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Titles are hard when they're all variations on "ways I am sad": houseguests; media consumption
CW for ridiculous melodrama re: mental illness, grieving; also some discussion of suicidal ideation.
Everything that can go wrong does go wrong! There's some family drama on Devon's side and, as result, houseguests; I have been trying to know as little as possible because there's nothing I could do with the information anyway and I already have enough to deal with. But it has absolutely been aggravating my agoraphobia, which was just about the only mental illness that wasn't acting up more than baseline.
I've always been a little in love with temporary scarcity (like power outages, like childhood illness: that feeling of being slightly inconvenienced in a way that removes you from daily life & its expectations, and so secretly feels like an indulgence); I've always been convinced of the messages I internalized when I got sick, that I wanted to be miserable and was creating my illness as an excuse for histrionics and to escape the real world. At least for the present, those things are my coping mechanisms: being confined to a single room, not being able to make food, my sleep disrupted by outside noises and the anxiety they trigger, has become a sort of fever-dream of non-time; I eat when Devon's around, my sleep is broken and alternatively scarce and profoundly indulgent (entire days spent in and out of dozing), reality is a fiction. It's a relief to have things feel far away; to have a concrete shitty thing which is out of my control to use as an excuse to just ... stop trying.
I don't know how long that sense of escapism that can last—probably not very before it becomes claustrophobic. I also acknowledge that it's not healthy but, you know, I don't care. That sounds childish (and is!), but isn't glib: I believe there are bad and destructive coping mechanisms, but also that they are all coping mechanisms, all serving their purpose (if poorly, if with consequences), indicative of underlying issues & therefore in their way valid. Also that beggars can't be choosers; I will take all I can get, right now.
(I've been having some chronic pain issues—probably the result of broken sleep and now also contributing to it!—atop this, atop Dev's crazy busy schedule, atop my dad, atop being crazy; I keep feeling as if I've reached my limits and then something will push me further. I've been posting melodramatic quotes from gothic fairy stories:
#I ended up with conflicted feelings about this book—its inspirations and atmosphere are just fantastic #but the technical craft (plotting and language in particular) I think don't live up to that—I wanted to be swept away & was not quite #but it has some real damn good sections A++ #I've been having extra bonus chronic pain issues lately (b/c everything in this crapsack life that CAN go wrong IS going wrong) #and w/o an entire sob story I don't feel pain—just every co-morbid symptom & a lot of self-doubt #is the numbness a secret blessing OR proof that the pain doesn't actually exist; what even is chronic pain if I don't feel pain? #which is also ... how the sad feels rn; it's where I am in the grieving process: #it's so much more than my current capability that I'm not even sure I'm feeling it anymore; when is sad not sad but just ... status quo #or not even status quo; when does it just stop being real
because it's the best metaphor I have for this exhausted over-saturation of Just Really Bad Shit.)
I've also become hung up on the idea of things to do before I die—it's not even that I'm feeling my own morality: I think about death a lot because of my suicidal ideation, and have no fear or sense of loss regarding my own death. But I also cannot die right now because it would be a supremely shitty thing for my family (and I don't believe that a suicidal person should prioritize anyone else's bereavement over their own suffering—let me be explicit: I think guilt tripping mentally ill people is disgusting—but I recognize that, in this one specific, my pain is hugely outweighed my family's and my father's wellbeing), so I need something to fill my time. I'm not feeling my own urge to accomplish things things before I die, so much as ... sublimating my grief over what my father won't be able to achieve and turning it into things I can achieve.
Mental illness makes a lot of my bucket list (polyamorous found family! write a narrative, maybe a book? hospice or FIV+ cat care, own a Leonberger, etc.) impossible, personally or financially. That means that the vast majority of my actual bucket list is just media: my massive TBR, but also the surprising number of narratives I've been putting off because my preemptive feelings about them are overwhelming.
I feel so overwhelmed already that this is both the best and worst time to check off those things. I need the distraction, but have no concentration; I worry that I won't be able to enjoy the narratives I have the capacity to love, but what's a little self-sabotage compared to knowledge that one day we'll all die? So, in between strange and broken sleep, in between long periods spent staring into the middle distance, I'm reading a lot, rewatching Deep Space 9 (which is a post in and of itself, if only things cribbed from my tumblr; the show is so triggering and so cathartic and also a huge timesink; I'm not sure if watching it is a good idea, or if I'll ever be able to watch it again), catching up on the ridiculous but life-changing epic that is Critical Role now that the original series is complete, trying to check off these various things—things of all sort of scope and import, just stuff I've been holding on to, stories that were meant to be important to me, someday.
I have not been seeing my family nor my father near as much as I should.
Everything that can go wrong does go wrong! There's some family drama on Devon's side and, as result, houseguests; I have been trying to know as little as possible because there's nothing I could do with the information anyway and I already have enough to deal with. But it has absolutely been aggravating my agoraphobia, which was just about the only mental illness that wasn't acting up more than baseline.
