April 25th - Crux
Sometimes there comes a point in life, where all things seem to co-exist in some kind of chaotic horde, at least for me, there has come that point. When all the details and elements in life swirl about in some kind of chaotic monstrosity. When you move beyond overwhelmed and into a darker place, brain and body and psyche - rebelling.
Different things happen for different people in that place, things we lump under various labels of mental health - or lack there of - stress, depression, break-down. Break it down now.
It's like the creative force and the destructive force in the universe, two sides of chaos, rumble around in some kind of half-hazard dance in your being, and in that constant motion, oddly enough, you feel almost frozen.
Crazy places... and you ask yourself, what is normal, what is functional... does everyone find themselves here at some point? and for those that don't vacation in the darker realms of mental health, are they really better off? better people? happier? more.. normal?. We aspire to control, to calm, to sane, rational, and smooth flow... and when the waters of our soul become turbulent, possibly violent, maybe frozen over in catatonic disassociation... what then? Do we come less beautiful, society wants our psyches to be still pools, calm waters, gently lapping waves.
I'm a little lost right now, in my own ocean... but in some ways there is the odd security, that no matter how lost you are in your own mind and spirit, in some ways... you always know where you are.
So as I'm sitting here, in a more lucid moment of my recent emotional chaotica (copyright that sucker too.. happy word) I wonder what exactly has prompted me to go slumming in my darkest emotional projects? When things in my life, were starting to reach the potential of fulfilling all my dreams, when I felt I was potentially getting closest to emotional success.. what drives the fear of failure into sabotage mode? Why is it when you have the farthest to fall, that you decide maybe you should lean over the edge just as far as you can and see what happens?
Why is it... when we get close to death, that sometimes we feel the most alive... and when we have the potential to have the most in life, that we may fixate on death?
And we all live so constrained and trapped in our own little selfish heads. As much as love, and give, and listen, and be empathic for other people... there is always the self we're filtering it through.
One of my professors in one of my psych classes once made a reference to some classical written work talking about depression which metaphorically referred to depression as a companion, in terms of the 'black dog of depression' and at the time I thought... well better the black dog of depression as a companion than the taupe gerbil of normalcy/conformity.
Lets not get entirely the wrong idea here. I'm not someone living in a constant state of dysphoria, I don't have chronic depression. Those who know me well, and have known me for most of my life, or a fair chunk of it would likely characterize me as a happy, functional, well balanced, productive individual. I'm usually focused, goal oriented, and achieving, (over- achieving) a phenomenal amount in my life, both on an external and internal level. In fact, most of my life, most of my time, I'm supporting other people, in myriads of ways, strong. My family doctor, when I collapsed in emotional puddles on the floor of her office, talked about it being not uncommon, for people like me, people who provide care for others, and who she described as a 'leadership personality' to have moments in life, when they cease to cope. Maybe I save up all my dysfunction for big eventful emotional collapses, rebuild to stronger places, and repeat the process... maybe I should chart the events. Seismic graphing of emotional overloads.
This has been my worst.. worst... 'episode'? break down? quickest, hardest, fastest fall, most rapid escalation into feeling out of control. Darkest place I've been before. Though in this little pity party I'm having in my head, different parts of me sit in attendance, and some of them feel like its all some unreal game, and I ask myself 'Katt, Katt... what are you playing at now?' ' What high drama is this' 'You CAN'T be serious'... 'Do you seriously want to see just how badly you can fuck things up?'
When you stand still, in an evolving universe, you fall behind. On the other hand, sometimes, you've got to stop and take a little rest. Trusting that your place in the pattern is going to hold. Some things, will have sped by, some things won't rest with you, won't wait it out, other things will. I'm on medical stress leave, and sorting out the details of that, and my job, likely won't be waiting for me.. but that's not necessarily a bad thing, I know I need to do something different in that regard. The website, which has been suffering, is fading slowly, and depending how long I'm resting for... how many of you are hanging in here waiting for it to pick up again, it may or may not be waiting for me to pick up with again. Though I'm not going to give up on it.. going to rebuild. I love this place. The people in my life... so far so good. I know with Wolfe, who has been through hell with me before, that when I come out on the other side of this, we'll be stronger than ever. barbie... I worry about that situation, here I am taking the 'rest break' of my life, in the emotional gutter, and well, quite frankly at my 'most fucked up', and she hasn't known me long. Though really, in some ways that's the crux of my 'crash' in some ways.
barbie to me, feels like potential completion for me, in so many areas of my life, fits, so well into so many things I have wanted for so long. The concept of 'family' that I've so long wanted, come closer to me than ever before. And so much more than that... If I look back, as far as I can go in my life, and look at all the hurts I've had, big and small, the things that I've really felt have wounded me, friendships, relationships, family issues, dreams unfulfilled, fantasies left incomplete, so many of my strongest desires, deepest yearnings, things I've always known I've wanted, things I even hid from myself... all that, and more, and more still. I see all those things healed, completed, filled.. potentially, with barbie. It's like she flows into all those places in me that remain empty. When we connect, and flow, together, and things are good.. they are so very good, so amazingly happy, so light, so easy, so natural. The fear factor, for that, is overwhelming. It's like being born with low level pain, and events in your life, increasing it, over the years, until it continues to build, like a crippling disease... all your life. This building pain, pain and a maddening itch, and you start to think, you're never going to have any relief, there's no cure, the pain is just going to keep building, the itch is going to never be scratched, your never going to have any relief, never feeling like you could rest totally, that you could even be fully who you were, but you keep hoping and praying that somehow, it's going to stop, that you can be free of it, because without hoping, what else is there.. and then overnight, your presented with 'the cure' you know it's there, you believe, really believe, that it exists, that it's just there in front of you. But your not 100% sure. It's like, all the best scientists have put this thing together, and you can look at it and think, this is going to do it for me. But what if? what if it doesn't work? Then if you take it, and it fails.. if that perfect cure, fails...
Some may ask, well what do you have to lose? Try, give it your all, what else is there to hope for? Exactly, the truth is, you lose what's been keeping you alive.. if it doesn't work, you'd lose the hope.
So what kind of idiot have I been.. am I going to plunge in and give it a try, am I going to push it away and delay and hope...I don't know how much sense my crazy analogy is making, makes sense to me though.
I'm afraid, frozen, hoping, waiting, the universe is evolving around me... I'm in pain, burning, yearning... with a maddening itch. Potentially moving into being the happiest, and most whole, most complete, healthiest I've ever been... or, or maybe stuck here, left behind.
XO
Katt