I wrote this entry years ago, when my depression and anxiety were at its worst, when I thought I would lose my mind, when my mind made me dream of death, making it seem like a holiday from self.
I have talked to a few people, and I keep finding, some will never understand what it is like to be ruled by your mind... to be insane. And insane I was... how else would you call the terror and despair that has its source in your mind like a cancer that it makes you want to scratch your brain out. That you know you will never love, enjoy, see light again, and all you will have to live with for the rest of your days is terror, fear and sadness. It wears you out so much. There is nothing you can do to stop it. You can't get "all positive" by willpower, because your mind controls your will as well... you need emotional strength for will power, and insanity does not come with that... it drains it like blood.
***
Fear is a color. Fear is a filter. Did you ever notice how you can take anything, and when you add a certain filter to it, it can be happy or scary or sad... films do that with music. You film a field, and add scary music, and you're dead sure something will come lunging out of it. Play happy music, and it's all different. The same picture.
That is how I sometimes saw things. Not all the time, but it happens.
The color of fear for me is purple. It's hard to describe what I mean by this, because it is not a real colour, but an emotional tinge. A tinge that covers everything, making something that you would normally consider pretty look absolutely sinister and terrifying and insane. Abnormal. The worst is that you know you are the only person that sees it like that. If you were to tell it to others, you would realise, they are on the other side. They are not part of your world, they are part of the world you see and they can't understand, because to them, you are the one that is terrifying. And you're on your own.
The worship had already started in our group, and I went back in, too late.
And when I sat down, it happened.
The whole world distorted. The worship was there, but the music was shrill and people seemed to scream and howl out the songs like they had turned utterly mad, and thoroughly enjoying it as if they were a bunch of larks.
It was like in those movies, in Falling Down. D-Fens stuck in a traffic jam, in a car with broken air conditioning, and it is a hot summer day. In a school bus next to him are screaming kids, enjoying themselves. All seems fine... but slowly, the madness begins to seep in, and the world around him turns into an insane whirl of grotesque faces, sounds and smells. A woman in a car applying lipstick almost obscenely. A kid in a car stares at him, in an almost paranoia-causing way. A world in which everything is so berserk that even a fly can drive you out of your mind.
It was like in Mad Love when Drew Barrymore, playing a manic-depressive, sits on the curb outside a shop near Mexico, waiting for her boyfriend. She smokes a cigarette and watches some children play. One minute everything around her seems cute, a happy rural town scene, people going about their business. And then, slowly, things begin to distort. And you see the discomfort rise in her face, and everything increasingly gets shrill and terrifying. One of the kids is crying. They are violent to each other. The nice men she saw walking by actually leer at her obscenely. Suddenly that peaceful country scene distorts into a nightmare. This is how she sees things.
This is exactly how I feel sometimes. And what I felt at this point.
J.L. had this utterly ridiculous devotional madness in his face, it was scary!
I thought I was gonna lose my mind. But I didn’t want to be lame and jump up and run out – I don’t want to explain myself to people about that – not about that!
So I tried to hold on and look normal. But they wouldn’t stop. They put on song after song, and there was this pile of sheets with songs they still wanted to sing. Minutes stretched.
I pretended to rest my head on my chin and pinched my ears closed under my hair. The pictures and sounds tore on my mind and made my body flush with adrenaline. I felt my every cell vibrate like someone had stuck my head into a microwave and turned it on at 1000W. I stared at the blurred guitar strings and suddenly knew how it must feel. All I could think was STOP STOP STOP STOP! I was afraid that I would start screaming any time soon.
And I thought they have to end soon, but then they put this song on that never seemed to end. And as they finally got to the end of the sheet, they put another one on. And it had as many stanzas as the old one. It was a loud song.
I thought I was gonna lose my mind. But I didn’t want to be lame and jump up and run out – I don’t want to explain myself to people about that – not about that!
So I tried to hold on and look normal. But they wouldn’t stop. They put on song after song, and there was this pile of sheets with songs they still wanted to sing. Minutes stretched.
I pretended to rest my head on my chin and pinched my ears closed under my hair. The pictures and sounds tore on my mind and made my body flush with adrenaline. I felt my every cell vibrate like someone had stuck my head into a microwave and turned it on at 1000W. I stared at the blurred guitar strings and suddenly knew how it must feel. All I could think was STOP STOP STOP STOP! I was afraid that I would start screaming any time soon.
And I thought they have to end soon, but then they put this song on that never seemed to end. And as they finally got to the end of the sheet, they put another one on. And it had as many stanzas as the old one. It was a loud song.
I got up and almost ran out. I wanted to go somewhere quiet, I didn’t want to be around people. But there were people all over the house. I felt if I didn’t find a quiet room soon, I’d freak out. So I ran to the laundry room and closed the door and sat in the dark and cried for 1 ½ hours.I was on complete emotional overload. I felt like I had just seen the world thru a distorting mirror, and the most terrifying thing was that I thought I had for the first time gotten a realistic unfiltered view.
The world is so fucked up. SO FUCKED UP!
Everyone is a cripple that can’t do anything about anything except hurt others and hurt himself, they are so trapped, so caught in their murder pattern, that sin and hurt and consequential sin is like a chain reaction, a perpetuum mobile of madness and destruction.
