Shutters and bugs

[JamesG]

Two days ago, I had a phone call from a very old pal. We'd been in band together back in the late 70s and early 80s. He went on to do some music stuff until the mid 90s and ran a record lable. I'd told him I'd done some music and he'd asked to hear it. Quite unexpectedly, I seem to have been signed up for a new lable. That's right, I have a record contract. Aged 54, I have a record contract. It's ambient, home recorded twiddling but for some reason, it's exactly what they want.

Happy? Not a bit of it. I feel nothing. Neither do I feel anything when I get good book reviews for my novels. Not a sausage. Dissociation in action. Now I'm not writing this in despair, I'm being objective, but isnt that amazing? Two things I wanted to do all my life and now they are happening, I feel like they are hapening to someone else. This is a perfect example of C-PTSD, you throw out the bad and the good goes with it. Baby and bathwater, clear as day. This is precisley why recovery is so difficult, as soon as you open the shutters to let the fresh air in, the room fills with bugs. The bugs are worse than the stale air so the shutters close again. So what do you do?

You open the shutters. Then you kill the bugs. The air is better than the bugs, but this is not what the bugs want you to believe. They exert a greater power from outside the room than they do when they come in. When they get in they can be swatted and they can be sprayed. Keep the room sealed and you will suffocate, slowly and subtly, but you will suffocate. Ok so I don't feel these things as much as I want to, there is no euphoria but so what? I can't stop them because I don't feel giddy, that's what the bugs, the narcissists want, they want you to close your windows, they want that more than they want to bite you. If you stop, they win. They win your stagnation, the only way their own crippled insecurity can look better to them. They fear your happiness more than they fear anything else, you are a mirror, a nightmare reflection of why their terror is pointless and why it is doing them to decline. If you stop, if you fail, then their philosophy is vindicated. It's upside down, inside out and back to front but it drives them more than their black heartbeats.

Open the shutters, take a deep breath and roll up the newspaper.

[Sceal]

Sorry to hear that you cannot feel any joy from your new breakthrough. Still, I would like to congratulate you on it. It's pretty cool that you got a record deal! It's not nothing that's for sure.

I hope that given time, you'll be able to also find some satisfaction in the fact that you've both published books and now will be making a record. Maybe the satisfaction will come later? In the meantime, I hope you'll accept a hug 

[JamesG]

I ACCEPT!

[Sceal]

I ACCEPT!

Then a big big hug to you!

[Three Roses]

Then we shall be happy for you! I can see, tho, where i would also probably be frozen if i had a record deal or a book published, there would be a bit too much of the "waiting for the other shoe to drop" feeling for me to allow myself to get caught up in the joy of it. Big hugs! 

[Rainagain]

That lack of joy? that detached bemusement? That's dysthymia, that is.

Music to swat to, vol 1...........