This is NOT an emergency alert. Get your finger off the button.

10/6/23 1:06 AM

SNAFU is an acronym that is widely used to stand for the sarcastic expression Situation normal: all fucked up. It means that the situation is bad, but that this is a normal state of affairs. The acronym is believed to have originated in the United States Marine Core during World War II. 

 

I'm so tired of trying to describe depression, or whatever it is you want to call what is wrong with me. So never mind, forget it...you wouldn't understand anyway. It's not that I think I can make anyone understand anything, since my experience is unique to me, and even I don't understand it. No one really sees things the way I do. Probably for the best.

Nonetheless, I will try to make myself understood. What are my thoughts, exactly? Where do they go wrong? Are they even mine? 

It's easy sometimes to subscribe to the notion that there are demons and angels that can alter our fate, twisting and turning us this way and that. A god, or devil--some higher power who can claim credit for our good, or upon whom we can heap our guilt and shame, someone external to praise or blame. That might help some folks to get through their day, conscience unscathed, but not me. I am inoculated against such things.

The idea that "Life must have meaning," or more accurately, "You must find things that are meaningful to you" is something that I am finding hard to agree with or do. Whatever I think of, whatever I want to treasure or elevate to some higher stature, seems to fall short of the promise, and the hope it inspired withers. 

Still, I try to make my daily routines--the necessities, the frivolities--a thing that I cherish, like petting the cats or trying on hats, or setting out food for a couple of strays that have adopted me.

Yesterday, I went out walking, on a mission to get to the top of my hill. It's actually Donovan's hill, but no matter. I have chosen it as my morbid obsession. When I am pissed off at life, I go there, at great personal expense to my degenerating body. 

I made it to the top, despite not having done it for a while. I was just so mad. My internal monologue was stuck on "Fuck." Fuck this, fuck that, you know, like the Creature from the Black Lagoon meme, where he's smashing everything and everyone and cursing them blue. 

The problem with just going along with these thoughts, in my condition, weaning off one med and onto another: I might actually take one these thoughts seriously. I tend to emotionally reason that all of these thoughts must have merit because they feel true. When you don't feel much at all, you tend to give weight to the things that make you actually feel something.

Hence, my stubbornness in continuing to hike, out of sheer, determined pissed off-ness, even when my feet were hurting and my strength waning. 

I fully expected to go up the hill and come back down, just blow off steam, not blow my head off (even though my head does seem to be the problem and blowing it off, the obvious solution). Nonetheless, my whole intent, my mindset, was that this is necessary training, conditioning for when the time comes.

On the way home, I felt a little victorious. Fuck that mountain too, I thought. I kicked its ass. I found the straightest, least obstructed path, and I made it up to the top and back down in record time. This will be harder to do at 89, my self-prescribed time. 

Nearer to home, I spotted a lizard on the trail. As always, in these situations, I like to give the sunbathing reptile a little nudge to keep them from getting stepped on or run over. I might try to sneak a few gentle pats in. Cold blooded reptiles need love too. "Good lizard, I say. Now be on your way."

But this misguided little guy decided to run between my legs, crawling up my boot, up the inseam of my pants, barely missing the hole in the crotch (I really gotta sew that up sometime) and finally taking up residence in geography very close to where my head was last alleged to be located. This guy was clinging onto the backside of my pants, peeking his head out from in-between my thighs. (I mean, I love animals, but not in THAT way).

He wasn't going to leave on his own, so I made a few attempts at grabbing him, but he slipped out of my hand each time, climbing higher each time. Finally, he fell off, and I wished him well, and I was on my way. 

This little lizard interlude probably took all of 2 minutes, but it made me smile just a little. Somebody liked me. I softened a little. Fuck everything--except this little lizard here. He's OK. And so is my friend Emery. But that's about it. I was still gonna be mad, sad and pissed off, but I could make a couple of exceptions.

----

I've received some harsh criticisms lately, and I'm just now being able to feel their effect on my psyche. I was severely blunted at the time, due to my anti-depressants working too well. But a few weeks later, the words still lingered in my memory, and now there were some emotions to go with them.

The criticisms were mostly my own, but it was one of those situations where you are trying to tell someone what a lousy fuck-up you are, and you are laying it on real thick. You know, just over-the-top and cruel, self-loathing kind of stuff. You are hoping that person will stop you and tell you, "No, sweetie, that's not true. Stop being so mean to yourself. I love you." 

Well, that's how it's supposed to work. Especially, when the person you are beating yourself up in front of is your mom. 

"Hey," I said after a minute or so, when she didn't try stop me (and those were some pretty vicious things I was saying about myself). "You aren't supposed to agree with me!"

Instead, she added a few items of her own. I guess I know what my mom was trying to express when she said I talk too much. She was trying to say, "Son, you talk to much." She didn't use those words, but her meaning was clear. I talk excessively, and that is annoying to her. It's not just the content, but the quantity. 

I know she's my mom, and she loves me, but I don't think she really likes me very much.

----

The return of emotions after weaning off anti-depressants is like a person coming out of paralysis, or someone who has been frozen. At first, they can't move a thing. Then they may experience some tingling around the periphery. Then they find that they can feel their toes. Then their legs. It starts in extremities and then moves toward the center.

In similar fashion, my emotions returned to my face first. I found my face was in sync with my newly rediscovered feelings. I could feel and express my two main emotions with my droopy, misty eyes, sagging jowls and deeply furrowed brow. We're talking major furrowing here, the kind usually associated with steam coming out of the ears.

I still don't have the gut feelings at all. I haven't thawed out all the way. But my head, wherever it is actually located, is shouldering (ha) the burden. I don't know how long it will take before the melting process reaches my heart and my belly, the seats of love and laughter.

I probably shot myself in the foot by even agreeing to try anti-depressants. It set me back to zero on my emotional growth chart. I'm currently about as evolved as the lizard I encountered. Still, I have to give myself some credit: For a reptile, I'm doing an astounding job of approximating a human.

This bit of whining that I'm doing now, this long-ass, rambling, go nowhere post, is just meant to be therapy. I only put these things out there because 1) I am just narcissistic enough to think that my thoughts are important somehow, and 2) maybe--just maybe--someone else will relate to them. God help that poor person, I hope not. 

----

I came home and found that I have a bunion on my left foot. Like finding an potato bug in the backyard, it was surprising, shocking even. It looks awful, and it's now a permanent part of my landscape, like my missing tooth was for so many years. 

How do I fix this? Can I? Probably not. It's not advisable unless there is constant pain. Walking up the side of a mountain is kind of an exception, so a little pain is to be expected. But my mom had to have foot surgery some years back, and it's likely that these will just get worse over time, and I may have to consider surgery. 

Or I can just keep driving this stupid body around like an old jalopy, not caring about dings, dents and scratches. There's something liberating about that first dent. Now you don't have to wash your car as often. You can stop caring as much.

OK, I have officially wound myself down for the day. Now here's a picture of a lizard crawling out of my butt: