(no subject)

[vicarz]

I feel better, but I'm still broken. My mood has finally pulled out of that gulley, and has been so high that I consider consciously tempering it to prevent the subsequent crash. I wondered if perhaps I beat my funk, if I was better...I feel happy so I must be on the path to redemption. But no, I start to talk to a friend, good friend, not so good friend, and find myself opening subjects in too much depth, talking too long, speaking with too much emphasis...I realize that I still have a lot to work through. I process externally - talking to myself when I'm alone, and I still have a lot to say. It's like I have to put the words and thoughts out there to see what they form, or find out how they reflect what has happened inside. I find myself returning to the same subjects over and over, and I don't realize they are issues (or how much) until they keep creeping into everything I say. It's a constant battle not to drone on about these things. I don't even know they're occupying my mind until hear them over and over from what I say to others.

I had a blast last night at game night - didn't play a single game, but there were enough people not gaming enough that I had several good conversations. I was tacky enough to take my shirt off to show off the abs (receiving where do you dance from a yoga instructor? Flattering!) but as tacky as that was, it took serious effort not to search for a reason to do 1-handed pushups. I was attention-whoring, but holding in much worse attention whoring.

I'm not above shallow sex, didn't mean to say that. Nothing wrong with sex, just saying that it's not for me - not right now. I'm doing better, I will do better, and I'll be fine in the long run - but my running-on mouth shows that I have too much broken inside to trust what I feel about anyone outside right now. There is too much risk of hurting someone else or being very hurt myself - I'm hurt, but I have to work through it on my own. If I switch this hurt into another interest, I won't grow or recover - I'll just switch problems or postpone the period in which I fix myself.

Let me say this clearly - I'm broken. Broken!

One of my favorite conversations last night was with a surprisingly self-aware woman who had realistic and perhaps depressing views of relationships, growth, the effects of a long-term relationship on the people and relationship itself, and the additional effects of spawn. It was beautiful, happy, and sad all at the same time - I want to talk and listen more to her views, would like to talk to her husband to hear his. Hell, I wonder what the spawn says when he's not talking about "my juggernaut."

Talked to Kris (as in K & KC), who creeps me out. He doesn't creep me out when I talk to him - I don't think he does it on purpose, but when we talk he smoothly takes what I say - no matter how inane, and wraps it into a meaningful conversation with direction, books, movies, friends, stories...and a point or observation. Sounds good, but is it real? His wife sells things - are they networking or are we having a conversation? Is this marketing or real? Is he humoring me, using techniques, or are we exchanging things with genuine interest? I remember our falling out, and can't understand how it happened - remember the beginning of a friendship that fizzled, disappointment. Is that him, me, or us? You can drive yourself nuts having conversations and having an internal dialogue at the same time is this real? Are his lips saying the words he thinks? Am I hearing words he is speaking?

I'm having lots of moments and thoughts like this right now - I guess I'm in my manic phase. I was depressed and sad for a while, now I have a recovery period and I am nuts with feeling and intensity. It's hard to tell how much is thought and analysis, and how much is just the feeling of meat. Am I in love or did I ingest caffeine? Is this interesting or am I having an endorphin rush? Am I happy or just feeling the pleasure of the cessation of pain? Am I really this self-indulgent?

Real drugs are easy to figure out for me - at least in my body. Every drug makes my stomach unhappy, so if I am on barbiturates - I know because I'm going to vomit. If I'm on caffeine or speed, if I'm on thc...anything, my stomach will lurch or not lurch or churn as though a knuckled fist was in there spinning around without a wrist. Nothing kills the track your mind would take on drugs more than gut-wrenching. Your biology reminds you that your meat has merely been effected by chemicals, that for all your thought you're just another package of meat. Meat can be physically altered, mind is meat and thought is meat and everything that seems so real can be made, altered, and destroyed by physical and chemical reactions.

(I'm not high, but I just finished electric kool-aid and my writing kind of is infected by that idiocy. I'm so glad to be done with that book, never to be read again)

I have a lot to work through and I'm not sure what I'm working off, through (other than the obvious sick dad issue and the sheer weight of that), or towards. I don't really care - I know I have some growing to do, some maturing, some wounds to heal, but so long as I grow I don't really care how much or in what way I do.