Weight, Discussed in a 'Round About Way
2003-05-27 � 3:13 p.m.

Welcome to another day.

I have so much I want to say, so much I want to accomplish, so much I need to do...and I can't manage any of it. I sit down to work at something, and suddenly it's five hours later and dark, nothing's been done, and I couldn't tell you what happened in the interim.

I am listening to Shellac. I mention this not because I want to promote Shellac (though I do), and not because I think it overtly relevant to anything I am saying or feeling or doing (though it is relevant to an extent), and not because music is a gift from heaven (though it is a gift), but because I need to be listening to something. Today, right now, it happens to be Shellac.

I need it, because I cannot concentrate. It's weird, because I am thinking back to all those questionnaires I filled out a few years ago when the doctors were trying to decide if I was for really real clinically depressed or just a screwed up person in some other way. Turns out I was right...funny, huh? Anyway, the questionnaires always have items about your level of concentration, and I always responded that I had no problems concentrating on things.

See, I would think about it in terms of work: was I able to buckle down and get things at work done? The answer was always "yes." (Despite my recent foibles, I am and always have been an excellent employee.) But now I realize that the work aspect was really the least important...and I also realize that I should have been answering those questions to indicate that I cannot concentrate.

If left to my own devices, I am finding myself completely unable to cogitate, ruminate, dwell or think things through. I just go blank without some external source of distraction. This figures largely into my decreased number of entries here, in my inability to write email (to write anything), to really do anything at all. I just can't — I feel heavy, and the thought of making the effort is like the thought of lifting a car, just plainly impossible.

When I sit down to do something, my mind flicks over the surface of the project, lighting on little things, never able to grapple with the central construct of whatever it is that I am sitting down for. It's scary, some, but only intellectually, because I also find myself unable to worry effectively about anything either...but I've discussed that before, I think.

So I put on some music, and I have something to put a little bit of my attention on, and it's like I can trick myself some and use my second-tier level of concentration for the thing I really want to be doing. If I actually focus on it, I lose it, drift away, can't recover my train of thought, etc. It's the only way I can do it anymore.

But it is dissatisfying. It never feels done, I never feel it is adequate, and it only works for some things.

And so the days roll by, nothing changes for the better, I get older and older with no thoughts of the future, and I know that I'm missing life, whatever that might be.

It fucking sucks, people.

The separation, the partitioning, that humans are able to accomplish within their own mental structures is astounding. I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose — it's a defense mechanism; mechanism as in mechanical: not conscious, part of the basic functioning of the mind that is below the level of rational control. Keep that person rolling forward; survival imperative!

But I never thought to find it in myself. In a survivor of horrible trauma, sure. Child abuse, violent crime, etc. Me? I'm nothing. White bread, middle class...I have nothing in my past that would cause the kind of separation of mentation I find inside myself.

Yet, it is there. I have felt it grow, and it scares me, because I used to believe I could think my way out of anything, and now I find my very brain to be turning against me, denying me access to its functions, my meager ability decreasing. O, treachery!

These kinds of entries must be getting boring, huh? Sorry I don't have exciting stories to tell or bizarre interpersonal drama to relate. I don't even rail uselessly about work anymore. Sorry. This is all a reflection of my decreased capacity.

Think how I must feel!

Cars are heavy.

-t

Currently Aurally Inducing: Shellac, Crow
Selection of the Lyrical Vocabulary: "He flies as a crow flies...straight to her!"

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