anxiety

Friendship in these pandemic times

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My friends are never out of my mind
I have several times a day where I would love to talk to them but I don’t. I don’t send a message. Or meme. I don’t say anything about anything happening. I am silent.

It’s fear. Fear that I’ll fall flat. That I’m tolerated not liked. It starts when you realize who you think that they think you are, who you think you are, is not who you really are.

You’re real friends see past the mask you are using to protect yourself. Past posture and phrase.

And you’re left with this raw exposed self. And you can hide or distance yourself. Not on purpose, but you never thought there would ever be people who wanted to hang out who transcended circumstances.

Not work friends, not writing friends. Though that’s where you met. Real friends. Who are just as bad about reaching out as you are. But who, when one of you does, reconnect like magnets.

Intoxicating friendship. The kind you crave.
Pre-pandemic, I used to meet every week with a couple of friends for lunch. For years. We didn’t make it every week but we tried. Sometimes schedules were too much. But I miss that schedule. That sure schedule of weekly dance.
Of trying each week.

Above almost all things, I want that back. And given my inability to reach out, I wish for it. It’s dumb. They are right there. Across the ether. But, still, I’m silent. Maybe I’ll put it on my calendar.

It seems that’s the only way I have to get it done.

Sleep’s ellusion

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That first step
Getting into bed
So comfortable but
My mind draws me out instead
Won’t simply rest
Reminding me that sleep
Might as well be dead
But life has its moments
Those times when extreme comfort combine
With anxiety
Talking about having to go to work
To interact
And my brain
Instead of the sleep I know will help
Instead throws out these things like reading
Like playing games
Like taking apart my fan to clean the motor
All to keep the anxiety at bay
Worst coping mechanism
It causes me harm to follow its prescribed treatment
So why am I still awake
Instead of drifting
Can’t sleep when tomorrows just a few hours
I miss the days when I knew that by waking up and going to work I’d be with someone I loved
Not because I miss the relationship
But that balm of sleeping, in a rush to get to the next day
I miss that
Instead
I have tomorrow
Another day without succor
Another day without you

Sleep walking

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I woke up yesterday with a profound sense of calm. I felt at peace. It took me a minute to realize what it was. I had no feelings of depression and no feelings of anxiety. I felt profoundly normal. Steady.

And I could not help but think, if this is what those without anxiety or depression feel like, then it is no wonder that their responses are so wrong. That they cannot conceptualize what it feels like. Because their variation from that baseline into sadness or into worry are a different reality.

It would take a open mind and a huge amount of empathy to see my normal. To see my real. And I don’t expect that from them.

It would be like asking someone who could not see the color green to accept that I can, when their society says that I can’t. When a community consensus of what is is reached, it becomes entrenched and rooting out that becomes harder and harder.

So I understand why they would not understand what I feel. Not understand me. But it does make me feel sad. Because now I know how they feel. And I think, their understanding is far from reach.

But worse, I don’t want that normal for myself. It did feel wonderful. But only in opposition to what I normally feel. Without the counterpoint, I think it would feel empty. And I’ve had quite enough empty,
Thank you very much.

Bullshit laments of a white collar worker

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Yearn for sleep
But keep it at bay
That distant sirens song
Oblivion calling
Rest after a day of being

Keep it away
Give just a few more hours of wake
Tomorrow brings anxiety
Sours the taste of sleep

Makes everything a little worse
A little paler
Life drained out
Trapped and uncomfortable

Too cold
Too much chatter
Not enough content
Not enough freedom

Going to work
Trapped with limited free will
No peace

Awoke upon a distant dreaming

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Waking up every hour
Nightmares playing scenarios through my mind
Drink some water and descend into something so real that waking is relief
Thankful that I am peripheral player in each
But deeper past people I know until I breach some layer
And indelible images which make mock of decency
Of kindness
Play out as if I am a camera lens
Unable to act
Six punctuated hours of sleep
Six different nightmares
There is more sleep in me
But my endurance for nightmares is spent

“Post”-Quarantine Blues

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I’m getting super stressed. Not because of the quarantine. I’ve adjusted to that. Gotten used to working from home in a t-shirt. Prior to this, outside of gym workouts, I haven’t worn a t-shirt in literal years. I’m comfortable. If I’m having a bad time of it, I go and hang out with my cat. I go outside and just soak up the sun.

I don’t have any of the social interaction stress. I don’t have to put on a false front. I don’t lose 2 hours a day to driving to and from work. I get more work done. I enjoy my work more.

But they are making us go back into the office. Effective Monday, May 18th. Because Americans are idiots. Because “the economy” is more important than lives. Because they only know how to fight the last war. Because politicians care more about their electability than the people they are supposed to be advocates for. And because corporations only care about the appearance of what is right and not the actuality of what is right.

