My Brain Tricks me

I feel like the entire world is falling in and I can't make myself care. Nothing particularly unique, new, or devastating happened in the last few days to bring this on, yet I knew it was coming. I knew it the way wild birds know of an approaching storm. Like some kind of voodoo intuition, I felt it on its journey to me. Nothing has really happened in the last few days to warrant one of my "bad days" yet here it is. This deep emptiness that I just can't shake is swallowing me. It is one of those days when it takes everything in me to pull myself out of bed and across the floor in an attempt to start the day. One of those days where regardless of responsibilities and my need to fulfill them, I just can't shake this demon long enough to function at anything other than a primal level of existence. I just feel a compelling desire to retreat both physically and emotionally from anything that may harm me, and on "bad days", that means everyone and everything.

I turned on some music and sat down with a fresh pungent cup of coffee and my battered pack of Marlboro cigarettes, seeking some form of escape from this overpowering dreariness. As "foolish games" pounds out of the tiny speakers of my headphones and I draw more fiery tobacco smoke into my lungs I almost find a speck of solace.

Almost is the key word for me here. "Almost" is quickly becoming an accurately descriptive term for my entire life. I almost completed my formal education. I almost found happiness. I almost had a happy, healthy marriage. I am almost a great parent. I can almost write well. Almost. Always only almost but never really much more. I wonder if "almost" if ever really enough. Not just if it is enough for me, but enough for those whose lives I intersect with. It is a sad irony I suppose. I would never accept " almost" from those around me as sufficient, and yet, it is all I am able to give return.

Yet one more example of the fact that life surely isn't fair for anyone. Maybe it is some kind of twisted metaphor. Yet one more of Mr. Murphy's many ironic laws. I know I am capable of giving much more than " almost"; I simply can't compel myself to do it. I hate the "grayness" of all of this. Black and white are concrete and I can be comfortable with either of them, but gray is alien. I feel like an enormous gray whale has swallowed me whole. Like the drabness of the color itself is transfusing me. Sucking the colorful essence of life from my soul and replacing it with nothing. Leaving me bland and lost on a foreign planet without enough oxygen to breathe and no food or water for sustenance. Stranded on that lonely planet with no desire to return to anything I once knew simply for the lack of ambition it has produced. Stuck in limbo once again. Lost and not seeking to be found for reasons I am unclear about.

Maybe it is the need to sit in the shit pile I am accustomed to. You know what they say about sitting in shit pile. It stinks like hell, but it's warm and soft. And the shit pile offers the added benefit of a defensive wall. No one wants to get close enough to it to really "rescue" me, and in the worst-case scenario, I can always start throwing it at intruders. What a convenient weapon shit is. Far easier to wield than a sword, far more accurate than a bullet.

Annie Dillard said that there is no shortage of good days; it is good lives that are hard to come by. I think she was wrong; both are impossible dreams. They are the stuff that dreams, not reality, are made of. Pipe dreams they call them, imaginary puffs of smoke that we believe we actually saw. Mystical mirages that capture our emotions and keep them captive until reality comes smashing through the walls of our envisioned sanctuaries. The reality that robs us of our hopes then steals our dreams, and leaves us helpless to face it with any true vigilance. So we do what comes naturally; we run. We run as quickly and as far away as we can, if only in a nonphysical sense, we run and we hide. And always, like the true wicked and tormenting stalker that it is, reality hunts us down like a slave master and hauls us back to its encampment. That is why bad days and bad lives are the reality that most of us live in. Because we can't hide from them. Because we are the hunted and the hunter has far more skill than we. That is why we surrender.

I have been told more times than I can say, that we should all face reality. Why? Why face an adversary that we cannot possibly overcome? Why choose THAT opponent? Why not simply refuse and go back to the euphoria of our pipedreams. Why not live by the adage of mind over matter? Because we are weak minded and have only lied to ourselves to ensure a belief otherwise. Because not facing reality requires us to become internal in every sense of the word and sometimes, just sometimes, what is inside of us is more terrifying than reality. "Let me into your head" the shrink said. I laughed. He doesn't know what he is asking. My head is a dark and scary place to be. I know better than anyone that it is true. Bad things happen in my head. Nightmares that make Freddy Kruger look like the Easter bunny. Thoughts that would make Charlie Manson shudder. Wishes that Satan Himself would not wish. I know. I spend more time there than anywhere else anymore. My head is my internal hell, complete with fire and brimstone; Infested with the seven deadly sins and overrun with stench. My head is also the safest place in the universe. I only have to fear myself there. No one else ever gets in. That is the rule.

Most of me is for me only anymore. Not out of desire but rather self-preservation. If only I can hurt me, I am at least safe from everything and everyone else. It is lonely here but far better to be lonely than captured and tormented with the furry of the ancient Norse Gods. At least this way I only have myself to blame. Now if only I knew how to care for myself I could be free. I used to know, I believe, but that knowledge has died from nonuse. I let it grow stagnant and it rotted away like leaves in a compost pile. I don't remember how I gained it in the first place or I could simply go back and review the process again. I got to this place on autopilot, the same way you somehow end up at home after a long day without remembering the route you took to get there. If only I could remember.