I Shouldn't Have To Ask You To Walk Me Home

I watch my mouth, I cover up

My modesty, is not enough

To keep me from, from being seen

We're born a target, how can we be free?

I'm policing myself but I have to watch you

Because your behaviour reflects on me too

I'm guilty of crimes that I never commit

All girls are the same yeah, we're just some dumb bitch

She shouldn't have walked there, she shouldn't have spoke

Why is it *our* fault when the system's a joke?

Try to complain and you're met with the stares

The steely male gaze of benefactors and heirs

We're done asking nicely, we're sick of this shit

When you don't respect us, not one little bit

Don't try to sell me that 'But Not All Men!'

It's not my job to stop this from happening again

We give and we give but it's never enough

We're terrified but we try to act tough

We're sick of the bullshit of this twisted game

But the worm, she is turning, it's no longer the same

psychological disaster preparedness

Do. Or don't. It doesn't really matter. That's the beautiful thing about embracing nihilism as an outlook, a personal philosophy. Ultimately it all ends in the heat death of the universe, so fuck it, what does it matter? Life is what you make it. Speculation on that rumination provides justification for just about anything - and that's something to be mindful of for sure. But that's also the horror about the whole thing. When you're stuck in a neverending cycle of anxiety, pain and regret. When that's all you know how to make, it eventually coalesces in to a black hole of terror and emptiness, a spinning vortex of loathing and fear that sucks you down, trapping you forever in that maelstrom of hurt and sorrow. Everything collapsing to a single floating point, just you all alone. No-one's coming to save you.

If all this sounds like so much the self-absorbed ravings of a gothy teenager who's just discovered Schopenhauer for the first time, I guess that's a fair enough criticism. Some things you never truly grow out of. Some things just sear themselves into your psyche, to become scar tissue, inestimably bound to the concept of 'you', and some things are just too painful, too shocking to be forgotten. The first time you experience ego death at the hands of a panic attack, you discover the true extent of the horror the mind can exert on itself, with you as its hapless victim. It's not too strong a descriptor - having experienced ego death in the traditional fashion from psychedelics, there's really no mistaking that feeling of the mind separating from the body to be carried away by the power of its own silent scream, and the terror you feel scrabbling at the cliff face of the edge of the self, thinking this is it, this is the moment 'I' as a concept is obliterated, leaving behind a spastically writhing body only fit for the insane asylum. And if that's not bad enough, we can set this cycle to repeat dozens of times until you're too afraid to leave the only place you feel remotely safe. So forgive me for the angst both caused by and contributing to a touch of cabin fever.

When nothing feels real, when the very matter of 'real' is utterly meaningless, how do you make peace with that? When it's the feeling of derealisation that triggers the sudden spike of adrenaline and cortisol that instantly flips the world from mundanely intimidating to existentially threatening obliteration. It's kind of like asking how do you prepare yourself for a car crash. In terms of the emotions involved, the level of fear, the neurochemicals and the psychic aftermath, that's not as hyperbolic as it sounds. There's an arsenal of tools at my disposal that I'm slowly, clumsily working out how to wield. I can't always stop the crash from happenning but I'm working on learning how to ameliorate the impact as best I can. Psychotherapist, psychiatrist, mindfulness, medication, dialectical behaviour therapy, self soothing, distress tolerance, emotional crisis management, radical acceptance, progressive muscle relaxation, breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Strange little birds

I feel like I'm rubbish at making friends. Always have been. Maybe I wasn't properly socialised as a child (actually I know I wasn't) but it's one of those life skills I see people enact seamlessly while I fumble ineffectually at the sidelines with a quarter of a clue. Like watching people fly around gracefully at an ice skating rink while I can barely lace up my skates, forget about getting out there and doing anything else besides making a fool of myself. Maybe I missed the day they had successful friendship classes at school but definitely feels like everyone else knows something about the process that I don't. Whenever I'm at social gatherings I look at other people who navigate that landscape with ease and just think 'how do they do that?' I always feels like a character in a game whose dialogue choices are hacky and weird. I know I am supposed to say x and y but i feel strange doing it I, controlling my mouth like I'm playing a part. I do have friends of course. Just not very many. Try to play it off like it doesn't bother me but it gets very lonely sometimes. Solitary melancholy was alright as a goth teen in the 90s but it's sad in more ways than one when you're in your mid 30s.

