The minotaur
*Names in this journal have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent*
I have a strange feeling these days. I can't put my finder on it exactly. My anxiety is down, I guess, from my usual tightly wound nerves I can feel vibrating like electric wires under my skin on a daily basis. I still get that roller coaster feel several times a day. That feeling that is not quite like vertigo, not quite like the queasiness in the pit of my stomach when going upwards on a roller coaster, not quite like the consciousness is being sucked outside of your body but something akin to all those feelings. Whatever the hell it is anyway-I associate it to anxiety. It's mildly irritating and disconcerting, but passes in moments and leaves me feeling tired and strange. I've gotten used it.
Usually I worry and stress about a million different things. I have control issues. Anxiety yet again, I know. My house is not clean. Oh, my car is messy too. The laundry has piled up. The dog poop needs scooped. There are doctors appointments I need to make, a social security form for my daughter I still need to mail. My final paper is due next Monday. Those kinds of things normally weigh on me like boulders. That's just what comes to mind off the top of my head. And of course the larger, bigger picture problems. My boyfriend still has PTSD so bad he can't sleep all night and ends up sleeping half the day away and never seems to get anything done, and I can't even get mad at him over it. And my daughter is still crazy too. She always will be. I may have to either take care of her for the rest of her life, and all the maddening schizophrenic-bipolar things she does, or put her in a home, because I really don't know right now if she will ever be able to take care of herself. Kinda makes the laundry and the dog poop seem unimportant-but all that's still there too-I mean, one set of problems doesn't negate the other. Aren't my brain damaged, PTSD boyfriend and schizoaffective child a fine pair for a likely co-dependent like me. Really great combo for my issues.
Normally all these things are just crushing down on me, overwhelming me, bringing up every fucked up issue from an abusive marriage. That voice that whispers in my ear that I can't do anything right, that I can't handle folding clothes in the proper way, or driving to an unknown destination without help. That voice tells me I don't matter, the people I love are who matters, I don't have needs-I don't, I've banished them, vaporized them, they don't exist-I don't really exist other than this machine that keeps pushing, keeps moving forward on this road that disappears into the horizon and goes I know not where in the end.
Meanwhile whatever emotions I've balled up and tried to lock away in a cage in the basement of my subconscious have come to life like some Frankenstein's monster. Feeding on the resentment, insecurity, and fear that wonders too close to the cage. It has outgrown it's enclosure and swells against the cage in all it's grotesque deformity, writhing and rattling the cage with an ungodly noise and vibration, reverberating up through my consciousness and making my blood beat in my ears, adrenaline course through my veins, and chest constrict around my heart like a vise. For years I've been terrified of what I'd created and hidden away. I pretended like the monster I birthed didn't exist.
Through the years I've gotten braver and braver, peeking at its leering and wild bloodshot eyes around the corner. Coming a little closer to it's rancid, labored breath in the darkness. I still couldn't acknowledge it was mine when I again reached the light. I knew it was there but I'd be damned if I knew how it got there, if I'd take ownership of it. I ignored it's wailing-that angry and sorrowful cry. I knew it would swallow me whole as soon as look at me, and I'd disappear. I still fear that.
But right now it feels like it's silent. Lately I have not felt the rattle of it's cage, the rumbling of it's howl but I feel like it's still there, wondering around in the labyrinth of my mind like the Minotaur of Crete. Like a twin who always somehow knows where it's sibling is I feel it's presence still, my dark doppelganger. I am terrified it's gotten out of it's cage and it's coming to get me-and it's pissed as hell. With a murderous rage it's stalking me, and will make me pay for my neglect and it's imprisonment.
That's kind of the feeling I have I guess, it's the calm before the storm-that greeny black sky that says the monster is coming. I am steeling myself for what I know I must fight. The anger. The depression I have fought off so long it's now coming, I can feel it breathing now my neck, toying with me. I feel resigned to fight this hydra until I can drag it into the light. It's the light that kills what lives in darkness. I'm just afraid it will be the fight of my life. I've always feared that.
