Well, it’s Friday again, but since I’m working tomorrow, this won’t be the last blog post of this week‒unless some catastrophe happens and I’m unable to write and/or work tomorrow. If something does happen, I hope it’s something that at least leaves me unconscious, possibly comatose, for however long it lasts. It would be annoying to be stuck in a situation where I was, for instance, in great pain and unable to work, but still didn’t get any rest from myself.
I occasionally think about seeking out one of those experimental depression treatments, like ketamine or psilocybin or summat. But I would be very nervous, especially about the psychedelic one. I tend at times to have weird reactions, or at least unusual ones, to neuro-active substances, and as you may or may not have realized, my mind is not my friend. I feel quite nervous that I would start a treatment like psilocybin and be stuck in a longish “bad trip”, which I know can literally last for hours and subjectively last interminably.
Of course, I frankly wouldn’t know where to seek out such a thing, anyway, and even if I did know, I don’t think I could force myself to go and seek it out, just on my own. I can’t even work up the will to change the inner tube on the front tire of my bike. I’ve been perusing electric scooters for weeks, but I’m no closer to buying one. My ability to do anything other than my basic, daily routine is almost completely gone.
I can’t really foresee going on any trip, or doing anything fun on a weekend, such as seeing a movie, going to a bookstore, going to a restaurant, going to a zoo, or whatever. Nothing is really any fun, anymore, anyway, so I have no motivation, no drive. I wish I could just collapse, somehow.
I often think of the comic book version of Adam Warlock* who, when in distress, or after injury, or when needing healing or something, creates this cocoon around himself and just goes dormant for a long time. I guess maybe some kind of sensory deprivation chamber might work like that, but again, I don’t even know where one would find such a thing near me, and I don’t think I would have the gumption to seek one out, anyway.
I don’t make things easy for myself, do I? But then, who would make things easy for the person they most despise in the world? It wouldn’t make sense.
I’m writing a bit slowly this morning, but that’s okay. I always wait for a while at the bus stop, anyway, even when I leave “late”. I would be terribly distressed if I left it to the point of barely getting to the bus on time. That would make me feel horribly tense and uncomfortable and, frankly, angry at myself.
I always used to get to school more than an hour early, usually before most of the teachers. That way I could just be in the place in silence for a while before anyone else showed up and began the cacophony. Then the place at least felt, in some ways, like mine.
I do the same with work, now. I can’t stand to arrive anything but quite early. And I don’t like it much if other people get there too early as well, interfering with my time alone in the quiet. But then again, I also hate when people show up late. I really don’t make things easy, do I? At least, the only person who suffers from all this is yours truly. I mean, okay, occasionally I probably get grumpy, but since I don’t socialize much anyway, there are few consequences for anyone else.
For me, though, I start to feel tension build as the time approaches for the workday to begin, as people begin to arrive at the office, and they start to have conversations and interactions‒often talking to each other from clear across the room, rather than moving closer each to the others. It’s horrible. It’s like the shrieking of the damned, but they don’t even realize they are the damned, so it’s only other people they’re tormenting.
I’m being unfair, of course. I am the weird one, obviously. I am the odd one out. No one else deserves recrimination for the fact that I’m always made uncomfortable by so many things other people do routinely without any malicious intent.
Of course, “deserves” is a silly, artificial, imaginary concept, like justice and goodness and law and money and civilization itself. That doesn’t mean it’s all valueless, but it has no foundational, fundamental, inherent reality.
I wouldn’t say it’s a “language game”; that’s not really an accurate or useful description. I like Yuval Noah Harari’s choice to call them all “fictions”, by which he doesn’t mean they are unreal‒a fictional story is, if you will, a real fictional story, after all, and though money is a fiction, its effects are immense‒but they are made up. They don’t exist outside the minds of groups of humans and humanoids.
Anyway, as usual, I don’t know what point or points, if any, I might be trying to make. I’m just writing because that’s what I do every working day. I had thought for it to be a kind of therapy, hopefully helping treat or improve my dysthymia and depression, but I don’t think it’s doing that at all, and I’m sure many of you would concur.
Writing fiction seemed reliably to help my mood, which is consistent with Stephen King’s long-standing claim that his writing was, for him, the best therapy around. It’s certainly ego-syntonic‒especially if, like Stephen King, you have other people who read and enjoy your work.
But I can’t seem to do that, anymore. And I can’t seem to do music anymore, either. I certainly haven’t fixed the E-string on the Strat. My toe is steadily healing, at least. It looks worse than it feels, but it is still sore.
Anyway, that’s all stuff and nonsense. I’m at the bus stop, now, and not improving this post with further writing, so I’ll stop soon for today. I’ll be here again tomorrow, and then Monday, then Tuesday, and so on and on, until something finally breaks me, or until‒much less likely‒some kind of epiphany or miracle happens and I get better, or perhaps I receive help from somewhere, somehow. I don’t expect that to happen, however. I could use it, I would probably welcome it, but it’s not going to happen based on my actions and initiative. So I don’t have much hope for it.
Anyway, have a good weekend.
*I still haven’t seen the movie, yet, and I probably won’t go to the theater to see it, but will wait until it’s on Disney+, if I even watch it then.
