ever had racing thoughts? Due to a bad trip or drug reaction, or overwhelming stress or something like that? I have. Boy oh boy, that was a bad two days. If you're fortunate enough to never have experienced this, the best way I can describe it is... it's like tripping over your own thoughts. You begin thinking very, very quickly, and the problem is that they're frequently disjointed thoughts connected by only the barest thread - because by the time you're about to formulate a singular notion, you've already jumped onto three more thoughts springing from that idea, and it goes on and on like a runaway train. It is awful.
That's not how it is for me most of the time, however; or should I say, it's an extremely minor version of that very awful experience. How often do you forget what you were about to say? That's essentially what it's like - a thought was fully formed, ready to come out, but somewhere on its way out of the mouth it gets lost. Sometimes you track it down and bring it home, and sometimes it freezes to death in the woods and is eaten by raccoons. Thought-raccoons, I mean. They might stand for, ah... no, I'm not going to waste your time by trying to make this into an extended metaphor, because that would be a real shitshow.
However, when I talk to myself, it forces every part of my brain to hold on a minute. Translating the thoughts into words and then speaking of them is so much less efficient that it slows the whole process down, and in turn allows me to focus better on one idea for longer. Do I still get distracted and forget what I was talking/thinking about? Yes, yes I do. But by processing my thoughts that way, and then hearing myself speak them, I'm able to pick up where I left off soooooo much more often.
This brings me back to my last update, where I was talking about being alone trapped inside my head. One of the reasons I have always valued solitude is that it has provided me with that very opportunity to think things through more clearly. Which is extremely important for me. However, much like my brother and roommate, what may seem normal (and even useful) to me when used in moderation becomes a sort-of nightmare when left unchecked.
Because I will just keep talking. Sometimes I'll be watching a show/movie or listening to music while alone and I will pause whatever it is just because I feel the need to talk. Talk talk talk. Talk some more. And a lot of times, I'm dealing with issues I have already dealt with. They're already done! I will not have received any new information, and often will have already made a decision (if I haven't already put said decision into effect). It's just a retread of what I've thought about before. I have the same arguments with myself, come up with the same solutions, and in general just repeat myself. Over and over and over again. Depending on what I'm thinking about, I can do this for weeks or months - and a few times, for years. YEARS! Of having the same exact conversation with myself.
Taking self-inventory is important, and I feel like I spend a lot of time in introspection. And this process helps me with that, and that's super-great. But once it begins to seem obsessive to me, it becomes something I want to turn off. But I can't. It's always there, and I know it's an exercise in futility and it actually takes up a fair amount of my time, and I want to stop it. But I can't. It's extremely frustrating. I can squash it if I put my mind to it, but it always creeps back in. I'll realize I'm mumbling to myself while walking to class or washing my hands in the bathroom at work, and ffffffff I mean it's just real annoying. Real, real annoying.
Now I don't know if you've seen the link between all these worthless ramblings, but it's basically 'uselessness.' Or futility, I suppose, or whatever you might call it. It's about how your mind can take things that are, more-or-less, healthy and/or helpful - asking those you respect for input/advice, taking care of how you come across to others, giving yourself time to think matters through - and turn them into crutches, and eventually labyrinths. Run through the maze, mouse. It's the same maze every time, and we all know that, but we also know that you're still going to run through it.
On a more uplifting note, however, my point is that we all have these kinds of things. At least, this small sample size does, but I would be highly surprised if most everyone didn't have certain mental prisons they've constructed for themselves. I don't get trapped inside my head the same way my roommate does, or my brother does, or you do. But we all do get trapped up there sometimes, and it can make us feel a little crazy. And frustrated, and useless, and just bad. Bad bad bad. Sometimes we might ask other people if they ever feel the way we do, and if they say no we go 'heh alright nevermind' and drop it.
