I promised I’d come back to continue Fridays post. Experienced something like falling off the wagon. Derailed my whole mode let alone my train of thought.
Anxiety attacks again. Just exposing myself too much. Sure enough I did just go to bed about 6pm and stayed there until 2.30pm the following day.
We’ve got guests staying at the moment and that has bought more drama and stress than I needed. I’m bored of life but any IRL drama is just triggering all out terror.
Since I mentioned dialectics in the previous post, it’s something that is on my mind all the time now. Anything that can be good in life can turn bad from another angle. There is nothing left in the world that is a guaranteed good.
Anything that helps one minute can hurt the next. Can be turned against you. Most people can deal with it fairly comfortably but my brain just can’t be flexible enough.
Avoiding blackness is all that matters but I can’t see beyond it. As everyone knows fantasy works best when it’s got a basis in reality. I lost the ability to mix the two and now I’m stuck between oscillating black reality and white fantasy that does nothing to help me in reality.
Always looking to reconnect internally and rejoin the different sides of myself again, get them working together.
The questions I have to ask myself and the choices I have to make are not clear. But the questions I have to ask are really how I’m going to get the answers I desperately need.
The previous life I miss so much, that’s fine for the time being. There’s nothing wrong with trying to regain it but I have to be honest and say that it’s up to me to actually do something in reality and not just refuse to let go of the past.
Actually live in the present among the real world without retriggering the same old wounds. Without being overwhelmed by the same old blackness.
Aside from the fact that I need to keep my boundaries up against the blackness, I need space and light to operate in. To engage in something that I actually love but not let that love become imprisoned within a wall of darkness.
To find a love that can’t ever be subverted.
To what extend has my own struggle made me more empathetic to the struggles of others? Little it seems so long as my own continue to overwhelm me. I can only empathise with what I see and I stopped seeing other people.
I’ve been watching a lot of Blade Runner reactions on YT in preparation for having another go at the video game. I’m reminded of how much I love the philosophical thought provoking sci-fi.
Something I never really considered before is how the replicants in the movie reflect my own underdeveloped emotional responses. They are portrayed very child like but with extraordinary abilities and ruthless motivations that can come across as intimidating.
In the original novel they were written as inhuman emotionless robots as a metaphor for Nazi concentration camp guards. In the film they have developed emotions that are new to them and feel very raw and animalistic.
In both of course, they are hated for who they are and hunted to extinction.
I’d love to write something like it but I think I struggle with creative writing because it doesn’t feel like it’s anchored in any reality. Just pure escapist fantasy.
There’s no limit to absolute freedom but I live such stringent logic that freedom is one of the scariest things.
Plus I need to be in a particular head space to actually sit down and write. To be comfortable where I am and be motivated to do something useful.
It is time to fundamentally change my entire daily routine. To do what is good and healthy. To keep myself in physical shape and be healthy enough to function in the real world. To touch grass as the saying goes and engage in the real world while but to keep doing things I actually enjoy.
It’s always been difficult to find people who really share my interests. What I’ve learnt is how bad it is to lose yourself when trying to find love.
Actually sharing my life with someone and them sharing their lives with me was everything I wanted in life and it remains that way even now. I knew I wasn’t really ready. I know that I always pushed people away when things don’t go the way the way I want.
Pushed people away as soon as the blackness comes. And once it arrives I feel how much of myself I’ve already lost.
I need to be more realistic about who I actually am but I can’t help the fact that I’m not inspired by what’s realistic. Not inspired by anyone who says “you just gotta be yourself”. But then maybe that’s just because I never had the confidence to actually do it.
It feels so simple and easy to just “be yourself”. Yet it was never easy for me and seeing other people do it just makes me feel like I just don’t belong.
Being yourself feels like an illusion anyway. Who the hell actually knows who you really are? How the hell do you know if anyone is actually being themselves? I know I don’t trust people because I only know masking and hiding. I only know secretive, manipulative behaviour because it’s how I learned to deal with the world.
How I learned to protect myself when no one else could.
I want to escape the trap I’m stuck in but I don’t want to face up to the work I need to do. My actions have told me that the desire to stay in the familiar groove has always trumped the desire to be confident and successful.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s the external influences in my life that keep me from flourishing. But then I’ve never ever done a good job when on my own. Because when I’m on my own I’m looking to someone else for guidance.
How can I listen to my own voice when it produces so much darkness? How I can stop the voice from producing darkness? How can I connect the real world with positivity and confidence when I’m not in control of my own emotional darkness?
Sometimes you just have to tell yourself that things are ok. Despite all the darkness, things can be ok because you just get through it. Do what you have to protect yourself and live to fight another day.
The same ruthless high standards I set are the same forces that keep me fighting for a better future.
It’s time to work smart rather than hard and actually be effective in making things better. Time to recognise that some things that aren’t fun to do are actually beneficial and worth doing.
Who knows, may be I can make these things fun somehow. To be fun, they need to not be a fucking struggle.
I think I should realise at this point, that the urge to be a good person in all circumstances is not actually what makes me happy. But then I always preferred to be good than happy.
I don’t think anyone can really call their lives a good life without taking sufficient joy for the sake of being a happy human.
Breaking free of the self-imposed prison should be the happiest day of my life but it all comes down to me and if I can do what I need to do.
As long as I can actually believe that I can and will make myself happy then all will be well. Even if that means finding the right people to find friendships or deeper relationships.
Anxiety still is that sense that things aren’t ok. As a physiological response that doesn’t switch off easily, the hardest thing in the world for people like me, is just to feel ok.
Where’s that rational problem solver gone? Where has the human self gone? Buried by the black flood of trauma response.
The solution lies among the stuff I haven’t tried yet or the stuff I haven’t given enough commitment to. But I do not and never have doubted that there is a solution waiting to be found.
Theory and practise. Dialectics and praxis. As good as it is to feel human and feel emotions, nothing you want will ever happen without theory and practise.
I’ve thought long and hard about whether to stop blogging for the sake of taking action but the answer is a resounding no.
This is where I do the thinking required.
The only choice to make is the big one. Do I keep running away and making excuses or do I fucking do something to turn my life around? It takes strength and courage and I keep telling myself it’s too hard. There’s no point. It won’t work.
Other people can and would love to help me but they haven’t been able to touch the deeply ingrained voice of defeat. This is something only I can do anything about.
I make no promises now that I can follow my own advice. But I’m only going to succeed by trying.
I hope this marks the end of this chapter and the beginning of a new one. But I will never stop.
Kindest Regards as always xx
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