Burn - In This Moment

Well, I'm back. Still nothing too positive to say at the moment, though I wish I had something. Just... something brilliant to say. Something useful, or wise, or profound, but really all I have is more musings from the pit of despair that is my day-to-day life.

I thought for a moment several days back that I might just be able to get through this thing in one piece, that I might be able to overcome my depression for the first time ever without having to hit rock-bottom first. I thought this because for the first time since the breakup, I laughed. Really, genuinely laughed. I felt the shaking tremors of euphoria break through the numbness for a glorious hour, and for a moment after feeling that laughter, I thought that maybe I could turn myself around without needing therapy or drugs or someone to lift me up.

Of course, this clearly isn't the case, since I'm melancholy again. I keep going through these cycles in my head, where I'll succumb to the depression, experience something that gives me hope, float a little on the hope I've found, have that hope crushed, and then I just... wither in on myself and cry myself to exhaustion, at which point I can't even bring myself to care any more, and the cycle begins anew.

Some days, I only go through the cycle once, and manage to make it through my entire day before having my hope crushed. Other days, like today, I go through this cycle numerous times, bringing myself to both physical and emotional exhaustion from the whirlwind of confusion. I go from chipper and optimistic to borderline catatonic in a matter of minutes at a time. In mere seconds, I've gone from well-composed interactive human and melted to the floor into a blubbering, sobbing, snot-dripping mass of self-pity and self-loathing. I feel like a worthless excuse for a human being.

I want to be happy.

I want to feel normal.

I want to go through a day where I don't feel like my mind is a recreation of the Salem Witch Trials, with me on the stake and all my self loathing surrounding the pyre, laughing and jeering and mocking my pain as I burn to death again and again. I want to be okay. I just want to be okay.


I feel this is the beginning
The beginning through the end
There’s nothing left to fear now
So watch me close as once again you


In the days since my last post, I've made some changes to my living arrangements. At the time of my last post, I was camped out on the couch in the family room of my basement, with an assortment of miscellaneous distractions surrounding me. The room had become my surrogate cave because my actual bedroom had become a depressing black hole of doom with no possible way of making it from one end of the room to the other without severe injuries. In subsequent days, my family got so fed up with my camping that I was pretty well told that I would have to clean my room and sleep comfortably or sleep in the mess. Either way, I was being evicted from the couch. So my room was cleaned in the course of a whole Sunday, and is now clean enough to see the floor, open the closet, find things even.

I've relocated from the couch to my own bed, and while physically, I'm benefiting from being on a mattress instead of lumpy couch cushions, my nightmares persist, and if anything, they've gotten worse since the move. I hate that. I hate that I can't sleep without seeing the faces of everyone I've wronged, glaring at me and criticizing my imperfections even in my dreams.

I hate that right when everything started turning my way, the entire world started to crumble around me.

I hate that even now, I can't be glad that things have finally turned in my favor, I just keep sinking into myself and hating anything and everything. I hate that I can't even be properly sad any more, because being sad just makes me hate myself more, and acting sad causes my mind to go into a frenzy of more self-loathing. It's gotten to the point where I have to choose between going through vicious cycles of sadness and self-abuse or catatonic disinterest in the world.


Burn me alive
Set me on fire
And watch me die
Burn me alive
Watch me ressurect
Right before your eyes


There's a reason that In This Moment and Blue October tie as my two favorite bands, and there's a reason that I've been listening to so much of their music lately. Blue October is my sadness music, and In This Moment is my rage music, so being in my horrible cycles between sadness and rage creates this bizarre combination craving for the two voices. I wish that Justin Furstenfeld and Maria Brink could just create a hybridized vocal mutation that could satisfy my feelings without having to change my playlist every five seconds.

I've been a soupy mess of thoughts, despite my whirling tsunami of distracting behaviors. The other day, Victoria was saying how she was grateful to have finally gotten a moment to just think, and all I could say was "I'm jealous. I wish I could be so busy that I didn't have time to think, but even when I am busy, I can't stop thinking."

I keep thinking about all the things I could have done to prevent this. I keep thinking what I could do to change what has happened. I keep thinking what I would do if I was given another chance, and I keep thinking of how I'll most likely never be given that chance, and how I should just move on with my life. I keep thinking about how I don't want to get on with my life, because a part of me is just pitifully clinging to that small shred of hope that by some bizarre universal alignment, things might go back to the way they were.

I. Just. Keep. Thinking.

I can't stop it, it's like a wildfire in my head with an endless supply of fuel to burn and no firefighters on duty. Again and again I burn, inside and out. My motivations are running short, my dedications are faltering. I'm facing a critical virus that's eventually going to make me overheat and crash.


There’s no reason to cry now
There’s nothing to forgive
This suffering’s my blessing
The death of sin is how I live
Burn me alive
Set me on fire
And watch me die
Burn me alive
Watch me ressurect
Right before your eyes
Set me on fire
And watch me burn
Set me on fire
And watch me


Yet for some horrible, cynical reason, I almost enjoy the feeling of being caught between sadness and rage. I'd rather have this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach than feel nothing. I'm grateful for my emotional torment, in my own horribly sick way, because I know that feeling pain means I'm still alive, still breathing, still capable of progress.

I'm like that sick twisted kid on the playground who scrapes his knee and finds it hilarious to poke and prod at the bleeding wound. It's something that's completely new to me. In all the months of depression I've gone through in the past, I've never had the luxury of pain.

I've never had the opportunity to choose between the numbness and something else.

There was only ever just the numbness. But now, there's this, and I feel strangely grateful for it.

Despite all of it though, I'm just... tired. I'm tired of going through ups and downs all day every day, and not sleeping soundly, and being tormented by my subconscious every waking and sleeping moment of every day. I'm tired of being depressed. I'm tired of being incapable of living my life the way I want to because of my own pitiful inability. I'm tired of waking up every morning wishing that I could just roll over and sleep the rest of my life away.

I'm tired of being sad.


Burn me alive
Set me on fire
And watch me die
Burn me alive
Watch me ressurect
Right before your eyes


I don't know what it is, but something needs to change in my life. Be it location, occupation, sexual orientation, I don't know. I just know that right now, with my life the way it is, I'll be depressed for a really long time, with no real hope for survival, and I don't want that. Something in my life is keeping me from the future I want, and I don't know what it is, but I'm going to hunt it down and change it. Me. Just me, because relying on other people has gotten me nowhere.

I'm damn grateful for the support I have, but right now, support is all I can accept. I can't let myself be helped out of this. I can't let someone take me by the hand and say "here, Claudzie, this is the way out" because that'll just be a fast-track right back here to Square One. I can't let that happen, since Square One will always be where I burn...