For a while now, I've secretly wished not to have any emotions at all. (It was a very secret wish: even I was not informed.) I want to run around doing exciting things, but I want to dispassionately observe them at a distance. I want to watch myself on the telly. I want to be a perpetual tourist in my own life. I want an off switch on my emotion chip like the silly Star Trek android, Data.
On the other hand, I've been feeling more or less depressed recently, which I hadn't felt for a quite a while . . . and I have had virtually no anxiety. Are my choices anxiety or mild depression? It's much nicer to be sad for no reason than to be panicked for no reason.
I don't have data, but I suspect that it's very difficult to write music while striving to not feel anything. Which may also explain why it's been so hard.
Why try not to feel? Well, it often kind of sucks. A few years ago, when I used to sometimes get depressed or stressed or whatever, I had a feeling like I was at the bottom of a long shaft, like a smokestack of an abandoned factory. And on my shoulders, there was a flat, large board that fit perfectly inside the shaft, like the floor of an elevator car. I was holding it on my shoulders to keep from getting crushed while more and more things got dropped on to it. But this image is no longer current.
Now, I feel like a bag of parts. Like a cloth sack wrapped around something porcelain, that got smashed in shipping. I feel broken. But mending. Like Frankenstein's monster, the parts re-assembled, slightly misjoined, ringed by scars. Still in the midst of loose bits, nothing in quite the right place. Misshapen, ugly, absorbed in myself.
I want to go out and live and make mistakes and recover from them and have excitement, novelty, adventure, etc, but not feel it. I want pain without hurting.
Sophie says that I clearly hate myself. I want her to be wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment