Frozen

It happens every morning about this time: the anxiety. The shaking, the sweating palms, the nausea. Feeling as if I'm about to die. Sometimes it's so bad I have to call someone, usually M., to talk me through it.

Deer in the headlights. Waiting for the crash.

I don't know what causes it or why I get it this time of morning, always. I have some ideas. The thought of getting dressed and facing the world overwhelms me. The thought of one more day I have to get through.

Maybe it would be better if I could do something about it: scream, cry, I don't know. But I can't. I am frozen in this place.

It's not that I don't feel the urge to scream or cry. I often do. But something--my meds maybe, no: almost certainly--keep me from being able to. Not even when I try to make myself. All I can feel these days is the anxiety interspersed with boredom. My own pain is uninteresting to me.

I remember the days when I used to cry at the drop of a hat. Not only when I was depressed, though there was plenty of that. But at anything: at sappy movies, at sad songs. Now movies are only something to keep my attention occupied for a little while and music is a background to some of my activities, not something I feel and connect with.

I never thought I would long for the crying days. The times when I felt so bad I would scratch my arms until they bled because it was less painful than what I was going through inside and cry until my eyes had the scratchy feel of sandpaper. "Getting hysterical" is what I called it, though I think that was probably an understatement. But to a person to whom some kind of self-expression, even the expression of pain or self-hatred, has always been valuable, not being to express what I am feeling is the worst kind of hell.

Even in earlier parts of this blog, I see I could still cry.

Events make it through to me. When we lost Gwion Bach, I cried. But since then, nothing. No tears. No rage. No joy or laughter. I am stuck in this grey place, where the skies are broken only by the lightning of my intense anxiety.

Maybe I should be thankful I can feel that. Because otherwise I am just frozen.

And I don't know how to thaw out, or if I ever will.