Nursing

I'm laying in bed in my scrubs afraid to go to work like a child. I keep trying to tell myself that I'm contributing something positive to the world. I take care of people, how can that be anything but good? All I feel is this overwhelming anxiety that I'm going to be dragged through the town square and quartered. I love taking care of people, serving others...but the uncertainty drains me. Am I going to have the patient that throws objects and hits? Only in his 30's and angry at the world? Or will I have the sweet but senile old woman I can easily calm with a cup of coffee and some company? I don't know why it destroys me so harshly. I want to help, I want to be productive instead of sitting at home absolutely useless but I feel defeated.

Hidden Insanity. It isn't bad.

I'm not sure what this is anymore. I have a new paper/leather-bound book to write in so I suppose I don't need to be posting my mind online.

I can't wait to have our apartment so I can have my own space and be the hermit I am. Being around everyone I often forget...that's not to say that my attitude changes, merely that I become a reservoir of this insanity, these thin lines the decent part of the world wouldn't dare cross or even dream to think of.

Ever ask yourself why people commit heinous crimes and atrocities and how they could have made it okay in their own sick way? That maybe that rationalization is a part of us and we all do it, we just don't get held responsible for it because it often doesn't lead to the attention of the authorities and others like the acts of a serial killer or a bomber.

We're all crazy, sick, and twisted. There's a show on T.V. now called "My Strange Addiction." Often when I see people witness these shows and addictions the first words out of their mouth are, "Why would they do that?! Who eats toilet paper and couch cushion?" I urge you to think about the things you do in private or when no one is looking and then ask yourself if those addictions people have REALLY sound that crazy. Why do they do it? For the same reason you drink when you get home, smoke, or take a hot shower. For the same reason you dedicate your life to football and getting that next big project at work. Everything and anything can become an obsession, maybe some are more odd than others but the emotion behind them are the same. We're creatures of habit and we like to have control in a place where there are always questions and almost never answers...at least not ones we would bet our lives on.

I'm proposing a challenge to you, think about all of the things you do when you get frustrated, all of those dirty little "What ifs" and all of the questions you've proposed to yourself that go against society and what is considered respectable and good behavior. I want you to think about those things, those things you do in private. Think about them and ask what good comes from those things being shared, or even just the realization that you're not the only one. We all have to have a line we walk or we would all snap, but it's important to be conscious of those things...just something to think about, a little of our own insanity.

The beginning

I can feel the insanity rising beneath my skin, like blood percolating at a puncture. The only thing that keeps it below the surface is the small part of restraint somewhere in my being. My soul stuck in this body of flesh, blood, and bone. Sometimes I can feel myself bursting at every seam, feel myself break apart into shattered fragments of lunacy. Screaming at myself, at everything I am, and am not. Sinking, enveloping, molding, dying into this form into this creature...rabid...untamed, and without conscience. Death really is only the beginning. Death has no pain, no sorrow, no torment...but this...this is tyranny at its deepest. This is wrought iron, this is cruelty. It is fire and brimstone, it is rhyme without reason and pitch black. It is crying and wailing, and silence and surrender. It's everything you decline to acknowledge, every perverse thought and feeling abdicated. Every wrong, and every consequence and no way out but uncertain redemption.

Like a dog heaving at the side of the road.

work in progress

Slices of Human Propriety

Let's take a deeper cut. OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. No, I'm not talking about when you are frustrated because the laundry isn't folded right or you always have to have the dishes stacked. I'm talking about serious obsessions and compulsions that leave you bound to a task for anywhere from half an hour to much longer. Not just because you're anal and want something to be done a certain way, but because if you feel like you don't do it the "right" way that something bad will happen. Imagine every time you washed your hands turning on the faucet and letting it run until it's scorching hot. But that's not the worst part. Hot water kills germs right? Now imagine sticking your hands under and letting it run over your skin until you can't stand it. Your hands become dry and cracked all because you "know" that if you don't do it that something bad will happen and you'll get germs. You didn't wash sufficiently. That's just part of the day. How many times a day do you wash your hands? Quite a few. And there's more? Oh yes. If you don't shut your curtains justttt right until they're perfectly overlapping someone in your family will die. If you don't breathe a certain way the former will happen. Or maybe because you didn't sweep every speck off the floor someone will die in a car accident. OCD can take its form in more ways than you can imagine. What makes OCD different from your every day anal person? The fact that you feel like you can't control it and it consumes your life for one thing.

