August 20, 2024
so you’re in hell. assuming that this is a hell of your mortal life and not the eternal one playing out to me from a gas station between davenport and muscatine iowa (long story, marginally related), there are a few things that you can do.
sometime in july of last year i was having frequent panic attacks. this was not the first incidence of them; they’ve been a feature in my life since seventh grade or so, but every time they rise up as a rip-tide pulling me out to sea before i can remember that this has happened before, with no time to steel myself. this sequence was especially bad; the only way that i could sleep in my windowless iowa apartment was to play Seinfeld as i drifted off. no other shows worked, only Seinfeld. whenever Seinfeld wasn’t playing panic attacks were inevitable, turning intermediary moments into suspense waiting for the needle to drop. in the parking lot of a caseys with fog settled in the valleys between hills of corn fields I was struck with the vision of a future with reversed entropy, generations upon generations resurrected confirming their own mortality; a opposite-day universe which would someday come to pass. an entirely aspiritual revelations propelled by the laws of physics. prophecies like this would haunt my thoughts for weeks until i started numbing my brain with lexapro. this was hell for me. I couldn’t sleep, eat, or drive without being tormented by these thoughts. when one stops lexapro or other ssris, a common complaint is brain zaps, and they’re pretty terrible. i still take ssris when needed because these thoughts flashing through my mind and derailing everything are far worse. this is the instance of hell I feel comfortable writing about in public; there are others.
the problem with various hells is that the temperature is turned up on you. for a couple days, weeks, months you accept the heat, put it off, become adjusted to it, be the kind of person who is ok living in it. and it grows hotter still. you’re miserable, but used to it. your job sucks and you’re miserable but don’t even recognize it anymore, and really you’ve gotten used to it.
to leave you’ve gotta realize how bad it is.
now that you recognize that you are in hell and that it sucks over here you have gotta think about what you want. what’s so bad about hell? what do you need to change about yourself or your situation? what would you like to change? who are you when not in hell.
people over here often discuss what sucks about themselves; what does the ideal version of your situation look like?
you –> ??? –> your ideal. basically, there’s an ideal situation you want to be in but don’t know how to accomplish that. acting as if you were your ideal helps. do what the perfect version of yourself would do (get out of the car). odds are that you will fail miserably the first time and the second and the nth time. each time you will gain a better knowledge of the situation. here are the handles and here are the locks and there’s the door to leave hell way over there. the attempt is what matters. one time your sleeve will catch on the handle and you’ll be out in fresh air. what matters is that you create a larger variety of actions to explore your space.
when you’ve been driving long enough your legs are atrophied. even though you’re out of the situation things are still not easy. unfortunately, you’ve got to keep flailing. try imitating other people walking perhaps? again, the goal is to act in a variety of ways to find that which fits best.
hell is extraordinarily painful; the world just ordinarily so. you may find yourself dreaming of the balmy temperature of past days. nostalgia is a powerful force but find places which make you happy for the here and now.