Filling in the blanks
One of the things I've enjoyed
most about becoming involved with LJ is that it often provides some
kind of direction for the never-ending internal monologue.
Ninety-five percent of my "mental posts" will never make it to the
computer, of course, but it sort of gives me a way to corral my
thoughts into something resembling coherency. Because honestly,
the flow of words just doesn't stop. There's like a handful of
activities that engage my attention enough to build momentary dams, but
those end and eventually wash away in the new flood. I remember
in my very last session with the psychologist I'd grown to dislike, she
said that she believed that things were much busier in my head than my
lack of talking to her would indicate. I thought, "Lady, you have
no idea." I wonder what she'd think of me spilling my guts online
in unlocked posts??? It almost amuses me to imagine it.
Getting out of bed today was difficult, and I don't like that. It scares me. There seem to be certain triggers that send me backsliding a little, and while I know which ones are operating now I still intend to move through them. I can't live my life in fear; I already drowned in it too long. This morning was just bad because I woke up from a dream where my dad caught my ex and I making out. And it wasn't a memory of the time that actually happened, lol, it was current day, and my dad said something to A about if he hadn't received such and such an email from him, he would have killed him on the spot. We all laughed and Dad left the room and A and I kissed again and it was happy.
Which is so far from the truth of what could possibly happen that it's utterly baffling how my mind could twist that way. Still. It pisses me off to know that some part of myself is forever irretrievable, burned away by what happened in a way that left such deep marks. Yes, the wounds have healed, and I'm grateful for that but I also know I worked at it for a long time, to find some kind of meaning in a life that no longer bore any resemblance to anything I'd ever dreamed of. Some days I think about how sad Magic's epitaph was, how those few words conveyed so little of who she had been and what she had meant to people, and right now there would be virtually no difference in my own. "Beloved daughter and surrogate mother to a great cat. She loved books and music." Scintillating, isn't it?
Depression is like alcoholism: you are never truly free. You will have to guard against it for the rest of your life once it's seeped into you. I look back at my life growing up and I understand that now. I understand how my friends prevented me from withdrawing into myself the way I am naturally inclined to do. I understand how, when they chose to remove themselves from my life because of who I chose to marry, that fragile structure began to collapse and one man--one boy, really--was not enough to save it, even had he tried the way he should have. I understand how I became obsessed with a TV show that happened to come into my life at a time when I needed something to believe in, and some way to believe in love perhaps more than anything, just in its existence even if it didn't touch me. And then the community, who encouraged me to pursue what had been my oldest dream, and suddenly there was a pen in my hand again. Becoming friends with D., and later the others in the group, was what truly pulled me out, back into my own skin, because I had people who cared about me again. Friends. I don't have words for what that means to me; for what they mean to me.
And incidentally, I understand the brand new obsession with Green Day, too. (Hi, my name is Tas, and it's been five years since my last obsession.) I suppose it makes sense that a lyric from Jesus of Suburbia should sum it up fairly neatly: "I don't feel any shame, and I won't apologize." They started out as just kids, literally living in what amounted to a crack house, and pushed through everything because of a dream, because they wouldn't back down and wouldn't be other than exactly who they were and more than anything, because they were fearless about it all. I identify with that journey, and I want to make the same kind--to finish making it, all the way to something as brilliant in MY own way as I believe American Idiot is. To live my life that way, without any apologies for who I am or what I want. It's harder than it looks but I'm trying.
Getting out of bed today was difficult, and I don't like that. It scares me. There seem to be certain triggers that send me backsliding a little, and while I know which ones are operating now I still intend to move through them. I can't live my life in fear; I already drowned in it too long. This morning was just bad because I woke up from a dream where my dad caught my ex and I making out. And it wasn't a memory of the time that actually happened, lol, it was current day, and my dad said something to A about if he hadn't received such and such an email from him, he would have killed him on the spot. We all laughed and Dad left the room and A and I kissed again and it was happy.
Which is so far from the truth of what could possibly happen that it's utterly baffling how my mind could twist that way. Still. It pisses me off to know that some part of myself is forever irretrievable, burned away by what happened in a way that left such deep marks. Yes, the wounds have healed, and I'm grateful for that but I also know I worked at it for a long time, to find some kind of meaning in a life that no longer bore any resemblance to anything I'd ever dreamed of. Some days I think about how sad Magic's epitaph was, how those few words conveyed so little of who she had been and what she had meant to people, and right now there would be virtually no difference in my own. "Beloved daughter and surrogate mother to a great cat. She loved books and music." Scintillating, isn't it?
Depression is like alcoholism: you are never truly free. You will have to guard against it for the rest of your life once it's seeped into you. I look back at my life growing up and I understand that now. I understand how my friends prevented me from withdrawing into myself the way I am naturally inclined to do. I understand how, when they chose to remove themselves from my life because of who I chose to marry, that fragile structure began to collapse and one man--one boy, really--was not enough to save it, even had he tried the way he should have. I understand how I became obsessed with a TV show that happened to come into my life at a time when I needed something to believe in, and some way to believe in love perhaps more than anything, just in its existence even if it didn't touch me. And then the community, who encouraged me to pursue what had been my oldest dream, and suddenly there was a pen in my hand again. Becoming friends with D., and later the others in the group, was what truly pulled me out, back into my own skin, because I had people who cared about me again. Friends. I don't have words for what that means to me; for what they mean to me.
And incidentally, I understand the brand new obsession with Green Day, too. (Hi, my name is Tas, and it's been five years since my last obsession.) I suppose it makes sense that a lyric from Jesus of Suburbia should sum it up fairly neatly: "I don't feel any shame, and I won't apologize." They started out as just kids, literally living in what amounted to a crack house, and pushed through everything because of a dream, because they wouldn't back down and wouldn't be other than exactly who they were and more than anything, because they were fearless about it all. I identify with that journey, and I want to make the same kind--to finish making it, all the way to something as brilliant in MY own way as I believe American Idiot is. To live my life that way, without any apologies for who I am or what I want. It's harder than it looks but I'm trying.