“Wasted Days”  Do you ever have them?  Days when you look back at the end of them and think I have done and achieved absolutely nothing today I have instead just wasted the whole day.  They can be quite demoralizing can’t they?

I have them.  Not very often I have to admit but I certainly have them and indeed I have other such strange days and moments.

How about “Non-Cognitive periods”?   Do you ever experience them?  Again, I do.

Part of my mental health is that I seem to “zone out”.   I have written about these times before but they are times or rather whole periods of time that happen and that I only know about when I suddenly seem to become cognitive again and looking back can’t remember having actually been even alive for the past x amount of hours – let alone having actually done anything.

Trust me these can be completely distressing and very disorienting.  Sometimes (and as strange as it may seem these are the better times) I will suddenly become cognitive again and I am sat in an arm-chair or in my office or stood in the kitchen and I have no idea how  long I have been there or what I have even done.

As I said, this happening, when I am sat in my office or in my arm-chair or stood in my kitchen, are actually the better times and trust me are not as bad or as distressing or distressing as when I suddenly become cognitive again and I am stood in the middle of the street outside my house or in the middle of town or down on the bridge over the river.  Those times are far more scary and much more concerning.

And I experience other weird things happening also…

“Senseless Times”  Periods of times when I can make little to no sense of things.  Periods of time when confusion dances all around me and all within me.  I try to function but fail.  I try to achieve things but instead of them being natural or easy or even achievable to me they become complicated, t00 time-consuming, cumbersome, muddled or confused.

“Emotionless Days” for example.  Days where I truly can’t remember having a single emotion of any kind all day long.  Of course to be factual I am fairly certain that I have actually felt and experienced emotions during these times but somehow those feelings and emotions either haven’t registered or have been lost or were all too easily forgotten.

Now I should perhaps explain that actually there are a range of emotions that I just don’t seem to experience in the same way that others do.  Excitement for example.  I just don’t do excitement.  It just isn’t an emotion that I experience.  Elation, is another one that escapes my field of experience somehow.  Grief and mourning are yet other emotions that I don’t seem to experience.  Loneliness.  now there is one that again I hardly ever experience or that I don’t experience in the same way as others seem to.

Don’t get me wrong.  Sometimes – albeit very rarely – I will get a sense or a thought process recognizing that I am totally alone in something or at that specific moment but I don’t “feel”  lonely.  It is I have to admit more of a mental process or mathematical equation than it is an emotion…

“CS – C = BA”  or “Companionship minus company equals being alone.”

Indeed when special relationships in my life end I simply accept it and move on without really giving them much thought afterwards.  My wife (another special relationship that ended) used to call me the great chapter closer.  Closing one chapter of my life and moving onto another with complete ease and dexterity.

Now please don’t get me wrong here.  I am not celebrating this ability or any these things at all.  In fact far from it.  I truly immensely dislike the fact that I am like this.

I understand that they may all be related to my mental health and I call them all part of “the nothingness.”

“The nothingness”   I hate it.  Hate it with a passion and what is more I fear it. It stalks me and I fear it.

I fear that it might one day catch up with me when I am unable to resist it and that it will totally consume me for ever.

As I have tried to illustrate from examples I have given above “the nothingness” does catch up with me and tries to consume me in different ways at different times.

Sometimes, like for example with the “Wasted days” and the “non-cognitive periods”  I only know it has been once it has left.  Many a time these exhaust me and drain me but I again I only experience this draining, this exhaustion once it has left.

Other times, I just feel it’s presence.  It’s wish to consume me.  It is devious and unpredictable.

Like some unseen entity it might suddenly leap at me either grasping at me or  clawing at me, or try to over power me and to consume me.

Or, as is the case at this moment, it seems to be more subtle, even more devious.  Far less obvious, secretly, silently draining away my strength  all the time lulling me into that place of emptiness which demands that only the nothingness survives.

All evening I have felt strange and weird, and yet didn’t realize what it was.  I tried to write but couldn’t concentrate, I have tried to relax and yet can’t relax.  I am drowning again and the nothingness is the sea in which I am drowning.

I am going to go pray and then try to sleep in the hope that I will stop it from accessing my mind, my heart, my very being.  For when the nothingness seeks to consume us I know of no other defense.