#i can’t stop overthinking and ruminating and I’m stuck in a rabbit hole of thoughts and I hate being like this

[galariangengar]

I am doing horribly mentally tonight and my jaw hurts 😢

[snarkyperson]

and then i could remember to breathe

I don’t like being depressed, or being melancholy, or spending too much time ruminating and stuck in my own head.  But it freaks me out when I DON’T feel like that, because that’s how I’m used to feeling.  That’s why I was in such a state yesterday.  Last night I started to feel a little hysterical again and then I woke up at 10:00 and I was overtired like a toddler and basically having mental temper tantrums and then I slept again and now that I’m awake one more time I feel very introspective (not in a good way) and melancholy.  My response when I realized?

“Ahh, there she is.  Now we’re back to normal.”

I would like my normal to, you know, not be a default state of hating myself, but we play the cards we’re dealt, I guess.

Do you like Simon and Martina?  I have been a die-hard fan for a lot of years, and last night I listened to their latest podcast, which is very good and you should listen to it.  It’s about playfulness and being yourself and finding things that spark your joy.  This should be inspirational, and in some of my moods it is.  Last night, however, it sent me down the path of “I will never be my authentic self” and “No one will ever appreciate my weird as shit thoughts and putting them in the blog just makes people not want to read it” and “Nothing I do brings me joy because I am an empty husk of a human being” and then somehow THAT morphed into, “I should stop talking to my friends because I am too weird and depressed and my friends deserve someone who can bring them joy and good things.”  So I went to bed convinced I would never talk to my friends anymore, even Vel and Amy, until I could be a better person.  A different person.  

I thought about that this morning when I woke up the first time.  Are we ever really different, though?  I mean, we’re always changing.  Growing.  Maturing.  Our interests shift and maybe one year we like tunic shirts and the next we like fuzzy sweaters.  We get obsessed with kdramas and then next year anime.  Whatever it is.  And we learn things.  I hesitate to use myself as an example because of the year I’ve had, but when I look back over the span of my life dealing with mental illness (and yes, even this year), I have learned a lot and changed a lot and grown a lot.  I don’t know if I’m a different person.  I probably am in some ways.  

You always want to strive to be a better person.  You always want to grow.  But I don’t know if it makes sense to live on a secluded island and cut off all your friends until you do.

I think I was feeling a little sensitive because Vel didn’t seem like he wanted to talk to me last night.  But I mean, he probably needed a break from me.  I can understand that.  Maybe he had a bad day at work.  Maybe it was completely benign and he just wanted to play some fucking Final Fantasy, Aaz.  I think just with all the stuff going on I’m feeling tender.  

At least this is all familiar.  Back down my old familiar rabbit holes.  Happy day.

I’m going to try to write in a bit because I had some pretty good ideas last night.  Good ideas that, again, are coming from how I personally would react to a situation.  That is starting to piss me off.  But bear with me while I try to explain.

Tom Waits is one of my favorite musicians, and one of my favorite songs of his is Alice.  It is -cough- entirely possible I named my Hawke in this last story Alice specifically because of that song.  And it is also entirely possible that this protagonist is named Alice so that I could hopefully work it in somehow.

Before I continue, I renamed Ehlren Leo, because it’s easier to spell and not so outlandish and also is different enough from Leto (get it, get it?) that I won’t get a copyright strike.

So anyway, Leo is a musician and photographer.  Photographer isn’t relevant to this, but anyway.  He plays bass guitar and does some back-up vocals in a cover band.  My idea is that Alice & co. go to see this band perform one day after Leo and Alice have been dancing around each other for a while, and in a move that shocks everybody, Leo takes main vocals in addition to bass and sings Alice, and he looks at her the entire time he sings it, and she is like HEART EYES MOTHERFUCKER.  

Now, that’s not strictly a self insert.  I think probably a lot of ladies would have that reaction, wouldn’t they?

The second idea though comes from personal experience.  Thanks to my friend lithium, I am starting to have tremors in my hands.  Most of the time I don’t really notice, but it is really jarring and apparent and difficult to deal with when I’m eating with a fork and usually makes me extremely angry in a way that is really disproportionate to how serious they are.  It’s just the whole “god I have to take this fucking medication just to function and look what it’s doing to my body rar rar rar.”  

So anyway, I mentioned Leo is a photographer.  I was thinking, maybe he goes with Alice to the Art Institute because there are some really beautiful flower gardens nearby if I remember correctly.  Or they go to the lake or something.  Not important.  What’s important is that they go, and she is going to sketch and he is going to photograph, but then his tremors start up and he can’t hold the camera steady and he starts having a fucking meltdown.

This is where I get stuck.  Thinking from personal experience, nothing anyone can say makes me feel better when I’m having one of those meltdowns.  I just have to have it and get it out of my system.  However, this is both a romance novel and a chance for character growth, and I would LIKE it to work such that Alice is able to talk him off the ledge.  He trusts her, and for someone with his kind of trauma, that is a really big fucking deal.  Because he trusts her, I wonder if it is feasible that he would, I don’t know, actually listen to her when she tries to calm him down.  I mean, it’s fiction.  I’m probably overthinking it.  But this goes back to that “I want to treat this carefully and realistically and with respect” thing.

My ideal ending to it is that Alice agrees to be his hands, and he actually lets her.  She holds the camera up, and he puts his hands over hers to adjust the view, and they manage to successfully complete the shoot.  

I can hear Amy already.  Stop overanalyzing everything and just write it.  However, I feel so under qualified to be tackling these kinds of intense issues.  I have trauma and abuse in my past, but nothing like what Leo is dealing with.  I want to do him justice.  I don’t want it to be a typical romance novel where he is MAGICALLY HEALED because LOVE.  But I do want him to have growth, and to realize he is finally in a healthy, trusting relationship, and to realize that maybe he can take down some of his walls and get some relief.  Because he’s not alone anymore.  He has Alice, and he has Cali, and he even in a lesser way has Liam and Zulah.  He is building a little community where he can be safe.  That makes a big difference in a sick person’s life.

Shit, I’m testament to that.

I say “so anyway” too much.  Got to work on that.

Go listen to Alice.  Seriously.

P.S. I’m not going to write about the scary thing anymore.  I’m 95% convinced (now) that it was a dream.