But while the people you ask may not know exactly what the dimensions of your cell is, or the material the bars are made of, or how many excrement buckets there are (are there excrement buckets? Did you luck out enough to get a functional toilet? You are literally killing me here), I can bet with a good deal of confidence that they have their own prison. Maybe you even know about it. One of them, at least. You now know about one of mine, but the mind is dark and full of terrors. There is plenty of space for a whole Panopticon in there.
I'm thinking I should start breaking these walls of text up with pictures. What do you think. Would that help with the boredom?
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Masks, Performance, and Your Own Thoughts
I was speaking with my brother and Jared - my ancient friend/current roommate - the other day about thought patterns, and the odd things we each do when trapped inside our own minds. I'll go into that later in the next post, because I think it might provide an interesting look into the workings of minds that may (or may not be) similar to your own, but for now I wanted to make just a quick update about being alone vs. being around others.
My computer ate it a week or two ago, and my campadre Enoch was kind enough to let me borrow his Macbook Air while I waited for my other amigo Justin to send me his old computer. I received it a while ago, but I still haven't taken any steps to transplant the guts from the old to the new. Which you could blame on sheer laziness - certainly that's a major part - but is more a factor, I think, of the way I feel. And think, I guess.
To really get what I'm talking about you have to know the way our apartment is set up. In the very beginning, we Chose (odds/evens) to see who got the bedroom and who got the living room (essentially the second, less private bedroom). I won, because very rarely that happens, and so I have set up shop in the bedroom. Jared is out in the living room, living things up as it were, and has arranged the couches and things to be very conducive to lounging. And watching shows/movies on his monitor, of course.
Beginning this past winter, when I picked up a WiiU, I have found myself spending more and more of my time out in the living room. I even picked up a Vita so I could keep the good times rolling. And bleed even more money, of course. Now that I'm completely mobile, I essentially spend all my time out there, and only use my room for sleeping and occasionally making blanket forts.
This has been a pretty stressful semester for me, and the last few weeks in particular have found me wound pretty tight. And, finally tying this back in with the beginning of the post, I have a tendency to live in an echo chamber; that is, a place where my thoughts echo back and forth (a metaphor I drew on for a previous blog update) without really being solved or worked through. They just resound.
It's frustrating, if I'm honest, to be stuck thinking about things you've already thought about and have, more-or-less, come to a conclusion on (or the best conclusion you can, given the state of affairs). And it cycles over and over, and I almost always find myself talking to myself to keep my thoughts straight - because if I don't, I lose my thread of thought every fifteen seconds or so - and even that is difficult to keep straight and rational. Whoa, I guess I really might have ADHD. Damn you psychiatrists...!
The end result being, when I'm alone in a smaller room, my thoughts tend to get louder. They fill up the physical space, if you'll permit me yet another metaphor, and the smaller the space and the fewer people around to fill up that space with their thoughts, the more mine take control. And so I've found recently that my room, which is pretty comfortable and set up by me for me, including the heaped clutter covering every square meter, has become a space for gloom and depression. It's almost stifling, really. But something as simple as transitioning to the living room - a trip of about fifteen steps - lightens my mood significantly.
Granted, it's still not all sunshine-roses and water-daisies (?) when I'm here alone, because while being in a larger space makes me feel better, I'm still alone with my thoughts, and with no one else present they can be given a voice as much as they wish. And then I feel like a crazy person babbling to myself for forty minutes straight!
Which is why I'm actually quite thankful that I don't live alone. I mean, I always figured that I would love to live by myself - and that's true, in many, many ways. But for right now, at least, that's not my deal. Even if the thoughts filling the room when you're spending time with someone else are dark and depressing (sorry for putting you on blast here Jared), it's their darkness, and their depressing, which is a different enough shade from your own that it helps take up some space. I think this extends to whenever you spend time with another person, and I mean spending real time, not fake faux-friendly 'let's watch something and crack jokes and then leave' time that so many "friends" engage in. Which is fun in its own way, to be sure, but at least for me, when I'm feeling down, I don't have the energy to put on that mask. The performance just becomes less important to me.
