Falling Down
It sometimes takes me hours to come back after becoming a person who is good at my job. Some of that is just a hangover dissociation I use to be them. Some of that is hypoarousal to recover from their overcooked state. But some of that is me deciding to tune out my own cognition because I can’t make it stop.
Person with Job is held aloft in tension, always urgent, always productive, never concerned with any other part of life. Burning through steps and goals and tickets. They use that tension and an endless supply of tasks to keep busy and conform with the expectations of capitalism. But if PIC get ahold of that hyper-focused brain, they will be obsessive.
It’s easy for me to imagine that Person in Charge is pure cognition. But that’s not really true. They will use cognition if it’s available, but they are here even when we can hardly breathe, and before anyone else when we come back to consciousness. PIC is not disconnected from the other parts of my existence, they’re not ignoring my body or my feels or even my blood pressure. They are survival and they underly all those systems.
When PIC is in charge of cognition and there is no more pressing issue, they are planning for our death. Training to be sure that when I need to let an orderly negligently suffocate me I’ll be able to do it. And while there is significant safety in that idea I’d mostly rather not let PIC manage my thinking.
I can’t quite convince myself it’s unlikely – being punished in a hospital – but I could probably arrange to be someplace where more direct violence is available to help. In the hospital I might have to do it secretly and alone and without tools, which is much higher stakes. But statistics and risk won’t convince PIC – if they are planning they are planning for the worst survivable conditions.
So to avoid being PIC while my obsessive thinking is on I just give up caring about thinking. Thinking still happens but I don’t get attached to it. I mostly don’t even notice it. To keep myself safe I simply decline to engage in anything and mostly just sit still, waiting for thinking to be safe, checking occasionally to see if it’s safe to exist again, holding still and bring invisible. Not frozen in panic but choosing to diminish, waiting for something more urgent to provide focus, or for the need for focus to fade.
I probably don’t need to be overcooked to work. Certainly I could half-ass all the procedural parts. And I’m good at managing narcy relationships (even if it can make me feel terrible). But it’s real hard for me to get any work done if I haven’t jumped up to work mode. There’s some other way to organize this that’s less like switching.
I mean, I sure hope there is. I might eventually get Shanda to join me in more efficient ways to get money from rich people, but in the short term my best option is still job. So I will have to find something I can tolerate.
Person who Writes is animated by tensions too. There are other things I imagine wanting to share. But my energy dropped out as soon as that story came together. So other news will wait, and I will sleep.
ZiB
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Sent from a phone.
