Wandering the Wasteland

I’ve made a conscious effort to cut back on my electronic media consumption. It makes me feel like a little kid, the fact that I’m trying to limit my own “screen time,” but I do think it’s become necessary for my mental health. My social isolation seems to make me particularly susceptible to the influence of the “flickering Cyclops,” as Sideshow Bob once called television (and, by extension, computer screens).

I think it warps my perception, and that has already been seriously warped by loneliness, anxiety and LSD (j/k). Years ago, I stopped wearing ear buds while working out at the gym. I noticed that listening to music or podcasts took me “out of the moment.” I wasn’t as “present.” (Sorry about the quotes. I’m still not totally comfortable using that terminology. It feels like New Age crap.)

It makes for a boring workout, but I quickly realized the real reason I’d been using the ear buds. They were a distraction from my loneliness. But the loneliness got too strong, no matter how much I repressed it. Using the ear buds started to make my head hurt, albeit only slightly, like mild sinus pressure. It’s a feeling of fullness, like I’m trying to stuff too much stimulation into my brain.

Gradually, I abandoned the ear buds almost completely, even when working monotonous temp jobs. I realized that facing my loneliness has become less painful than repressing it. I’ve also mostly switched from watching TV to listening to podcasts, and since then I’ve cut back on the podcasts in favor of going out.

I had to face the existential terror of wandering the Wasteland alone. (The Wasteland is my name for public space, which has been abandoned to fear, paranoia and anxiety, a silent stretch of barren desert devoid of meaningful socialization or personal interaction and other building blocks of a healthy society. But, then again, my perspective might be a bit slanted.)

I also opt for outdoor exercise like biking more often now. Being outside in the sweet sunshine is better for me than being in the gym with today’s biggest hits blaring and people generally ignoring each other. There’s some stress involved in biking on the city streets around Uptown, dodging cars and whatnot, but I’ve learned that stress can be beneficial. Most of it arises from my social anxiety. I’m less worried about getting run over and more worried about pissing off drivers.

My self-consciousness is coming back, which is actually more good than bad. I think I was just repressing it anyway. I don’t think I’d actually overcome it.

The self-consciousness is what kept me from taking more risks, being more social or going out in public more often. I felt like people were always watching and judging me. This is probably why getting on stage is relatively easy for me. At least on stage I know people are watching me, and I actually have a pretty good idea of what I’m supposed to do to gain their approval. Off stage, it’s anybody’s guess.

So now I’m more anxious in public again, but being out and about has also become more beneficial. There’s real risk in it now, which means the possibility of connection as well as rejection. Before, my heart was shut to everything, the good and the bad. Now I actually feel some hope of making friends and dating again.

It feels like I’m experiencing things firsthand rather than just watching them through someone else’s eyes, à la Being John Malkovich. It was especially gratifying biking along the Greenway last week. My eyes/brain/heart could finally take in the joy of the sunlight and the awe of the tall buildings towering over me. I was back in the Real World.

There are many feelings and sense-memories that have triggered pain in me for a long time, so I blocked them out. But blocking them (what one of my therapists called “avoidance”) made the world unreal. Avoiding them turned me into a hermit. Either way, it just made me more miserable. Avoidance became an extremely maladaptive coping technique, and I had to learn to confront my anxieties rather than avoid them.

Now I have to disentangle my brain to remember what behavior will make me feel better and what behavior will make me feel worse. I’ve built up so many layers of detachment between me and my experience that it can be hard to tell. The detachment is so severe that, at this point, it’s more about reducing or eliminating pain than generating joy.

My experience of joy has been much less than my experience of pain for several years now, so it’s gonna take a while to rebuild my capacity for it.

I suppose it makes sense that I’m mainly just trying to diminish the amount of pain in my life. After all, the avoidance of pain is how I got here. Rather than pursuing joy, I avoided pain and risk, so clearly I’m more responsive to negative motivation than the positive kind. I suppose my brain is just giving me the stimuli it thinks I need.

At least I’ve dropped 25 lbs. during this crucible. I was hoping for that, although it has come at a steep price. If I had it to do over again, I would’ve kept the weight over the anxiety and depression/toxic brain shit/Black Bile Flood. (I think.)

I’m putting myself back in the world mentally. I’m once again a member of the Human Race, just as significant or insignificant as anyone else. I suppose taking myself out of the world is a form of solipsism, but it feels like reducing myself to a nonentity rather than setting myself up as God. Well, they’re probably just 2 sides of the same coin anyway.