So I’m stressed and not sleeping. I finally crashed Wednesday afternoon and woke up at midnight. Missing my posting deadline.

I hope you are all doing better. But, I’ll be honest, I can’t see how it will be better for a long time.

Desperate deep breathe

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Soft plat
Blood forms perfect droplets on the plastic
Frantic to stop the bleeding
Even more so the pain

Pulse deep
Unreachable
Sharp
A blunt needle burrowing

Pressure building
Can’t feel the crash coming
Eyes press tightly

Nightmares strut
Wallow
Glut
Mind breaks each morning

Another splinter
Another ache
Trails of wetness
Unseen

Feel blood pump through veins
Waiting
Waiting
Waiting

One last trip
Until silence lasts

Uncomfortable with crowds

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Depression is insidious. For me, when its not overwhelming sadness, it’s self destruction. It’s eating too much. Spending too much. Pushing too hard. Overcorrecting until people are sick of it. Or staying up way too late even when I recognize that I’m tired. Even when I’m falling asleep in my chair.

And the thing is, things aren’t bad. I’m anxious for a trip I have to take for work. Basically because there will be a ton of people there and I won’t have any social cover or retreat. Other than that, I’m good.

But still I push past endurance. Still I do this. Self destruction. In service to nothing. And, while I’ve gotten better down the years, I’m still not well. I don’t even know what well looks like. And it baffles me that there are people out in the world who have no idea what this is. They never feel like this. And if they do, they shake it off. Like it’s nothing, like it’s easy.

To me, they are aliens. I can’t relate to that frame of reference. I don’t know what it is. So we are aliens to each other. Describing the indiscribable. And getting lost in the words we can’t share.

And I wonder, how many dichotomies are like this? How many fundamental schisms of perspective are there?

We share this world, but I don’t think we live in the same one. And that is the hardest thing to accept and convey. The reason we are so fundamentally divided is that we have codified our stances as fundamental parts of our being. And so, every deviation is a existential fight for identity with no person or group able to give ground. Lest we are forced to redefine our self as other.

I despair for humanity. Not because I think we are doomed but because I see the downward trend. And I don’t know if we’ll make it out. I hope there is some angle I’m not seeing. Some truth that lays fallow and unknown waiting to bring forth life.

But still its late, and even now I procrastinate.
I can still get a couple of hours of sleep, maybe.
I can control me. And maybe that’s all we could ever do. And maybe that will need to be enough.

Anxiety dreaming

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I had an awful horrible dream. I was downtown for first Friday(an art and food thing) but I was also down there to retake a class in grade school. As myself not as a kid. And the teacher had reserved me a place right at the front. Then an adjacent classroom played a famous jazz song super loud and she started acting and singing like a jazz singer but completely out aync with the music and she had somehow transformed into a 1930s flapper. And the room transformed from a classroom to an upperclass parlor. Her manservant came in and offered her cakes and food and she declined all but a black and white. Then I was driving. I parked an headed to work but not before reminiscing with the crossing guard that this area used to be all construction and I remember drinking beer at lunch with my father on the job(never happened).

I was then in an elevator up to my futuristic bedroom and I met my older brother there and we talked about the woman I was seeing. After I talked to him for a bit I found myself on my phone. Scrolling through various messaging systems and I realize that this person I’m seeing has ghosted me. And I feel heartbroken and lost, like one does. I wander and find myself in a music shop where I meet a DJ who is demoing progressive drum and bass but who buries signal for some underground movement in it. I go to buy a copy but to do so you have to get it mailed an I don’t have any stamps. I pull up google maps on my phone and we have an argument about big data. Then I head off and I decide fuck it. I don’t owe this guy anything so I head back to my car with the intention of going home. I arrive at my car and find the windshield plastered by pseudo official tickets because there was a blue arrow painted on the ground to indicating handicapped parking. That’s not a clear symbol or a legal one, so I’m like fuck it. Then the security guard wanders by and she says “thought you could slink away, huh”

Then my alarm rings. And I’m left with this feeling of failure and sadness on waking.

Anxiety scrambles for purchase

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Sounds get stuck on my tongue
A few words waiting to be said
Waiting for some truth
As the stress mounts
Real sets in
Unsexiest of worries
About money reel and hopeful
What was can seldom be
Unless perfect storm and
Responsibility
All boats rise with prosperity
But so do they in calamity
And mindless ramblings for wars of desire combat against what’s possible
Until emergency depletes and scramble for purchase on dirt
Hard packed with indifference
Easy to live without the cost of living
Scramble for a place makes mock of all
Until only the memories stand sentinel
Around broken forms
Lifeless
After the fall