I have a strange feeling these days. I can't put my finder on it exactly. My anxiety is down, I guess, from my usual tightly wound nerves I can feel vibrating like electric wires under my skin on a daily basis. I still get that roller coaster feel several times a day. That feeling that is not quite like vertigo, not quite like the queasiness in the pit of my stomach when going upwards on a roller coaster, not quite like the consciousness is being sucked outside of your body but something akin to all those feelings. Whatever the hell it is anyway-I associate it to anxiety. It's mildly irritating and disconcerting, but passes in moments and leaves me feeling tired and strange. I've gotten used it.
Usually I worry and stress about a million different things. I have control issues. Anxiety yet again, I know. My house is not clean. Oh, my car is messy too. The laundry has piled up. The dog poop needs scooped. There are doctors appointments I need to make, a social security form for my daughter I still need to mail. My final paper is due next Monday. Those kinds of things normally weigh on me like boulders. That's just what comes to mind off the top of my head. And of course the larger, bigger picture problems. My boyfriend still has PTSD so bad he can't sleep all night and ends up sleeping half the day away and never seems to get anything done, and I can't even get mad at him over it. And my daughter is still crazy too. She always will be. I may have to either take care of her for the rest of her life, and all the maddening schizophrenic-bipolar things she does, or put her in a home, because I really don't know right now if she will ever be able to take care of herself. Kinda makes the laundry and the dog poop seem unimportant-but all that's still there too-I mean, one set of problems doesn't negate the other. Aren't my brain damaged, PTSD boyfriend and schizoaffective child a fine pair for a likely co-dependent like me. Really great combo for my issues.
Normally all these things are just crushing down on me, overwhelming me, bringing up every fucked up issue from an abusive marriage. That voice that whispers in my ear that I can't do anything right, that I can't handle folding clothes in the proper way, or driving to an unknown destination without help. That voice tells me I don't matter, the people I love are who matters, I don't have needs-I don't, I've banished them, vaporized them, they don't exist-I don't really exist other than this machine that keeps pushing, keeps moving forward on this road that disappears into the horizon and goes I know not where in the end.
Meanwhile whatever emotions I've balled up and tried to lock away in a cage in the basement of my subconscious have come to life like some Frankenstein's monster. Feeding on the resentment, insecurity, and fear that wonders too close to the cage. It has outgrown it's enclosure and swells against the cage in all it's grotesque deformity, writhing and rattling the cage with an ungodly noise and vibration, reverberating up through my consciousness and making my blood beat in my ears, adrenaline course through my veins, and chest constrict around my heart like a vise. For years I've been terrified of what I'd created and hidden away. I pretended like the monster I birthed didn't exist.
Through the years I've gotten braver and braver, peeking at its leering and wild bloodshot eyes around the corner. Coming a little closer to it's rancid, labored breath in the darkness. I still couldn't acknowledge it was mine when I again reached the light. I knew it was there but I'd be damned if I knew how it got there, if I'd take ownership of it. I ignored it's wailing-that angry and sorrowful cry. I knew it would swallow me whole as soon as look at me, and I'd disappear. I still fear that.
But right now it feels like it's silent. Lately I have not felt the rattle of it's cage, the rumbling of it's howl but I feel like it's still there, wondering around in the labyrinth of my mind like the Minotaur of Crete. Like a twin who always somehow knows where it's sibling is I feel it's presence still, my dark doppelganger. I am terrified it's gotten out of it's cage and it's coming to get me-and it's pissed as hell. With a murderous rage it's stalking me, and will make me pay for my neglect and it's imprisonment.
That's kind of the feeling I have I guess, it's the calm before the storm-that greeny black sky that says the monster is coming. I am steeling myself for what I know I must fight. The anger. The depression I have fought off so long it's now coming, I can feel it breathing now my neck, toying with me. I feel resigned to fight this hydra until I can drag it into the light. It's the light that kills what lives in darkness. I'm just afraid it will be the fight of my life. I've always feared that.
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