It sometimes feels like I’m emerging from a bout of poor mental health without anything to hold on to. How could this be a recurrent feeling when it continuously spills out of itself? There are no pronounced relapses, and I’m fortunate to have my physical health, a nice place to live and a balanced diet. I’m beginning to wonder if it might instead be the outcome of a longer period of transformation, and every strain is followed by relief. As I pick up pieces of myself, I’m discarding more of them than ever. Growth is difficult. Not being able to recognise old, safe versions of me while the capitalist apocalypse threatens our collective existence has me freezing up.
The inaction and inertia I’ve found myself in over the years affects me in a few different ways that I hope might lead to deeper understanding of my own habits, and wider acceptance of the forces affecting. Internalised capitalism surely must be the largest cause of mental illness among millenials.
Sometimes I am inside feelings, surrounded and suffocated by the void, the perfect scenario for a frequent flagellant. I am primed to believe I am useless, that my blank mind is a result of my own failure of imagination. This technique exposes my own unawareness: when I’m expecting the results of my negativity to deliver the task, it’s only natural that thought processes don’t move me beyond the doorway before I’ve talked myself out of it, or decided something else is of greater, more pressing importance.
Then, other times, I am feelings, embodying totally the amorphous fear of scarcity. I am the ghoul among a room of relics. The meaninglessness becomes the meaning. I read tweets about not wanting to be perceived and realise my own needs for validation and symbols of affection are drawn from the lack of compassion I show me. Are my thoughts, words, actions, only valuable if they be used to create a dislocated representation. Once they are severed, is this a loss or liberation?
Slowly, quietly, I’m learning to accept feelings, throwing a shadow and sitting in the corner to observe me do whatever I’m (not) doing. A hairline gap is a chasm for exploration, there’s something to be said for denying yourself the comfort of immersion so as to walk into new rooms and open new windows and breathe new air. Once far enough away, I’ll have no need to reject these things that sit with me.
The next stage is to feel feelings, to notice patterns and to enjoy the spectacle. When I started therapy two and a half years ago, I think I told my own future in promising to embellish my limited emotional vocabulary. The dream of being-alive-and-having-things-happen-to-you was a distant goal, always in the forever future. It’s hard to believe I may be sitting somewhere on it right now. My excellent friend Dudley drew a Feeling Wheel and gave me a print. They showed me a moment of tenderness when I was showing myself cruelty.
There is unspeakable joy in realising one’s own infinite capacity for love, curiosity and irritation simultaneously.
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Absent-mindedly standing in a bramble patch, staring at the autumn rust of leaves, a few questions come to mind. Do the plants know I’m here and are they judging me? Would the ants ferrying debris over my phalanges avoid me for staying in bed an extra hour? Will the yeast carried in the wind still settle on my arm if it knew I procrastinated?
The exaltation felt when all human pretence slips off like a heavy robe fills me with fresh cool air in my head, lungs and pores. There is no other way to dissolve boundaries than to imagine them gone. They will not be removed for us as it would undermine our assigned purpose: to serve and consume.