Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Idaho

 You ever just feel like the only way to understand your own feelings is to write them down? I've got this theory growing inside my head. The idea is that my working memory (RAM, if you will) is super duper small. So trying to figure something out about my own feelings or plans quickly overwhelms it. Or, rather, I'm able to figure it out, but it's overwritten or lost really quickly. If I really want to understand myself or figure something out I have to write it down. I can move my thoughts from RAM to a more stable medium, and this allows me to handle much larger problems. 

Even though I have a good brain, it has its limitations. I am _so much_ more effective if I have a pen and paper in front of me. I do prefer paper to digital, to be honest. Even though I type so much faster than I write, I find the freedom that comes from paper to be very powerful. When I type I have to move in exactly one direction (to the right, blech) and occasionally downward. When I'm on paper, shoot, I can move in any direction at any time. That's where the money is.

I'm in Idaho at the in-laws. I love it here. I have lots of happy memories here. It's good to be with good people. It's good to show my kids this big part of themselves. It's nice to support the wife and help her feel this place again. 

I wouldn't say that I'm happy. I'm depressed, of course. I have depression, just like always. I heard about an old person that has depression who, suddenly, went into depression remission. That sounds nice. I don't really think that's going to happen for me. Here's the rub: I believe there's a lot more therapy I could do. I'm not convinced that I can improve pharmaceutically-- what I'm on is strictly fine, and I've already tried a number of other things. This is decent and I just don't think there's much more for me there. But I could likely dig deep and do a crap ton more therapy. That feels like a ton of discomfort. And it also feels impossible to find. The last two times I've looked for therapy I got run-of-the-mill CBT. That's Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for y'all following along at home. And CBT is actually pretty decent, but I don't really want to do it again. The wife has done some really cool work healing some of her past trauma. It has become apparent to me that I've got some past bullcrap to work through, but, blech, I really don't want to. 

I think it's because it sorta represents a threat to my current existence. Not my existence, really, but more like my life as it is now. A lot of wife's work on this has been about accepting the previous "parts" of yourself and giving those parts what they need. The idea is that when you experience hard things (trauma, if you will), you sometimes exile the part of you that experienced that trauma. You kinda push that part of you into a closet (probably not that kind of closet) and move forward without it. And apparently that's not super helpful. 

So I guess the idea here is that I'd have to accept this part of me that I exiled long ago and be kind to current me and ye-olde-exiled-former-Chris. That feels like a lot of work. And I just don't want to open that stupid can of worms. There's a pretty good chance I ought to. Maybe this is me starting to accept that. Probably. 

See, like I said: writing. Helps me get stuff out. Helps me get places I wouldn't get otherwise. 

It's tricky because I sorta need to be perceived. Like this wouldn't work if I wrote it in some private doc. I'd get some benefit, sure, but for whatever reason this stuff works best for me if I write this on my public blog. Granted, this blog is _never_ read (except for you, Nate Cunningham! How are y'all, btw?) but it still helps. It's difficult because I want to share personal crap-- I sort of need that. But this is also a public post, so it behooves me to not admit to any federal crimes (that's clearly a joke you monsters). 

Did you know I have ADHD? Yeah, I got diagnosed a year or so ago. Big relief honestly. Medication has really helped with work. Explains a lot of my behavior. Do you remember how I frequently overuse parenthetical messages when I write? It's because I'm trying to send multiple streams of information in the same channel at the same time. It's a clear ADHD thing. Ha.

Okay listen, it's 11:20 and I'm incredibly tired. I'm going to go to bed. I hope that I keep writing. It's pretty good for me.