I’m writing this on my phone today, because yesterday I didn’t bring my laptop with me when I left the office.  It was a deliberate choice; I felt absolutely…well, it’s hard to describe, but clearly I was not at all healthy or well.

It was a very strange day, internally at least.  I started out reasonably okay, after having no worse a night’s sleep than usual, which is something like 4 or so total hours of non-continuous sleep.  I wrote a relatively fun blog post, which just sort of happened.  I certainly didn’t plan what I wrote, it just all poured out, shaping itself even as it came into existence.  That, at least, is not unusual for me.

But then, at the office–actually, really, by the time I got to the office, and certainly by the start of business–I felt the first a wave of my usual, work-related tension that comes from having the endure the noise, and the questions and erratic shifts in direction and momentum, as people come interrupt me, while I’m clearly doing some work-related task, and ask me, without any preamble or waiting period, to do something for them, or to help them with something, or whatever.  I also went over the reports from one of the companies with which we contract to make sure their records match ours (I do this every week).  And then I just felt my nervous system begin to fade out.

I don’t mean that I lost consciousness or anything.  I just ran out of propulsion.  I hardly interacted, barely replied to questions, had a hard time even following what anyone was saying, and had difficulty even moving.  I could do it, but only when necessary, and it was much slower than usual.  I felt truly like someone who was in many ways already dead.

Indeed, I contemplated just taking a big fistful of Tylenol and swallowing it, just to take some kind of action, but that would only cause trouble for people in the office, assuming they knew I even did it.  I did take slightly more pain medicine than usual, because my left hip and lower back were acting up slightly more than average, but even that didn’t seem to stimulate any real behavior or anything other than the aforementioned stuff.

By early-to-mid-afternoon, I was barely moving, and in between specific tasks I mainly just stared in a random direction.  I thought about just lying down outside in the thunderstorm that was going on then, in the “alley” behind where the office is, only partly in the thought that maybe I would get run over, mostly in the thought that it would be good just to lay out and let the elements take me and wash me away.  But neither that, nor lying on the train tracks (which briefly went through my mind), were things I could think of too seriously, largely because I wouldn’t want to cause the trouble for so many other people such an action would cause, and because they would require movement to accomplish.

Also, in a way, I knew that I probably would not be able to resist the biologically mandated drive for avoidance that approaching cars or trains would trigger.  Maybe that’s part of the reason I think of such things–to trigger that fear and perhaps wake myself up.

Yesterday, though, it was mainly apathy and lack of energy that prevented me from doing anything.  I think if someone else had picked me up and plopped me on the tracks or in the road at one point, I would just have lain where I was placed.

I’ve had episodes somewhat like this before, where part of or a lot of my brain just seems to lose all impetus, all sense of motion.  It’s often associated with depression, but not always.  I didn’t even feel tired, or at least not sleepy.  Sleep is not a readily available thing for me a lot of the time.  It’s more as if the springs that drive my clockwork ran out of tension and everything consequently just slowed to a halt.

In particular, I noticed I had a hard time talking, certainly in anything above a mumble.  I was reminded of a strange thing that happened when I was very young, certainly well before I was kindergarten age.  I had become frustrated with some attempt to say something–either no one seemed to be listening, or I was told to be quiet for some reason or other (as little kids sometimes are, out of necessity) or I just couldn’t find the words I wanted, and I remember thinking to myself, in effect, “Fine, I just won’t talk anymore.”

But soon I realized, when I had gotten past my initial little grumpy response, and wanted to say something, that my voice didn’t want to respond.  I had effectively shut down my ability to speak.  And I could kind of feel that, if I didn’t force it, I might not be able to speak ever again, sort of like Holly Hunter’s character in The Piano (not that I thought about that…that movie lay a few decades in the future).

Anyway, it was quite frightening, and I really had to struggle to get myself to say something.  Finally I did, and I’ve never gotten quite that close to being nonverbal again.  But I felt somewhat close to it yesterday, and the thought made me wonder if this could be something akin to an “autistic shutdown” (though I’m not even sure if I’m “on the spectrum”…maybe I’m just a freaking weirdo, which seems most likely).  I tried to look the symptoms up, with my limited will, but the ones I saw at a cursory glance didn’t quite resonate.  There were videos I might have watched but I had no capacity to follow a video.

Apparently my state was noticeable and rather concerning to my coworker/work-friend.  He began showing me about a forthcoming movie, and then I told him it looked cool but I wasn’t going to be watching it, or any other movie.  But he couldn’t really hear me, because I was speaking so low.

He asked me if I was okay, asked if I needed him to call an ambulance (no…what would they possibly do?) or if I wanted to go “home” (no…as I said to him, needing to repeat it since he couldn’t hear me, “home” is shit, my “home” sucks, and I like it no better than the office or the train or the street, except for the fact that I can vegetate there all alone).  Anyway, I tried to tell him I didn’t know what was happening, but that my brain just wasn’t working, and I didn’t know why.  It must’ve felt for him a bit like trying to have a conversation with Stephen Hawking when he had to use his voice synthesizer thing.

He did his best to give me encouraging and supportive words‒he knows I have trouble with depression‒and asked me to let him know if there was anything he could do.  I didn’t know what to say, because I didn’t know what to do, or what anyone could do, but I sort of nodded in recognition of his kindness.

After a low point at about 3 pm, my capacity started to creep back upward, and I was able to talk and interact more, and by the end of the day I even made a few stupid jokes.  I kept up with my work as I pretty much always do.  But I never got quite back up to my usual, “normal” level of energy, such as it is, and I still don’t feel quite fully functional, even for me.  I guess we’ll see what happens.

It’s too much to hope that this is some kind of imminent moribund crisis that will take me inescapably out of the world, but it’s not good.  Today is payroll, and I must go to work to deal with that, but I wish I could just not move.  I’m not sleepy at all, unfortunately, and I don’t really even feel “tired”, not in the usual, normal sense.  I just feel almost immobile, or at least with very limited “motor” function (not in the neurological sense of motor versus sensory neurons, for instance, but very much in the thermodynamic, Carnot engine type sense).

Maybe that’s it.  Maybe I’m approaching maximum personal entropy.  Maybe I’m nearing some personal, metaphorical thermal equilibrium and there’s just no more “free” energy that can be turned into useful work.

I don’t know.  I guess I’ll see how today goes.

I have to leave now to head to the bus stop, because it’s getting “late” for me.  I will try to keep you all posted, but I don’t know what is happening, so I’m far from sure what will happen.  In any case, I hope you have a good day collectively, and good days individually.  Which is an interesting, parallel and coterminous yet not identical time construction and notion all on its own, come to think of it.