Chill

It is there, laying in wait, looking for its chance. Is it hot or is it cold, is it a choking mist or something more filthy than mud, does it have claws and teeth or is it all blades. I always know it's there. I know it's always there. It's in my earliest memories, as confusion and alienation. A sense of strangeness. It is depression, a part of my personality. Who would I be, without it.

It helps to be busy. But of course depression has a feral intellect of its own, emotional, nothing so romantically dramatic as tombs and crypts, but much to do with something like death. Thanatos. And I often understand that even if love were offered to me, I would reject it. This makes me sad, but I must want to be sad. Hope? Yes. A sentiment of great power. I wonder which is stronger?

I put some pine nuts in my smoothie today, and it made me nauseous. No more pine nuts, whatever they are. Slept for three hours, feeling betterish. Were they rancid? Some sort of bacteria? I guess I have to throw out the second half of the smoothie. Missed my workout. I think its the first one I've missed. Haven't been sick for something like three years. A few times a decade. I'm not opposed to illness -- it just needs to have a purpose. Now I'm hungry. I'm hungry and slightly nauseous. I wouldn't have thought that was possible.

How does nausea work? Are there sensors in the stomach? Reacting to germs or toxins? Does it need to get into the bloodstream? -- some metabolite or peptide? Travel along nerves? There's only one nerve connecting brain and gut -- the vagrant vagus nerve. Can people who have this nerve cut feel nausea?

I seem to be under some pressure. Not all news is bad, but the future is such an intangible thing. And when one is prone to depression, creating opportunities is hard. It's not about energy. It's about moving out rather than folding up. I look at people with their emotions, their anger that they use to argue with, as if it will get them what they want. I don't believe anger changes anyone's mind. It might frighten someone into giving you what you want. But I suppose that's as good a way to be as how I am. I don't believe it's possible to change anyone's mind. Maybe their mind will change, but I didn't do it. Anger or cold rationality -- I just don't see how anything gets done.

That's depression talking. It wants me to be helpless. Right now it's winning. I'll stop now.


J