the joy of closing doors
(or: allting som jag vill, kan jag gora!)
wednesday, january 16, 2002
i just woke up this morning feeling great. things just seemed so clear, so obvious. of course! when parts of your life inexplicably suck, you actually have the option of cutting them out! d'oh! enter feeling of purposeful serenity.
the past 3-5 months or so, when i've been spending a lot of time inside my usual bowl of suck, i felt like i lost track of everything. being depressing for extended periods of time always end up launching all sorts of whacky attempts at defeating it, and then they backfire, and i sink deeper into the suck.
being diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder was really a big thing. suddenly, there was a name for what i've been feeling the past 5-7 years. but with a name comes learning about the condition in detail. and once you learn about what you have, you begin to investigate how to "cure" it. and then it's supposed to leave, right?
the first few weeks, i became oddly upbeat about it all. and then a big glop of depression clung to my skull. again. and i was so disheartened. because i realized that just because i know what's wrong, and what can alleviate it, it doesn't automatically make it go away. it's still there, with the difference that i can address it on a first-name basis. beh.
it's uncomfortable to know that i cannot will myself out of feeling crap. i'm grateful for the days when i forget about it, but it ultimately sinks my heart into my knees when i wake up and it's there again, the heaviness and sleepiness and whatnot.
being around people i feel comfortable with does not remove it, but it surpresses it. when i'm alone and find myself anxiety ridden, i draw intricate patterns on wherever i can reach to zone out in a similar fashion. if i can just find a dot to focus on, then i can forget and trick myself into calming down.
but what the heeeelll! i've spent the past few months deluding myself a bit, grasping onto the idea that i don't want to spend a lot of time alone anymore, that somehow company, any company, would fix things. and so i've extended hands, bended and twisted around people like the clingy vine i can be, and i've smiled and listened and spent time on them.
and then i woke up and realized i was being an idiot. hello! suddenly it just dawned on me--the anxiety i've felt lately have not been my usual companion. noooo. i've been spending hours analyzing and adjusting to these new people to a point where i'm in a whole new state of constant anxiety. and they all sucked, anyway. i was grasping after complete fuckwits, and in effect, being a fuckwit myself. feh!
i prefer to choose my poison, thank you very much, and choosing between my random everyday anxiety, and this energy-sucking monster that's getting way out of hand--back to normal, thank you!
remember venom? the alien that pretended to be spiderman's new costume and turned out to be an entity on it's own? that's what it feels like--as if i've been enveloped in this suffocating, black goop, clogging my every pore and clinging to my skin ever so tightly.
no more. at least not if i can help it. :)
because i realised that things did not suck this much before my little social experiment. because i have a few constants in my life that brings me immense joy. can you grasp that concept? i have joy in my life! as corny as it sounds, it just did not seem to be there before. but there it is.
it's there in my few, but very dear friends. i don't care how sporadic my communcation with them is. i have been able to form strong friendships where i've least expected it. and i really do think that if i've been able to do that more than once, then it's likely it will happen again.
no more of this pathetic grovveling to mold reluctant slugs into forced friendships. it's not how any of my close friendships began--they just.. happened. like that. snap of fingers and voila. and maybe it will happen again, and maybe it won't, but the point is--it did. it have. and that counts for a tremendous lot.
so i'm closing some doors. retracting and curling back inside my tight self. no more feeling foolish. no more of this pathetic energy that goes into trying to decypher messages. i don't need it anymore.
my world is shrinking a bit, but inside my world i feel larger than in a long time. it's a world with people that do not pretend, or try to manipulate. they just are. and they like me. they do! and they understand the joy of music, and movies, and books, and discussing winona ryder, all at the same time. and i don't have to suck my stomach in. or overlook disturbing clashes in personality.
i know this will not erradicate my medical (mental) problems. but at least whatever i feel from now on is once again stemming from myself, and not from strained, puzzling experiences with newbies. yeeey!
this entry brought to you by the letter j and the number 1. cin cin! (i'm in a hakan hellstrom fever again! new hakan-ep jan. 21st! i must somehow get my claws on it, or i will disintegrate at the seams of my unhappiness! yey, drama! and this is still one of my favorite days out of my life. hee.) �� 8:28 p.m.
