Duck Down

that I actually am as boring as the world has so far led me to believe.

Writing’s slowing down and/or getting harder.

I find myself now with things that just seem like self-pity/whining/poor me-ing. And I feel as though I’m taking the self-pity and trying to put a spin on it, pretending that it’s something else. Maybe that’s what the previous post was, I’m not sure.

Sometimes I feel that I’m holding things back just for the sake of holding things back. Fear of other people’s responses/the consequences is a good excuse for a while.

Guarding things it gives you the illusion that there’s something here that’s special, like a gun with silver bullets. But for me anyway, there’s nothing dangerous, there’s nothing even interesting.

I wonder now if there’s anything here at all.

I realise that for the past year or so I’ve been feeling that there’s a competition on. And I’m not sure what the rules are, but I can tell that I’m not doing very well at all. I dearly want to get out of the competition, but I don’t recall how I got into it in the first place.

It’s like being in a dream, you know something’s happening although you can’t see any evidence of it. I have, a few times, been relieved because I believed myself to be out of the competition, but later find evidence that I’m still in it.

I feel as though my being unwell is some kind of punishment for breaking, or not understanding the rules, like when I was a child something unpleasant might happen to me and I’d be told that “it served me right” because I hadn’t done “the right thing” (although I’d never been told what “the right thing” was).

I’ve miscomprehended something. Or just missed something. And now what?

Apparently I find myself fascinating.

I didn’t, and yet totally did want to write the previous post cos, from what people tell me, I do a fair job of seeming not hopelessly pathetic. I do try. But that last post, once again cue more shame.

I imagine someone, if they were to read my postings, might wonder if I’ve ever “gotten help” or “seen anyone” as the phrases go. Or perhaps they assume that I have/am.

A condensed history/recap answer.

I was sent by teachers to the school psychologist, (a woman that showed up ever so often, of whom I’d never before heard) who once asked me to promise that I wouldn’t cut myself again before I saw her next. I said I couldn’t do that, I didn’t want to make promises I knew I wouldn’t keep.
A few years later I saw a child psychiatrist who seemed to think all I needed to set me right was to make more friends and engage in more social activities. I didn’t go back. Around the same time I saw a psychologist who prescribed me anti-depressants (I can’t recall which) that I didn’t take. About a decade later, while I was in hospital for something physical a doctor had me see a psychologist who intimidated the hell out of me, apparently in an effort to make me “accept help”. During the same period a nutritionist referred me to an eating disorders clinic/place/something which, again, I didn’t follow up.

—

Unrelatedly, assume any “notes” on posts to be what I’m designating “spam likes”, very rarely are they actual people liking/reblogging out of liking-ness.

Florence a character in the book The Good Soldier carries “heart medicine” with her in a flask. Amyl nitrate that, as she had a weak heart, might one day save her life. After her husband learns that Florence has committed suicide, he discovers what the flask actually contained —

“How could I have known that, during all the years of our married life, that little brown flask had contained, not nitrate of amyl, but prussic acid? It was inconceivable.”
…
“Leonora says that she had that flask, apparently of nitrate of amyl, but actually of prussic acid, for many years and that she was determined to use it if ever I discovered the nature of her relationship with that fellow Jimmy.”

(Prussic acid is a liquid form of cyanide.) She carried it around just in case. A comfort. If the worst happened she wouldn’t have to face it.

The full text ofThe Good Soldier

—-

I used to feel, I think maybe I still do, a huge comfort in the idea that if life ever got so horrible that I couldn’t stand it that I wouldn’t have to. Then I can extricate myself mentally from the tangle of crap I’ve caught myself up in, somehow helps me not trivialise myself. Though, it’s quite an impotent idea as I never came up with a method that I’d be willing to undertake. I’m not being flippant, I think the idea of suicide has been a crutch when nothing else really could be, that this isn’t going to go on forever, this “living” business.

I’ve been living life carrying the the heaviness other people’s values, their likes and wants and shoulds. I saw the lives adults around me were living and I felt as thought I rather die than live any of those lives. I feel that I’m completely out of touch with the people I talk to or hear about, that somehow seem to there, around me.

Things that other people do seem real, like a legitimate use of time and effort. I’ve never felt that anything I did was real, apart from things I was ordered to do, or did for other people. I tend to be a person other people ignore. There’s a feeling that anything I do that interests me will go nowhere and is therefore a waste of time; in the past this put me off posting stuff — what was the point?

When I was young I never understood the world I found myself in. Other children seemed to like things about their world. They didn’t mind school, they didn’t mind childrens’ TV (I think they liked it even). They seemed to enjoy reading the books that they read. They enjoyed birthday parties, wanted to play hide and seek. I thought they were doing as they were told, that they were playing snakes and ladders because they’d been told to. I never imagined that they could be doing it because they wanted to.

I’ve lived for enough time that I “should” but I still don’t know what I like, what I’m good at, what I can bear to do for a living (the idea of enjoying doing things for a living seems like something that other people experience). What I want to do in my spare time (althought it’s all spare time these days).. I learned from school that if I’m enjoying something and it’s making sense to me then I’m probably going to get a bad mark. Part of the “If you feel good then something’s wrong” thing wot I have going on.

Bought a ticket for a gig (that’s probably going on right now) but didn’t go. Last month there was a thing for which I’d bought a ticket and I didn’t attend. Feel as though I have failed when the appointed time arrives and I really don’t want to go. I could have gone, it’s not as though I’m in pain, I’m only tired (feeling very heavy).

Every time I don’t force myself to go to a thing, or read a thing or listen to a thing, or do a thing that I *should* I feel like “see, this is why you’re nowhere, coz you’re not trying hard enough”.

