I am feeling the way this song sounds pretty hard right now:
The thing is, once I “stop,” stuff like this comes rushing to fore. I don’t like to think of myself as a ‘busy body,’ but it’s becoming pretty clear that I have built up ‘stuff to do’ as a coping mechanism for avoiding sometimes-crippling sadness. The things I use to keep myself ‘busy’ are mostly meaningless, banal things, things that I don’t actually even care about.
I am kind of obsessive about trying to keep things around me neat and tidy. As I was sweeping/mopping our floor last night, I was thinking about why I even cared about stuff like that … Why do I “need” the countertop to be clear? Why does seeing it a mess give me so much anxiety? … And, I think a lot of it comes down to wanting desperately to feel like I am in some sort of control of things. A messy countertop = more evidence that everything is out of control, and I am helpless. So, I take some comfort in having my desk clean; a clean desk = I am in control of some things and I can take solace in them.
I have sometimes described my experience as feeling claustrophobic inside my head. There are so, so, so many things zooming through my brain at any given time, thoughts about literally everything. The best analogy I can can think of is something similar to how I often feel in a crowded concert or airplane; I am not “scared,” per se, but am definitely a little nervous and uncomfortable with so much going on and so little “order” to all of it. There is a line in Björk’s song, “Hunter” that hits this pretty much exactly: “I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me.”
I have studied a lot about Buddhism and Taoism. In both of these traditions, there is a lot of talk about not trying to control things; things just are as they are, and trying to control them really only makes you miserable. I get this, philosophically, but in practical terms, I can’t imagine actually just “letting go” of certain things. This, especially when I feel like my “natural state” is just sad. (And, yes, I know that Buddhism would say I have some of this stuff backwards …)
Something else that hurts a lot: What the hell do I have to be so sad about? Objectively, virtually everything has turned out for me, I have “accomplished” more than I ever really set out to do … yet, sometimes I am just really, really sad.
Anyway, some days are worth being a little extra vulnerable, and today is one of them, I guess.