So, yes. There you go. Having people who know you, who you can really talk to and be comfortable around, is absolutely awesome when you're dealing with some miserable shit. You don't have to talk to them; you can do literally what I mentioned in the last paragraph, and watch shit with them and crack jokes. But the important part is that you don't have to keep up the mask, because at some point you can't maintain the performance any longer and if you don't have anyone you can let it down around, you turn inwards and isolate yourself. Then it's just you and your thoughts, and that can be a bad combination.
My computer ate it a week or two ago, and my campadre Enoch was kind enough to let me borrow his Macbook Air while I waited for my other amigo Justin to send me his old computer. I received it a while ago, but I still haven't taken any steps to transplant the guts from the old to the new. Which you could blame on sheer laziness - certainly that's a major part - but is more a factor, I think, of the way I feel. And think, I guess.
To really get what I'm talking about you have to know the way our apartment is set up. In the very beginning, we Chose (odds/evens) to see who got the bedroom and who got the living room (essentially the second, less private bedroom). I won, because very rarely that happens, and so I have set up shop in the bedroom. Jared is out in the living room, living things up as it were, and has arranged the couches and things to be very conducive to lounging. And watching shows/movies on his monitor, of course.
Beginning this past winter, when I picked up a WiiU, I have found myself spending more and more of my time out in the living room. I even picked up a Vita so I could keep the good times rolling. And bleed even more money, of course. Now that I'm completely mobile, I essentially spend all my time out there, and only use my room for sleeping and occasionally making blanket forts.
This has been a pretty stressful semester for me, and the last few weeks in particular have found me wound pretty tight. And, finally tying this back in with the beginning of the post, I have a tendency to live in an echo chamber; that is, a place where my thoughts echo back and forth (a metaphor I drew on for a previous blog update) without really being solved or worked through. They just resound.
It's frustrating, if I'm honest, to be stuck thinking about things you've already thought about and have, more-or-less, come to a conclusion on (or the best conclusion you can, given the state of affairs). And it cycles over and over, and I almost always find myself talking to myself to keep my thoughts straight - because if I don't, I lose my thread of thought every fifteen seconds or so - and even that is difficult to keep straight and rational. Whoa, I guess I really might have ADHD. Damn you psychiatrists...!
The end result being, when I'm alone in a smaller room, my thoughts tend to get louder. They fill up the physical space, if you'll permit me yet another metaphor, and the smaller the space and the fewer people around to fill up that space with their thoughts, the more mine take control. And so I've found recently that my room, which is pretty comfortable and set up by me for me, including the heaped clutter covering every square meter, has become a space for gloom and depression. It's almost stifling, really. But something as simple as transitioning to the living room - a trip of about fifteen steps - lightens my mood significantly.
Granted, it's still not all sunshine-roses and water-daisies (?) when I'm here alone, because while being in a larger space makes me feel better, I'm still alone with my thoughts, and with no one else present they can be given a voice as much as they wish. And then I feel like a crazy person babbling to myself for forty minutes straight!
Which is why I'm actually quite thankful that I don't live alone. I mean, I always figured that I would love to live by myself - and that's true, in many, many ways. But for right now, at least, that's not my deal. Even if the thoughts filling the room when you're spending time with someone else are dark and depressing (sorry for putting you on blast here Jared), it's their darkness, and their depressing, which is a different enough shade from your own that it helps take up some space. I think this extends to whenever you spend time with another person, and I mean spending real time, not fake faux-friendly 'let's watch something and crack jokes and then leave' time that so many "friends" engage in. Which is fun in its own way, to be sure, but at least for me, when I'm feeling down, I don't have the energy to put on that mask. The performance just becomes less important to me.
