That is, in the face of the deaths seemingly piling up around me lately, I’m okay.

In fact, my major stressor has become the fear that my late sense of peace will end.  Because if this ends, then I didn’t learn anything new.  And I’ll struggle to control myself—again.  Then, I’ll know the peace was really shock from Sang’s death.  Then, this is just another turn of the chemical tides.  It’s always—

I’m catastrophizing.  Realistically, it’s more likely the peace I feel is due to the overall peaceful environment I’ve constructed around me.  I have several inspiring relationships in my life.  I have a steady income and health insurance.  I have an able body and a highly capable mind.  True, I recently lost one of my best friends to what boils down to the limitations of science.  Just today I held back tears as I told a Sang story.  Yet, that I was able to exercise that much control surprises me.  My voice only broke a few times, and I had the foresight to lower my gaze to hide the rising tide hazing my vision.  It was a small step but a step forward nonetheless.

Publishing this post tonight is the biggest step of all, actually.  The worst thing a depressive can do is isolate.  So, I’m doing what anybody who’s had effective therapy treatment does: communicating.  Every word hurts, and every sentence feels like a small miracle I alone labored to create.  Even as I write these words, I’m wondering if I’ll have the courage to press the “Publish” button to my right.  If I do, it’ll be a big step out of grief and depression.  If I publish again tomorrow, I’ll have started myself on the long journey back to full mental and physical health.  Writing, my shameless monster, washes me of the guilt and self-disgust that’s too long kept my skin from breathing.  Publishing adds meaning to an otherwise masturbatory skill.

So, in a sense, I give myself meaning by publishing.

I’m sorry.  I’m either extremely focused or disturbingly absent-minded.  This post seems to drift between the two states.  I irresponsibly allowed the Clonazepam to run out in between psychiatric visits.  Though I did have the job of finding a new psychiatrist during that interim, I should have made the matter a higher priority than I did.  I—I’m whipping myself.

Not a new problem.  I know.

I’m trying to scream on paper, but I’m not talented enough to know how to do it.  So too simply put, nothing feels urgent anymore.  Yet, I’m full of all this quiet, distant tension.  Not quite dissociation, I’m compelled to enjoy it.  But I just don’t trust it to be good.  There’s an anxiety whispering from there.  It’s creeping up my throat, and I want to let it out.  If I let it out, maybe I’ll be able to take a deep enough breath.  I can stop this yawning.  I’m always so exhausted, lately.

I just have to press “Publish.”

Related posts:

1. Freewriting Panic Attack: Holding Myself Up Normal
2. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares
3. Freewriting Panic Attack: There’s Never Enough to Cry About
4. Freewriting Panic Attack: This Is As Close to Being Inside My Head As I Could Have Gotten You Through Words
5. Freewriting Panic Attack: The Building. Shaken. Up.

To answer the question, I need to ask myself what I would and wouldn’t change about myself or my circumstances.

I need less TV, more reading, more exercising, of course.  But a more serious look at my life reveals something that needs more than the yearly “do more” fill-in-the-blank can address: control issues.  Again and again, my desire to completely control myself and everything around me inflames my depression through workaholism that eventually drives me to illness with self-destructive patterns like restricting food and self-applied pressure to “succeed,” to surpass expectations, to be honest with myself.

Yet I have my words.  I wonder if I would remember the good parts of life if I weren’t writing it all down, deriving meanings about my person from my every choice, accidentally journaling my life, hopefully preventing myself from repeating history.  It’s difficult to denounce the obsessive thinking that, given the refocus I’ve given it this year, has become a great means to healing.  And so, I won’t denounce it.  Instead, I’ll promise myself to continue to focus this merciless tic on questions based in reality, not the chamber of fear behind my eyes.

As I review the last year, as I note the way I’ve matured and the ways I’ve failed myself, I realize there’s more to be said than I can get down tonight.  As the 9-to-5 circumstance begins to weigh on my stamina, I’m beginning to find myself exhausted midway through writing any post.  That upsets me, but it’s also forcing me to consider what my time is really worth.  Looking into the new year at my new job and my new life, as new and ever-increasing responsibilities make greater demands on me, the value of my time will, no doubt, increase.  Who and what will make the cut?  The answer to that lies in a simpler question: if I’m getting tired midway through writing a post, what’s taking up the time writing used to occupy?

But I’m thinking again.  Too much for one night.  I need to go to bed.  More tomorrow.  I’ve promised myself.

Related posts:

1. The Mental Healing Starter’s Guide: Because Some of You Have Asked, “Where Do I Begin?”
2. The Mental Healing Starter's Guide: Because Some of You Have Asked, "Where Do I Begin?"
3. Stop it! Shut up! It’s too ugly!
4. Freewriting: Madness
5. I Want to Stop Writing About What Happened to Me.