I understand the healing powers of routine. Really, I get it. I know for a fact I thrive better with a set routine. Because of this, when I was young I wanted to either be in the cadets or be a nun. Not because of any alignment to any sort of believe or value system, but just because I'd know when to wake up and what to expect. No alarms and no surprises. When someone asks me to imagine a safe place, I imagine a hospital bed. Horrific, right? But not to me. There's always someone awake, around me. Human touch is always available in abundance- hell, I don't even have to ask for it. Even the cold shock of a stethoscope feels like a massage if there is a warm body tending to me behind it. Plus nobody can sneak up behind me in a hospital bed. If I were to imagine myself, as often people do, on some sort of sandy beach I'd become so anxious I'd feel paralyzed rather than relaxed. A sandy beach??? You mean, out in the open like that? Nobody else is around? But what if...Oh, hell no I can't close my eyes! Relax? That's just inviting surprise.
At any rate, I do understand the importance of habit. But when I open my eyes in the morning (okay, the afternoon), even though D so sweetly has coffee ready and the dog already walked, I cannot move. I just. cannot. move. The dreams I had, so lucid I can't separate them from memories most of the time, were so sweet (even if nightmares) because I am never depressed in my dreams. It's never really about me in my dreams. And then when I wake up it's only about me. This self-obsession I cannot escape. I know it. I see it. I recognize it. Yet I am powerless to control it. People tell me, you gotta force yourself, Just get up and do something. The same thing every day. Run, walk, read, whatever. It's difficult to explain why this is an impossibility in the depressed mind. I once explained it to someone like this: Imagine the most horrible thing, the most heinous thing, you can do to a person or animal. Now go do that thing. What do you mean you won't? There's nothing physical stopping you. Is it just because you know that it's wrong, someone told you that you'll go to jail? No? What is it then? What is that deep, instinctual, so-very-YOU force that's stopping you? That strength of impotence, the revulsion, the inertia, that is what is keeping me in bed. Not that I think it's a heinous act like in my example, but the STRENGTH of that revulsion to that act is very, very similar. It's almost a physical impossibility, like someone has to drag me out. The only thing that has ever worked to get me out of bed at a specific time is the fear of getting into trouble, of being ridiculed as punishment, that deep-seated fear of chastisement, of castigation, of being scolded and called a disappointment. That is the only thing stronger than my revulsion to leave the warmth of my bed. One time I signed up for morning yoga classes (expensive ones, thinking that would get me out of bed) but they were so all namaste there I knew I wouldn't get into trouble for not going so I didn't go. Yeah.
In an effort to at least pretend I'm going to introduce routine into my schedule, there are some things. Money is tight right now so though I'd like to get a membership at the YMCA nearby, it may have to wait. I used to go to an Agnostic AA meeting once a week. There's that. I could do that again (I probably won't but shhhh you're ruining the exercise). I meet my therapist Friday at 3pm every week so there's that too. For some reason I stay faithful to that even thought I know I wouldn't get in trouble for not going. So that's interesting, what's keeping me at it. I'd like to get back into my snow globes (so, I make these snow globes right? But there's no warm fuzzy scene in them. They're usually scenes from horror movies or just random sad things like a graveyard scene with mourners, or men carrying a body in a carpet, that sort of thing). Aaaanyway, getting back into that would also be great but it's fucking expensive to do. Train miniatures are like little nuggets of gold to surly veterans*. Plus I swear they up the price for me because they know what I'm going to manipulate them into. And, there's no set time so I'd have to make my own schedule which again isn't going to work. I could go back to work but I tried that already and fell most spectacularly. I thought I was ready but the electro-shock stole a lot of my memories so I had to ask about the most basic duties of my job which just caused panic attack after panic attack. I think most of my memory is back but how do you know what you can't remember? How do you know if you're forgetting something if you've forgotten it? The only way to know is to go back to work but....fuck....those panic attack were just too much. I need to be sure I'm ready.
So this post ended up being pretty boring so I apologize to anyone (if anyone) is reading but if this blog is just as much for me as it is for others, shit's gonna get boring and whiny and all the wonderful characteristics of the melancholic mind.
*I love and respect all veterans but it's a fact the ones with miniature trains are often surly. Hey I don't make the rules.
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