Sep 30

 Closest I have pulled my sleep into order today.

After a really fucky day period of broken sleep, last evening I managed a sleep period from 7pm to 6am. Ballpark normal. Hopefully I can stay stable enough to work on this a bit more and pull it round to something a little latter, 10pm to 9am or thereabouts would be good I think. 11 hours. Light by my "bad" standards. But. Eh. We shall see. As soon as I hit an unwell bump it will go to shit. But maybe. If I can stick it there long enough, it will prove to be somewhat "sticky".

Today was therapy day.

In the morning I shifted into a "hyper aroused state". What I would previously call "proper mental". It wasn't a bad bout of it. But it was definitely a thing. Everything goes manic. Or in this case, slightly manic. Your thoughts are so fast. Like lightning. And each of them slips away from you. Out of control. Down it's own short and terrible path. Everything triggers a bad reaction. Everything is bad. The world feels... sick. Awful. Triggering. Hostile. Damaging. Everything you do is damaging. Like being on a rollercoaster where your car is covered in knives all pointing towards you. Any shift or move squeezes you onto them. And everything is going too fast.

When this is bad - and it's rare it occurs - it is very bad indeed. Proper padded ward mental hospital type stuff. Banging of head on walls type bad.

I talked to the shrink about it.

They were uncomfortable calling it "proper mental". What does that look like. Why would you call it that. I said. If you saw someone doing it on TV, you would instantly go, oh yes, that person is mental. It is a depiction of behaviour you would identify as bonkers.

The shrink squirmed without a comeback.

I said their description of it being "hyper aroused" was useful. It definitely was that. It made it a bit more understandable. A bit more accessible. A little less scary. I casually noted me splaying my fingers against a wall. Moving my fingers. Back and forth.

A soothe said the shrink. A neuro divergent pattern.

We wandered around some aspects of neuro divergent.

It seems. Once you go looking for it in me. You start to see it hiding in the grass.

The shrink said some neuro divergents found things too stimulating. Their environments too much.

I glared at the overhead light.

See. I said. I find lights a lot to deal with.

We looked at the overhead light. I grimaced.

You don't like that light the shrink said ?

It's ok I said. It's fine. I can deal with it.

I am hearing the same thing in you again about "dealing" with stuff. Where you take these things on. And you just put up with them. This is you coping with something and pulling it onto yourself as your problem. But you aren't comfortable.

I said I was ok, I was a tough little boy. But. Yes. I hated lights like that. I can feel them. They are too much. I shrink underneath them. I want to shrink under them. I don't. I stand against them. Normal. But. Heh. There is some effort there.

We can turn that light off the shrink said.

It's ok I said.

You're coping the shrink said.

Heh. Well. I said. I would be nice to have it switched off, yeah. 

The shrink sees in this a pattern in me. Where I am very very shy in expressing what it comfortable for me. What I want. And instead. By default. I take it on as my problem that only I can deal with and I have to endure it.

I said. I had a similar thing with noise too. Emergency vehicles that go past me make me literally wince. They are too much. But. This is normal ? No ?

We also got into my varying finger fidgeting and other fidgets I have. I said I very much liked having fidget toys. Back and forth. Click, clack. Movement and tactile. Or humming. Or singing. Or tapping.

Uh huh.

Hmmm.

I said I was slightly aware of the "hints" of some form of neuro divergence in the air. But I said I didn't like to label it. And I was aware that these days it felt like it was over diagnosed. I mean beyond the stupidly over tuned problem crunching and cognition monster. I mean. I get that is... super weird. And clearly atypical. But. Eh. The rest of it. I don't look at too hard.

Eh heh.

I said at home I had very subdued lighting. It was always on the low. I said I thought everyone was like this. No one likes strong lighting.

No the shrink said. Not everyone is like that.

Uh huh.

I can see what the shrink is nudging towards. That some aspects of what I go through are neuro divergent over stimulation and soothe behaviour. And that some things are harder for me to deal with. And others easier. I am not. Your neuro typical. 

But most of the day was spent on being very sad.

I related my terrible grief dip last week. I had made sure to recall it and note it, because the shrink is forever wanting to know how it feels. So. I gave them the breakdown.

