Feeling like a Procrastitute

I intended to try to write something with less heft to it today... buuuuuut that's not what happened:

Lately, there's a tumor sprouting in my gut and the roots are drinking my patience like a thief, hose-sucking the gas from my tank, siphoning my fuel with a fucking crazy straw. 

I've been going for a walk every morning (well, nearly every morning) around my neighborhood as part of my getting reacquainted with the world, as prescribed to me by my doctor as one more step I am taking to expand my limits within this PTSD cage, with the added benefit of helping me lose some of the 50+ pounds I've amassed since being devoured by this demon whose stomach I can't help but feel I am being slowly digested and dissolved within, patiently awaiting evaporation within this sarlacc pit'esque tomb. Taking the walk has come easier in some regards because I've been waking up with my heart already beating strong, white knuckled fistfuls of blood into my veins and the sensation that if I don't do something physical, I run the risk of letting those tubes burst from the mounting pressure.

Like a crying baby, I know my mind and body are screaming for something specific, but I can't for the life of me figure out what that might be. I've taken it for a walk. I've bathed and changed my diaper. I've been writing- not the novel that I wish I working on, but better than the nothing I did last week and the week before. I've tried to distract myself with reading- I burned through an entire book earlier this week in just one day, which is impressive because I've lacked the attention span to read anything outside of the audio book format and comic books for a couple years now. 

I tried playing a video game yesterday after I had walked and written and showered. After a few moments, the controller hung limp in my hands and I stared vacantly at the blank space just above my television screen while my defenseless character was brutalized. 

I listened to music, usually a calming activity. I set my playlist to shuffle and kept hitting next halfway through the songs after realizing what I was listening to hadn't held my attention well enough to keep my thoughts from getting lost, hoping through a dozen songs that the next one would catch traction in my head. 

I tried taking a nap, not because I was tired but because I needed to kill time, of which there was too much left in the day for me to imagine trudging through. I needed to slaughter time, in fact. 

I tried combinations of these things and more, leafing through some of my PTSD literature on how to cope with these exact feelings. I know that the cycle is a natural occurrence. I assume it's common for people who are struggling with this disorder to go through periods of extreme motivation (which I can remember feeling about a month ago) and then eventually crash into what seems like a hopeless depression funk. As I approach the bottom of the cycle, it feels like I'm dragging and scraping my raw belly through asphalt covered in broken glass.

I've been out of work for almost a year. It doesn't feel good. Prior to losing my fucking shit, I had been workin forty hours a week or more since I was eighteen years old. I feel simultaneously useless without work and crestfallen that I let myself become a person who defines their worth through work. Work that I don't really care about, in the grand scheme of things, so what's that say about me?

I try to be compassionate towards myself and it feels patronizing, insincere. I would never dream of being as mean to someone else as I am capable of being to myself. My psychologist suggested that I might be filling the vacancy of the absent and scary voice of my childhood tormentor with a ventriloquist version in my psyche. I am reminded that the voices we think in, inside of our mind when having conversations with ourselves, they are not who we are. The voice we use to communicate with ourselves is more like an amalgam of all the people who have had an impact on our lives, both positive and negative, wearing the skin of our own voice like a puppet whose mouth they take turns working. My voice's body has been occupied by the same hand for too long. I try to imagine the kind words of a loved one taking the reigns, if only for a moment of respite, but the thin illusory tenderness echoes in my ears with a mocking timbre.

I'm torn between feeling like I need a break and knowing that I don't deserve a break. Anyone who sees what I'm going through would assume that my life has been on break for the past year. I am spending my life like coins thrown into a well, wishing for change like a child while throwing mine away.

I'm pulling away, crawling further inside myself and away from the skin which is where the discomfort lives.

I only hear every other word or so spoken by my fiancee, my son. These are people who are towing the line, living up to the expectation, going to work, going to school, deserve to be grumpy or depressed, earned the right to complain. I can't look them in the eye without choking on tears suppressed in my throat.

I scroll through Facebook so often that I'm re-reading the same posts from a few minutes before and acting like I'm engaged in the activity, pretending to the nobody in the room who can see me that I'm interested in what I've already read ten times in the last hour, even though I wasn't even engrossed the first time through. The only posts that illicit a real response from me are those that resonate at the same angry frequency at which my veins are already quivering like struck guitar strings. 

At least they are making contact with my mind, I think. 

I try not to get wrapped up in these things typically, but they seem to be the only subjects my mind can hold onto for more than a few seconds: I write a blog about Caitlyn Jenner. I write a blog about casual racism in video games. I don't like feeling angry. I hoped that expressing my disdain would exorcise the emotions from my body, let my muscles relax and stop my jaw from aching, but it's still there and I think it's getting bigger. I'm feeling angry at people I know I'm not angry at and I'm reminded of the story of the two wolves that live inside us all; one named Anger and its Gemini twin, Compassion. They are both fighting for the precious real estate of our souls and the wolf that wins is the one you choose to feed the most.

I write half of a goofy ass blog about famous sidekicks, trying to expel the negativity, but this is not the story my fingers are trying to tell today. Each digit strikes at the keys like angry vipers and their venom shows up as pixels on my screen. 

The monitor screeches at me like an infant vulture waiting to be fed, ignorant of the predators it attracts, hungry for something real... substantial, meaningful. I feel unprepared for a war that I know is coming, may be already here. 

When I can't substitute this persistent and unrelenting feeling and the roots of my gut's tumor have spread across my intestines like the silvery threads of a spider's web, I close my eyes and type until I'm out of breath and exhausted, bled dry of the nameless emotions that have left me feeling poisoned for days. There is nothing left to think. No more left to say. Everything I ever was has been left here on the page.