I Am Not Swirling the Drain

((Long one, sorry…have a lot on my mind today))

Flight is typically my base response.  I detach, numb, or escape.  I also tend to schism or compartmentalize.  This is an extremely dangerous way to live.  It provides an illusion of comfort, because whatever the trigger is no longer exists in your consciousness, but it dictates your behavior without acknowledgement.  When life is ruled by base instincts, life is reactive in every way.  You exist in a minefield, versus running in the forest.  Projection becomes a way of life, and it is scary as fuck.  When everything and everyone seems as if they are out to kill you? There is no end to misery and fear.  Regret and remorse are common companions as explosions go off left and right.  As you delve further into triggers, it seems they are unending.  It seems everything has gotten harder.  The more I seem to release, the more seems to come back to haunt me.  The more I embrace myself, the more skeletons I feel.  It’s fantastic.

It’s fantastic because something is changing.  The more explosions I have encountered, the less afraid I have become.  I struggle under the dichotomy of a Catholic upbringing with an emerging belief in reincarnation.  I have never been afraid of dying; hell, I try to kill myself all the time, it seems.  As I stared at a stream, I thought if I were to die, I’d simply be reabsorbed, like water splashing out of the stream.  I’m not above or below the cycle of life, because I am it and it is me.  I drink water, I pee water, I flush pee and water.  To me, death is getting flushed down the toilet of life.  The only fear I have is swirling the drain until the big flush.  What a waste (see what I did there?)!

I am not numb.  I feel the pain, but I am not holding it.  I feel the anger and frustration, then I purge it onto the keyboard or dancing or hiking or screaming obscenities at the walls.  I’ve lost the fear of being crazy, because I’ve been diagnosed with every mental illness the DSM-V can offer.  I have more letters than a PhD, which makes me highly qualified to diagnose myself as “struggling with the utter bullshit of life”.  As I’ve been stumbling around in explosions, I’ve realized how unimportant it is.  I refuse to even identify with this shit anymore, because I don’t care.  The only way my past can hurt me is if I allow it or repeat the same mistakes.  When I started writing, all I did was discuss my past, tearing everything apart, looking for the connections of old patterns repeating.  As I read more, I realize that all of my problems are the same as everyone else’s.  I maintain that my life is pretty easy. I realize that pain is a scale and relative.  My 10 could be your 2, and I also realize that I have a high pain tolerance.  Or do I?  Do I just numb it? Do I just escape it?

No, I don’t, because both are delusions – it’s there whether or not I acknowledge it.  Every cigarette I puff on is an indicator that I am not okay.  Air is everything, yet I purposely poison my air and pay for the favor. Improvement is constant, because I don’t jam my fingers down my throat to purge my problems, or slice my skin with a knife; I write.  I am, however, becoming a narcissist again. I have a habit of absorbing people that I love, so I adopt their behaviors and mentalities.  I am the epitome of a copycat, which makes my ego fluctuate.  Currently, I am way too interested in myself, because the ceaseless labyrinth of my mind is fascinating.  In every sense, though, this becomes a snake devouring its tail.  I cannot improve or change by stasis or rumination.  Don’t we all love the smell of our own farts, though?

Water then comes back to mind.  If I picture the ocean, I am nothing in comparison, because it is too big, too vast.  All of my problems are rain drops, and they will only persist if I allow them.  I believe now, that the only reason I am in a minefield is because I have noticed it.  It’s just like if you buy a new car, you suddenly see your car everywhere.  I am not in more or less pain; I have just begun noticing and acknowledging.  Even if I am late to the game, i.e. I’m already sobbing my heart out, I’ve still noticed it.  Awareness is a blessing and a curse, eh?

Awareness is what makes me question everything constantly, but to research everything is to kill my intuition as well.  I read that a man studied for years in an attempt to define beauty.  His ultimate conclusion was “beauty is indescribable!” Years of research to conclude common sense.  This is a metaphor of life.  You can sit and contemplate all of your issues and seek to resolve them, or you can accept they are and let them pass, as a wave passes to and from the shore.  Yesterday, I was angry.  I could feel the fire burning inside of me again.  There was no, that I could discern, rhyme or reason to my anger, but it was there.  When I do not fight my emotions, they pass.  Right now, I continue to feel unsettled, a churn, frustration.  My life is akin to a severe bout of IBS.

My intuition has been for awhile now that I am tired of me.  Rather, this illusion of me.  I have always thought I need someone to take care of me; yet, when people try, I tend to push them away.  Coming back to schisms, I operate either masculine – goal oriented, driven, fiery, combative or feminine – nurturing, passive, accepting. (VERY LOOSE definitions here, do not get on me)  More accurately, I adopt the masks I hate so much.  I literally will adopt personalities and mentalities of people I love.  Or, I find my center.  My center tends to be analytically creative.  I have a deep sense that the only thing holding me back is me.  That if I would set my mind the way I normally do, I can do anything.

In everything, people tend to go to poles – optimistic, pessimistic, cynical, etc. I always try to avoid that, because any extreme is an extreme.  My current bipolar diagnosis (amongst the alphabet soup) indicates extremes are a way of life for me, I guess.    However, I think optimism is just as silly as pessimism, because neither allow things to be as they are.  Moreover, it is impossible to relate to someone who lives under extremes.  “I got out of bed this morning, and I shit my pants, it was incredible!” is equally illogical as “I shit my pants again, I keep taking ex lax, because feeling like shit is how life works” I just look at everything in my life and think, I haven’t died, so great job.

They say to watch looking at your past, as it becomes a rate limiting factor.  What if, though, I never believe I have failed?  I noted to my psychologist yesterday that the first abusive man I dated, whom I had a child with, gave me the pain of the adoption, the beauty of life, and through him, I met the man I married.  That man gave me my three babies.  I can go blow by blow through my life (literally and metaphorically) but to what end?  I let myself believe I was crazy again, yet every time I set that aside and babble about what is on my mind, people start talking to me.  I like people, and it is far more fun in life to run through forests with a bunch of nuts then sit on my couch hating the greatest gifts I have.

My struggle right now is so stupid it is embarrassing – “What do I want?”I want, nothing more, than to write all day every day.  I want to be loved with the same intensity I love.  I want equal(s).  I want to stop looking backwards, and I want to stop stumbling on landmines; hell if anything I would prefer to walk right on the damn thing, let it blow and know that it can’t blow again.  That’s how it will be for me now.  I am only 34 years old.  Every time I have set my mind to something, I have accomplished it. I want to smell the roses, not my farts. I want to live my fucking life, not swirl a drain. I refuse to live by diagnoses; to me that is a bigger rate limiting factor then reviewing your past to help understand your present.  From now on, there is no failure in my vocabulary, because failure is the biggest lie we tell ourselves.

((I typed this, immediately turned, and accidentally shoved my foot in my coffee.  This is why we can’t have nice things…))