Some people are fine with being solitary loners, or at least they'll tell you they are. Personally I go between desperately craving company and secluding myself for so long that it sounds strange to hear my own voice when I speak to another. But at the heart of it, we're social animals. Humanity and civilisation would not have got to the point it has, nay, may not even still exist at all, if all those millennia ago primitive humans opted to sit in caves by themselves scratching frowny faces into the walls. Possibly while sporting some ill-considered charcoal panda-eyes, although The Cure was some way off from releasing any material to be sad to. The point is,  networking is crucial. One carbon atom on its own simply exists in isolation without achieving anything, but multiple atoms arranged a certain way can form carbon nanotubes, extraordinarily strong material that is so much more than the sum of its parts. Or possibly just the material for the aforementioned charcoal eyeliner. It all depends on the type of connection forged, and this is just as true for humans as it is for atoms. Superficial and weak connections may be able to form interesting structures but they are transient, unstable. They break easily and the constituents go back to floating about ineffectually by themselves. But the right kind of connection can form a unit that is so much stronger than the individual, able to withstand so much more.

Sadly, not all of us are armed with the ability to make those connections. Some of us won't ever be. Fake it til you make it is generally surprisingly good advice for a lot of daunting situations in life, but when it comes down to the minutiae of interpersonal relationships it can quickly devolve into some kind of psychological uncanny valley. People will disengage and distance themselves from you because, although you seem nice there's just something about you that makes forging that connection difficult or unappealing. But you know what? It's ok. You can't be best friends with everyone. You might be a solitary loner, and maybe it's not by choice.  By ourselves we are merely building blocks, but there are people out there you can connect with, people you can forge that kind of strong bond with. But you must first learn to like yourself before other people can too - that's the real secret. Trite as it sounds, confidence is key. I'm still working out how to do that but I think I can get there one day. Starting from way behind the white line doesn't mean you'll never finish, it just takes you longer to get there.

The Longest Journey

I spend my nighttime walking
Over flattened western plains
Time spent gently musing
On losses, and of gains

Try to calculate the cost
When you've nothing left to spend
Some pluses here, a minus there
Makes even in the end

Defeats and victories alike
Are written on the page
Contributes to the wisdom
That only comes with age

In this way I work towards
A cold and lonely truth
You cannot think your way back to
The innocence of youth

Why smile when you can cry instead, but don't cry for me because I'm not dead

Today I cried.

That's not a noteworthy event in most people's lives. I've always been a bit (a lot) of a crier. It seems to be my emotional self's way of responding whenever it is overwhelmed with emotional input, be it happy, sad, frustrated, angry, - it's especially an issue when arguing with a gaslighting boyfriend*. The words 'stop being so sensitive/you're just being crazy' still make my blood pressure jump 20 points instantaneously. But that's a story for another time, and it's not the kind of crying I'm talking about now.

The black dog has been my constant companion for six months now. Bipolar is a hell of a thing to have to deal with when suffering from a degenerative neurological illness. And vice versa. I named said canine hubris after foolishly boasting last year that I had not been seriously depressed since 2009. When I say seriously depressed, I mean the kind that persists for months (years) without an end in sight. The kind where every day, instead of a cute list of what you're thankful for, it's a list of all the reasons you shouldn't commit suicide. It becomes a list of the carefully considered reasons *to* commit suicide and the ways in which you could do it. Then it's a list of the things you have to get in order, the people you need to say goodbye to and the supplies you need to make it happen, depending on your method (plastic bag asphyxia was my go-to - it's how they do it in the psych ward). I came closer than I ever have been to that ultimate end point and it was terrifying. I think about it now with a thrill in my stomach like you would get from missing a fatal car accident by a hair's breadth. Or starting to slip while leaning out too far over a precipitous legde with no guard rail. I guess those are concrete manifestations of coming within spitting distance of self annhiliation. A situation no sane human being would choose to put themselves into. Because when you're that deep into it with the black dog, you don't feel like you have a choice. No longer content to to just dog your heels, you start going where he leads you. And it can lead to some pretty terrifying places. An event horizon of the soul.

