The Cerebral Mum

The last 48 hours have been relatively busy and I was going to talk about all the things I’d done, all the things I’ve yet to do and all the benefits of the new site for me and for my readers but I’m too tired to make administrivia sound interesting right now. Even though it is interesting (to me at least). So I’m leaving that for another day and what I’m thinking about is this:

How on earth do we know when things are real?

I’ve spent the last couple of days moving this blog, which required a certain amount of commitment and energy which I purport not to have, and chatting and joking on Skype with people I don’t even know while we worked together to get things set up. I felt normal. I think I even seemed normal. I almost felt likeable. I almost felt human.

And then I got a message from a long-lost friend, the closest friend of my teenage years, and I sent a happy, chatty message back. That felt kind of normal, then very fake.

I was genuinely excited to hear from her and I would genuinely like to see her again but I was also scared of the mess in my head and hyper-aware that if we were to find a time to catch up, I would be stricken with anxiety and feel overwhelmed by the process. I have to ask myself, is a computer a place to hide or is it a safety net while I find my feet again? And I don’t know the answer. I really don’t. Maybe it’s both.

A few people have left comments, and sent messages, appreciative of my candour. Am I candid? I think I am. I try to be. But my mask is still on when the conversations are closer to home, and away from my homepage. Part of me thinks this is good: It is nice to be reminded that there are actually human beings in the world that I can interact with, it’s nice to feel like myself, but then I’m challenged as to why I don’t feel that way when it becomes face-to-face. Worse, I’m challenged as to whether this depression is just a figment of my imagination, something I’ve made up. Maybe there is actually nothing wrong with me. Maybe I am one big faker. Maybe I am not being candid at all.

In the cerebral part of my brain, I can untangle it all, see that none of this is black and white. I can reject the false dichotomy: That’s logical fallacy 101. In spite of that, I just cannot seem to find solid ground to stand on.

Why do I feel that ominous sense of guilt for momentary pleasure? Why do I feel that ominous sense of guilt for being depressed? Why does everything I do or feel make everything else seem like a lie?

The truth is - I know this is the truth! - that we all have many faces. We all play many roles. How honestly we play them is dependent on us, but we play them nonetheless. Why do I not feel at home in any of them? Being sad feels wrong, being happy feels wrong, being alone, being with people, being quiet, being intense… It all feels wrong. I want to feel comfortable in all my faces again. I want them to feel real.

I need to shake everything up. I need to rattle me in a dice box and just see where I fall. I need to somehow create something to work with again, something to hold on to.

In the past, often I would do something sudden: Move house, change jobs, shave off all my hair, anything just to see who I was. At the moment, I can’t even move the furniture. It’s not my furniture. I am living in borrowed space in borrowed time. Time borrowed from living that can never be paid back. But I can do nothing suddenly. I have created too much of a mess. I need to strip away everything, all my labels, all my things, all my burdens, and try on new faces.

I need people.

I think I require a stage. I think the only set-decoration should be me. I don’t think I can do it in this vacuum. I don’t know how to get out of this vacuum. Am I too scared to get out of this vacuum?

The other day, chatting with my Mum on Skype, I called her Mrs. Plod, an affectionate insult that she is not insulted by in the least. I would be highly insulted by it. Is it slow-and-steady that will win this race for me? I am not slow and steady. I am fools-rush-in-where-angels-fear-to-tread. With nowhere to go and no way to get there.

Tomorrow, I will rearrange my room.

Okay, what follows is brain detritus with foul language, and no stylistic merit to justify it. Don’t read if you’ll be offended. Don’t read if you hold me in any esteem. But it is what it is. And I won’t apologise for it. Or justify it. Because whatever it is, it’s better off here on this blog than in my head. If I deleted, this blog would become a lie and I’m sick of feeling ashamed for whatever I am.

Sad facts. I hate not being happy. I hate feeling lonely and friendless and boring and nothing. Even if it isn’t true. I hate feeling it. I think that’s pathetic. It is pathetic. Not for anyone else who feels like this. I have sympathy for them.

No sympathy for me, please. No, no sympathy for me. I have none. I want none. I just don’t want to feel like this. It makes me angry. It makes me angry being pathetic. I’m smart, I’m not half bad to look at. I’ve got an education. I’m capable. It makes me angry being weak. Because weakness is repugnant. Weakness is the fear of rejection, the loss of respect. It’s people feeling sorry for you. That’s not the same as sympathy. It’s people moving away from lepers. I don’t have to experience that right now to know it’s true. That’s the way it is.

