Scary Stories I Tell Myself in the Dark

(Attribution)

I've lived a life that has provided me with a near-endless supply of anxiety-induced, paranoid, cinematic, catastrophic nightmares.

The Dead Man's Hour is typically when this happens, waking up in a state of sleep paralysis -- or possession by a Dybbuk. Because of course.

Scenes of madness, of improbable (if not impossible) tragedy. Unspeakable but, apparently, not unthinkable. Grotesque evil filling the folds of my grey matter like sewage water until I feel as if I'm drowning.

I tell myself scary stories of loved ones dying, loved ones violated, sudden illnesses, protracted injustices, years of good people eating shit in sufferance while the avaricious spend long lives of cruel bigotry and blissful ignorance. They rotate and repeat, varying the cast of characters, but playing the same soundtrack of horror.

I imagine myself fighting back, a desperate gesture of a futility, and then falling... falling... until the closing dark suffocates me and I shiver next to a dim lamp, quietly crying for help.

Other times, you almost can't even notice the terror going on inside my head. I walk around as if the blood and plague and cruelty and death isn't roiling behind my eyes, tempestuous and gluttonous. I can just be talking to you in some diner on some random night in vapid pleasantries, while actually thinking that someone is going to break into my home, carve a swastika into my forehead, and kidnap my family. So I go on a full vengeance spree, killing every single antisemitic bastard until I can only smell the bloody iron oxidizing in the air. It was too late. So I return home to cry in every corner with a bottle of vodka and bad poetry like the worst stereotype of every male writer since the turn of the 20th century.

Then I tell you goodbye and wish you a good day. Shuddering briefly as I turn away and come back out of the icy depths of my random Tuesday's intrusive thoughts to wonder what the fuck is wrong with me.

I'm still not really certain how I stay sane and hopeful like this. How I find the capacity to love, and love deeply, or to reach for ever greater heights of self-actualization. I bet Maslow would have a field day with my -- not a hierarchy of needs, but a Gordian knot of viciously circular neuroses. (I call this a point in favor of the possible existence of Gilgul.)

I guess what I'm trying to say is... I'm not alright, but I'm gonna be okay. I'm FINE and most definitely not fine. I'm on both sides of the bell-curve for emotional-mental health and yet, still comfortably in the center.

I feel like shit. I feel fucking great. I guess I feel perfectly normal.

Cheers and Happy Halloween!