Daily: freewrite

It's not always power. Some things never felt like power. I read something and it clicks, though: secrets are power.

How obvious does it sound laid out on the page like that? But I never mapped political secrets and treasure chests onto emotions before.

You keep your secrets and I am pleasant to you. I keep mine and you are pleasant to me. The kindness-simulation machine runs on secrets. Its secrets are mined from unkindness: little rejections and big explosions slowly draw the blinds down on our truths until, through the metamorphosis of their own weight and heat, truths harden and exude only secrets. There's no light buried this deep.

The machine runs. The machine strives for self-preservation. The machine feeds, generation after generation, rolling forward and compacting selves into secrets through the scramble for the power we hope will make us safe.
( more freewrite )

Fragments

My brain isn't patterning right, right now. Either it's not intaking the right amount of information or it's not drawing conclusions properly. Spatial things, like Tucker leaving the tap on for a minute while cooking or a bike behind the stairs or the (normal) placement of a coffee table -- neither of which are ultra unusual-- startle me and I stare at them in confusion. It's hot then cold and I can't tell whether it's me or the surroundings. There's a layer of bubble wrap between me and the world, things filter in slow and dim. I can't tell entirely what's happening in my head and what's in the real world, or more accurately I can't focus on one over the other intentionally.

It feels dissociative but not in an emotionally-triggered way. It's like handcuffs on my mind.

I have a great face or mask for this sort of thing, I can make small talk and say things that sound sensible and leave lots of space in conversation which people are happy to fill. But. I can't put two and two together.

I slept through most of two of the last three days and was sluggish through the third. I got a covid test today because I technically have all the symptoms and I'm supposed to be in a vehicle with the summer students on Thursday. But.

The tired is "normal" for a week every month at this point: calling-in-sick levels usually one day a month on average, if there is an average. But this, is it brain fog? It's concentrated and it's lasted all day and I think all weekend too.

I can't tell whether this is normal, whether it's hypochondria, whether there is actually something wrong. I can free-associate and write but I can't think.

Ugh.

Fragments

My brain isn't patterning right, right now. Either it's not intaking the right amount of information or it's not drawing conclusions properly. Spatial things, like Tucker leaving the tap on for a minute while cooking or a bike behind the stairs or the (normal) placement of a coffee table -- neither of which are ultra unusual-- startle me and I stare at them in confusion. It's hot then cold and I can't tell whether it's me or the surroundings. There's a layer of bubble wrap between me and the world, things filter in slow and dim. I can't tell entirely what's happening in my head and what's in the real world, or more accurately I can't focus on one over the other intentionally.

It feels dissociative but not in an emotionally-triggered way. It's like handcuffs on my mind.

I have a great face or mask for this sort of thing, I can make small talk and say things that sound sensible and leave lots of space in conversation which people are happy to fill. But. I can't put two and two together.

I slept through most of two of the last three days and was sluggish through the third. I got a covid test today because I technically have all the symptoms and I'm supposed to be in a vehicle with the summer students on Thursday. But.

The tired is "normal" for a week every month at this point: calling-in-sick levels usually one day a month on average, if there is an average. But this, is it brain fog? It's concentrated and it's lasted all day and I think all weekend too.

I can't tell whether this is normal, whether it's hypochondria, whether there is actually something wrong. I can free-associate and write but I can't think.

Ugh.

(no subject)

Although on the other hand there are still things in the world like a one-week-old duckling sitting on the shiny surface of a feedbag, paddling its little feet as if it were in water and going nowhere, frantically cheeping for mom. It was there for a full five minutes until I picked it up and set it on solid earth, at which point it ran away.

I feel you, little duckling.

(no subject)

Although on the other hand there are still things in the world like a one-week-old duckling sitting on the shiny surface of a feedbag, paddling its little feet as if it were in water and going nowhere, frantically cheeping for mom. It was there for a full five minutes until I picked it up and set it on solid earth, at which point it ran away.

I feel you, little duckling.