And it was hard. Going back to that space. Was hard. My emotions came right up. I paused for a full minute. A room full of silence. Whilst emotion warred in me and I couldn't get a word out. Strangled. I went through it. And I cried whilst relating it.

We went through it in detail. The physiological response. The clencing of muscles. You feel threatened. Your body is reacting as if it is under threat. The troughs and peaks of it. The overwhelm. The sudden circuit breaker numb when it becomes too much. The brain pulls the plug. Everything shorts out. Over stimulated. 10 seconds of numbness. Wham. The signals come back on.

The shrink thought a lot about it.

They said it sounded like I have open wounds. That I do not resolve. There is no releasing of that energy into a lower state. That it continually recurs. Wounds that don't heal. And. You are carring all these open wounds.

What do you do after these grief moments.

I looked at them and shrugged. Nothing. You just get on with it don't you. You carry on.

It was clear there felt like the missing bit there. No. You don't just get on with it. You should get some kind of relief. Yeah. No. I smiled. The smile from the depth of misery and hell. Those kind of smiles that suicidal people give and everyone then comments the day after how happy they seemed and how they couldn't imagine that person committing suicide. ....... Uh huh. I smiled and asked them if they had the answer then tell me.

They had no answer.

I explained the rest of that day. On realising I was not controlling this. I needed help. I needed an external help. In this case. Watching something I knew would be a high pull for me. A good bit of writing. Something I hadn't seen before. Something that was going to grab my attention and keep it. And that worked.

We talked about how I felt afterwards. Fragile. Brutalised. Exhausted. I said I sometimes referred to it like being run over by a truck. I was also aware at this point in my misery career just how much energy high emotion states consumed. That you burned through it as a colossal rate. And you ended up exhausted. In a way I said. It's like running full pelt around the block a dozen times.

Sure the shrink said. Your body is in a high state of alert. Fight or flight. Muscles tensed. It's very energy draining.

I got it I said. I did not freak out about it. I understood what the costs were and how they manifested.

I said that this is something of what I meant from last week. About all of us having a mileage limit. Psychologically. For me I said. I feel each of those things. Sure. You get hurt. You adapt. You move on. It scabs over. A scar. You do the adult thing. But I said. It. Does. Not. Go. Away. I still feel it. I still carry it. And overtime I lose a bit of me everytime. Until there is less and less of me left. I said this was the quintessence of being a person. You are shaped and formed by your experiences. They make you who you are.

The shrink noted that I said scabbed over. And again said I wonder if they are with you. That they are in fact still open. No proper closure.

It could be the shrink said, you still need to grieve. All those things.

I said if I do that. I get lost to it. Not for days. Or weeks. But months. Years. I said that was not normal. I was not normal. Dysfunctional. There is something wrong with me.

The shrink argued about what was normal. Normal according to who.

I said that in the world you needed a certain balance. To get things done. To be functional. Productive. Otherwise. Everytime someone dropped a carton of milk, the world would end. Society couldn't function like that. Ergo. There was something wrong with me.

The shrink couldn't refute it. Even though they do not like me labelling myself as broken. But there it is.

I get. I must be an absolute ass to argue against. But this shit is all solved in my head. Like a logical stack of cards set in order. The conclusions maybe unsettling. But. They are there. To me. I think. This is the cold touch of the nihilist void brought into the human condition. What are you actually worth. Objectively. Are you broken through an objective lens. I get. This is brutal. It is unusual. It is not a place that normal people fucking figure out. And that as a shrink wading into the swamp, those monsters are going to eat you alive. You are ill prepared. And worse. You're probably fighting against the objective truth where your subjective beliefs wither and die. Your lovely ideals about healing and worth and all that melt in the face of the cosmic beast. No. Santa Claus doesn't exist. And the Wizard of Oz is a sham.

 On the subject of grief I said that I don't think I worked like that. Being able to just let it go and move on. It is always a part of me.

I said I lived my life with my heart on my sleeve. I didn't shy away from things. I didn't hide. It was connected to the authenticity thing. I am open. And yes. Living like that is definitely.... a thing. You are going to get hurt. It is going to be. Withering at times. But I said this is why I think I get on with dogs so well. They too live with their hearts on their sleeves. No artifice. They engage fully. I said in many ways they are my perfect companion. We see eye to eye. We have unconditional love for each other.

