Therapy

Another day another tumble of random thoughts that need to shifted through and disposed of, some far easier than others. I came out of the hospital today having just missed a bus and in the old days I would have just walked home, now disinterest seems to be the order of the day if I can come up with an excuse I will, it does indeed seem to be the order of the day. One good thing that did come out of it all, I got to sit and watch the view from the hospital, looking across the valley at the new style of windmills that seem to pop up everywhere, thankfully gently spinning, taking me away from the miserable thoughts that now seem to flood back in from the basement up on a daily basis!

Big hulking shapes that move with a grace that nobody would believe, spinning always in control, not judging themselves in any way, just turning, going through the motions doing what they do, I’m aware that I have a number of small walks that I do allegedly for exercise, although I feel I should probably do a lot more, however I neither have the ability or the inclination. Every walk has windmills at some point and usually that is my resting point, in some weird way they sooth the savage beast, stop me feeling the anger and resentment that seems to be close all the time, anger and resentment that seems to pointed in over, it would appear I am overly critical of myself with unimaginably high standards, standards that I’m not aware until they pointed out and I then slap my fore head like a docile Homer Simpson, something that is obviously so easy to spot by other people, why can’t I? (Is this me with high standards again?) I sit and try and second guess every waking decision that I make (and some that I make when I’m sleeping) picking at things that I say and do, looking at the rest of the world with spiteful eyes, hating that I can’t figure out my next move, when in all honestly it’s as simple as going from point A to B!

Resentful that other people can enjoy life, when all I seem to be doing is causing abject misery to myself and who knows what to my immediate family, god knows what my kids have thought over the years, do we get Mr Misery or something approaching useable, my wife sometimes gives me that look “oh here we go again” and I really don’t understand how she puts up with the mood swings, I know everybody has them, I’m not stupid (contrary to what I feel about myself) but sometimes I bet she feels like pushing me from a fast moving car, at times I try to deflect my bad moods with what I perceive as humour, others see it as sarcasm (and I don’t see it until too late) just to deflect whatever attention is being focused on me, so consequently when my friends notice that I’m doing it, they are more astute and know when to leave me alone, this is not always a winning solution as it usually sends me on a downward spiral far quicker than I would normally do so, left to my own devices self-pity will always rise to the surface and take over.  

Anger isn’t far from the surface either, anger with myself not angry as in a violent way, but the kind that surfaces when you can’t verbalise something, when all you want to do is let loose some kind of Primal Scream! Just scream until the emotion is out in the wide world scream until my lungs are ragged because I have abused them, so that I feel like I have been running a marathon and not caring about the end result. After anger then along comes resentment again mainly of myself, and that at the age of nearly 50 I have a child like ability to reduce myself to just these two emotions, neither productive, exactly the opposite and I feel my little black cloud sitting somewhere in the background just laughing at me, waiting for the opportunity to really make me suffer, although in reality it’s no black cloud, it’s me doing all of this to  myself, nobody else, but I have no chance of pushing these emotions away they swamp me and I just buckle at the first assault, empty of any true feeling, when the anger and resentment go what am I left with? Despair is the word I would use to describe it (look it up it’s rather apt), a total blackness that nothing can pull me back from, at this point I get emotional and freak everybody out, and at this moment in time I have very little within myself to combat these feelings, they are just there daring me to do something about it.

I haven’t wrote much this last fortnight, and to be honest I would not be happy putting my thoughts to paper, in the wrong hands there would be the possibility of a funny jacket that ties at the back, as I always state (to myself and anybody who thinks that I could harm myself) I have no desire to harm myself (or anyone else for that matter) in any way shape or form, but putting the worst of my thoughts down on the written page might make others think otherwise, writing sometimes brings me a kind of sweet relief it allows some kind of light to seep in through the edges of wherever I am. My treatment has brought forward other things to the fore front of my mind, stuff that I have thrown to the back of my mind then forced the rest of the world to sit on them, little details that for some reason that I can’t seem to let go, do they mean anything? no not really they are just there, someone shouting for a medic (three times) the scramble of feet over gravel (I so don’t like that sound) a hospital bed with sunlight streaming through windows, straps on my wrists, a man removing said straps but not looking at me directly, they all float in and out of my view without warning and just disappearing because they can, the passage of time (?)  Something that I have always been obsessed with! other obscure feelings that at this moment don’t make any sense, they float towards the front of my thought process and then disappear just as quick, not leaving any imprint, just a misery that leaves nothing but confusion on my fried brain.

