Blogging every day in July except the first because that's for dummies maybe?

I need to write more, and I want to write more, and I have been writing more, but only in small notebooks and only a page or two.

And as noted in the title, I understand it's kind of ruined already because I am starting a day late, but 'kind of ruined' works for me as a person so it should work for this thing, surely. SURELY.

Here's the thing though.

In my notebooks, I can write whatever I want, but on this thing, it's like, potentially public. I can either write real things (which are not nice cheery things) that I mostly don't want people to know about probably, and then I get to spend a whole month writing things that no one will see because I won't share it with anyone, so no one will know there are things here.

Or I can write other things. I can write things that are real but are not authentic, if that makes sense? They're things I really think but they're not what I want to write about.

I guess we'll see.

I do have some plans. I already have some verrrrry initial drafts of things. Which is good because usually when I do this, it results in me spending half an hour up at 11:30pm writing four lines of garbage to fulfill an arbitrary goal I've set myself and becomes more about writing to a quota than for any deeper, existential purpose.

Because this is very deep and existential.

Here is a truth: I feel numb. I feel disconnected. I feel like I am a puppet or wind up doll or robot. But none of those are quite right.

I feel like a human-shaped sack of sand, where the weight of moving any part of my body requires almost more strength than I have. I feel like it's taking all my self control to move my limbs in the way I want them to move to resemble a human being, or to move them at all. I feel like my movements look like they're being controlled by a remote from like, a real decent distance, which is probably reflective of the fact that I feel like I am controlling them from a real decent distance. I feel like the part of me that's meant to feel anything deeply and persistently has been locked away, and I can't get to it if I tried. This is a look of sentences starting with "I feel..." for someone who feels nothing.

Mostly, I feel like there's a human part left in me, deep deep down, and it's curled up tightly, in the fetal position, around the part of me that is meant to feel, and occasionally the human part looks up to see if it's safe to stand up and let go, to see if there's any sunlight or breeze, eyes hoping, and it sees nothing. Darkness and clouds. And every time it looks up, there's a little less hope there, and the look is a little bit quicker, and they come a little less frequently, and it holds on a little tighter.

There's a line in It's Quiet Uptown, from Hamilton: The moments when you're in so deep it feels easier to just swim down.

And it does. I can feel myself slipping further away. I can feel myself disconnecting more and more. Sinking.

Sometimes I can actually sense all the things I want or need to feel, like a wave cresting over me. Sometimes I can literally feel the weight on my skin like a physical presence. Pressing against me or swirling around me or grabbing me sharply. And it's too much. I sense it there, and I retreat, because it's too much. I've gotten so good at retreating, and the wave has kept growing, that I'm worried if I let it wash over me, it will crush me. It'll tear me apart and break me and suffocate me.

Well.

Let's see how long this stays up for, shall we?