(no subject)
I am tired these days. I don't have the energy to sit up all night watching reruns of sitcoms I've seen a million times before. I don't have the luxury of sitting and wallowing in anxiety until I'm afraid to move or to speak. I don't wonder about monsters under the bed (or couch as it were), or in the closet, or in the shower. I have more pressing matters to think about.
Yesterday, exhausted, I slept for three hours in the middle of the day. Or, at least, I think I slept. I was caught in that hazy place where you don't really know if you're alive and moving or asleep and dreaming. The dreams are especially bad caught in that place. I couldn't remember them, but I woke up sad and lethargic, worn out all over again from fighting my way free.
These are the moments when I have to be especially strong and smart. It is easy for others to say, "it was only a dream." But my dreaming self is more insidious than you can imagine. I dream of death and endings and the destruction of the world as I know it. Bombs, water, fire, starvation, a cold shoulder...in the dreams there is no one to help, and I wake up changed.
Last night, I tried an experiment. I shouldn't have, and I knew it, but I did it anyway. How far could I push this? If I opened the floodgates, how long will it take for me to accept the fact that I am broken and guilty and worthless? It took about fifteen minutes.
The funny thing is that in this place I was no longer anxious. Anxiety is the subtle vibration between hope and despair. It is that thing that tells you that if you can find your way out, there will be milk and cookies at the end of a rainbow. When I am sad, it does not exist. Funny too that I can get to this place without being at all suicidal. It was the complete acceptance of my lack of worth without fear or despair. It was a fact written on a chalkboard by an unforgiving teacher. I copied it into my notebook, filed it away, then went outside for recess.
Yesterday, exhausted, I slept for three hours in the middle of the day. Or, at least, I think I slept. I was caught in that hazy place where you don't really know if you're alive and moving or asleep and dreaming. The dreams are especially bad caught in that place. I couldn't remember them, but I woke up sad and lethargic, worn out all over again from fighting my way free.
These are the moments when I have to be especially strong and smart. It is easy for others to say, "it was only a dream." But my dreaming self is more insidious than you can imagine. I dream of death and endings and the destruction of the world as I know it. Bombs, water, fire, starvation, a cold shoulder...in the dreams there is no one to help, and I wake up changed.
Last night, I tried an experiment. I shouldn't have, and I knew it, but I did it anyway. How far could I push this? If I opened the floodgates, how long will it take for me to accept the fact that I am broken and guilty and worthless? It took about fifteen minutes.
The funny thing is that in this place I was no longer anxious. Anxiety is the subtle vibration between hope and despair. It is that thing that tells you that if you can find your way out, there will be milk and cookies at the end of a rainbow. When I am sad, it does not exist. Funny too that I can get to this place without being at all suicidal. It was the complete acceptance of my lack of worth without fear or despair. It was a fact written on a chalkboard by an unforgiving teacher. I copied it into my notebook, filed it away, then went outside for recess.