DAY TWO / STARTIN SMALLS

 One thing you may have pieced together is that I'm trying to write daily. In fact, I've decided to write daily in a blog that I actually make publicly available--though I assume it will be a long time before anyone reads it, if ever. Sort of a perfect middle ground between the zero-stakes therapeutic writing of a journal and the pressure of deadlines and publicity pushing the writer to make the shit actually good. "This shit half good", say I. 

I am doing this in the morning almost immediately after waking, just as beloved teacher of the Artist's Way, Julia Cameron, always encouraged us to do. "Morning Pages"--a recurring phenomenon in my life since I was a child, when my mother made me practice them off and on through the years in which I was homeschooled. This isn't exactly what Morning Pages are about, though, because there is a throughline of purpose, and I'm publishing it, so I can't go full stream-of-consciousness and word-vomit. Moreover, at the moment I'm not really ... [here I launched into a stream-of-consciousness reaction to my father returning. See... "footnote"?]* 

Okay, I'm done, and as you can see these are very neurotic thoughts I've got rattling around the ol' think-machine. Though, understand that I'm not exaggerating with his social issues, and I really do try very hard for his sake. Literally everyone who's ever been at all acquainted with him has asked him to stop constantly humming the same few bars over and over and over and over and over every single moment of every single day until we all fucking die.

Jesus Crust, I've gotta get back to some kind of point. I'm doing this to try and order my thoughts, not just record them for the hell of it. I was going to talk about looking at smaller habits that I could build to reshape things gradually back to any level of dignity, mental clarity, and physical energy. One of them is this--writing, just writing regularly. Another that I've actually managed to keep going daily for the last few weeks already is walking. The great thing about starting from zero is that even a little effort will be very rewarding, relatively speaking, and I've definitely felt positive impact from the daily walking. 

I'm actually gonna switch gears for a second here and examine what's happening this very moment, because in many ways it is the crux of the whole problem. I am losing steam already. Writing the previous paragraph took longer than that whole stream-of-consciousness wall-o'-text, because of the number of long pauses I took to just slump limply in my chair and blankly stare at the floor. There is a strong pull toward apathetic oblivion and abandonment of any willful use of my body. It often feels uncomfortable at a very basic level to intentionally, consciously operate my body and steer the ship of my attention and cognition in all the ways that are fundamental to truly living a human life. The path-of-least-resistance that I feel naturally compelled toward, like swimming downstream, is one of living death. What I *want* right now is to go back to sleep, or, barring that, to get high on opiates and watch a TV show or movie, leaning back in a comfortable armchair--in other words, to carefully arrange myself and my surroundings so that I need not move, think, or do anything besides blithely allow waves of comforting sensations to wash over me and become my world, blocking out all the profoundly beautiful light of life and all the shadows it casts in favor of a grey** state of suspended animation wherein I can pretend for a few hours that suffering and loss don't exist. 

This doesn't come from nowhere. I haven't led a charmed life which I've just failed to appreciate, though I certainly still have room to improve my sense of gratitude and appreciation for it. I had a fairly insane upbringing, and my current condition is a very predictable, textbook result of the way I was raised and the kinds of traumatic experiences I was made accustomed to from a very young age. In other words, most people who were raised the way I was end up having exactly the same issues I currently have, down to their DOC (drug of choice) being opiates/opioids. I would love to see a good therapist and explore all that more deeply, but I can't afford it. I'm currently unemployed because, yet again, I could not keep up any kind of balance or healthy life outside of work, leading me to take even more drugs so that I could get through work without just breaking down and crying all the time, which made my condition worse, until I just completely fuckin lost it,  did break down and cry for hours at work, and finally quit, saying I would hit the road and just be a homeless beggar again.

All of this is why I feel the best option, for now, is to start from the bottom with tangible, external activities, and just try to regain the ability to do anything at all with my time (besides get high and play video games while simultaneously listening to a podcast) through simple repetition and practice. Repeated attempts to change my behavior will naturally uncover the inner obstacles to that change as I go, and provide clearly defined ways of facing them. I have been at this for over an hour now, and I don't want to push too hard too soon, so I think I'll call this one for now.  

Well, I still need to figure out what the fuck to do with the rest of this day. 

NOTES BY FEET FOR FEET:

*oh man, fucking god damn it, dad is back and I have to deal with his awkward ass without hurting his terrifyingly insecure feelings and for the love of all that is holy I need several more hours to be prepared for that oh jeeeesus oh god why do I struggle so much just to be around other people why am I so harshly averse to simple small talk and the desire of my father to hang out with me i whatte rwitng looooool when I woke up he was out of the house and it was blessed peace, no constant humming OH THERE IT IS he just started it up, what song is it this time that he'll loudly hum 2 measures of OVER AND OVER FOR HOURS as he lumbers about the house aaaaaaAAAAAHHHHH dad learn to entertain yourself and don't depend entirely on one person who is completely different from you to fulfill all your social needs please god it's completely unfulfilling to me to talk to a person who literally cannot understand what I am saying, and who, despite my simplifying it as much as I possibly can, still just kind of freezes up if I do anything besides say "yup", who literally cannot listen and comprehend what ANYONE else says because he's too deeply wrapped up in obsessively, anxiously trying to arrange himself so that he *appears* to be listening and understanding to stop thinking about himself for a moment and actually *listen*. If I am busy doing something in my room--and mind you, I usually don't close the door, and it's a small house, so I'm not locked away in a distant cave on the second floor like a suburban teenager, I'm just chilling in the most logical part of the house for me to be chilling in--he gears up to say something with a series of grunts and loud throat-clearing in a manner that is so completely consistent that I ALWAYS know up to a minute or TWO in advance when he is going to uncomfortably ask me to a "watch a movie or whatever". Okay, okay false alarm that was just a regular throat-clear and never ramped up to the 2 increasingly loud throat-clears. If I'm lucky he will find a way to occupy himself for at least another hour or two so that I can fully psych up to spend the day with him. 

**maybe I'm from the UK, you don't fucking know.