The shrink agreed that dogs were like this. And could see why I would fit with them. And bond so strongly with them. And them with me. The shrink said you allow people into your core. You allow yourself to be fully committed to that love. And clearly. Them to you.

We talked about grief being the reflection of love. The deeper the love. The stronger the grief.

This was definitely the case the shrink said. The stronger the connection. The stronger the grief.

And I said. I suppose. With some tears trickling down my cheeks. I loved them very much. And they loved me very much. And that. Is so beautiful. But I said. My god. The loss is awful. When you lose that.

I said the line about grief just being love that has nowhere to go anymore.

The shrink agreed.

We talked about triggers. There are no apparent triggers. For any of it. It gave a tiny nudge towards neuro divergent fuckery.

I talked about why I felt like I had to capture every bit of essence of them to put online. Because. Without it. It felt like the world would never know they existed. They didn't exist. And they weren't important. I felt like that perhaps was a little crazy.

The shrink assured me it wasn't crazy. And that it made sense why I would do that. And that it was important.

I also related that a tiny part of me was glad. Glad that I suffered. Glad that I grieved so hard. Because. And I was quietly crying at this part again. That it meant they were important. That I hadn't forgotten them. They meant something. And it was right. That I should be in pain. I said I was aware. How somewhat fucky that was.

But the shrink understood. The importance of them justified the emotional reaction.

The word sensitive came up. For the first time.

Some people, said the shrink, are more sensitive than others. 

We talked about context circles. About how a little distance, a little perspective dulled the pain. Reduced the stimulus. And I said I was aware my context circle could be enormous. Pull things in very close to me. And I could feel them. I related again how this was human nature, a coping mechanism, people pushed things away from them. People didn't linger over the kids dying in Gaza. Or Sudan. Or Yemen. It was a horror that was far away. And didn't trouble them. But sure if they read it. Wow. That's awful. But then got on with their day. A coping strategy. Only so many things in your personal context bubble. Only so many things to worry about at once. Only so many major griefs to handle up close and personal and even then, they get pushed out.

One of my friends regards some of my antics with horror. Particularly my poking of the nihilistic bear. Why. Would you do that ?! If something causes you pain. Is horrible. You cannot deal with. Don't go there. Leave it. Do not poke it.

But I am always inclined to poke it.

He sees this in me as some form of madness. Willing to walk into the fires of hell and burn out. Just so I can know. And poke it.

Me all over I suppose.

I said as much to the shrink this week. About not hiding from anything. Stand and be burned to a crisp. Give me that all consuming light.

Perhaps. Fundamentally. This is a knowing vs self preservation thing. An authentic vs inauthentic thing. Stand. Don't run. Accept it. Do not flee and pretend it doesn't exist.

But the cost of that.

Well. I think. In the end. Is probably terminal. It costs everything. It just depends how many burning steps you've taken so far.

I don't know.

Part of me feels like. Running away from grief. Pretending shit didn't happen. It feels. Like a lie. It feels like. An insult to others. To their lives. To existence. It feels. Fake. Cowardly. To protect yourself first. Selfish.

Perhaps. That is such a strong bone in me. Not to protect myself for the benefit of others. Even when those others are gone. I will still go down in flames in their memory. Because. It feels like the right thing to do. It's such a strong thing. That it ends up being a source of harm.

Sigh.

But everything in life is harm. No one gets out of life alive. In that context. No one lives. So. It comes down to choosing what you die for. What's important.

And from that context. I will die on that hill about it being about others. And not me. Ultimately. That's what the shape of my life will be. The choice of how to live and die. Not for my own sake. Selfishness. But others. And it maybe damaging. And harmful. But. You are going to die anyway.

I don't know.

I'm probably just a fucked up neurotic. Locked in grief. Always craving unconditional love and a calm and stable deep bond. Just love really. And if you look hard enough, and rationalise almost to the point of missing the point. Perhaps all I am doing at the end of it. Is trying to fill the hole of no love I had as a kid. Trying hard for others. In the hopes that I can be loved. And find peace. And close my eyes. And sleep happily.