I am sitting in our living room. In a comfy brown recliner that I found on the street. It is a room of mostly windows. I feel the warmth of the sun through the glass on my arms, my bare feet. It is one of the coldest mornings we have had this winter.

I am watching my roommate play with her puppy. Though occasionally he attempts to get me into the fray by grabbing me by the arm or trying to pull away my computer, or earlier, the coloring book I was working on.

I am out here in the living room on purpose. Lately (it feels like forever, but it's only been lately), I have been literally hiding from the world. In the corner of my bed which is in the corner of my room, covered by as many blankets as I own. Usually with something streaming on my computer so as to escape the world.

Or, as I heard a Marxist scholar say earlier today, escape my last bit of resistance to the world.

One thing I have always hated about my mental illness is how passive it makes me. But I am starting to see now how I have always been passive.

This was partially conditioned in me, in all of us, with the insistence on following authority and obeying rules and socially conforming. Especially so with church kids like myself who are taught that God has a will and God has a plan and that everything that happens to me is a part of His will and my unblinking obedience is crucial to His plan.

But part is surely temperamental. I fully agree with Simone Weil that "the most beautiful life possible has always seemed to me to be one where everything is determined, either by the pressure of circumstances or by impulses where there is never any room for choice."

I want that because then I am not responsible. Then I am not the one to choose. Even a life of struggle and hardship is acceptable because it is part of a narrative. There are rules that are clear to understand and if you follow them good things happen.

I saw a FB post earlier that said the hard thing about growing up suicidal is that you have never dreamed about your future or really prepared for it in any way, because you, at least in some sense, expected to not be alive at this point. The person who shared this added that she felt this way growing up believing that the rapture would happen any moment. That fundamentalist church kids were better prepared for death than we were for life.

I grew up suicidal and both ready and terrified for the rapture and Hell and disaster. Of course I don't know how to play and run wild in a field of flowers and endless possibilities.

My dad is a dreamer and my mom a worrier.
I can see how I got the worst of both.
Especially all holed up as a kid due to illness.

I am not surprised that I would want to escape into my imagination.
Given my isolated homeschooled bubble boy existence, I am also not surprised that I am highly adept at it.

I'm not sure how coherent all this is.

What I am trying to say is:
I am becoming aware of the degree to which I have chosen to live my life in my head instead of in reality.
I am becoming aware of how much I have just let life happen to me without making much effort to do or change anything.

When the puppy grabs the sleeve of my sweater, I just let him pull until my roommate calls him off.

I have been having fantasies recently about becoming catatonic.

I just don't want to do things because I feel like I have always been bad at them.

I know I am lost. That's why I so badly just want to hand over the map to someone else. Let them drive for a while. I want someone else to be in control.

I know I should feel joy in my freedom. I can be anything. Do everything. I don't know why it feels so strongly like a trap.

11:26 a.m. - 2020-02-13