Reality without it’s face-on only does two things; it fascinates from a safe distance or makes people run like hell. Because people are big, fat, hairy-assed pieces of chicken shit. They’re liars and right now I wish I could say that I was just externalising my own state of mind, and I am, and I’m pissed at myself more than anything, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not a little bit of truth in there.

I love people, I do. I love them for all their flaws and faults. I do that because there is nothing else that can be done. But boy, are we all a fucked up bunch of pansy-assed hypocrites. You know what word I like? Honour. And loyalty. I like that word too. I’m sick to death of seeing so many people around me using and being used. I’m sick to death of how fucking small everybody is and I’m sick to death of everything I’ve done in my life so as not to offend them. Because, you know what - that makes me a big, fat, hairy-assed piece of chicken shit.

So what if I’m not liked. So what if I attract people like flies before they dash off to the next pile of shit. So what if I could never understand my visibility and tried to be what a million other people needed. So what if I was present, really present. What the fuck made me think that it was my responsibility to fix whatever anybody else’s fucked up reactions were? How did I absorb everybody else’s fucked up projections until I ended up here, with nothing left of my own.

I’m angry and crying and angry and crying. Because I should have known better. And I should have been aware of what I was doing to myself, and now there is nothing left of me to like. And I don’t even care how fucked up the rest of the world is and I don’t even care about the who-done-me-wrongs. I just care that I’ve let something outside of me mould my existence, grind my existence to fucking nothing.

When I used to be someone people would come to, rely on for help, for perspective, for philosophy, for unadulterated fucking acceptance and love. What fucking use to the world am I now? Really… What use?

That’s not hubris. Everyone is connected, everyone is useful. Everyone conscious is useful. When did I lose my fucking consciousness. When did I lose my fucking conscience.

So, after loosening up my written tongue, that’s what I had to say. I would have said more but there was a knock at my door and B’s twins were there offering me licorice and wanting me to go and meet their Nan. So I’ve been sitting in the garage next door with a wonderful lady and Big Sis and The Odd Couple, and surprisingly, talking about real things. Talked about the people in everyone’s lives; rape victims, manic-depressives, alcoholics. And B’s autistic brother, and what it was like raising an autistic child 30 years ago. How she wanted to commit suicide every day, how she wished every day the bus bringing him home just wouldn’t arrive. How much respect I have that she is comfortable saying those things, just matter-of-factly, never diminishing the love she has for him, the pride she has in him. She can talk about the excitement of the first time he looked through the window instead of at the glass at age seven, but she tells no lies about what it was like. She doesn’t conform to everyone else’s opinion, to society’s story of the self-sacrificing mother. Which she was, of course, and deserves respect for, but there is no getting around the fact that we don’t experience life in the way our patterned narratives make it seem.

I like her. I like people who are not phased by messy reality. I guess what I wrote before going next door was how angry it makes me that people are phased by messy reality. And I guess that isn’t a new theme here, even before I said the word depression. So now I feel like, fuck it all, I am who I am, whatever. But tomorrow I will wake up and I will be left alone in my messy brain, and the mess of my reality will have, again, no place in this world. I need to carve a space out for it, even if it is only in words. More importantly, I need to carve out a place for it in myself.

Because,the world is full of people experiencing big things, big traumas, big struggles, big joys. Things which always go unsaid, things repressed and reduced, always hidden beneath the Sunday-best face we’re are supposed to present to the world. Welcome to reality, where people suffering suffer all the more because it makes everyone uncomfortable, everyone exhausted.

That’s just not good enough for me.

Life is fucking huge. Make room for it.

So, I’ve had a cup of coffee and read my morning feeds and now, just for today, I’m making the rule that I will not come back to the computer at all until Cas is in bed for the evening. It’s sunny out. Today is external work day. I will get some things done. I don’t know how much, but I’ll try to differentiate between the physical exhaustion and the mental exhaustion. That is so much harder than it seems. It is amazing the impact of your psyche on your physiology. I will push through, I will take breaks. But I want one small thing done every hour. And then I shall come back here for my reward.

That is my plan for today. Not for the next week, not for the next month, just for today. Anything else is too much for me to imagine.

I really don’t. Or not this, anyway. I’ve had enough of myself. I’m living in a vacuum. Nothing challenges me. Nothing inspires me.

Hmm. Since writing the above, I have wasted two hours pfaffing around on Facebook, which I don’t even like. Procrastination. On that uplifting note, I’m going to bed. Numbness and sleep. Lipstick tomorrow.

xx

Today was a good day. Big Sis let me wallow in the bath for two hours, a thing I miss being able to do terribly since becoming a mum. It gave me time to wake up, and time to read. I used to read whole books in the bath at least a couple of times a week. Having a shower just doesn’t cut it, not that having a shower is that much easier as a mum anyway. By the time he goes down for a nap, the day is half over.

