bad days

The Buddhist koan of the original face is about questioning who we are, with every layer of circumstance peeled away. Koans are typically unanswerable, intended to be pondered indefinitely, as a practice of mental focus. There is no original face to be found.

I got to the gym on Monday, and again yesterday. Skipped today. I woke up feeling miserable this morning. I have no idea why. I haven't been sleeping well. I keep trying to take naps because my sore joints and muscles really need it. I find it impossible to care about anything or to want to do anything, except training. The scrap of driftwood I cling to in an ocean of despair.

I couldn't seem to pull out of it all day. I wasn't very creative in my efforts to try, only occurring in retrospect that laying around doing nothing was probably the worst thing I could do. As is typical of such states, I didn't think of anything better at the time. I was too apathetic and distracted by feeling sorry for myself, hoping it would just go away.

Depression is another aspect of who I am that I find difficult to feel very good about, in large part due to how rare it is for anyone else to feel good about it. I dabbled in the goth thing decades back and still tend to dress in black, trench coat and all. Holding on to some piece of myself that had a lot to do with trying to see something good in being miserable. Hoping to find people who could see it that way too. People like me.

Who I am, based on circumstances, like how depressed I am when I wake up in the morning, and my brain's malfunctioning abilities to manage that. I understand why part of me tries to embrace it, but it's not good at all. My whole life has been shaped by it, mangled by it. It's not fair that this is such a consequential part of who I am, but so substantial that I'm rendered socially worthless for it, to anyone who isn't in the same boat?

This is where I've realized it's possible I've been getting it wrong all my life. I don't know that people disregard everything else about me, because of this and all its consequences. People see things in all different ways, not everyone being all that judgmental. It's a difficult and frightening question, but the blanket generalization I tend to make has to be at least somewhat wrong. Self-esteem involves such deeply rooted presumptions.

Unfortunately, that has a lot to do with my actual experiences with people. In particular when I was young, my brain still developing, but as an adult, it becomes a strange question. People like each other in all different ways, and there's very little playing with toy trucks or stuffed animals. Nobody asks me if I want to play, and I don't like most of their games anyhow. I go to the gym, and people ask if I want to spar, and that works, but has its limitations. 

I don't feel like I want much else from them, but I still keep falling into depression. It's a warning light that won't stop going off, in a vehicle that's painfully just sputtering along. In theory, connecting with peers would counteract this substantial part of myself, making for less of an obstacle to being someone I'd prefer to be. That seems to be the basic mechanics of it.

Granted, it hasn't worked out that way much, but for most of my life, I was getting everything else wrong, too. Possibly for endocrinological reasons, but I've also had so much to learn. I don't understand why this is all so hard. Except that I do. I just try not to dwell on all the shit that's gone wrong, because that sure doesn't help. 

It doesn't help, but not dwelling doesn't make it go away, either.