lately i keep tripping over myself. in the worst ways possible. choking on myself. about to say something, then it refuses, changes its mind, dives back down into my throat & burrows miserably inside of my chest.
can't sleep, tonight. killed time by watching various episodes of stupid television on the stupid internet. no attention span for a movie, or a book. even a short story. so i get high & blur out to comfortable idiocy. the saccharine moments, enough to bring tears to my eyes. maybe that's the weed. it reminds me of vomiting, the way my mouth fills up with saliva & these needle-like jabs of pain.
then, it all kind of stops. even this, right now, at the time of. present moment, though i am describing it in the past tense. this has been the refrain of my brain's song, lately: extended flights of emotional frenzy, punctuated by
"wow, this is stupid and dramatic. i am stupid and dramatic. over-emotional. i am damaged. this is self-pity." sometimes, brief chords of "i'm a closet egotist whose veneer of insecurity and humility is wearing thin." or "i actually think very highly of myself and suffer from delusions of grandeur."
then it goes away, swallowed up by the miasma again.
and my phone is ringing now. well. vibrating. there's a text message. an incoming call i have to let ring itself out so that they don't know i'm ignoring them. this happens so often lately that i wish i wanted to smash it. "i want to see you again" only it's not "you," it's "u" and that awful silence in the car the next morning. it's not just that - it's everyone i ignore. i am becoming something different suddenly. this is a very strange time, and keeping my face straight is suddenly an incredibly taxing exercise. i want to talk about it, i want to feel totally comfortable and just - say. i want to be able to say how i feel when i feel it. it's funny, because the more i find myself needing to speak, the less i do, and the pain of unsaid words just sinks into the lining of my stomach and fizzes acidly. i want to say everything, but there isn't an everything. there's no end to it. and it's worse when the silence happens. you know that. it's not that there's an end, it's either that you felt bad for as talking as long as you did or you felt that it was time for someone else to have a chance to open their mouth.
i am a mumbler, and people don't hear what i say sometimes. i am frequently interrupted, though maybe it's because i interrupt frequently - although i can't be sure of that. to be honest, there's very little i feel i can be sure about. what's nice is that T. is coming home this weekend. although i find myself lately trying to lower my expectations so that i don't find myself disappointed. don't think i can really handle that on top of whatever else.
so then work becomes an issue. maintaining my false - whatever it is - to the door, to the patrons, to my co-workers. feeling ashamed of the lie. but how do you ...? you "leave that emotional shit at the door." dr. f. has told me that i am too extreme, that i gravitate to extremes like an out-of-control see-saw. my words, not hers. it hurts when she tells me things like that. they stick in my brain. partly, this is a good thing. i am made aware of it. i can try to avoid that kind of behavior. unfortunately, most of the time it isn't apparent until hindsight kicks in. there's the challenge: discovering what elements trigger the recognition of the pattern, and applying them to foresight. attack the problem at incipience. kill it at the root. but being made aware of other things isn't what i need. i am already far too aware, though i feel i look without actually seeing a lot of the time. i talk without considering what words will fill the space, and with the motive that i know i should talk because i'm being talked to. without much regard for what it is i could possibly have to say, my diction becomes fumbled & my consonants a boggy glop of drymouth noise.
some days i don't use my voice until the sun sets. i didn't notice that until the other day when someone said "hi" to me on the street, and when i tried to say it back, nothing came out. like those old nightmares you have as a child, when the monster's getting you, carrying you agonizingly slowly past your parents' dark bedroom (you can see the red LED light of their clock, on the nightstand) and you scream with no sound, and they can't hear you, and you're doomed.
i would like to be approved of. i would like to be validated. i would like to approve of myself, and validate myself. i would like to believe it when someone likes me. i would like to be able to trust myself to like someone.
there is no way in hell i am ever going to get anything done with this yoke around my neck. maybe i should salinger off to the woods. but is isolation...?
what it boils down to:
the phone won't stop ringing. well. vibrating. and i haven't listened to the voicemails yet. i haven't been eating regularly and i have been consuming an incredible amount of alcohol on a nightly basis. it's not any one thing. it's everything.
and as we all know, there's no end to everything.
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