Sometimes I can write four or five thousand words long hand then rewrite them long hand (simply to bring some kind of cohesion to my thoughts) before typing them and reworking them trying to erase the black emotions, almost as if I can remove them from the page, I can remove them from me, it rarely works although the process does have a kind of soothing feeling to it. I have been known to write seventeen thousand words just a stream of consciousness of pure drivel no train of thought just every weird emotion on to the written page, writing until there is nothing left, emotionally drained, less than a tenth of it in any way useable, but when you read it back you know that it’s something that you don’t want to rework or rewrite purely because it wouldn’t be healthy for you to, again nothing that would cause physical pain to myself or anyone else, but they aren’t fit for human consumption, the sensation of tearing them up or dumping from the computer’s memory is sort of satisfying, thankfully that happens rarely and although I don’t feel better at that moment in time , because I’m emotionally drained I feel very little for a period of time so thank god for small mercies!

Sunshine has been the order of the day and on days like these I feel as though I don’t belong, I feel totally disconnected to other people, everybody seems to revel in the good weather, I just want to retreat into darker surroundings, I feel less inclined to do things that are outside, I feel less inclined to want to mix, feel less inclined to try and climb out of my apathetic state of mind, I actually used to be quite a busy person always doing something, now if I could do nothing all day I would, that is not good for me or anyone else. But when I feel this way I don’t care for anybody but myself and my stupid thoughts. My inability to sort these emotions are again my inability to grant myself the same standard that I allow for others, surely I should have a higher standard for myself wanting to do better for myself, although it appears that it actually has a negative approach so again more work for myself to apply to myself.

Panic is a mood that isn’t very far from me, usually when my black moods are swirling around me like some kind of whirling dervish, causing me to struggle emotionally, causing me to struggle with breathing, generally pushing me to run away from everything that really wants to help (friends and family) I know people want to help me, but I feel like a drowning man who is far too stubborn to ask for help (these people have their own problems without having to deal with mine). Panic stumbles into helplessness which turns back to despair and my black cloud wins, I lose the ability to want to do anything, help myself, to please others, I want to drown myself in dark thoughts and food. The longer my treatment goes on the more I stay away from alcohol, is this me doing something sensible? I have no idea but the thought of time in a pub feels completely alien to me at this moment in time.

Food isn’t doing me any good I’m aware of that, I can’t exercise so I can rid myself of any excess weight (although when I am eating I am more inclined to be disinterested, a vicious circle with only one loser) dark thoughts take over and sometimes I find myself looking for something to eat (I never seem to over indulge in anything healthy) a form of self-abuse that seems to more evident to me, but I seem powerless to have the ability to do anything about it! one that if my wife were there, she would stop me dead in my tracks, although why I feel the need at this point to have a chaperone for something as simple as food escapes me, I’m less inclined to leave the house for any reason and it’s getting harder for me to even want to go to what appears to be my one place of sanctuary which is work! somewhere I can just lose myself and switch off to the rest of the outside world, the numbing effect has worn off and again disinterest rises with regular monotony, which is not good when you are the only wage earner in the family and the family does rely on you!

I don’t like myself ,this is something that has surfaced a lot later in life than I’m aware of, it’s something that wasn’t there five years ago, if it was, I wasn’t aware of it! It’s something I don’t really understand, I have no comprehension why this has festered like an old wound, how could I allow something like this to get a hold, I know I have never been the person out front leading the charge, I have never had tons of friends and I had no issue with that, but of late it is like picking at a scab, again is this those incredibly high standards kicking in or just something else I can torture myself with? As if I have to torture myself with anything else. I have to question what has caused all of these issues,  no matter how I write this it always seems trivial, so please be aware that I am writing this as I feel at this moment my interpretation changes on a daily basis, 30 plus years ago an incident happened to me that lasted only a few seconds in the grand scheme of things, those few seconds have skewed the way I have dealt with life the universe and everything going on from that moment, I am being stupid and I know I just didn’t process it correctly at the time. I understand that I have no problem with that, it’s the inability to process all this time later that I don’t comprehend. The world works in black and white or so I thought, now that view is being shattered on a regular basis and I don’t know how to deal with all the shades of grey that I have to deal with.