Are people with OCD crazy? Not at all. Have you ever gotten really anxious? Say maybe you're hoping someone will ask you out, or maybe you're worried you'll make a fool of yourself at school giving your speech. That's what people with OCD feel like but it's taken to the extreme. It's overwhelming anxiety about "what might happen." Why do they perform compulsions? Because it's a way of feeling like there's control over the situation. It's a way to subside the anxiety. "If I trace over these letters 10 times perfectly in black ink then no one will die." People with OCD know it's ridiculous, but the anxiety can't be assuaged unless the compulsion is performed.

It's upsetting because people don't understand. But they could if they wanted to. We all deal with things in our own way. We're all people with hopes, dreams, ambitions, and fears. We all have lessons to learn, and for some of us OCD is a way to learn multitudes. Some people are liars, martyrs, door mats, people pleasers etc. everyone has something. It's an Insane Truth.

What Dreams May Come

Have you ever hated yourself...for every word you spoke and every breath you took? Like the earth crumbled beneath your feet pulling you deeper and deeper limb by limb into an asphyxiation of self collapse? By having your own original thoughts and ways of deduction that you were somehow guilty of such atrocious crimes you should be eternally punished?

What did we do? What did I do? I find no value in what I say, I say things and I think things because if you don't know then who's going to tell you? And no one should, that's the beauty of being an individual and living a life, no matter how similar to anyone else's it is purely your own. But I hate what I say. I feel like when I speak it will be taken all wrong and then it will be shoved down my throat and I'll go into penance for the next decade as a way of punishing myself. I can't get over it. I hate myself for things that I don't understand...and I lock myself away, I torment myself with the utmost mental brutality. I know it's all irrational, I know the things I say are completely normal, why should I be punished for preferring Spirituality over Christianity? Or...pink over orange....the sea to a lake? I don't know. It's ridiculous isn't it? It's INSANE and yet that's the way I feel. I hate ever finding myself thinking that my words and my thoughts have value or precedence over someone else's. I hate seeing other people's pain and knowing that I can't fix it, that I can't detract from it and generally can't even understand it because I've only experienced a sliver of what I am sure is a vast abyss of pain. A never ending spectrum of torment from physical, mental, spiritual, and everything in between.

Sometimes I want to lay in bed and just die, just cease to be because I feel so robbed and so utterly helpless. I feel defeated. How ridiculous right? How completely miserable and selfish. But sometimes I just don't know how to go on when there is so much. I know it's all in my head. It's a fabrication of the pain of others and myself. My own mental hell. I can't even write a simple email without reading it 50 times before and after I've sent it. It's like hide and go seek from under a desk. You see the seeker's feet shuffle past, and then abruptly stop. Your heart starts pounding violently as you try to suppress the sound of your breath but it only seems to get louder and LOUDER as every muscle in your body tenses with anticipation. I can't turn it off...I can't sooth it. I just fly into tears and lock myself in my room of perdition. Scrutinizing every thought, wanting nothing more than to turn it all off. So why don't I turn it all off? Because in all of this is truth. In all of this is why life is so amazing and beautiful. In all of this irony and ridiculousness there's love and compassion and understanding. There is a craving so strong to want to know more than what is felt inside myself and only of myself. Do you think it's possible? to be both a genius and a mad man?

Mangled attention

I'm a masochist...a martyr. An attacker of the internal, a crowd of voices all my own. Am I important? Not in the slightest. Does anything I say have value? I don't know you tell me, and even then, who's to say it's not just a timely fascination? So what am I here for? I don't know. Am I the only person who sits and obsessively ponders if it would be to my benefit to leave the house and interact with friends like a normal human being? Am I the only one who fights with myself like I'm 5 different politicians hammering out needs vs. wants, personal gain, sacrifice and whatever else you can possibly add to the list? Am I the only one who deprives myself instant pleasures because of what I know will result in larger and more consequential ramifications to the denial of my true nature. I'm always split. There is no angel and devil...rather a spinning of trials, truths, and falsities all spitting epiphanies at an overwhelming rate. But who cares? Who cares if I want to disappear into nothingness because I'm so tired of being blown further and further out of formal existence? I crave it and yet it's characteristic of most, including myself, to want to be remembered, to be thought of, to exist outside of oneself. And maybe all of this back and forth doesn't really exist. Maybe it's all an ideal and not really challenging my nature at all. I love the denial of not allowing myself to have what I want. I get some sick satisfaction out of knowing that it makes me look beyond. I too, want to go out and experience love and physical passion with another person and yet, is that really what I want? Am I even going anywhere with this? Give and take, push and pull, we all love it and relish in the drama and the anxiety of creating life force; of playing out a fantasy so sick and twisted, so genius and intellectual we ourselves are sold to our own made up villain. Who will be the hero tonight?