Introspective Alexithymia
This blog is a labour of love, and it will always be free. Thousands of people read every post which is incredible. And if just 100 people donate €2 it means that I’ll be able to continue doing all of this for another year. So if you like the work, it would mean the world to me if you considered making a donation. Thank you to everyone who already has this year. There’s no expectations, as ever, and I hope you have a lovely week. Donate here
There is also now a Thoughts Too Loud Podcast!
The sun is constant. Even in the thickness of night.
Its heat is un-leaving.
Outside my window is the brushed silence of the maize stalks being lulled to sleep by the wind. Almost like the seaside, the waves losing their strength as darkness falls.
I’m losing weight in my sleep. My skin is wetness and dirt every morning. It is the mud. My body is in constant need of water. Ever-thirsty. There is no rest, only respite.
Sleep is the only time I cannot hear my mind. But even then it seeps into my dreams. Waking me in fear, confusion. It reminds me, even in unconsciousness, of everything. Ensures I don’t forget.
I wake exhausted, and the mind hums into life. The thoughts pool and pour, drowning any sense of peace, of calm.
Days are a tedium. I’m not certain if I’m depressed again. I don’t think I am. I feel outside of it.
Like my mind and body are sick but I am not.
I’m observing it, finding it curious, of interest, but not experiencing it. Like I am split off from myself. Like the fracture has reached foundation.
The infection is separate to me. Causing my mind to rot and fester, my body to eat itself. But I am not part of it. Somehow, I am not.
I smile often. There is laughter. But all of these connections are fragile. I know it wouldn’t affect me if they were gone. I would accept their disappearance. Grief wouldn’t visit. I can’t tell if this is balance or breakdown. Have I mastered my emotions or have I lost my grasp on them?
When I see two birds flying together I feel lonesome. Sometimes they are magpies, but sparrows are more common around these fields. Asynchronous but aligned. Never thinking beyond instinct. I wish I could have that. To feel this would be everything.
I fear I have lived beyond my death. My use-by date has long-past but I somehow kept.
Maybe this is why everything comes so unnaturally to me.
My existence isn’t written.
It is scribbled in margins, the bored drawings of some library child. It is fragmented and nonsensical.
The universe never planned from me. So I stumble between the destinies of others, disrupt and give them something to learn from.
When the piano starts to play, gentle, I am pulled so much out of myself that I find myself back inside.
But at a different angle.
And the thoughts I never authored pause. I can feel the cavern of a mind worn down to brake pads. Raw and swollen from overuse.
How can I be numb if I spend my days obsessing over what other people think of me. This is anti-numb.
This is hyper-feeling. I’m mortified at how often I check my follower count. As if this number will eventually be big enough to convince me I’m okay. That I’m loved. As if a soulless number could make me feel like I finally belong.
But my palms have no lifelines, my heart was never scratched by stars.
This patchwork okay-ness can only last for so long.
Replacing dopamine bandages
every day.
Feel the beat of it with every-short lived interaction. Flesh on flesh, thumb on glass, clapping like thunder. Convince me I am okay, at least for now. Get me through to another bout of sleep.
That’s all I need from you.
Help me limp back to respite.
Let me sink into your steady beat. How are you so certain?
It always fascinated me. How sure you are.
I wish I could be that.
I wish I could exist and not feel the need to have earned it, to continually earn it.
When dawn comes I am never up before it. I’m still lost somewhere in-between. I don’t want to always be like this. I want it to be lighter.
To call oneself a burden is overdone. I am not a burden. I have no weight in this world. I am something someone once saw but misremembered as a dream.
There’s dust pooling on a polished feather. And I am lost in the middle of a summer.
Until the end, I’ll be here. People will remember me as something I never was.
Something that tried and failed to be.
But I was never anything.