In Blackest Night – And The Words Just…Stop

I’ve been fairly quiet on the blogging front.  In terms of publishing, anyway.  I’ve got a few drafts on the go (my working title for this post was going to be ‘It’s Awful Drafty’ but I’m not feeling even mildly humorous and it’s a shit title to be fair).

My mood of late has been dire.  I’ve withdrawn as far as I can go without getting flush with the corner.  I’ve barely set foot out of the house this week – did the school run on Monday(I think) and that’s about it.  Other than that, I’ve just been out on the doorstep or in the back garden to smoke.  I don’t really want, nor do I feel like, to talk to anyone.  Some may perceive this as wallowing or some shit but it seems like the right thing to do.  I’m less of a problem if I’m not heard and barely seen.

Some may construe this as selfish and what-not, and yeah, maybe it is – maybe it saves me the hassle – but I feel like anything I can and do say will be vile and cause arguments and other social discomforts.

My inspiration for the book?  Gone.  My promise to blog once a day?  Broken.  My desire to get better?  A.W.O.L.  I’ve been thinking about getting better and I’m really not sure if I want to get better or if I’m saying that because that’s what seems normal and that will save me additional hassle.  It’s kinda hard to admit that you don’t want to get better.  Truth is, I just don’t see the point in ‘recovering’ when it will just continue to happen over and over, and each time is more difficult than the last.

I’m at the stage where I have no fight again; I have a few things going on that I could really do without.  I’m finding it harder to maintain the façade I once was a master of.  You see, and I’m not saying “my life is worse than anybody else’s” or “please pity me cuz my life is hard”, to get through a single day I generally have to wear multiple faces or masks (some often call it wearing different hats too).  These masks require varying levels of energy and I really am struggling.  This ties in with the notion of “why do we hurt the ones we are closest to?”

Here’s an example: It’s time for the school run.  I drive the kids to school (getting pissed off at other drivers and pedestrians) and they’re stropping and bickering with each other.  I put my Google Music playlist on, hoping to drown their incessant noise out, but then they’re nagging for me to put their favourite songs on.  We get to the carpark, and this feeling of relief is biding its time…they’re not there yet.  We walk a couple hundred yards or so; the playground is a warzone of noise.  I can feel my pulse in my neck as if someone is continually prodding me to get my attention.  I then see other parents I know.  The anxiety of knowing I have to interact kicks in – what do I say?  What if they don’t acknowledge me?  I have to smile and become a different person for what, in reality is a matter of minutes, seems like an eternity.  I just want to go home; I need to be away from everyone.

Sometimes I have to engage in conversation with the caretaker at the school.  He’s a really nice guy and the kids like him too.  Most days, our interaction is merely a few words such as “good morning” or “awright?”  But sometimes there’s more.  Like the other day; leaving the school raring to get home and be away from everything, he stops to ask me about the wedding.  I’m caught off guard and find myself in an awkward position – my responses are slow, somewhat laboured, and I feel out of my depth.  My delayed responses then have me on edge about my body language and whether I should stop and talk or walk slowly as I respond.  I ended up stopping, a few feet away from him and feeling like I’m being watched by everyone.  This type of situation is one I always struggle with.  It takes a great deal of mental preparation to go out and face the day.  But then, if something I hadn’t forecasted or considered happens (such as an impromptu conversation), I find myself floundering.  It’s these curveballs that set me on edge and make me not want to leave the house.

That level of mental activity is exhausting.  The hyper-reality is something I wish I could be free off.   To describe the processes my mind goes through over, what most would regard as  simplistic, interactions and stimuli is pretty tough but, as I write this, I’m reminded of being in school and having to describe a task such as opening a door or tying show laces to someone who has never done it before (the scenarios in school involved aliens).  What we see as a few basic steps and we can just do it is, in actual fact, a very long winded process.  It’s a lot of data to put down but the brain can process millions of bits of data in a matter of seconds.  So, to try and accurately describe my mental activity, it’s a case of multiple tasks running simultaneously and having to work through each one as efficiently as possible – it’s like so many things are happening at once and rapidly but, at the same time, everything is slowed down to detail each intricate step required for the end result.  And that’s where the struggle is: so many process running super fast but my mind then slows them down to a crawl and the multitasking aspect suffers so that, if I need to respond verbally, the answer can come out as nonsense or too quiet, nervous, too fast, too loud…all different things that are a product of failing to read the social situation because my mind is too busy with the cold hard logic of it all.

Yet another example of the graceful duck, gliding across a pond yet, all the while, it’s legs are going mental beneath the surface.  Even typing this has been pretty tiring because my head is just not in it and I’m just blogging for the sake of it.

Anyhoo, thanks for reading.