Swear-wolves

I’ve got a lot of thoughts in my head. Too many thoughts; thoughts that I obsess over, thoughts that haunt me, and thoughts that I can’t even articulate.

After awhile, all these thoughts just cycle, each familiar thought circling back to its origin with no new revelations or alterations to the spin. Ultimately, it makes me feel like I’m in an emotional vacuum; no way to change these thoughts but I just can’t keep cycling.

I can’t move on, and I can’t stay the same*

For the longest amount of time, I’d try to force these thoughts and emotions into little compartmental boxes in my mind. Just closed off and sitting on a shelf, behind a locked door. The problem with this kind of approach is that once that door is unlocked, even just for a moment, everything in those boxes start screaming. The chaotic frenzy and rush of an overwhelming amount of all that repression hits so hard that it completely takes over.

Avoiding that entire cyclical experience then becomes the new obsession. It’s a slippery slope from there.

I guess that’s why I’m doing this. I need to get these things out, but in a way I feel I have control, or at least some semblance of control. Now that I think about it, maybe it’s no so much control, but the opportunity for myself to get these thoughts, feelings, emotions, and memories in a place I can objectively examine them, but also finally let them go. I’ve had to compartmentalize so much in order to maintain the path of least resistance, but that process has taken its emotional toll. I think it’s time to break this in a form of anonymity that will allow me to be fully candid without fear.

It’s going to hurt, I know it is, but it also might be really beneficial in some very small way. I’m not sure how that could manifest itself, but it’s worth a try anyway.

I’ve been having panic attacks. Before, they were infrequent and quick to pass. In the past, they were just a punch to the chest, a minute or two injected with a flurry of emotions, but easily manageable and quick to subside.

Not lately. These attacks have become more frequent and more intense; a constricting so tight that I can’t breathe. My chest literally hurts and feels like it’s in the midst of imploding. A pain that makes me double over and sometimes become queazy. An uncomfortable flood of emotions and adrenaline that comes on hard and fast. They don’t seem to have a pattern in occurring either, but their presence has become too frequent to ignore.

The most obvious answer is that I’m probably going through another round of depression. Ugh, just that phrase “another round” feels so glib, but it’s the truth. The thing I never really learned about depression until this go around is that, for me anyway, it’s a cyclical event. This is just part of my existence and who I am.

Once I realized that I started to spiral even more. This. Is. A. Cycle.

Yes, you will eventually work through this and find a point where you feel some form of “even”; an existence that isn’t crippled by an overwhelming melancholy. But at some point things are going to get low again. The amount of time for each phase is never definitive or even, but it is a cycle. A cycle that can’t be broken.

This wasn’t the most pleasant of revelations. To be perfectly honest, it was a realization peppered with a mix of emotions. I felt relief knowing that I’d eventually get past this, but it’s just so disheartening to realize that I’m just going to end up back here.

It all sounds rather bleak and full of self pity, and I guess it is, but I’ve also realized that I need a way to work through this. Maybe documenting things will help me understand things a little more. If I turn the internal dialogs I have in my head into a fully articulated concept it’ll help relieve some of this tightness in my chest and clear my mind.

Or maybe I’m just screaming into a vacuum. Who knows.