Insomnia
The insomnia is one of those nagging awful things about depression. Basically, I love sleeping more than I love anything else, except maybe eating and writing. Sleep is a world where I go where I'm divorced from this body, divorced from the petty concerns of reality. I think I would even prefer nightmares to sleeplessness. But no. You don't get that choice.
I'm riddled with thoughtworms to the point where I don't know what thoughts are mine and what aren't. Over and over, the same images and symbols play in my head and there's no stopping them, no diverting them. You can change the subject momentarily, but stop concentrating, stop paying attention for even a moment, and they slip back in.
The sense of powerlessness is the worst. The sense of NOT. KNOWING. WHAT. YOU. DID. WRONG. It is, actually, psychological torture. First, the excommunication, the shunning, the being forcibly ejected from your community. But worse than that is the not knowing, you have been charged with a crime, and they will not tell you what it was. You are being punished and forced to pay for a crime when you don't even know what it was.
In the absence of information, paranoia runs wild - wait, is it really paranoia if 51 different people are, indeed, very much out to get you? No, I don't think it is.
It's not one post, or even one argument you're being punished for. It's your entire personality.
I'm already aware of the reasons that most people dislike me. It's not just that I'm a woman, I'm a woman who doesn't conform to gender expectations. I'm mentally ill and I insist on actually talking about it, instead of shutting up and going away and locking myself in some box where people don't ever have to be confronted with either 1) the darker and less pleasant aspects of the human brain or 2) their own fears and prejudices about people whose bodies or brains don't work the same way theirs do.
We don't have to go through the character assassination again. Whatever bad thing you think about me, I'm certainly more than capable of coming up with something much, much worse. Do you know what its like to be locked in a room with someone who will not stop saying the most vile, negative, awful things about you? YOU'RE SHIT. YOU'RE USELESS. YOU'RE HOPELESS DIFFERENT. EVERYBODY HATES YOU. EVERYBODY *FEARS* YOU. GIVE UP NOW. THERE IS NO HOPE, THERE IS NO LIGHT, YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS, YOU HAVE NO ALLIES. You'd either try to leave the room, desperately, or you'd become cranky, miserable, short-tempered.
Now imagine that the room you're locked in with this seething pit of negativity isn't a room, but your own head. This is depression.
There are only two ways out of the room. One is suicide. The other is pure escapism. Writing, drawing, making music, dreaming. If I stop writing, I will die. Simple as that.
I'm riddled with thoughtworms to the point where I don't know what thoughts are mine and what aren't. Over and over, the same images and symbols play in my head and there's no stopping them, no diverting them. You can change the subject momentarily, but stop concentrating, stop paying attention for even a moment, and they slip back in.
The sense of powerlessness is the worst. The sense of NOT. KNOWING. WHAT. YOU. DID. WRONG. It is, actually, psychological torture. First, the excommunication, the shunning, the being forcibly ejected from your community. But worse than that is the not knowing, you have been charged with a crime, and they will not tell you what it was. You are being punished and forced to pay for a crime when you don't even know what it was.
In the absence of information, paranoia runs wild - wait, is it really paranoia if 51 different people are, indeed, very much out to get you? No, I don't think it is.
It's not one post, or even one argument you're being punished for. It's your entire personality.
I'm already aware of the reasons that most people dislike me. It's not just that I'm a woman, I'm a woman who doesn't conform to gender expectations. I'm mentally ill and I insist on actually talking about it, instead of shutting up and going away and locking myself in some box where people don't ever have to be confronted with either 1) the darker and less pleasant aspects of the human brain or 2) their own fears and prejudices about people whose bodies or brains don't work the same way theirs do.
We don't have to go through the character assassination again. Whatever bad thing you think about me, I'm certainly more than capable of coming up with something much, much worse. Do you know what its like to be locked in a room with someone who will not stop saying the most vile, negative, awful things about you? YOU'RE SHIT. YOU'RE USELESS. YOU'RE HOPELESS DIFFERENT. EVERYBODY HATES YOU. EVERYBODY *FEARS* YOU. GIVE UP NOW. THERE IS NO HOPE, THERE IS NO LIGHT, YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS, YOU HAVE NO ALLIES. You'd either try to leave the room, desperately, or you'd become cranky, miserable, short-tempered.
Now imagine that the room you're locked in with this seething pit of negativity isn't a room, but your own head. This is depression.
There are only two ways out of the room. One is suicide. The other is pure escapism. Writing, drawing, making music, dreaming. If I stop writing, I will die. Simple as that.
posted by Masonic Boom | 5:54 am
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