Warning train of thought:
What I suffer from doesn't feel like anxiety in the traditional sense. Neither is it depression in the way that one usually feels it. Fear and sadness are luxuries I cannot afford during these late nights: thoughts racing and with a dense block of concrete for a brain. Fear and sadness are for the living. I am dead. I do not grow and I cannot feel. The more desperately I search for simple comfort the more it eludes me. Shouldn't a man be happy with food and water? A soft warm bed? and even the internet where entertainment is only moments away! I feel the caresses of these decadences as though through a thick callous.
Anhedonia is a word used to describe the very real medical phenomenon of the inability to feel pleasure. It is difficult for me to even cry anymore. Is there not a certain pleasure even in crying? Truly crying is the most enjoyable part of sadness. The part we dislike is the feelings that bring us to the tears. The tears are the release. I however find no tears at the end. Just irritation. All the way down inside the innermost parts of my being I simply experience vexation. Surely this is a result of a defense mechanism. All the stress I've been under. I have formed an emotional and intellectual callous. I've heard many people speak of this before but surely they're just copying off of the few of us who really experienced this. I used to think apathetic depression was emotional callousness. But unfortunately I've found a deeper level of deadening. And for what? university grades? pathetic.
I cleaned all those papers off my floor that have been there for about a month. I also looked through some even older stuff. I found my high school english portfolio. Reading some of my old papers was a strange experience. I brought back old (very old) memories of me at a young age. It was unnerving to consider the ways I have changed and the ways I have stayed right here where I've always been. Certainly I felt more then even if it was often sadness. I guess it was inevitable that I would be forced to give recompense for the wallowing I have done in the pleasures of loneliness and depression. It was the good life then to (at the very slightest of whims) be able to consider the romantic suffering of the lonely and fancy myself a part of a rich tradition of the tortured yet superior. My bittersweet aches were a burden I could bear. I burden I could practically run with now. If I could only wring a drop of life out of the empty hours now! I'm wrapped in shells and callouses from the wounds I've suffered, but I'm somewhere inside weak but willing. Pale and etiolated from being sheltered from the light and undernourished for so long but still with a tiny flame.
/trainofthought
I feel like I can't escape myself. I analyze everything to pieces and I myself am not exempt from that. Being so self-aware and perceptive mixed up with all this anxiety is such a burden. Part of my problem might be over-stimulation. Listening to Scriabin, coffee, math, internet, worrying, analyzing, re-analyzing, over analyzing, ironic, absurd, meta, post-modernism, minimalism, deconstruction, pattern-searching, making long lists to try and convey the ridiculousness of everything etc.etc.
I can't get out from under the burden of myself.
I'm not even sure what's wrong with me exactly anymore. I can't even relax or enjoy anything. I probably need drugs to help me recover but that's outside my control under the current circumstances.
Does anyone know a way I can speed the healing of my burnt-out mind? Anyone have similar experiences?
19 Dec 2011, 5:13 am