One little incident, one that I relive or rather the six minutes in the run up to it then ……nothing almost like trying to tune an old TV into a distant station sometimes getting the signal but getting more static than anything else, not too bad it’s only six minutes, I mean what’s six minutes, but this something has ran continually since the incident more than 30 years ago, that’s 240 times a day! That’s nearly 88000 times a year for thirty plus years, the math in itself is frightening, not being able to turn it off, normally always crystal clear HD quality just running through what essentially turned my life upside down, going from being (allegedly) a normal person to the person I am today, some people might be thinking I’m making a mountain out of a mole hill and to most people I appear to be a normal person who is just whinging because they can, I will just point them in the direction of the friends who at some point have had to deal with a gibbering wreck or my wife who sometimes feels like she is dealing with a three year old with a stubborn streak the width of the grand canyon, again the default position is self-depreciating humour, that some people just look on with pity on their faces and as always I feel powerless to do anything about.

I don’t like myself and it feels like a muscle that is being worked on and exercised regularly so as to make it stronger, I have no idea how to deal with this, I have no quick witted response and I can’t answer it, my wife and I try and talk about my issues in my more lucid moments, but I have no idea why this has appeared, the look on my wife’s face when this rears its ugly head is more soul destroying than anything else, again giving it more power over me, another struggle that I am slowly losing the will to be bothered to battle against. Sometimes the easiest thing would just be to walk away, just leave the people who I am hurting and its soul destroying that I am inflicting this pain on people who I love, to walk away from friends family and this area that I live in, just to have no connection, that the seems to be the easiest solution the one that offers the easiest way away from the issues of hurting everybody else, just go and live rough, would it be tough yes on everybody involved, but in time it could fade like any scar seems to do for other people, I could carry my scars and deal with them, or at least attempt to without that daily grind as to how my family and loved ones do now!

I feel as though I have missed out on so much, as though I have gone through life not noticing anything, do I love my family? Yes I do I believe they have brought me a stability I never thought I could ever achieve through all the good times as well as bad, but through time I feel like a satellite falling from the heavens back to earth with bits being dragged from me and the approaching impact (no matter how far in the distance is) lends a sense of impending doom, just waiting for me to fold my arms and close my eyes and await said impact, it’s this I dread, the impact, for everybody else I’m sure this would be so much the answer, as always I have no care for myself, something that I have no answer for I know it’s wrong, I know there are people who have feelings for me as I do for them, but I do not like myself and struggle to  grasp the concept why do they?

Music has been a great saviour, changing my moods bringing back to the face of humanity that many times I don’t feel, sometimes something depressing (musically can bring me back to a level of normal, different things for different people, I don’t want to be like everybody else, I just want to be me without any of the extra baggage that I have never required. Music helps me dissolve those emotions. As it does for many others a good song can lift you higher than a mountain, I have never had a song make me feel depressed that in itself is a good thing. Music has always been my escape, even though I can’t sing or play an instrument, I can write words and have done so accordingly (admittedly many years ago) I don’t miss those days, times changes everything and we all need to move on, this is one of the reasons that I cannot grasp or understand why I can’t let this memory go and why it rules the roost and drags me down this road to ruin!

Now as I look at the time and darkness that is everywhere I realise that I have written and rewritten this a number of times, restructuring what I feel inside, trying to be a more open person and not trying to burden anybody else, I understand when I am in these moods I do nothing else but burden everybody again a vicious circle, my intention is to keep a low profile and try not to impact others, but I also realise that this over six hours of writing, long hand, scribbled, long hand, neat(ish) long hand removing altogether some parts that do not make me happy, typed, typed restructured, and this has been  me in a better place than normal, when I write I move away from everybody else I don’t wish to connect, I want the isolation that comes with the writing like a cloak to pull  over myself, I’m aware that my writing style is sometime flowery,  but the words have a soothing effect and I would rather write 3000 plus words than sit gobbling down whatever medication usually offered in this situation.