I am writing today. I’ve been in a pretty dark headspace, one of those “nothing means anything, and nothing is going to fix that” spots that I get in. The old big sad, in a particularly high level of intensity. When you wonder where in life there is any possibility of joy or fulfillment, and you can’t seem to recall when there ever was, the type of dread that cannot be reasoned with by presenting factual information or any kind of logic. I would think of all the unsuccessful ways I would look to fill this dark hole, and how none of them worked. I thought about money, I thought about sex, obviously I thought about drugs. I considered the decades-long hope that modern psychiatry might have an answer, and the times I even turned to prayer. My mind has this knack for making something like a rough mood cycle feel like the new permanent reality without any hope. When you feel like this, you’d do pretty much anything not to. Whenever someone commits suicide, the people around them can’t seem to wrap their heads around it, but it makes perfect sense to me. I’m not saying I’m going to climb into a bag of dope or eat a bullet, I’m just examining the proximity of those thoughts to my mental position.
I can remember the distinct feeling of times when I had been able to find something like meaning in the void of nothingness in the practice of self-expression. So I parked myself at this keyboard, with nowhere to be and nothing else to do for a good few hours. Despite the fact that I can’t stand myself, I know that if there is something I can do with some level of proficiency, it is reporting from inside the mind of someone with a mood disorder and a penchant for using any means to escape some of its phases, no matter the consequences. I don’t think it’s unique to want to be seen, heard, and understood. There are many people who go through similar experiences who either can’t articulate what it’s like or are afraid to. There is something meaningful in trying to describe pain that seems beyond description, it does something for me. I’m going to go out on a limb and consider that it could do something for someone else. One of the worst parts of feeling the way I’ve been feeling is the fact that you feel completely alone with it. I don’t have any inspirational messages today, but maybe someone will read this someday and realize they aren’t alone.
It was an absolute chore to write this, and it took me at least an hour to get to this sentence. I don’t know if my mind is going to kill me, but I’m more than confident it isn’t going to kill me today.
I have therapy at 2:30, by the way.