Nobody had the right to hurt anyone. I was left to sort stuff myself early and it terrified me, but eventually I got independent and took care of myself, cos I had no other choice. And a fuck like P. S. thinks he has the right to patronize me and humiliate me and the dignity I have created for myself with sweat and blood over years. Too fucking late, buddy! All those fucked up legalistic Christians destroy more than they do else by pinning their fellow people to the Law through their bare skin with sharp nails without caring a fuck for those screams of pain.
I am not nailed to the cross by the world, as they always tell me, but by fellow Christians, and that is so fucked up and WRONG and I am no longer going to support that, so
FUCK YOU!
They are like the Phariseans that dissed Jesus because he healed a paralyzed a Sabbath.
They don’t understand that the rules were made for people, not people for rules.
I seriously wonder this: Jesus didn’t brush the law aside. He confirmed it, but only in the way that those who had truly received his grace didn’t need to be controlled anymore.
They acted out of love, not out of law, and that was much more reliable than being beaten and controlled by the keepers of the Law.
If you are completely filled with God then you’d never do anything to harm anyone. Or even more, hurt God. Anyone who has ever felt this incredible closeness with God couldn’t possibly bear sin. They’d feel sick, physically, by the thought of it.
They couldn’t because their character, their compassion and love wouldn’t permit it.
There can’t be an evil thought in a truly loving mind. How much must Jesus have cried when he fully realized how fucked up and broken and sick the world really is, how fucked up beyond comprehension, how twisted beyond recognition. It is so fucked up that the slightest hint of compassion, weakness etc is considered shit, is not wanted.
I cried and screamed inside as the realization suddenly hit me. It is like God opened the door of unveiled truth. Just for a second. And it was more than I could handle.
There is no hope for us, left to ourselves.
Everyone is a cripple that can’t do anything about anything except hurt others and hurt himself, they are so trapped, so caught in their murder pattern, that sin and hurt and consequential sin is like a chain reaction, a perpetuum mobile of madness and destruction.
Nobody had the right to hurt anyone. I was left to sort stuff myself early and it terrified me, but eventually I got independent and took care of myself, cos I had no other choice. And a fuck like P. S. thinks he has the right to patronize me and humiliate me and the dignity I have created for myself with sweat and blood over years. Too fucking late, buddy! All those fucked up legalistic Christians destroy more than they do else by pinning their fellow people to the Law through their bare skin with sharp nails without caring a fuck for those screams of pain.
I am not nailed to the cross by the world, as they always tell me, but by fellow Christians, and that is so fucked up and WRONG and I am no longer going to support that, so
FUCK YOU!
They are like the Phariseans that dissed Jesus because he healed a paralyzed a Sabbath.
They don’t understand that the rules were made for people, not people for rules.
I seriously wonder this: Jesus didn’t brush the law aside. He confirmed it, but only in the way that those who had truly received his grace didn’t need to be controlled anymore.
They acted out of love, not out of law, and that was much more reliable than being beaten and controlled by the keepers of the Law.
If you are completely filled with God then you’d never do anything to harm anyone. Or even more, hurt God. Anyone who has ever felt this incredible closeness with God couldn’t possibly bear sin. They’d feel sick, physically, by the thought of it.
They couldn’t because their character, their compassion and love wouldn’t permit it.
There can’t be an evil thought in a truly loving mind. How much must Jesus have cried when he fully realized how fucked up and broken and sick the world really is, how fucked up beyond comprehension, how twisted beyond recognition. It is so fucked up that the slightest hint of compassion, weakness etc is considered shit, is not wanted.
I cried and screamed inside as the realization suddenly hit me. It is like God opened the door of unveiled truth. Just for a second. And it was more than I could handle.
There is no hope for us, left to ourselves.
You gotta get fucked up in order to comprehend how bad it really is and to see your enemy, but the problem is, once you are fucked up and know your problem, you are lost.
Else you’re just icecold happy.
Misery-forbidden-happy.
I went back home and went straight to bed. A bed can be an amazing comfort. It is soft and responding, somehow and warms away your anguish.
Where are you, God?
I want to see you, free from all I might imagine as the You, free from my prejudices and icons of you. I want to step before you like I don’t know you at all. To see you unfiltered, the clear you.
Then, suddenly, there were those clear thoughts popping up in my head... they were so out of the blue that I was almost startled, but they were beautiful balm.
I went back home and went straight to bed. A bed can be an amazing comfort. It is soft and responding, somehow and warms away your anguish.
Where are you, God?
I want to see you, free from all I might imagine as the You, free from my prejudices and icons of you. I want to step before you like I don’t know you at all. To see you unfiltered, the clear you.
Then, suddenly, there were those clear thoughts popping up in my head... they were so out of the blue that I was almost startled, but they were beautiful balm.
I am the arm that holds you when you cry, the shoulder you wet with your tears, the sweet hum that sings you to sleep, the blanket I wrap around you to warm you as I cradle you in my arms. I am there at the bottom of the deepest hole of your pain, waiting for you, because I have been there and I understand.I am all you ever wanted and nothing you ever got instead.