The reason I like writing is cos it’s making it a lot quieter in my mind. I became used to the internal chatter, all these conversations happening. The conversationalists wander in and settle down. Occasionally they pipe up. I hadn’t realised how many had taken up residence, how many shouted, repetitious arguments were taking place, untilI I began to make note of these things in words.

The conversations are all in my voice. I talk and I reply, but sometimes the voice(s) that reply are me doing an impression of and/or or representing the position of other individuals. I often find I’m attempting to justify myself to various people in my mind, as though I’m on trial.

When I used to diary write, putting things into words usually made me more trapped, made things feel more thick, I waded in the sludge of it all. So I stopped. And I thought “that’s what writing does to me” so I didn’t write any more. Some of me is wondering when this will start to happen this time.

All this writing I’ve been doing, I feel as tho I’m in a minor manic episode. Can’t stop writing, can’t stop thinking, can’t stop making connections. Can’t shut up (figuratively). Feeling that if I kept writing I could understand all things eventually, or at least some of myself, perhaps.

I seem to be doing my best here to encourage the idea that I am quite the unstable one.
Eh, whatevs.

Edit: Take references to “X made me Y” or “the reason why X” as rhetorical devices. Or lazy writing. I’m not assigning actual cause to any specific thing.

“I don’t know why I’m posting so much.”

I don’t like “why”, so often a useless question. You go astray seeking some definite and specific cause. If you keep regressing in whys what cause do you end up at? Genetics, the Big Bang, some god-like concept that is the why of the way everything is.

Why am I the way I am? Why is there something and not nothing? That kind of thing.
I find those questions and attempts at answers both fascinating and disgusting. I’ve noticed that I find absoluteness disgusting. I could describe this in astrological terms but you (who?) don’t want to me talk “superstitious unscientific crap” do you?

I must have listened to/watched Foster the People - Pumped Up Kicks live at Austin City Limits Music Festival on YouTube about 50 times in the past couple of days. Not exaggerating. Hours.

I had imagined the words in the chorus went “All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you better run, better run, louder than my gun.” but I googled I think it”s “better run outrun my gun.”.

I’m kindof stuck on the idea of running louder than a gun. Or sleeping taller than your tale, or flying softer than his skin.

If I ever properly wrote lyrics, unusual verb-adverb combinations might well be in them.

I used to read books. Lots of books. I wanted to be submerged in worlds.
And now I don’t read books. The last book I read all the way through was “The Medium is The Massage” (which is a short book, has images and the prose is poetic and dense.)

It almost hurts now to live in someone’s creation the way I used to when I got through 2 or 3 books a week. I end up getting trapped in there and I can’t get out. Cos the words just sit there, the reader has to do something to experience anything. And the *something* that I do keeps going on when I put the book down. Many times I’ve felt I was fighting with a book, that the book was trying to suffocate me. I even have to be careful reading the Twitterz (The past year’s been almost Twitterless).

I want to read books, but they frighten me. There’s a huge should about reading books. And I don’t, and I feel neglectful.

Think this is part of the reason I’m writing so often recently. To get lost in something of mine. God, even that’s difficult, cos once you’ve written something it feels dead. All the vitality gone. Bored now.

OK, bored now.

Meeting People I Don’t Know. How I used to (and sometimes still do).

Them: So, what do you do?
Me: Nothing

Translations of my response
1. Admission
“I have no answer, so let’s not.” (Usually they don’t pursue the question. Sometimes there’s a brief awkwardness.)

2. Annoyance
“Yes I have no legitimate answer so let’s not. Kinda resent your question.” (Unfair yes, it’s just a standard social question.)

3. Defence
Having a dig at yourself before anyone else can.

4. A Disclaimer
“Yes I do nothing that benefits the world in any way, just so you know. If you are networking, you can move along with peace of mind. I have nothing to offer”.

More numbers possibly.

Oh you spam likers and your spam likings.

I don’t know why I’m posting so much.
It’s like those times when you start talking and you can’t shut up.

Most days there is watching of live streaming video twit.tv. Watching these now familiar presenters/people. Feeling as tho “hey, they’re your friends” Seeing them make each other laugh, observing their arguments, knowing their on-screen injokes, seeing their appreciation/frustration/indifference to the IRC chatroom, them have technical difficulties, talk about patents. You know their opinion on Star Wars re-releases, their dog’s names, starting to understand how they “tick”. Sometimes you’ll think of the joke they’re about to make half a second before they say it. You’re taking on their speech traits, mannerisms.

I have a ridiculous prejudice against feeling OK/alright/good.

When I was younger I developed the belief that happiness is lazy and foolish and it means you have your head in the sand; whereas the disillusioned cynics saw the truth. The news media told you what mattered “The world is a terrible place, what kind of idiot are you to be happy?”. “Happy” people around me flung about platitudes that sounded like lies. I took the “(only) ignorance is bliss” idea and applied to all of existence.

It’s not a useful belief with which to navigate the world but it’s stuck, stubborn. I have to break pieces off it bit by bit cos I can’t shift it whole. Then things happen that make me want to reattach the broken pieces.

Past few months I’ve been oscillating between OK-ness and not OK-ness. I start to feel apprehensive when it’s OK cos I fear what’s coming next. If it’s OK for too long it seems that something’s amiss and I try to make myself feel less and less OK because then there’ll be less height to fall from when “it” happens.

Find it so much easier to talk about painful, heavy feelings that make you feel small and sinking and isolated. Somehow they feel more real, more legitimate.

Also scared of being satisfied or god forbid, happy, because happiness is dull. Literature/film/culture in general isn’t full of stories about happy people having fun times.

It’s all very silly, now I write about it. Cue more shame.