zombieeee

it's happening again and i don't know why. i feel powerless to stop it. part of me wants to say it's absurd--it's only in my head. it's happening because i let it happen. but there's another part of me, the part that i can't control, that refuses to believe this, even if it is completely irrational.

i wish i knew what triggers it. then, i could possibly come up with a ready-made solution, a process of dealing with it. i mean, i want to shrug it off, but something won't let me. my mind fixates at on it. it becomes an obsession, where days before, it meant nothing. it was so easy to just block out, to dismiss as ridiculous and carry on with my life. i guess all i can do is look for recurring trends--try to analyze it by pinpointing certain events or modes of thought that cause it to happen. it seems like it always happens when i'm just on the verge of a major breakthrough, when i'm finally content enough with myself to not feel any anxiety whatsoever, when the world seems so easy, finally, to figure out--words pour out of me so effortlessly, i feel as though i'm speaking through some divine medium. it's when i become conscious of the process, wishing to hold onto it, for fear that i may lose it (like now), that i do in fact lose it. like hemingway's butterfly analogy (a butterfly becomes conscious of its flight and, therefore, forgets how to perform something that came so naturally). like the butterfly, i am grounded. and it's always just as i'm taking off. finally, feeling my way around. getting my bearings. then, i plummet to the ground, nosedive into the pavement. and i'm helpless. there's nothing i can do to stop it. at least, i don't think so. i get so excited. finally, i think, i'm flying. i'm really doing it. but how? and it's at that moment, that i fuck up. because i realize that i have no idea how i ever left the ground and therefore there's no guarantee that i'll ever be able to sustain myself, to keep myself from falling, crash-landing. it's scary.

what it all boils down to, i think, is metacognition, the same affliction, i believe, responsible for jung's mental collapse--documented, apparently, though never published for the public, in his red book. he tried to understand how the mind worked and went crazy. thinking too much about thinking inevitably leads to insanity. it just does. trying to pick apart and analyze why your mind works the way it does and how it works is something, i feel, shouldn't be explored. it's like the tower of babel all over again. one of those things we were never meant to understand. it truly is the great and vast unknown. it's too much to take on, too limitless. we're treading in unsafe territory--infinite openness, wander out too far and there's no way to find your way back. it may sound trite, but it's true. and i don't care.

there is truth in pop knowledge. it's standardized, it's widely accepted and often cited for a reason. there's a critic in my head, an amalgamation of some of the most cynical people i've known in the past, that simply refuses to let me say the obvious. but i need it. i think that's part of the problem. unlike most people, i have no foundation from which to veer. i'm constantly veering, wandering off in my own direction because i simply will not allow myself to return to what almost instantaneously becomes familiar. i have to be different at all times. i thrive on the unexpected. and, frankly, i'm sick of it. i'm a little burnt out on the creative life. maybe i need a break. but then, do i stop growing at that point? do i lose everything i've worked so hard to gain, a well-established voice, whittled from so many painful hours of deep insight? or do i just pick up where i left off? do i start all over again, at square one? i don't know. i really don't. and i'm fine with that. or, i wish i was fine with that. but i have to know. i have to subject myself to misery and i don't know why. i'm a glutton for looking when i don't want to. and every time i flinch, my mind goes blank. i black out and it's the same thing all over again, ad nauseum.

maybe i just need to sleep.