And then I said to myself, We’ll go out for coffee, which sadly around here means McCafe. All other coffee machines are half an hour away. There’s not a big market for espresso when residents either spend all their dole money on drugs, booze and cigarettes or are nice, quiet folk, never seen on their neat front lawns but when they are taking their bins out.

So I got to read half the paper while Caspar demolished a raspberry friand. We should do that more often. There is nothing better than a newspaper and real coffee, out in the world in the morning. Unless you add Eggs Benedict and quiet company to the scenario. That is my idea of heaven. Even if it’s in a pretty average part of the world, it’s enough to make me feel like myself.

And then the sun came out and Caspar and I just had fun. I can’t even remember what we did now. But it was genuine, unadulterated fun.

It would be nice to think that just having a bath and a coffee would fix everything, but I know that even if I do just behave my way to feeling better, whatever is screwing with my head will just come back to bite me on the ass later. This might not be a perfect way to look at it but, personifying depression, making my head seem perfectly fine is just as much a tactical advantage for him as making my head seem scary and explosive. He is maintaining his existence. He knows he’s here for a reason and there is a little war going on; a psychological immunological challenge. He that annoying guest who doesn’t know when to leave, that annoying prankster who doesn’t know when to stop.

The truth is, it was nice to have a little space where my mind let the go of the things I need to do. But I still need to do those things. It’s a vicious cycle and I need to reverse the polarity of it.

Even just writing this now, that sick, overburdened sensation is returning, kicking hard against the idea that I deserved to do those things today when I have so much to get done; when I’ve turned Big Sis’ house into a disaster area, when the nappy bucket is overflowing, when calls haven’t been returned, when I’ve screwed up my university application and, most importantly, when my house is still standing derelict waiting for me to pack up all my shit and fix it up and sell it so that I can be out of debt and Big Sis can have her space back and Caspar can have the life he deserves.

I notice that I said Caspar, not Caspar and I. Obviously I don’t think I deserve it. Why not? Because it is there for the taking and all I have to do is do it. It really is that simple. Instead, I fail to do it, beat myself up, and fail some more. It’s not good.

Mr. D doesn’t get the fine distinction between building up some resources in order to get things done, and not getting things, so I have to fight him on that point. Calling him Mr. D probably takes away some of his credibility. That’s a start.

Slowly, slowly.

And then there is the other work to do; addressing all the other things in my head that got me to this point in the first place. They are harder to grab hold of and require me to withdraw from the real world and move in other realms. It is an unsolvable puzzle, having to do both of these things at once. I am pulled in two different directions trying to reach the same goal.

I’ve done a silly diagram of that too, and made up a silly name for it.

It’s funny, of all the things I’ve read in my life, I’ve never studied depression at all. But this is how I understand it. Chicken and Egg. Catch 22. So I tell myself that time out is work toward the goal, and tell myself that the tiniest practical achievement is a step toward the goal, and I tell myself that the most useless seeming thoughts, the non-thoughts even, are a step toward the goal. And that is all I can do. If something is in pieces, it needs to be fixed piece by piece. It is hard to do such intricate work, balanced on a wire, when the problem feels so large. And when you can’t think clearly.

It’s hard to know whether a good day is good, because Mr. D is always on your back. But can you really tell when Mr. D isn’t right? Can you really tell when the choices you make are right? Making time for yourself is good, but it carries with it the danger of procrastination, of drawing out the problem. Especially these days, when Because You’re Worth It is an advertising slogan propping up the most empty, self-deceiving way of living. How do I really know when I am deceiving myself? Self-doubt hurts.

Then again, self-doubt is good. Because when you lose yourself, your mind becomes rigid. It closes itself to new ways of looking at things. It closes itself to the possibility that you are wrong. And then it tells you you are wrong all the time, when your brain no longer has the elasticity to defend itself.

This is beginning to sound like an essay rather than my thoughts. I am trying to untangle them. Usually I write a working title when I start a post, and then change it at the end when I know what I have said. I think I’ll leave this one.

When is a good day good?

Like the stuff in my mind, when it comes to the stuff in my life, I have to accept the shadow of that reality as well. I mostly live with the head in the clouds, and I find a lot of things there worthwhile and meaningful. I prioritise them. But other things get missed along the way and it is a fine line between the clouds and the sand. Nothing is safe. Nothing is right. There are always things you have to choose between. I have to be careful. I have to be watchful. I have to find a way to differentiate between action and avoidance. Anything and everything has the possibility of being either.

