There’s a fundamental conflict between inside my head and outside.  It’s not emotions or depression or apathy for that matter.  These are things that can be explained and examined by psychologist and psychology books.  What I’m dealing with doesn’t fall into those categories.  It can’t be prescribed away.  It doesn’t make regular appearances.  It’s a school of blind fish.  A ball of static electricity.  Inside my brain is a contest of guessing how many jellybeans are in the jar.  Only no one knows how many jellybeans are in the jar.  Also, the jar is suddenly spiked into the concrete anytime anyone attempts to count them.

Whatever it is, inside my head, makes couches and beds, even consumer report’s top rated mattresses, the top of the line, memory foam, ergonomically sound sofas become uncomfortable.  I can’t sit still in them.  I try.  If I’m tired, I might curl up and fall asleep.  But awake, I don’t find comfort.

I’ve been with beautiful women and they rub the back of my neck.  They kiss me and tell me nice things.  And it’s still there.  The hive of mosquitoes in my skull.  They bounce off the bone and die in mass.  I’ve got thoughts and emotions and things to do on top of all that.  It makes a mess of things.

When people ask “What’s wrong?”  Sometimes I don’t answer.  Sometimes I don’t answer because I don’t like how they asked the question.  Sometimes I think they have stupid teeth or distracting nose hairs.  Other times I’d like to answer, but I haven’t figured it out myself. I could explain to them the jelly beans and the broken glass and the ants carrying away the jelly beans on their backs.  I doubt it would do anyone any good.

I don’t always feel like answering either.  The sound of my own voice gets annoying.  My breathing, the air squeezing through my mostly plugged nostrils, that’s an annoyance.  When I explain things, people often ask me to repeat myself.  The problem multiples.  Now the voice that vexes me is echoing around the room and the dog is licking himself raw and the television is on too loud and I’ve got a rash on my eyelid that itches.  

I want to turn on very loud music and unload the dish washer with a hatchet.  That would make me feel better.  In some strange way, that would balance whatever is going on in my head.  A lawnmower engine, growling, the blade chopping away, indoors, through a sofa pillow and up the leg of a coffee table.  That could be satisfying.  It wouldn’t cancel out the knot of static electricity.  But maybe it would lower the voltage.

This is an issues that arrives, sometimes out of peace.  It comes on nights with full moons and nights when the moon is a fingernail clipping.  It happens when the clock hands are up and down and stretched out to the sides.  It isn’t perpetual.  It’s there one minute and gone.  Then it’s back and sitting like a puddle.  It’s working its way down, adding a layer of sogginess to everything.

Of course I’ve sought out remedies.  I can douse it with vigorous exercise, sex, or sleep.  I can’t run it into the ground, up a hill, or through the woods.  I can stomp it out and it tends to go away when I bleed.  Laughing works sometimes.  Crying does not.  Combat, real or pretend has shown promise.  The effectiveness of drugs is inconsistent on the static and often comes with opposite and unwanted results.

Writing.  Writing is one thing that seems beneficial.  It doesn’t calculate the jelly beans or clean up the shattered glass.  It gives me space.  A step, a moment.  It allows me to say, “fuck those jelly beans.”  When I write, I can care less about how many jelly beans are in that jar.  Something about the written word, even crammed together in bad penmanship, or in incomplete fucked and fragmented hunks, it helps.  It’s not always peace and it’s often chaos as well, but it seems to work.  And for that, I’m grateful.