Output

I’m having a less than easy night. It’s not terrible – certainly not by the bar set by multiple nights this summer – but not… great.

I think it’s depression, or at least the leading edge of a depression front.

Sir thinks that possibly my feeling is akin to burnout (and potentially that’s enough to tip my bipolar back towards depression) because I’ve been… outputting intensely for several days and likely not getting enough inputting.

Last week I expended a lot of energy with full day activities with family, then with anxiety about taking the trains, and then did take the trains, and spent two long days in downtown attending a training, and even though my anxiety calmed down and I was emotionally comfortable with the situation fairly quickly, it was still a significant output of my emotional energy to get up, travel with other people (even without interacting, people take energy from me), sit in a room with other people, chat with my teammate who was at the training, ride back home (with people), etc. It was… tiring and draining. Being around people, though I choose to do it and it often gives me happy feelings, drains my energy at a steady rate.

Then this weekend Sir and I played (as I wrote about) and Sir and Sub Brother played, and it was great. Really great. I… enjoy playing, and it makes me happy, and I would be less fulfilled in my life without it… but it… uses energy. It’s a good and happy energy use, but the energy goes out nonetheless.

Then I spent three days writing my account of that play. And that… was… difficult. It was deeply personal and… sexual… which is not usually somewhere I go with my writing. It was incredibly vulnerable for me to put it into words, to apply my craft in that way, and, ultimately, to put it out in the public realm… not knowing what anyone would think of it, or of me, whether it would be accepted, rejected, enjoyed, or cause disgust… It is… in a way… terrifying to put things out constantly into the world. To… create… and to… give that away… for consumption. It is… terrifying to hand my own soul to people without names or faces or voices… just little blinking specks on a map… and never know… never know what they think, how they feel, what judgments they make of me, both for my art and for my content.

That is a huge output.

I don’t think I realized how profound that effect would be, or even considered it when I decided to write here every day. I was really thinking only of forcing myself into practicing the one real gift I think I can ever recognize in myself (and not even consistently). I didn’t realize the emotional toll of constantly putting forward pieces of my soul to be swallowed up into nothingness.

And that’s even when I just write little snippets of fiction, or rants about some political issue. Writing about the most deep intimacies of my relationship and my sexuality is… exponentially more wrenching. Offering those to the void… infinitely more crushing.

And finally, I have an international trip looming with all of the preparation and anxiety of… adventure (and we all know how well I do with adventure), which is sucking away anything I might have had left.

I have been writing several extra posts each day so that I can have content to auto-post while I’m away from my computer. I’m still a few days short of having enough to cover my trip. But I just… I have nothing to give you all… I have nothing left to sacrifice. I’m out of blood. I’m out of sweat. And my tears are too thin to sustain me.

Maybe this is why so many writers killed themselves.

Maybe this is the madness of creating.

Or maybe it’s just madness, and some of us afflicted feel compelled to share it before we go.