You are awake. You have slept a little later than usual. Over time, the alarms that you set on your phone, many of them clips of thunderous heavy metal tracks, die with a thud in your ears.
You have therapy in the late morning, you remember. This is the only reason that you are 100 sure what day it is; you have not known what day it is, without the help of a calendar, for longer than you are willing to say.
You do not handle mornings well, and are much more prone to negative thoughts, intense feelings of guilt and shame, heavy emotional mood swings, bursts of anxiety, and fits of crying. You know the most reliable way to level things out. When you wake up, move. Do not wake up and just lay there. Do not stare blankly at your phone. Toss off the blanket and get up.
The getting up is the thing that gives you motion, and you are fond of motion. Activity makes it harder to sit and stew and think about all of the awful things that you have done. Distractions are your friend. So, you get dressed and put on your sound proof headphones, the ones that practically drown out jet engines. Find something, anything to do; you don’t particularly enjoy sitting down and eating a meal these days, so breakfast will not and cannot be the distraction; this is no matter, as there are always candy wrappers and toys laying about, along with scattered pieces of dirty laundry. The clutter collects like snow on the top of a high altitude peak; constantly and dependably.
It is not a disastrous landscape by any means, but there is always something to do to it.
You do not like the clutter, but you also realize that the clutter gives you an opportunity to move, move, move. You are aware that downtime, silence, and inactivity threaten to cease your progress and toss you into ruminating thoughts— endless cycles of negative self-talk that encroach on the forefront of the mind.
Downtime is not your friend, and you have been working on meditation skills, mindfulness skills, and techniques designed to capture the moment as it happens.
Good luck with all that, sir. It is not going to come easy to you.
You cannot move while working at your desk, at least in this way, so you improvise and find ways to stop and slow down. First there is the weighted pillow, 12 pounds of firm but soft material that, when positioned on the lap or in the embrace of a hug, help trigger the body’s “calm down chemicals.”
You did not always need to weigh yourself down at your desk. This is new for you, and that’s ok. You do not mind as pillows are soft, and soft things tend to make you oh so very happy.
You also keep fidget magnets on both sides of the computer; these stations are needed the moment that work must be done by reading and not typing. Once in motion you are difficult to stop and do not like to stop; furious hands that suddenly cease and have nothing to do need a quick, simple outlet. Without such outlets, you have no real idea as to how you could function.
Your ability to communicate at your job depends on magnetized toys; otherwise, you are sure that the energy in you would be crushing, unbearable, and crippling.
You know what it’s like to be leveled by a cocktail of increased energy and anxiety, with no outlet to shut off the ruminating or mute the negative self-talk. You were on medical leave for several months because of this problem, remember?
Now, you realize just how much physical movement stops the kind of rain found in the mind, especially if there is a purpose to the ambulation.
Your frequent trips to the gym, where you spend nearly an hour on an infinite staircase, give you a reliable respite from yourself—the machine forces you to be in the moment, with your faculties locked in on breathing and posture. If you want to use this machine correctly, you have to stay aware of your surroundings. Remember that the infinite staircase is elevated and that falling from it could have a little extra hurt.
But some hurt is ok. It keeps you real and centered.
Physical exertion is grounding for you. It brings you up and away from thoughts that your mind thinks you need to hear over and over.
You are outrageously hard on yourself. Do you know that?
You do the things as many people in your position do the things, including your job, family life, and networks of friends and members of the community. You are functional but suffering, fully aware that if you stop for too long, the Big Empty will show up and stay for too long.
The Big Empty (BE) is what happens when an unstable sense of identity mixes with a lack of purpose. The rub for this dish is generally depression, anxiety, or both, often served with an au jus of shame. Symptoms of the BE are less pronounced during periods of peak physical activity. For you this peak activity is not a clinical mania, but it can look like a microcosm of one.
You are just full of surprises!
You think about all this, as all the things of the day wind down, with a measure of sadness.
Remember who you are. It didn’t always used to be this way, did it?
Things broke down, got stuck, and now you spend half the day busying yourself into oblivion, adding to the burden of compound shame. You do not know if you are productive or bent on escaping, and you suspect it is a little of both.
You get all the things done, but you are tired. You are weary of not being able to settle and embrace stillness.
Your chest tightens as you type the word “stillness.” You are strangely afraid of it and you don’t know why. Then again, maybe you do.
You are done writing this post. You have been sitting for awhile now and your pedometer is getting bored.
There is a moral in the story here, but it is not your job to figure it out. Morals must be cultivated by the reader.
You have done your job for the day. Go and rest now.
Yours Mentally,
Nathan
Comments