A warning: this is written over the course of several days, but it's about what happened one day, so it's all written in the present "one day" tense. Also, this was a little bit ago. don't worry, I'm okey.

Parabola, Tool

We barely remember who or
What came before this precious moment
We are choosing to be here right now
Hold on stay inside this holy reality
This holy experience
Choosing to be here in
This body
This body holding me
Be my reminder here
That I am not alone in
This body
This body holding me
Feeling eternal all
This pain is an illusion

Before we begin I want to point something out, if you haven't already guessed. I'm a functioning depressive. It's like a functioning alcoholic but without the bar bill. I like to make little jokes when I'm on my own. It makes things more comfortable cause I just tell myself that I know the peope who are reading my thoughts or listening to me and I know how they'll respond. I figure if there's anyone who doesn't understand me they'd be too bored to read this.

But I'm probably about to bore a lot of people because I just feeling like writing even though it's just a lot of thoughts rolling around in my head that won't leave me alone.

I'm having an okey day. Systems are going okey, the Net isn't doing anything stupid, work is pretty good today, I think I'm getting back in the swing of things (expect, of course, for the time I'm wasting here). But I woke up this morning feeling kinda down. Like I was going through the motions that keep my life together. I really wanted to stay in bed for another hour or two, but that would have domino effected the rest of the day, making me stay very late at work, not having much time with Molasses tonight...etc.

So I dragged myself up here, not quite despondent, but rather bored with myself. On days like this I often crawl back into myself and watch the world spin while I hold onto something sturdy to keep from being thrown off. I spoke with my mother a little bit this morning and she wants me to spend Sunday with the family. I doubt I'll be able to get Molasses to go with me unless I ask and even then it'll be more like begging. I don't want to ask, not because I wouldn't ask - I ask him for plenty - I just don't want to drag him if he would rather stay at his apartment or go somewhere else. If he wants to hang out with my family and go to church with us it should be up to him. But I wouldn't ask it of him if he doesn't want to. Heck. I don't want to.

I'm not really sad about having to spend my free day with my family, I kinda thought it was coming. But it sorta pushed me onto this slide all depressives know, the one that leads to that deep cold pit where a lot of sorrow and pain is collected.

Metaphors aside, depression is no fun. Occasionally it can feel like wallowing in misery but at the time that one is "wallowing" one does not realize it. When someone can look around and see that they have been indulging in being down they are, at that very moment looking up out of their pit and seeing that it is possible to be somewhere else. But it is so very difficult. So. Very. Hard. To. Get. Out.

I don't blame my mother, I was headed this way for a little while. And as I tried to get back into my work I was unsurprised to find myself choking for breath and hurriedly wiping tears from my face.

I haven't been able to shake how I feel for most of the day. And right now, I'm just putting it aside a little bit so that I can write.

The oddest thing, that which has driven me to write is that I've spoken with Molasses on the phone three time now, and every time I hang up I start to cry again. I sort of understand why but it's really irritating.

The trouble with writing, of course, is that I get caught up in meta-reality. The thought of "this is me, watching myself, and I am thinking: 'this is me, watching myself...."

Nothing hurts at the moment, I just feel a sort of emptiness in my chest. I'm pretty well over most the crying. It dissolved the painful lump in my throat.

I do it for the Joy it Brings
cause I'm a Joyful Girl
Cause the world owes me nothing
and we owe each other the world
Joyful Girl
Ani di Franco

I'll be heading out to hang out with Molasses. I kind of dread it because he'll ask me what's wrong and I'll have to answer, and I don't really have an answer. Chemical imbalance? My Chi is screwed up? Someone walked on my grave? A distant relative died? I dunno. I just spent the day feeling like shit. That's my only answer. Wonder of wonders I actually finished my work, but work can distract me from being down. But he'll still dig for something, or else ask what he can do to help.

*sigh* Molasses is about as smart as they come, and he has a good heart, but sometime he doesn't know how to turn off his brain so his heart can take over. Well, not sometimes, most of the time.

Driving is a little like floating sometimes. Especially when the traffic is heavy, but doesn't really stop much. You keep your foot over the brakes but you rarely push down on it. It wasn't so bad today that I couln't have the radio on. Sometimes it can get so bad that radio feels like an assault, demanding my attention away from myself and tearing into me and I have to shut it off because it's too much of an auditory itching.

I don't look forward to seeing Molasses, although I'm sure it'll be fine in the end. It always is. Right at this moment I almost hate him because he doesn't know what this feels like, and because he'll want to bandage it like it was any ordinary hurt.

But mostly I hate myself. It's stupid to feel this way. To be in pain, with no cause other than overactive brain and an underactive ciculatory system. Shit, all I had to do was jump on the bike for twenty minutes at lunch and that would probably have kept me from the worst of this. But I really hate myself they way you might hate someone who continually whines about getting a Toyota for their 16th birthday rather than the Lexus they wanted. You just want to grab them by the hair and drag them to a woman's shelter to see some 16-year-olds who have some *good* reasons to whine.

Forty-six & 2, Tool

I've been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what could've been.
I've been wallowing in my own confused
And insecure delusions
For a piece to cross me over
Or a word to guide me in.
I wanna feel the changes coming down.
I wanna know what I've been hiding in
My shadow.

Walking up to Molasses' apartment and to the car and then restaurant actually hurt. My midsection feels sore, and my throat keeps stopping up, but I'm terribly hungry (which is odd on the one hand cause I don't typically get hungry when I'm emotional, but then on the other hand, I haven't eaten all day). He realizes quickly that I don't want to talk so he holds my hand and gives up asking how he can make it better after the fourth try.

I wish I knew what he could do to make it better, and I think there are a few things to do on a short term basis to make things better. but they're only short-term answers, and thinking, rolling around in my head looking for such an answer really...well it hurts. I don't want to do it.

Closer, Nine Inch Nails

through every forest, above the trees
within my stomach, scraped off my knees
i drink the honey inside your hive
you are the reason i stay alive

I think back and watch myself eating as he talks about his day, about his thoughts and his plans. I asked him to tell me these things and he was reluctant but did so. I barely tasted my food and felt nothing from the margarita I ordered. I talked with him about plans for the weekend and it didn't hurt very much. Outside he made me laugh. I forgot what he said, but it caught me off guard and I laughed a little and he was so happy I laughed more, so that I almost started crying again.

On the way back I prayed that it would pass quickly and I would be back normal. I just want it to be over. I want out and I asked God to remind me how to get out again.

I remember a poster in my high school teacher's class of a doll with her arm trapped in an ancient washing machine's wringers. The caption read, "The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable." I remember when I was five and I put my arm between the wringers of an ancient washing machine because they would bounce apart and I wanted to see how far my arm would go before I couldn't get it out again. I remember I scraped up my arm something fierce and scared the hell out of my parents when they found me screaming my head off, stuck in the wringers.

This day was like that. Molasses talked to me, assured me that it was okey that I wanted to cry. Just talking about crying made my stomach tighten. A fist held my throat so tight it hurt, and it felt like the physical pain was what was bringing the tears up. I started to tell him that I didn't want to cry when the damn broke and I fell with it.

H. Tool

The snake behind me hisses
What my damage could have been.
My blood before me begs me
Open up my heart again.
And I feel this coming over like a storm again.