I've always been a little in love with temporary scarcity (like power outages, like childhood illness: that feeling of being slightly inconvenienced in a way that removes you from daily life & its expectations, and so secretly feels like an indulgence); I've always been convinced of the messages I internalized when I got sick, that I wanted to be miserable and was creating my illness as an excuse for histrionics and to escape the real world. At least for the present, those things are my coping mechanisms: being confined to a single room, not being able to make food, my sleep disrupted by outside noises and the anxiety they trigger, has become a sort of fever-dream of non-time; I eat when Devon's around, my sleep is broken and alternatively scarce and profoundly indulgent (entire days spent in and out of dozing), reality is a fiction. It's a relief to have things feel far away; to have a concrete shitty thing which is out of my control to use as an excuse to just ... stop trying.
I don't know how long that sense of escapism that can last—probably not very before it becomes claustrophobic. I also acknowledge that it's not healthy but, you know, I don't care. That sounds childish (and is!), but isn't glib: I believe there are bad and destructive coping mechanisms, but also that they are all coping mechanisms, all serving their purpose (if poorly, if with consequences), indicative of underlying issues & therefore in their way valid. Also that beggars can't be choosers; I will take all I can get, right now.
(I've been having some chronic pain issues—probably the result of broken sleep and now also contributing to it!—atop this, atop Dev's crazy busy schedule, atop my dad, atop being crazy; I keep feeling as if I've reached my limits and then something will push me further. I've been posting melodramatic quotes from gothic fairy stories:
It is like poison. You drink it slowly, over time, and hopefully you will become used to it. Sip it. Every day, until your body is so used to dying a little at a time that it no longer feels the pain as pain, no longer recognises it because it is so good at hiding, at pretending. We are all dying slowly, a little more pain would make little difference. So every day, a tiny sip of death, embraced and savoured like life, like reality, like truth, like everything that is good and worthy and wonderful. It is like drinking shards of broken glass—fragments of a dream—so beautiful, what was once real, now broken, just cutting one up inside.
But you do, because you must, because one day you will be able to drink poison of broken glass and not feel it, not feel the pain, not feel anything, be able to say: "I have forgotten and this is no longer pain, because I feel it so much, because it is like second nature to me, as natural as breathing, and I no longer remember what it is like when it was whole, when I was not feeling this, when it doesn't run through me."
—Under the Pendulum Sun, Jeannette Ng
#I ended up with conflicted feelings about this book—its inspirations and atmosphere are just fantastic #but the technical craft (plotting and language in particular) I think don't live up to that—I wanted to be swept away & was not quite #but it has some real damn good sections A++ #I've been having extra bonus chronic pain issues lately (b/c everything in this crapsack life that CAN go wrong IS going wrong) #and w/o an entire sob story I don't feel pain—just every co-morbid symptom & a lot of self-doubt #is the numbness a secret blessing OR proof that the pain doesn't actually exist; what even is chronic pain if I don't feel pain? #which is also ... how the sad feels rn; it's where I am in the grieving process: #it's so much more than my current capability that I'm not even sure I'm feeling it anymore; when is sad not sad but just ... status quo #or not even status quo; when does it just stop being real
because it's the best metaphor I have for this exhausted over-saturation of Just Really Bad Shit.)
I've also become hung up on the idea of things to do before I die—it's not even that I'm feeling my own morality: I think about death a lot because of my suicidal ideation, and have no fear or sense of loss regarding my own death. But I also cannot die right now because it would be a supremely shitty thing for my family (and I don't believe that a suicidal person should prioritize anyone else's bereavement over their own suffering—let me be explicit: I think guilt tripping mentally ill people is disgusting—but I recognize that, in this one specific, my pain is hugely outweighed my family's and my father's wellbeing), so I need something to fill my time. I'm not feeling my own urge to accomplish things things before I die, so much as ... sublimating my grief over what my father won't be able to achieve and turning it into things I can achieve.
Mental illness makes a lot of my bucket list (polyamorous found family! write a narrative, maybe a book? hospice or FIV+ cat care, own a Leonberger, etc.) impossible, personally or financially. That means that the vast majority of my actual bucket list is just media: my massive TBR, but also the surprising number of narratives I've been putting off because my preemptive feelings about them are overwhelming.
I feel so overwhelmed already that this is both the best and worst time to check off those things. I need the distraction, but have no concentration; I worry that I won't be able to enjoy the narratives I have the capacity to love, but what's a little self-sabotage compared to knowledge that one day we'll all die? So, in between strange and broken sleep, in between long periods spent staring into the middle distance, I'm reading a lot, rewatching Deep Space 9 (which is a post in and of itself, if only things cribbed from my tumblr; the show is so triggering and so cathartic and also a huge timesink; I'm not sure if watching it is a good idea, or if I'll ever be able to watch it again), catching up on the ridiculous but life-changing epic that is Critical Role now that the original series is complete, trying to check off these various things—things of all sort of scope and import, just stuff I've been holding on to, stories that were meant to be important to me, someday.
I have not been seeing my family nor my father near as much as I should.