Losing Reality: Part Two

Day to Day: "Sleeping"
9:00a - 11:00a... I sleep, then I wake up. No. I don't sleep. When I manage to exhaust myself, it's only to fall into nightmares that blur in reality - a half awake, half asleep state. I can move around my house, see and interact with everything. But there's a new plot line going on in my head, conversations I'm not actually having that are entirely made up, shadows and shapes, screaming and panic. Yet nothing is actually happening. After a couple of hours, I snap out of it and realize that I've been half asleep and tormented by my own mind.

Have you ever seen the episode of Psych, "A Nightmare on State Street"? The whole episode, you can never tell what is a dream and what is real until messed up things start happening. And when Gus wakes up, you can't help but wonder if he's actually awake this time or if the whole episode is just in his head. Nothing really seems to track from one scene to the next.

Exactly like that, except without the benefit of Bruce Campbell watching you like some creepy cultist playing
hacky sack with your brain and innermost fears.

Trust me, it may not be better physically... but for the sake of sanity, it's best to just choke down the caffeine pills with a cup or two of coffee.

12:00n - 1:30p... My second round of sleep. This one is heavy. Too heavy. I can't move, though I feel my limbs falling asleep and my muscles knotting up. For the first fifteen minutes, I'm intensely aware of everything around me. Then it's confusing dreams that I used to have every night as a child, tainted by real world knowledge of pain, death, and the burden of knowing that you'll always be truly alone no matter how many people there are in your life that say they love you. Yet still... Every sound around me in the waking world is amplified and echoes in my head, seeming much too real to actually be real - like some cosmic being in the sky is trying too hard to convince me that this isn't all just a holographic simulation.

Oh, wait... (Link)

Yeah, thanks science.

Losing Reality: Part One (Intro)

Catching Up
I've lost a lot of people recently. Most notably, my friend K. This hit me very hard.

I lost my mask. I lost my ability to conceal my thoughts and emotions, breaking down publicly the moment I heard about it. Everyone saw me completely lose my shit. Life is never fair. Just when you think that it is, it pulls out a giant and jagged knife, heats it on the fire until it glows red, and then just stabs you over and over and over again.

Since then, I've had yet another existential crisis, losing my grip on what reality is. I can never be sure what day it is, what I've been doing, or if anything even matters enough for me to care about that. Time just slips through my fingers rapidly while I contemplate if I'm actually alive or if everything is in my head. At other points, time seems frozen and infinite, and so much happens within what is actually a short span.

NODUS TOLLENS

n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore—that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand, that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre.

Everything changes from one day to the next and I can't control these seemingly random emotions. When I'm angry, I start laughing uncontrollably while I hit things and then begin to feel gut-wrenching despair. When I'm happy, I don't realize it until later because happiness now takes on the form of numbness. When I am depressed, I go off the deep end and start looking up how to tie a noose in preparation. And all of these emotions occur out of nowhere without a corresponding trigger. I think I preferred the emotionless detachment from before.

At a Time Like This
At a time like this, I should probably not be:

1. Left alone for three consecutive weeks.
2. Left alone for three consecutive weeks without my car.
3. Left alone for three consecutive weeks without my car, in the middle of nowhere without any real human contact.
4. Deprived of the opportunity to see another flesh and blood human in person.
5. Contacted by my much hated estranged father.
6. Given access to copious amounts of alcohol and less plentiful amounts of food.
7. Met with the realization that someone I love is too emotionally fragile to ever be with me when I need them, and most especially when I don't.
8. Realizing that numbers four, six, and seven are entirely my fault - but now I'm unable to correct them.

I thought that emptiness was the worst thing that could happen to a person, but I was wrong. The worst is knowing that you're spiraling out of control and you actually can't stop it. No inspirational speaker, no self help books, no conversing extensively with support groups can save you like everyone always led you to believe. You are utterly and completely powerless to the own whims of your thoughts and emotions...

LIBEROSIS

n. the desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life.

 Now that I'm done setting up the background, let me tell you about what happens when you start to lose your grip on reality...

Personal: The Male Half of the Parental Coupling

Daddy issues - if you don't have them, you can name five people off the top of your head who do. I'm one of the countless people inflicted with these issues, but not in the need-to-bed-people way. On the contrary, he has done emotional damage that leaves me not wanting to pursue anything other than a passing nod with people. Just hearing his name gives me a burst of adrenaline poisoned with anger.

My mother bore these seeds of hatred and planted them in my heart, and for a long time growing up, I hated her too. Who was she to turn me against my own father? But as I grew, I saw for myself what kind of man he was. I came to realize that she was not tearing him down to me to turn me against him, but simply refusing to conceal the truth.

And I cannot fault her for honesty, child though I was at the time.

The man (to use the term very loosely) has been in and out of my life whenever it was convenient for him, the resulting wake of his appearances bringing anger and stress like a dark plague. If you, dear reader, believe I'm being too dramatic... You haven't met the man. Spend one hour with him in without leaving the room and you'll want to vomit and/or kick him down a flight of stairs too. Here, I could recite his many, many faults and atrocities. Instead, I will get right to the reason for this...

I always knew my father was a heartless and manipulative bastard who never wanted me, but he recently made another appearance in my life. The king of poor timing, he's failed yet another marriage (to a woman that I actually came to like and appreciate, even if she was a bit of an idiot) and he's moved back to town. My fiance (of whom my father knows nothing about by my own design) and I have been trying to purchase a permanent residence there. Our families assure us that they will help keep my father out of our lives and that it will be easy enough to avoid him.

No. It will be very difficult indeed. He first reached out to my older brother, a man who had much more hatred for our father than I, than even my mother. I expected at best for my brother to ignore him. Imagine my astonishment when my father then reaches out to me and I find out from the both of them that not only has my brother returned contact, he's exchanged numbers and might even be seeing him for Christmas! So after a long consideration, I realize that this might be a good opportunity to do as I always wanted: let go of my hatred and move on.

But such is the curse of social media... You learn things about people you know that, without it, you would have never discovered otherwise. I have since learned that my father is a blatant xenophobe of the worst kind. I won't spiral into it, but upon seeing this I have to wonder what this says about my own brother. It's no longer a matter of personal injustice, but the very principle of my core beliefs. I cannot and will not ever be associated with anyone who shares the same world views that he does. It's left me with more questions than answers. Why, knowing this, would my brother let him into his life? Why has he not spoken up against the things our father has said and done, both personally and otherwise? Will I have to let go of yet another family member to uphold what I believe in?

Thanks a million for coming back into my life, male half of my chromosomes. And thanks for carrying on the tradition of failing me and my minimal expectations. You're a big fucking help.