The Open Matt Project

I think tommorow I'll kill myself - Pt. 1

Sometime earlier this week I had the epiphany that I had something very wrong with me. I had been feeling very moody and the movement of my emotions had become increadingly erratic. The realization I had a few days ago was that I had, in fact, gone mad.

Let me try to describe that.

Most of the time, you spend your time going about your business without a great deal of thought about the motivations and mechanics of it. You're getting coffee because it tastes good, or you want a little jolt. You snap at a stranger because they cut you off, or behaved rudely. Any of your actions can be scrutinized at a given point and more or less be found to have reasonable motivations, particularly in retrospect.

On occasion we all have had the experience of sudden awareness, a snapping awake, wherein we'd realize that we had no idea what we were doing. You go into a room to get something, only to realize you do not know why you are there. You try to use the wrong key for something, over and over, despite that it's not even close to the correct key. You put your radio next to the bathtub, plugged into the wall and are up to your neck in water before the hazard presents itself.

In each of these moments, you realize you are not aware of what you are doing and after the initial shake of the head, you backtrack to try and place the action in some sort of context that will comfort you through it's reasonable progression. Sometimes you can't, and you chalk it up to doing something dumb. More often you can, and you move on with the understanding that it likely won't happen again.

Now what if you can explain this coasting of action, such that you're not being dumb or thoughtless, but you find yourself 'snapping awake' a few times a day? No one notices but you, since your actions are by in large in line with what is expected, but you certainly notice. What if it happens dozens of times a day? Or a hundred times or more? At what point does one lose the ability to distinguish between conscious and unconscious action?

I hit that point. The point where I saw that my ability to mimic human behavior and response had reached an equilibrium with my ability to actually be human. I wouldn't even have noticed were it not for the increasingly uncontrollable mood swings of the past few months which have forced an awareness of to great what degree I rely on autopilot to avoid detection.

It was the moment I found myself asking why was I upset and I heard someone else answer, I knew I had lost it. This was only confirmed when I found myself not reeling from this realization but rather smoothly drifting away from it as it was automatically compensated for - by whom? Why? I breathed, relaxed, and went on with the day as if nothing had happened. For all I knew, nothing had.

Posted by Matt at February 27, 2005 02:49 AM