Clearing out my cache.

My organizational OCD has caused the creation of an uncounted number of blogs over the years. Every time I start to feel like a different person something inside me forces that I start fresh even online. As uncomfortable as it is to return to a previous home; this is my favorite url. At this point I only have two options: I can write every day until something clicks and the world fades out of black and white or I can seek therapy. As I’m on the edge of googling online therapist I decided to give this one last shot.

In the digital age that we live in it’s easy to forget how comforting a piece of paper and an ink pen can be. I’ve tried for years never to lose that connection to my words, but here I am with a wireless keyboard and my iPhone propped up against a coffee cup; I can’t touch the pen laying in front of me.

Any attempt to form complete and meaningful sentences has been met with absolute resistance. I am intimidated by the empty page for the first time in my life. 

I have been working through things in 2016 and now that I’m too the point of being who and where I want to be I find the thought of actually facing myself to be terrifying. I can’t start writing for fear of what I may scribble down.

It’s as though if I never put it to paper then it can’t be true; no matter how loudly I scream inside to just release the truth … I can’t.

I don’t know exactly how much longer I can expect to go on this way before something breaks beyond all repair.

I’ve walked away from this keyboard three times now in an attempt to further stall the writing process. As therapeutic as I find truth, it is also damaging. 

Over the course of the last week I can count the number of hours that I’ve slept on a single hand. I spent Sunday in the woods trying to work through life and came up with nothing of inherent value. I’m considering returning to therapy in an attempt to sort out precisely what this feeling is, but I already know.

I can’t confront the truth of pain in my chest anymore than I can write it here, but that doesn’t take away all of it’s power. Instead I drift through the days; merely existing and never living. Every breath is harder than the last and although I don’t want to die I long for the simplicity of death.

It’s strange the things that a mental illness can make you feel. Every fiber of my being wants me to swerve into oncoming traffic and yet I couldn’t bare the thought of passing off my pain to the people around me. There isn’t a way that I can come up with to explain what it feels like to be suicidial without actually desiring to commit suicide.

Examining what stops me from giving in to that urge is an easier topic. I can’t give into this feeling because there are people in my life who would suffer if something happened to me. I can’t give into this feeling because despite trying to crush me for years I’ve never caved to it. I can’t give into this feeling because too many people give up every day. I refuse to be a statistic. I refuse to be the reason why someone wakes up screaming in the middle of the night. I won’t pass along this feeling of hopelessness to anyone else. This shall pass; much like everything else. I just have to be strong enough to get through it.

Although it’s frustrating to wake up every day screaming inside for darkness; it’s also simple. Accept the way you feel isn’t always going to be the way you feel. I drown myself in work, in my friends, in a book or a video game. There is always a distraction waiting to take my mind to a far-away land where things aren’t the same as they are right here.

I’m not sure if that coping mechanism is exactly healthy, but the benefits outweigh any potential cost down the road. 

Another trip away from the keyboard leads to the contemplation of gallons of well vodka as a temporary solution to the week that has passed much too slowly. I haven’t turned to something mind-numbing for fear of the end result. A reprieve from anything painful leads to a dependence on the method of ease and that is a road that I’ve walked too many times before.

But. It’s tempting. 

Instead I sit on the sidewalk and watch cars slowly file out of lots as each store front closes up for the evening. Watching herds of sheep meander off into the night and wondering if among them is someone else who feels this way. It’s completely self-absorbed to assume that there isn’t a single oth human being screaming out inside for relief. It’s easier for me to accept that we all feel that way.

Even though nothing about this experience feels shared. It’s as though I am an island in the middle of Hurriance Michael or whatever bullshit they’ve named the storm ravaging the south-east these days. Isolation. Undetermined timeframe. 

I’m getting back to the point where it’s difficult to string together two sentences that hold any meaning to each other and that’s more frustrating than feeling this way. It isn’t often that I can’t find the words to describe something. In fact, this may be an actual first. By now I should have rambled my way into them and painted a depressing, yet beautiful, picture, but my heart just isn’t in it.

May instead of therapy I just need a bloody mary….