Stagnation in The Truth (As I Know It)

I’m realizing that stagnation is one of the main drivers of my battles with depression and the anger and frustration I seem to constantly feel. I think I’ve know it for quite awhile, but I’m now at a place in my life where my mind is actively trying to tell me to feed it something substantial. The complacency is gone. In it’s place is the slow awakening of long-slumbering machinery. Instead of a soothing (deadening) hum, I’m now hearing the rattle and clang of rusty parts starting to come back to life. And the machinery wants to be put to work. NEEDS to be put to work. And it’s telling me that either I start tasking it with something positive and meaningful or it’s going to feed on itself.
For so much of my life, the machinery has been dormant. It shut itself down a long, long time ago- and I allowed it to happen. Rather than face the world, I folded into myself and created a little cocoon. I fell into the numbing emptiness of chronic depression, and let it anesthetize me with its daily dose of malaise and ennui. I ran from challenges. I ran from stress. I told myself “No” a million times, in a million different ways. And the machinery was content with that. Maybe not ‘content”, but certainly unwilling to put up any kind of fight.
I’ve spent so much of my life looking inward- and I have eviscerated myself without every really taking the time to KNOW myself. I’ve bludgeoned myself with a sledgehammer when the delicate use of a surgical scalpel was what was called for. And now as I attempt to turn my gaze outward again, I find myself doing the same thing. I get angry and I rage at things inappropriately. I have little subtlety in my spectrum of emotions. Things are either “Good” or “Bad”. Someone doesn’t just make a mistake, they are a complete asshole. It’s not just a minor inconvenience, it’s “Fucking Bullshit.”
And the reason I’m still wielding that sledgehammer is stagnation, I think. I’m frustrated. Bored. Empty. Unfulfilled. The machinery is giving me an ass-kicking and telling me “Let’s Go.” It wants a challenge. Some competition. A chance to ACHIEVE something again.
The pump is slowly being primed and either I let the water flow out and into something positive, or that inner reservoir is going to drown me.

Last updated May 10, 2018