So, yes. There you go. Having people who know you, who you can really talk to and be comfortable around, is absolutely awesome when you're dealing with some miserable shit. You don't have to talk to them; you can do literally what I mentioned in the last paragraph, and watch shit with them and crack jokes. But the important part is that you don't have to keep up the mask, because at some point you can't maintain the performance any longer and if you don't have anyone you can let it down around, you turn inwards and isolate yourself. Then it's just you and your thoughts, and that can be a bad combination.
Friday, June 5, 2015
Lame Poetry Detected
For the record: I don't like or respect most contemporary poetry. I've taken a class or two, and dealt with poetry a lot in an academic setting, but I am not a poet by any stretch. Sometimes, it's soothing/fun to write a poem though, so that's what I'm doing right now. It's something I wrote on my way to work and 'edited' during a break. It is not good. But it is bad, and that can be entertaining too!
Internal Combustion
A stormcloud engine drives me
Can you hear the crash of heat lightning from inside?
Can you taste the metal and oil on my tongue?
Can you smell the ozone in my speech?
It drives me, uses myself to power myself
(self-consumption)
The purer the fuel,
the hotter the burn,
the brighter the flame
Now, the fire burns white
How long can I endure
Until nothing but cinders remain?
Internal Combustion
A stormcloud engine drives me
Can you hear the crash of heat lightning from inside?
Can you taste the metal and oil on my tongue?
Can you smell the ozone in my speech?
It drives me, uses myself to power myself
(self-consumption)
The purer the fuel,
the hotter the burn,
the brighter the flame
Now, the fire burns white
How long can I endure
Until nothing but cinders remain?
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
The Little Man (or Woman)
I've been feeling better lately. Mentally, I mean. And physically, too, I guess, since I'm just getting over another Illness (always the same thing for the same duration). Mentally is the most important, though, and without going into much detail about it I'll just say that my head hasn't really been screwed on straight for the past two weeks or so.
Which is fine; we all have little breaks like that. Things can send us into a loop of regret, confusion, and self-flagellation. But what I found is it also leads to a lot of introspection, and self-evaluation, and if you can control that - and medication helps, absolutely - then you may come out of it a more balanced, mentally sound individual. I like to think that's what happened to me.
Of course that might be the crazy talking, though I haven't yet taken to peeling shrimp in my bathtub to prepare for the promised dolphin plague. And it may be short-lived; it's hard to know. I would like to send out a beam of good-vibes to my friends and family, most of whom have been very supportive during this ordeal. No, I don't really believe in beams or good-vibes or whatever battiness really positive people say, but hey, it's a way to express yourself when you can't think of anything else to say. So, again, thanks.
In the past two weeks I've really dug down deep to understand what's important to me. Strangely enough, the answer has been people. A surprise to be sure, as I'm not the biggest fan of people in general, and I tend to value my alone time extremely highly. I know how to make friends though - and keep friends, if I may say - and I'd like to think that I'm a pretty good friend in return, outside of my inability to drive and general pathetic state. When I say 'people,' I'm not talking about in general, because - like I said - I think most people are pretty garbage and can't stand to be around many various types of human being. But certain people - and I think they know who they are - I've come to care for deeply, in a variety of different ways.
Let me fill you in on a secret you likely already know: caring about people suuuuuuucks. It sucks! It leads to insecurity and jealousy and fear and embarrassment and weird bizarro-situations where you want to help someone but you can't. Or you want to listen to someone but you won't. Or - God forbid - you want to repay someone for all they've done, but they still won't let you in. These are things that happen with people you care about no matter how long you've cared about them - a week, a month, a year, ten years, your whole life - and every time it happens it makes that little man (or woman) inside squirm and whimper. Perhaps it's just a little whimper, or a small shriek in the darkness, but that darkness is your mind and it is big and cavernous and reverberates. The acoustics there... you don't even know.
I got to a place where I couldn't decide whether I could stand the noise anymore. Because it is easier - it is so much easier - to wall up that part of the cavern. Let the little man (or woman) scream himself hoarse in the black. So that's what I did, because I'm always a fan of the easy way out - even if the easy way out seems hard, because the hard way out is a million times worse. I know others who have made the same choice. I know people who are making that choice every day.