Still, I think today was a good day.

Yes, one of those practical things. I’ve never been good at the practical things. I said to myself when I started this journey that I would try to eat well, try to take in some sun, go to bed before midnight and conquer one little task a day. It’s now midnight, and I’m not hungry, but I’ve only just realised that all I had to eat today was the other half of Caspar’s cheese and vegemite sandwich. I’m pretty sure that’s not healthy. I had two glasses of milk though. Does that count? I don’t think so.

I need to pay attention to the physical things. I need to have breakfast. I need to not stay here for another hour, just to write I don’t even know what, even though I want to. Because that would be no more balanced than today’s food intake. Errgh. I shall force myself to go to bed. And in the morning, I shall force myself to make having breakfast a priority. If that is the only task I conquer for the day it will be a job well done.

I think I am too drained to write. So I’m just starting. I don’t know what will come out. This might be it.

Unsurprisingly, I have become weepy since starting on this course. Weepy of the stupidest things. Yesterday Big Sis was going down the street and I asked her to pick something up for me. I gave her my money and she said, “Fuck, it’s all silver”. So I cried. Today my mobile phone rang and I didn’t want to answer it and I cried. I haven’t checked my voicemail for 2 weeks. I should check my voicemail. I hate voicemail. I think I’ll delete voicemail. But that would involve me using the phone.

I don’t know what I am talking about.

I’ll start again.

Today, I made lunch for Caspar and me and I wanted to eat together while we watched a dvd. I couldn’t find it and that upset me. Big Sis was using her computer so I couldn’t burn one. So I tried to find something else but none of the real dvds would work. My dvd player only likes .avi files. So that upset me. And Caspar had eaten half his lunch without me while I flapped around feeling broken because it seemed so little ask, just to watch a dvd. I cannot organise myself. I feel confused. My lunch was cold. I didn’t even want it anymore. Then Big Sis came out with a burned copy but she wasn’t sure it was the right one and I tried to organise my thoughts and figure it out but she just backed away as fast as she could while I struggled for words, distressed over nothing.

She doesn’t handle other people’s emotions well, my Big Sis. She shuts down. She gets out of there. She knows this and I know this. But that closed door left me feeling wrecked for hours. Rejected. Nobody can deal with me. Nobody will be around me as I am. Nobody will help me. Why does everyone leave.

Later, we talked. And I cried because I can’t seem to do anything else. And she is there for me and isn’t rejecting me. And I know that she tries her best to make room for what is going on. And we both know that no-one can fix me anyway. “That’s the depression talking,” she says when I try to explain how I feel. I feel abandoned. I feel like a child.

She is not kind to my friends. She has no respect for the people who say that they’ll call or say that they’ll visit or say that we’ll catch up some time. “They’re not your friends,” she says. There is truth in that, maybe. I make excuses for them.

I have other friends. Better friends, but they are far away. I don’t have the energy for gargantuan efforts to see them briefly. I want to be around people. Just daily people. Who talk in nothings. Nobody shares my nothings.

How silly and inconsequential this seems. I would like to stop crying now.

I have a counselling appointment for the 22nd. The woman who called asked me questions, took down my doctor’s name, my pension number, my Medicare number. I truly hope she is not the counsellor, she had an awful, harsh voice, even though there was nothing wrong with her tone.

I wanted to think about the clock, and what that meant. I don’t understand the clock. I feel like I should put backlinks in these posts so what I am talking about makes some kind of sense. I don’t have the energy for that. Making sense is not the purpose. I should put a note on the sidebar, maybe, for strange visitors.

The clock. The clock makes no sense to me. A clock I hated, that made me feel burdened and overwhelmed, that would make sense. But a clock that stopped me in my tracks, that made me want it to be the first thing I saw when I woke up? I read somewhere that a clock can be a mandala, a symbol of the self, but I am struggling to read at the moment. I cannot concentrate. I skip whole passages, whole pages.

I think I need to work out why, at my lowest lowest point, my cry is always that “Nobody ever takes care of me.” I think that is true and untrue. I think that is true and untrue for everyone. Why do I reduce to that little girl voice? I’m going out the back to eat worms?

I thought I should read about The Orphan archetype but I don’t have all my books. And the web is useless. I think Jung is really helpful, but he does attract the crazies. And he’s not easy. Everything gets simplified and misinterpreted. Jung is buried very deep in the psyche of the internet. I can’t find it.

And my eyes are stinging. And I am tired. And I am stupid. And I want so much to write something useful to myself and this all seems so useless. I don’t think I will read it. I will just post it. I’ll read what I said tomorrow. I guess nothing is useless.