Friday 2 September 2016

Shit For Brains (But a Fussy Kind of Shit)


Bombastic title aside (I quite liked it when it occurred to me moments ago), I have been struggling a great deal lately, and the sentiment kind of arises from that. My Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome have had some kind of secret meeting and decided that their host must be pulled to the ground and thoroughly beaten, that there is just nothing else for it. As their host, I would say mission accomplished.

I’m quite good at accepting (read as making room for) my anxious thoughts, even at times being able to accept that my physical health is about as robust as a cobweb fluttering from a car aerial as it hits 70mph on a dual carriageway. Sometimes no amount of CBT, mindfulness, progressive muscular relaxation or acceptance can lift my spirits and give me space needed to find the good stuff in life again. The image of Atlas holding up the sky kind of applies, but with knees almost on the floor, and a mightily pissed off look on his face.

That doesn’t mean I’m giving up or anything like that, but I’m really feeling it at the moment, the isolation, the fatigue, the vicious stabs of anxiety that make the fatigue worse, and so it spirals down. Even putting some of my favourite dark ambient tracks on and imagining that I was dead didn’t do much to ease the stress fracturing my peace of mind (you might find that weird but it’s a valid meditation practice in some contemplative traditions). Treating it all as something that doesn’t need “fixing”, I’m perfect the way I am kind of bullshit didn’t help either, even when I could genuinely mean it without the sneaky underlying goal of changing this “perfect state” into something more workable.

Seeing as I’ve gone all “mystic”, I should probably end this short piece with some trite sentiment about “planting seeds in my shit for brains to grow more positive qualities etc etc”. At the moment, I just feel like scooping it up in big sticky handfuls and flinging it at passers by, like a monkey whose banana was stolen when he wasn’t looking. Yes, I quite like ending on that image, it tickles me.