The problem, which is something that age has revealed to me in all of its twisted malformed glory, is that the shrieking doesn't stop. The cries and the throes don't cease, and in that small space they grow larger and larger until they start forming cracks in the wall. So you can build another wall; that's what I did. And another, and another, and another after that. Again, even this rebuilding is far easier than letting it loose, so you keep the little man (or woman), who at this point seems more like a monster than anything else, in its cave. It's a bit of work, but it's doable.
But the more you rebuild the wall, the more space the little monster gets. One day you notice that nice, quiet dark that you've valued for so long - let's say over ten years, why not - is much, much smaller. And it's no longer a comforting darkness, but a frightening one; you become trapped in your own mind; always wary of the next crack in the wall, always counting the remaining space. It can consume you, until you don't have energy left for anything else but repairs and measurements and worry.
And sometimes you decide to let the monster out, and sometimes it forces its way out, spitting on your best intentions to keep it restrained. It was a bit of both for me, this past year, and I can tell you truthfully that the tears in the wall from my side - the side that was just me sitting huddled in the dark - were much less painful than the fractures caused by the monster. Which, if nothing else, I think, is a good thing to learn.
Even now I'm not sure how I feel about the monster getting out. Actually, let me go back to using man (or woman); because when I met that part of myself again, I saw that it was not the monster I feared it was. I hadn't seen it in a very, very long time, and had convinced myself that it really was a monster. Why else would I have walled it up? Why else would it sound so horrible and cause such pain?
The answer is that the little man (or woman) is caring, and vulnerability, and legitimate concern for others. And every time he was hurt, I was hurt, and he and I were one and the same. But if you split him (or her) off and place him alone and wall him up, then he's not you anymore. But you're really not you anymore either. And I know this sounds really cliche and, well, probably stupid, but it's the truth. I was perfectly pleased with who I became - sans little man - and didn't really want him back. Like I said before, I had hit the wall a few times with a hammer, but I never committed to absolute demolition. Because those swings were painful.
So I still am not sure how to feel. It's all a little too new, and I am not a very smart man. The little man - manster? - is free now, and he's making up for lost time. I feel a lot of things that I didn't before. Sometimes I hate him for it, because a lot of what I feel is pain. Other times, though, I think maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it's good to be able to legitimately care, and feel, and not be constantly surrounded 24/7 by a shield of irony and sarcasm and bitterness. Or maybe the little man set free will cause me to fail out of school, or do something incredibly stupid and/or reckless, and regret not binding him tighter.
I really have no idea, and that is the absolute truth. It's not as safe with him running amok in the darkness now. I'm not as safe. But I also have a lot more room to think, and that has to be worth some pain.
Which is fine; we all have little breaks like that. Things can send us into a loop of regret, confusion, and self-flagellation. But what I found is it also leads to a lot of introspection, and self-evaluation, and if you can control that - and medication helps, absolutely - then you may come out of it a more balanced, mentally sound individual. I like to think that's what happened to me.
Of course that might be the crazy talking, though I haven't yet taken to peeling shrimp in my bathtub to prepare for the promised dolphin plague. And it may be short-lived; it's hard to know. I would like to send out a beam of good-vibes to my friends and family, most of whom have been very supportive during this ordeal. No, I don't really believe in beams or good-vibes or whatever battiness really positive people say, but hey, it's a way to express yourself when you can't think of anything else to say. So, again, thanks.
In the past two weeks I've really dug down deep to understand what's important to me. Strangely enough, the answer has been people. A surprise to be sure, as I'm not the biggest fan of people in general, and I tend to value my alone time extremely highly. I know how to make friends though - and keep friends, if I may say - and I'd like to think that I'm a pretty good friend in return, outside of my inability to drive and general pathetic state. When I say 'people,' I'm not talking about in general, because - like I said - I think most people are pretty garbage and can't stand to be around many various types of human being. But certain people - and I think they know who they are - I've come to care for deeply, in a variety of different ways.
