total_utter_madness stork daddy i've always found the idea that there is such a thing as sanity a laughable concept. perhaps this is why i find all of life's frustrations and blessings endlessly amusing rather than totally appalling and frightening. but i understand what sanity is shorthand for. insanity just means you aren't able to get what you want or to want what normal people want. the concept of sanity in the psychiatric sense is then, not merely descriptive but normative. and i'm failing to muster it more and more everyday. when i was younger, i had my rituals. i suppose we all did. i was afraid of being poisoned. i was afraid of moving my head because i knew of brain damage and of loss of one's self, one's identity. failing to order one's self and one's world seemed a failure to exist in some crucial way. if i jarred my head i would have to sit still and mentally imagine my brain remaining healthy, growing back over empty spots. i would start from front to back and then from side to side and then from top to bottom and then in all three dimensions. if something kept me busy so that i couldn't find time to do this i would have to do it later. but it had to be done. i would wonder why people were so keen on getting shots or being examined at the doctors. how would one know they weren't injecting you with poison? it was a leap of faith. faith in humanity or statistics but faith none the less. an inference not strictly drawn. being catholic, part of ordering myself was setting up myself by opposition to various concepts of evil. if i even heard the word satan i would have to repeat the following phrase seven times - "god oh lord oh merciful, jesus christ my lord, blessed mary and all the angels and saints in heaven...i would never do anything or be affiliated with anything evil like that." i found convenient ways to shorthand this by using some crude concept of mathematical association and multiplication. i would only say never seven times and each would be attributed to the preceding and subsequent phrases. and yet the knowledge of evil was an obsession, an uncomfortable thought that i couldn't shake. i associated it with the poisoning and the brain damage. it was a dissolution of self. i would think it and then immediately have to complete my ritual. then i would think it again. ocd seems a dismissive way to describe it. it seemed of philisophically central importance to the creation of any consistent and coherent world to allow no weak points, no slippery slopes. i would always be on the safe side. in a bathroom i would be sure someone was watching from behind the mirror. i would say "i know you're there" because that way if someone was i would have asserted myself, and if someone was not, no one would ever know. we cannot be strictly rational because we are not omniscient. as time went on the tasks became tedious and overwhelming. i couldn't keep up with all of the world poisons. being a perfectionist i did not see a partial infection, i saw any failure on my part to defend as a total defeat. to this day, i feel as if i've been struggling to keep up as the world draws me down ever since i gave up the purity i felt i once had. to this day if i write one wrong sentence, the whole book is horrible and everyone is ashamed with me. i'm dirty and unloved and on the street. the concepts are always pure, so i stick to them. the expression always is missing some detail. i no longer check to see if a glass has signs of tampering, or to say a purification prayer of sorts after receiving a shot. perhaps it is because i lost faith in my power to purify, or perhaps i have become reasonable as to my chances of being poisoned. i do not think it is the latter. we all are afraid of not the external things in the world, but how we react to it. it is not the noise of the world we fear, but our own frailty before it. our ability to hear it, to use it, be used by it, be drowned in it. and yet i still run from my anxieties. i cannot face the fact that one wrong move years ago could mean that nothing i do now can save me. and yet it is possible. the mere possibility is daunting for one who seeks absolute control of the world. i would give up what control i do have because the whole endeavor seems pointless if even some improbable externality i have missed or been powerless before. and so i still am horrified when i don't put out a cigarette after i toss it to the ground. it makes me feel as if everyone in my house has been brutally murdered. it makes me feel as if i will be rightfully shunned and alone. failure to shave one day becomes a full grown beard, an inability to shower. the details just add up and up to a tremendous weight in my mind, because there's always something you've forgotten. always some detail that escaped you. the detail that the world can sustain but you as a weak human mind cannot. the word satan slips into your mind. there is no soap in the restroom. and so you cannot start to read the book you need to read. and so you cannot write the book you need to write. and so all the dreams of happiness you had are shattered. you've already failed. nothing good can be done from here on out. yet you still exist. i am mad. and it's hilarious. 050531 ... Lemon_Soda If I had any advice it would be to look outside of yourself. One can think to much as it where. The mind comes to conclusions, yes, but the conclusions based on conclusions, based on conclusions will always end up anxiety driven and depressive. I would suggest losing yourself in the moment more. Whatever your doing, even if its just laying there and breathing, concentraite on it as much as possible. Relax all of your muscles one at a time in your mind. Count you breaths and make them even. Rinse, repeat. Try to be aware of the whole of your person at all times, instead of just whats going on in your mind. As for these thoughts that can seem so gripping and unavoidable, step back from them, observe them like clouds floating along and let them go. They may return, but you can always let them pass unhindered again. We learn by repetition, so to continually entertain these thoughts is to learn to think about them all the time. In my own case mourning or yearning the past or future leads to the most depressive states. I try to concentraite on the now. 050531 ... . . 050531 what's it to you? who go blather from