Grey morning, sitting down to my first cup of tea, Twig today since my stomach was so upset yesterday. Not quite coffee, in any way, and I’m craving the warmth and comfort of a really good cup of coffee all full of cream and sugar. The buzz of this loud computer, and the traffic going by. Cellphone constantly within reach in case someone calls, at least it’s a nice shade of red.
Listening to Jennifer Terran’s “Grand Canyon”, waiting for the cds of hers that I ordered to arrive in the mail. Nearly the only music I can tolerate day in and out, so much sounds grating and just so much going on within it, and I just feel bombarded with sound. I have definitely fluctuating tolerance levels for sound and noises- and when I’m feeling aurally sensitive, I get naueseous and increased headaches when confronted with unappealing sounds.
Woke up today tired, a deadened/leadened feeling in my chest. Heartburn tangled up with heartache. So much grief so close to the surface, but I’m so used to pushing it all down and putting on a dull placid face that I can’t process the emotions when I have them, so instead I feel sick, and get heartburn and nausea instead. Pounding headaches because somewhere along the way I learned it was better for me to feel physical pain than to show my emotions and be humiliated through rejection.
It’s entirely traceable, although particulars and exactnesses aren’t stored up in my memory. As a girl, I cried when sad, ridiculed, angry. People laughed at this, told me I was stupid and overemotional. So I stopped crying. Simple as sky or so.
Except now I have this huge mess/mass of blah and god know’s what chewing it’s way through my stomach lining and making me fearful of every little thing. Most times, my brain is not a pretty place to be. It’s worse if I read the newspaper or watch tv.
How do I daily face a world that seems to be coming apart and bursting violence, pain, and fear through all of its already rough hewn seams? What’s the point in even getting out of bed if we’re all going to die horrible painful deaths at the hands of greedy, angry, bitter deathmongerers? Such lovely thoughts to have first thing in the morning, I know.
When confronted minute by minute with an intensity of nihilism and pain, how does one have a successful existential crisis? Success being determined as being able to get out of bed everyday with a sense of purpose and possibilty, rather than crawling back under the covers to think sad and horrible thoughts.
Inside this spiral of though is the grain of answer as to why I find it so hard to be around people, to relate to people. To even feel as though I’m living in the same world as everyone else. I can’t deal with small talk, video games and celebrity gossip when my mind is perpetually concerned with the state of the world and our places in it.
My therapist has accurately described this sensation as my necessity for the real. I can’t function healthily on the bullshit level, though I’ve been trying to fit into it for so long that I’m in this uncomfortable liminal space of knowing I don’t fit into a certain space, but not knowing how to create or find a real space.
It sounds all teenage angst, to judge it, and that’s a problem, to pigeonhole experience in such a way. It denies the reality that so many people suffering from depression and anxiety, and that this is a social problem, not just a hush hush problem to be medicated and ignored. Trying to fit everyone into this social model of well adjusted, driven, high achievers just causes so much physical, mental, and emotional illness. I’m not putting all of the blame on the external world, but I do in fact believe that much of my so-called “adjustment problems” and “mental illnesses” are truly social illnesses that derive from growing up and living within an unhealthy and stifling social system that pretends to be wide open and full of possibilities.
I know all this, and yet, I still feel like a loser and a failure on an hourly basis. I feel like everywhere I go people see me and notice, whisper about that “dorky girl who just can’t keep a job, who can’t pull her own weight, who’s just lazy and whiney, spoiled, insignificant, stupid, and boring”. Yeah. I know. I’m neurotic. At least I find my thinking patterns kind of funny. In a way. But not really.
(weird formatting thing, can't figure out why the last paragraph is in a different font, and I can't get it to change. Oh well...I'll remain computer illiterate.)
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