"And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights
unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding
have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains,
though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self
you would discard that you may become free?"
[Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet"]

The January temp job fell through. I've recently become very ill with the flu. Friends have arrived in town from out of province, and I'm glad to get to spend time with them again. My life is in a turbulent time, and yet not so turbulent as my soul itself.

As badly as I need my rest to kick this flu, I awoke in the early hours of morning today gripped in what I can only describe as an anxiety attack. I can't say with certainty it was one, since I don't know what technically constitutes one. I've never been diagnosed as having such things before, but then, I'm sure I'd be diagnosed as equally brilliant and insane if I were ever subjected to clinical observation. I've elected to avoid such scrutiny.

I awoke gripped in fear of not finding a job before I went broke. No amount of logic, no calculation or self-assurance could convince my fixated mind to let its pit-bull-maw grip on my joblessness relax long enough just to get a few more hours of much-needed rest so that I might at least face the day able to breath again. I ran over in my mind how I could probably survive a few months after UI runs out before I'll be broke. I ran over ways I could step up the job search and people to whom I could talk. I ran over alternatives for my life if a few months pass and I find myself still without work. But nothing I could tell myself could shake me from the grip of fear that had set upon me. I tossed and turned. I coughed and hacked and wheezed. Oddly, my lungs were actually clearer in those moments than they've been in days. (And I'm sure there's some clever medical explanation for that, if I were curious enough to research it.)

With much struggle, I drifted in and out many times over the next few hours. Finally, at about 2pm, I arose. I've reorganized my online job search links. I searched them all. I drafted a cover letter and printed a resume for one job for which to apply (all I found through all that searching, and I'm horribly unqualified). Tomorrow I'll mail it. Shamefully, I probably did more for job searching today than any entire week over the past number of months, and I did it all in the matter of a few hours. I loathed every minute, and it was a struggle. And I know how easy it should be. And I know I should have been doing it long ago. I know it should have been a daily habit some many months ago. But it is not. I must struggle to make it one, if I can, and while I'm sure any reader of mine can sit back and see it as something requiring little real effort just to get that far, I don't know that anyone will ever understand how it is that I find it so daunting.

I believe it is like a phobia, and that this phobia stems from that self-same thing that all my phobias and virtually my entire personality derives: control, or lack theirof. There's so little you can do. It's like shooting in the dark. You get only faint glimpses of distant possibilities, take aim, and hope to at least come close. People much less capable than I, whom I've never met and might not meet, hold my future in their hands, my livelihood, my life. You can spend all day explaining to an arachnophobe that tiny spiders cannot hurt them, but it means nothing. It's not about logic. If it were, I'd have resolved it long ago.

On another front, I'm uncertain what the situation with Carol will bring. I'm not certain of what I'd like it to bring. I lack the strength or mood right now to give it any valid amount of consideration (in light of my more pressing fears), which is horribly unfair of me, I suppose. I don't intend to hurt her, but I imagine it's difficult for her to be friends with someone whose greatest contribution to the experience can only be described as indifference, and that's basically what she faces from me right now. Granted, we'd agreed not to take it too seriously, since neither of us feels our life is ready for a relationship right now, but I still think I'm giving her less than she was expecting. I also fear that in time, when each of us feels differently, the changes of heart may be in opposite directions. I guess only time will tell.

Between friends, women, work, and the oft-dreaded holiday season, times like these remind me of a simple thing about myself that I don't much like: that I hold the world in contempt. Well, perhaps not all of it, but most. Let's say all but maybe a couple of dozen people? It's a disturbing fact about myself I've come to grips with a little lately. I'm that much of a snob. I consider frighteningly very few people my equals. And that's why I resent being at their mercy. There's a fine line between confidence and arrogance, and I think that fine line is a good hundred feet behind me. My egotism knows few bounds. I worry about the day too many people realize this and despise me for it. They will resent my unspoken condemnation, and perhaps without understanding that it doesn't keep me from loving them. It's not even specific people, really. I just hate the world at large. That's my default position. I love and respect only those I've chosen to let close to me, the ones I found worthy of my friendship and admiration. My respect is not given freely. It can only be earned.

So like some tragic Shakespearean villain, I sit in solitude in the ivory tower of my mind's own devising, resentful of myself for building it, and resentful of the world for making it somehow necessary. But I lived here before, in the past, and I somehow found a way out. I ventured into the outdoors and let the sun shine on my face. I just have to find that exit again.

I told myself a long time ago, that I wasn't going to write in my negativity. I wanted to break the cycle of negative expression. But expressed or not, the feelings remain, and it's far more relieving to let the demons out than to keep them in check. Given how little I write when I am determined to only write happy thoughts, it strikes me as one grand lie of omission. There is no shadow without light. There is no light without shadow. If only I could teach the world the duality of Yin and Yang, reading of my pain might be properly tempered with remembrance of my joy.

I think the exit must be near the floor of the basement; I seem to recall kicking the darkness.