Ranting In the Dark // Yelling To The Night
Begin rant/
I'm no longer on my antidepressant. I still take the Xanax though. My therapist, who I was finally starting to get comfortable with after months, has moved away for a new job. So I've stopped therapy completely. I treat my psychiatrist like a mushroom because he doesn't seem interested in me. I feel like my treatment has helped me as much by not helping me as it has by helping me. I still have intrusive thoughts about terrible things. I still exhibit hyper-vigilance. I still worry excessively about my shit and piss and bathrooms and wearing protective garments. Yet now I have stopped putting myself down for past my behavior when I was a child. I give myself space to try and openly be sad, to feel things, to not be perfect. Some days I even feel truly, unconditionally, and briefly happy. Especially with my infant. Still, I always have that nagging sensation of imminent catastrophe I secretly want and reject. I can't seem to shake the thought that no matter what I do, I will never feel as good inside as I pretend to be outside. I fear death because I fear nothingness and can't sleep a wink, but some days I want to do nothing but sleep as if I were dead... And in-between is this never-ending guilt and shame that I have failed because I am weak. Because I deserve it and that's why bad things keep happening to me or my family. I'm scared shitless that, eventually, I'll ruin my daughter's life the same way my father, and brother, and uncle, and aunt, and niece ruined mine until I, in turn, fucked with them right back to the point of such ruthlessness you'd have thought I was born to slay motherfuckers. I love being a father and every moment with my baby is amazing because I never knew before that such intense, soul-shattering heartbreak could feel this good. I'm used to heartbreak that leaves me empty inside, like a cast iron pot of old soup scrapped clean except for a few small pieces of broken glass mixed into the broth that I have to sweep out. I feel like I shouldn't tell my wife because she does so much emotional labor already and knows about most of this too. But I still want nothing more than to tell her everything inside my head until my voice is cracked and raw. I want her to just hold me and tell me it'll be okay and then have a bunch of kinky sex. But I feel like I've asked and used up all her hugs, her shoulders, her ears, her mental energy, and the subsuming of her sexual needs to my own. Especially because now our energies are so focused on our baby. I feel like I am always wrong and always the asshole while simultaneously feeling I am actually right and the nicest person ever. The cognitive dissonance gives me headaches some days. I just wish things were better. But I know things are better, especially compared to how they were, compared to others' circumstances. And I know they could be a lot worse. Then I sometimes wonder what would happen if, in those small critical moments I made a different choice to say fuck it. To not fix, not save, not understand... To not try. What would happen? Would I be happier in a hell of my own making than someone else's heaven? I don't know. I know nothing. I am lost but I don't want directions. I need help but I don't want help. I am not a great person but I never wanted to great -- I just want to be better than all the idiots that I actually don't mind so much when I can just watch them from far away on rainy days. None of this makes sense. I keep hoping I'll reach an epiphany if I keep going but all I end up reaching is exhaustion. It's frustrating. It wouldn't have to be if I could be in charge. But I shouldn't ever be in charge, because I am full of equal parts self-righteousness and doubt.
I am tired.
That is all. So it goes.
\End rant
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