Rather Than a Sensation

I’m sick.

I’ve been sick a long time.

Darkness engulfs my brain, thoughts are empty and a permanent obscure mist hovers over all.

My family, my poor wife… I think, if I had known I would end up this mess I wouldn’t have dragged her into this nightmare. I cannot fathom what she must be going through looking at her loved one in such a dark place, trying to comfort and make happy this vessel whose aspirations, likings, and most all else have lost meaning and all form of enjoyment.

Psychologists and psychiatrists try to help and at times it seems that it gets better, but what exactly am I supposed to be or feel at this point? If I have undergone a transformation, one of brain chemicals or induced by the state of my mental faculties, then what is my new normal supposed to be? Am I to continue to measure normal by the doings, wantings, aspirations, emotions, and development of peers whose mental faculties have not been overcome by whatever it is I am afflicted with?

I went to therapy. I had to attend a long, two-week psychiatric program where I was given tools with which to fight this atrocious state I am living through. My new normal is… empty, repetitive, marred with the possibility of it all ending. My suicidal thoughts are not based on the possibility of betterment, the sadness of loss, the inconsequential wantings of love or understanding from those around, or even from an overall feeling of pity/empathy from others, it merely borders on sanity’s edge by following the thought that I am not living in a normal state and that through the seeking of assistance I may find betterment. How pointless it all has been. While I am engaged in the things that I do, the emptiness subsides into the cold and empty recesses of my being merely waiting their emerging moment upon my culmination, of whatever it is that I am doing.

I am sick, I have no delusions about that.

What is normal?

What should I base normal on?

What should be my desires (if any)?

There is this precipice, nothing more than an endless void. Coming up from the darkness is an air that smells like death, feels of shivers, and in the preponderance of it all there are the hoarse voices screaming out from it. Somehow, as I find myself within, not having jumped but merely having dreamt or day-dreamed that I was outside, I was able to somehow see from the outside-in where I was all along. All those movies that portrayed a person talking about hearing voices in their heads all now so real to me. It is a very strange feeling to think, come up with a plan or idea on what to do, and then do it; this would be normal. But, with these phenomenon of voices, the void, the emptiness, the nothing is overcome by thoughts not your own. Normalcy to me would look something like this:

It is as if staring at a fruit would bear memories of previous times when the fruit had been consumed, perhaps the remembrance of a place that radiated the smell of it, maybe recalling having been in a place where it was being sold, or possibly the recollection of enjoyment or dislike of it.

Yet, there are no thoughts. It is merely an empty office space. There should be desks, chairs, printers, or other things, but it is just empty. In the space now, lies the hoarse emanation of legion voices not screaming, but merely the vociferation of them individually into the same space for the purpose of just doing that. Think of the CEO of a major corporation in front of a mirror practicing a speech to be delivered at an annual convention for investors. There is purpose to the mannerisms being performed in front of the mirror, but more importantly is the individual voice poised with decorum aimed at the emptiness of the room. Such are the voices in this void, all one and all individually striving towards nothing, because the act for which the speech is intended is not being performed, but merely rehearsed.

I have tried to stop the voices by meditating. Sometimes closing the eyes leaves an after image, especially in well-lit rooms. In those instances I can see the afterimage slowly drift away and becoming dimmer with distance and darkness, until finally nothingness overcomes the after image. It then becomes a faint glow. Where there should be an afterimage now there is a thing, a blur of what was, and for some reason it lasts long. I concentrate on the heart beat which softly in my chest reverberates through my body. The image disappears completely, the void is filled with the sensation of a heart beat, and then, there is nothing; no more a thought, a glow, or a reverberance, but only emptiness. At this stage it is as if being is no more. You become, sorry, I become part of it. Whatever the it is I do not know, care to know, nor is it important, I just am. There is no feeling, emotion, thought, or anything resembling life, there just is this. This is every sound, the atmosphere, space and time, molecules, walls, and you as everything or within every thing. I have meditated before and what I just described is the ultimate feeling I have reached in meditation, the closest I can say I have come to nirvana. Yet, now I cannot achieve any of those states. Instead there is noise when I close my eyes, both physical and perceived, felt and somehow prepondered. There are these voices I explained all occupying the same space where I am. Closing my eyes with the desire to relax myself puts me in an immediate state of calm, followed rapidly with the overwhelming understanding of the nothing in where I am where all is not and not is all. That is quickly overcome, overridden, and defeated by the deafening and uncontrollable sounds that echo in the dark, almost as if an impulse propels thoughts in all and every direction not hitting anything but passing through it all.

My son is happy, but how will he be affected by my incapacitating mental deterioration? I simply ask to be left alone most of the time. I love him. There is this thought of not hurting him or my wife through my inaction which resides in all moments of their being present. While alone however, it is more personal, and simply dark. It is obtuse and confounding to feel that you do not feel anything. The only way I can describe it is as the brain’s image of being able to not just punch through newtonian fluid, it being liquid, but how much force it would take to pierce through a liquid; all this data flowing through various synapsis along the brain all confirming that this is possible, doable, affirmed through previous experiences with other fluids, and ultimately not just possible, but the only way. Yet, we know what punching this substance does, thus breaking the mores of concrete thought plunging them into anomie.

Having studied psychology, I feel I am in a very precarious situation. To know, as has been said before, I know I do not know anything, can be overwhelming at first. I don’t know how to cast iron, 3D print, use C++ to edit code, how much medication to give a patient at a hospital, how to fix an engine, how to fly an airplane, how to build plans for a skyscraper, and so much more. I feel overwhelmed with my ignorance. With this ignorance comes the incredulity of there being intelligence. In a small piece found in Psychology Today (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/intelligence) we get the feeling that differences in intelligence among individuals are not only normal but ever-changing where intelligence is concerned (if I make take a leap from the reading into my own conclusion). If this is true, and I have no reason to believe otherwise presently, then I must consider that my view of things is centered on a type of intelligence. Perhaps more needs to be found about this type of intelligence before I continue to say that I am sick. In the meantime, everyone around me will continue to see the poor, sad, confused, and ill veteran whose acquisition of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from childhood was only worsened after acquiring a different form through war experiences, and was later atrophied by an increase in migraine frequency which led to being afflicted with a debilitating depression that slowly led to his anxiety and suicidal tendencies/thoughts.

I am not sick because I believe that I am sick, for that is not my belief. I am sick because that is what science tells me today, because the expectation of societal standards has no inclusion for me, and because ultimately normal is not a definition that affects an individual in a world setting. I am not depressed because I want to be.

I am not anxious because I wish it so.

I do not suffer the indignity of fear-of-becoming because it amuses me.

As I discover what I am in the context of where I am, who surrounds me, and what the societal norms dictate, I further understand that I am not merely a vessel for life, but a life in a vessel. May the carcass that today I call home age well and some day perhaps be made to wander the Earth in ash finally becoming one with another(‘s). In the meantime, my search for betterment cannot cease as long as normal is not so, and sanity feels like a fleeting emotion rather than a sensation.