Let me fill you in on a secret you likely already know: caring about people suuuuuuucks. It sucks! It leads to insecurity and jealousy and fear and embarrassment and weird bizarro-situations where you want to help someone but you can't. Or you want to listen to someone but you won't. Or - God forbid - you want to repay someone for all they've done, but they still won't let you in. These are things that happen with people you care about no matter how long you've cared about them - a week, a month, a year, ten years, your whole life - and every time it happens it makes that little man (or woman) inside squirm and whimper. Perhaps it's just a little whimper, or a small shriek in the darkness, but that darkness is your mind and it is big and cavernous and reverberates. The acoustics there... you don't even know.
I got to a place where I couldn't decide whether I could stand the noise anymore. Because it is easier - it is so much easier - to wall up that part of the cavern. Let the little man (or woman) scream himself hoarse in the black. So that's what I did, because I'm always a fan of the easy way out - even if the easy way out seems hard, because the hard way out is a million times worse. I know others who have made the same choice. I know people who are making that choice every day.
The problem, which is something that age has revealed to me in all of its twisted malformed glory, is that the shrieking doesn't stop. The cries and the throes don't cease, and in that small space they grow larger and larger until they start forming cracks in the wall. So you can build another wall; that's what I did. And another, and another, and another after that. Again, even this rebuilding is far easier than letting it loose, so you keep the little man (or woman), who at this point seems more like a monster than anything else, in its cave. It's a bit of work, but it's doable.
But the more you rebuild the wall, the more space the little monster gets. One day you notice that nice, quiet dark that you've valued for so long - let's say over ten years, why not - is much, much smaller. And it's no longer a comforting darkness, but a frightening one; you become trapped in your own mind; always wary of the next crack in the wall, always counting the remaining space. It can consume you, until you don't have energy left for anything else but repairs and measurements and worry.
And sometimes you decide to let the monster out, and sometimes it forces its way out, spitting on your best intentions to keep it restrained. It was a bit of both for me, this past year, and I can tell you truthfully that the tears in the wall from my side - the side that was just me sitting huddled in the dark - were much less painful than the fractures caused by the monster. Which, if nothing else, I think, is a good thing to learn.
Even now I'm not sure how I feel about the monster getting out. Actually, let me go back to using man (or woman); because when I met that part of myself again, I saw that it was not the monster I feared it was. I hadn't seen it in a very, very long time, and had convinced myself that it really was a monster. Why else would I have walled it up? Why else would it sound so horrible and cause such pain?
The answer is that the little man (or woman) is caring, and vulnerability, and legitimate concern for others. And every time he was hurt, I was hurt, and he and I were one and the same. But if you split him (or her) off and place him alone and wall him up, then he's not you anymore. But you're really not you anymore either. And I know this sounds really cliche and, well, probably stupid, but it's the truth. I was perfectly pleased with who I became - sans little man - and didn't really want him back. Like I said before, I had hit the wall a few times with a hammer, but I never committed to absolute demolition. Because those swings were painful.
So I still am not sure how to feel. It's all a little too new, and I am not a very smart man. The little man - manster? - is free now, and he's making up for lost time. I feel a lot of things that I didn't before. Sometimes I hate him for it, because a lot of what I feel is pain. Other times, though, I think maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it's good to be able to legitimately care, and feel, and not be constantly surrounded 24/7 by a shield of irony and sarcasm and bitterness. Or maybe the little man set free will cause me to fail out of school, or do something incredibly stupid and/or reckless, and regret not binding him tighter.
I really have no idea, and that is the absolute truth. It's not as safe with him running amok in the darkness now. I'm not as safe. But I also have a lot more room to think, and that has to be worth some pain.
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