Dear SR,
I can’t stop thinking about this one thing. I can’t get it out of my head. I tried sleeping all day to make it stop. I went about and used my entire arsenal of distractions that don’t inconvenience others and still nothing. It’s so frustrating. I just want to slam my head against this fucking wall. Is that crazy? Reason tells me it is, but for some reason every time I think I feel that way, I keep sliding into the thought that it’s kind of…ordinary. It’s there and that’s it. I think it and it just is. It’s the way it has to be. Can’t exist normally without thoughts such as these; these thoughts have to be customary. The funny thing is that just leads me back to the initial question. Is that crazy?
It just makes me want to claw my face. It’s like a rash I can’t get rid of. The hives bump up as thoughts and feelings I can’t help but feel across my entire being.
THEY. ITCH.
I think I’m accustomed to not itch them though. At the very least during times when its not appropriate. If itching were leaning into a half baked dive into neuroticism that is. Sometimes it’s just so much though. Like the blood soaked underside of my flesh is scorching. The feeling rages and courses through every inch, igniting in a blaze that leaves me a smoldering irritated mess. It’s so raw as it creeps from my brain to every inch of me like a psoriatic disarray of maladjusted psychoneurosis. It’s painful. It hurts so much more than I realize. How is it that I’m able to forget a feeling like this? Oh, right.
“We forget what we must and not because we will”
– Matthew Arnold
It covers myself in a dull blanket of moderately sharp razors. It exists as a mild yet poignant discomfort consistently. Just as I exist consistently. It becomes something I can live with when not bothered, despite it being something I abhor. It only sometimes finds itself pressing deeper into my flesh in small isolated areas. Areas that can feel the burn. The sting. It has become convention to live inside it. Being sure not to dissect its nature too much as to not invoke more of the inescapable metaphysical penetration of this incorrigible psyche. Because if I were to move too much inside this sarcophagus, if i were to pick at it, irritate it, observe it more than is allowed, I would only find myself at the mercy of that which cuts deeper than blades. Don’t move—another inch—another driving wedge into a severed mind.
Fuck. It’s unraveling me.
Spiraling. Twisting. Spinning. Unwinding. All of it for a sense of clarity. But can I really find lucidity from something I have no power over? I say it’s for clarity as if it is something of a concession. Make no mistake, this is not voluntary. Even if a stillness is found from the lie that parts of me are becoming untangled, the only thing that comes is the realization of retrograde. It’s moments like this I look in horror. It’s a nightmare. This is my insanity; so much of it. Even you.
It occurs to me that I am sitting here pushing the line further and further into a state of instability, and I’m doing it with you. There was not a moment where I considered that this would be worth to dissect internally. Instead I attempted to spew this madness in your direction. Why? Because when you know someone so completely that they know you both inside and out. How you think. How you feel. How to make sense of you and what’s wrong (and right) with you. Those people know how to put you into words better than anyone who could even try. Sometimes better than yourself. So, if I can’t know anything about me without sliding into an abyss of doubt and uncertainty of where I start and where I stop, then I suppose I would hope that person would. I would hope they could just see me and dissuade at least some of this madness. Wouldn’t that be something nice?
Then I remember. You’re not here. I may as well scream this at the very wall I’m contemplating bashing my skull through. It wouldn’t make a difference. I just choose to believe you are here. A leap of faith that leaves me wishing to be met by your embrace telling me things will be okay. Even that though, is a delusion. You also exist as my hysteria. A far flung hope which leaves me stunted when trying to actually trust in someone who is present outside my schizoaffective misapprehensions. Perhaps we could sit here and call it a coping mechanism in order to try to comprehend these thoughts and prevent catastrophizing, but I think we can both agree that the extent of your involvement is more than just a mere endurance tactic. While certainly an element of greater mental disorder, I of course am still grateful. However, having someone like that one minute and the next minute they up and disappear from your life really fucks you up. To reach that point with someone requires a lot of trust, faith, and effort. It’s an deep connection of sorts. One that’s closer than most, yet not inherently affectionate, but now I find myself afraid to let someone else reach that level of emotional intimacy.
Thinking about all this I can feel my mind slipping in a way that is difficult to characterize. I either fall more into dissociation and reach a void of derealization or I find myself facing wave after wave of excruciating abstract paresthesia. All I feel I can do is ponder what brought me to this point. Dissect my mind space to better comprehend why it is so self destructive.
An ego that has been over employed and used much more than originally signed on for. It splinters apart to hide away my own thoughts, my own memories, and thus my own identity as if they aren’t something to call my own. Concealing what it must behind an imperceptible veil. This is not an act of kindness nor is it the kind of safeguarding that comes from a healthy relationship between mind and mentality. It is no mother protecting its own. This is a necessity. A deal that has to be upheld because both parties got fucked over. A filthy requirement. A plan B because everyone involved had no say in who got to pull down their pants and use them as they please.
An ego so at odds with itself it cuts fundamental building blocks like personality into sides that are then told to compete with one another for the right to live and survive. What do I want? Who do I want to be? What do I stand for? What do I care about? I’m compelled to struggle to maintain control of these values, but even that is facetious in nature. I don’t have these answers; not really. Perhaps I never will. How can I? How do I trust any answer about what I feel when everything is run like a democracy—dysfunctional.
I’m tired of thinking. I have no control over it, and no way of turning it off. I think I will just lay down.
love always,
wb