On my recent state of mind

I am a highly objective person. I've always been able to hold the world at arm's length and observe things with reason, and I've always been so proud of that. That isn't to say that emotion doesn't occasionally win over, but the brief periods of my emotions winning are just that--brief moments that pass and are followed by reason and reasoning.

I've always even looked at my emotions objectively, even my sadness. (And here, I refer to sadness, and not depression: I know that depression is a medical condition of the brain, and therefore I will not diagnose myself with depression, the same way I would not diagnose myself with cancer or diabetes or heart disease or genital herpes.)

Whenever things get bad (and recently, that's been more and more), it's almost as though I'm looking at myself from an outside point of view. I can see myself curled up against my wall, staring at nothing, shaking because for nothing can I get warm, and it makes something deep inside me angry with myself. Why can't I get up? There isn't anything wrong--maybe school is stressful, but I'm taking things easy, much easier than anyone I know. I am surrounded (maybe not closely) by friends who genuinely care about me, and I can feel that they love me no matter how far off they are. I have a lot to be thankful for, and yet I can't stop shaking and I can't get up and I can't breathe and I just can't any longer. Not for anything.

Being this highly objective person, I want to step outside myself and give my own shoulders a good shake, my own face a good slap. I want to yell at myself, scream at myself, make myself just fucking get UP already, this does not make sense, you have no reason to be lying there helpless when you have so much work to do and so many projects to start and so many options in front of you. Stop wasting these opportunities that others would kill for. Go make something. Go do something. Just go. Anywhere.

But I can't. I am one person, in one brain, and as much as I would like for logic to win out always, in this one respect, my emotions literally control my every movement. When my brain becomes heavy, so do my limbs, and my torso, and my feet and my hands and my chest, and my ribs ache and my heart won't beat right and my stomach twists and morphs and stops me from eating and all I want to do is sleep but all I see in my sleep are the monsters that haunt me. In the daylight, they are shakes and tremors and an irregular pulse, but at night, they take on a physical form.

And so I continue to lay against my wall. I continue to stare and shake. My brain is heavy, but I cannot sleep; My eyes sting, but I cannot cry.

And there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. There is nowhere to go (not that I can move); there is no one to talk to (not that I can speak); there is no more air left to breathe (not that my lungs work anyway).

And so I sit. And I try to let it pass. And I at least take control of my lungs, remind myself to breathe, that as long as I'm breathing I'll make it through, and once I have my breathing I have my heart rate back, and once my heart is beating normally my head loosens up, and once my head loosens up I can move again.

But no matter how much control I have over my breathing, my lungs still barely scrape air. No matter how much I can regulate my existing pulse, my heart still twists and turns and screams against itself. No matter how much lighter my head gets, it still spins. And no matter how much I can move, I still have nowhere to go.

But as long as I have my breathing and my heart and my head and my body back, I can take back reason as well. I can stuff sadness down for a little while longer, and once more hold the world at arm's length.

I know that one day this repression and objection will come back to haunt me, and I will be the worse off for it. And so I'll hope that when that day comes, I've strengthened enough to slay the monsters myself.

Last night

Give me a time, and I'll head out
Away from my house, left left straight right straight left
To red walls and spilled grinds and smeared fudge
But you'll forget, and so we'll head elsewhere
To salt and greasy tiles and smearing cherries
To epilogues and maps and stuffed somethings
To comfy chairs and organic popcorn and fake coffee
And on to stickers and dollar calendars

I would have kissed you in the parking lot, if you had tried

Because I guess I was the last one you had and that was so long ago
And because she's not what quite what you need
And because I don't know we were bored and maybe there's something there

But I hope there isn't, and I'm glad you didn't try
Because I like this thing that we have going on