People who know me might be surprised to hear how much I struggled these past 6 months. It cost me dearly to put on that mask every day, to pretend (rather poorly at times, I imagine) I was a functional if somewhat highly strung human being. But when no-one was looking, I cried. Every day. Multiple times. I cried with the tapping of a well so deep there was no bottom. An emotional aquifer so vast it subsumes the other parts of you. There is no relief from that kind of psychic pressure. All you feel, all you know, all you are is misery. There is no way out but one. David Foster Wallace sums it so beautifully I could not hope to top it so here it is: 

"The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

But today I cried with joy because for the first time in six months, I felt positive about the future. Optimistic. Like I had something to live for after all. I don't even know why, really. Depression is a capricious beast that way. Exhaustion responds well to a few good nights' rest. Iron deficiency you can cure by taking a pill every day. Depression you can do those things too, along with a boatload of therapy - which everyone should do at least once in their lives. But in the moment it can feel like it's not really helping. Until one day you feel a curious lightness in your heart, one that had been rendered foreign and peculiar by its absence. Something you'd almost forgotten the feeling of. It may only be a spark, but when you've been in the dark for so long, any light feels like it illuminates your whole world. More importantly, it lets you see that there is another way out after all. The black dog will still be around - when you have bipolar he'll never truly be gone - but he's not leading me anymore. I can reach the path ahead on my own.

*I say boyfriend because it usually (not always) is. It's a form of minimising and belittling women and telling them their feelings are wrong. It's insidious emotional abuse that the majority of women will face at some point, whether from partner, friend, coworker or family. This article explains it far better than I could ever hope to: Stop Labelling Women 'Crazy'

Manic confession

From out the blackest depths you've known
The depths of your depression
A light so bright it captivates
And holds your full attention

Finally your mind is free
The world is yours to capture
You cannot eat nor can you sleep
It doesn't seem to matter

Harder faster pushing so
It seems you'll surely break
You're not sure what you're doing
But you know there's much at stake

A million miles an hour goes
Your thoughts into your speech
It matters not how far you run
Your brain gives no relief

People shy away from you
Scared by what's in your eyes
Desperation, mania
A madness in disguise

But what goes up, it must come down
Come screeching to a halt
Every wrong you've ever known
You know it's all your fault

And so the cycle starts anew
It never seems to end
Beholden to your chemistry
It's pointless to pretend

Giving up or giving in
You know it's all the same
The sine wave carries you along
I guess I'll try again

What it's like to lose yourself, piece by piece

Every day is a new disaster. Each week brings some new challenge. Months go by with tragedy rolling into fresh tragedy and you wonder how it's possible for so many bad things to happen to one person. You're not sure you'll live to see another year if it keeps up like this. Your life is made up of one setback after another. It's not something anyone can truly understand if they have not lived it.

Your brain can't take this kind of repeated stress. Worry over specifics morphs into worry over everything, anxiety a suffocating blanket that smothers you until you want to cry out, make it stop, I can't breathe under the weight of this. Anxiety causes your brain to see everything as a threat and assume the worst outcome always. Every niggling feeling in your chest is a heart attack. Every headache is a brain tumour. Every mole is a melanoma. It's exhausting to live like this. We're not programmed for it. All you can hope for is the ensuing depression to make you want to sleep, to spend as much time as you can in a place where you're not like this, where the unrelenting doom brewing inside you will not manifest. It's the worst when you wake up. Because there's a moment, however fleeting, where you forget that you are who you are and that everything is in ruins. And then you remember. It's enough to make you choke. 

Depression is endemic in people with chronic illness. It's not hard to see why. You're trapped in a body that betrays you constantly. You take your fistful of pills, you endure the infusions and injections and blood tests and hospital stays and still it seems to make no difference. You become your problems. Your illness suffuses your identity and the hopelessness of your struggle turns you bitter and angry. If you're lucky you'll know when to withdraw from people before you completely exhaust their goodwill towards you. There's only so many times you can break plans with people and complain while you turn into a shell of your former self. Gradually you stop hearing from them, at about the same rate you withdraw. It's not like you can even blame them. Nobody wants to invite negativity into their life. Who wants to haul an oar on a sinking ship? By getting close to people, I'm only ensuring they will go through pain, a lot of it, watching me die and being helpless to assist me in any way. And so it goes until you're alone and it's just you and your problems that have no solutions. Still you struggle on. Your reward for not killing yourself today is getting the chance to not kill yourself again tomorrow. The irony is not lost on you.

Bit by bit, my body is failing. Each relapse of my neurodegenerative illness takes something from me. Always there is pain. Some days, and they are getting more frequent, my legs don't want to obey me. You sit inside all day, watching the sunset through the window. Remembering when you used to chase it, vowing you'd never lose it. And now you see it go down at one remove, watching it leave you behind. And you wonder how many more you're going to see. Will you know the last one when it happens? I just hope it's beautiful.