Life, The Universe, Everything

xposted at lj & vox

I'm in a very strange headspace today. Trying to isolate myself from the negative soundtrack in the background, to find myself above it instead of mired in it. (What's the opposite of a laughtrack? A whinge track?)

A part of me is fuzzy-headed and depressed. I hate the catch-all term that depressed has become. It's so much more than just feeling blue; it's feeling unfocused, unable to articulate with sufficient eloquence (hammered that one out, didn't I -- take that demons!), feeling worthless and desperately lonely. The part of me that I am trying to quarantine feels like nothing I do has any merit or worth. It feels like opportunity is always just beyond the tips of my fingers. The fettered part of my mind seems to think that I have no real friends and that no one would miss me if I dropped off the face of the planet.

Which is such bullshit. I mean, honestly. Wah much? ::squashes voices::

I've been doing some excellent writing lately, and a myriad of creative possibilities keep presenting themselves to me, like a menu for me to pick and choose from. I have a fantastic group of real world friends and a menagerie of interesting, exciting, intriguing online friends, some of whom are really beautiful for all they're more fucked up than I am. No one is judging me and finding me wanting except me. And it isn't even me, really. It's this damned continuous loop soundtrack in the background that is so yesterday's neuroses.

I wrote a story a few years ago about a doll. Yes, some of you remember the Angry Ugly Baby. This doll looked like a useless piece of plastic and cloth to the outside observer. It wasn't worth clinging to, and yet the two characters in the story are enthralled by the siren song of agony and raw need, heard only in their own heads. They would do anything to silence that voice, including destroying themselves in an attempt to satiate the doll.

At the time I wrote, it was a stupid horror story. Now, looking back on it, it was a really insightful metaphor for my mother laying down her burden (depression, anxiety, codependence) and me picking it up, knowing full well that it would destroy me just as it destroyed her.

I suppose knowing is half the battle, but some days, I just want to click off for awhile. I want to go to the zoo or the beach or someplace far from here, so the novelty and the wonder will drown out the soundtrack for another day.

Life is beautiful. Work is good. My friends are amazing. My life is full of good things, and there's more coming every day. My writing is the best it's ever been and getting better every day. The writing frees me in ways that I can never begin to understand. I don't need to understand, I just need to keep going forward.

Even mud can be a beautiful thing.

(Specifically not behind a cut, because I really, really want to put it behind a cut. The soundtrack says my words are not worth a full entry. The soundtrack doesn't want to impose. Fuck the soundtrack today.)