Is this the Yawning Hellfire of Insanity?

Resting briefly in catatonia. -- From Howl by Allen Ginsberg

You look down the street and you just know. It’s not going to happen. You can’t make it. In your mind’s eye the street has widened by a third and the distance to your destination is many times longer. Your palms sweat, you twitch, the fear courses through your intestines. Your feet feel like they are not solidly on the ground. Your central nervous system is sending alarms. You are not in the throes of a panic attack. Not yet. Maybe you’ve brought this on yourself. There was no real danger but you started thinking about it. That’s all it takes sometimes. But the fact remains that you’re going to have to turn around, try a different route. If the anxiety accelerates even the slightest bit more you’ll have to take a pill. You hate taking the pill. It’s a surrender. It acknowledges that you are powerless over this awful force that invades your mind. But to delay taking the pill can mean letting the panic take over and that’s the worst. The worst experience imaginable.

Afterwards it’s hard to put it all out of your mind. Sometimes you can. If you’re busy, have something to occupy your mind, then you forget it. But that’s just temporary. At one point or another you think about it. Think about how you couldn’t walk a few blocks one way. Think about how crippled you are. It’s depressing. Well you’re already suffering from depression so now you’ve got even less resistance to that dark prison that surrounds you with sadness.

There are medications aplenty that you’ve been prescribed. Right now there are three different ones. One at night, one in the morning and one for emergencies. One is for panic, one is for depression and one is for both. They haven’t been working. So you’re prescribed more. You can’t talk about it with most people you know because they don’t understand and many have misconceptions some are even dismissive. It’s hard to believe that a person could feel sad for no reason or that you could panic for no reason. It doesn’t make sense. Doctors, they think, are not to be trusted. These people make you feel worse about it. They’re well meaning but ignorant. It’s best to keep quiet about it. Suffer in silence. You’ve got support from your family so that helps but doesn’t stop the pain or the terror.

Is this the yawning hellfire of insanity? It's evil twin is the smothering gentleness and stupefaction of depression. That all encompassing onyx cloud that descends into your conscious hours, only held at bay with the distraction of work.

Sitting in a coal mine looking at the pretty flowers and the glistening dew on the the young girl's frock. Tigers growl from above and the sounds are all of anguish and confusion. You slip sadly to the floor and wonder at the proximity of bats. If this were a dream it would be a nightmare but it is you and what you do and where you do it. How do you endure?

Wretched streams of murky water sluice through the teetering tottering ambiguities of your fingerless pronouns. You languish. These are the times that tire men's souls and render them beaten and lush with blood. How querulously cumbersome. There is a weight in your chest, on your chest, of your chest. You can feel it though it's not tangible. The sighs are deep and heavy and necessary. You used to drink. Now you're on your own and it's all so overpowering and malignant and persistent and awful and grinding and stultifying and ponderous and menacing and evil and cruel and wearisome and salacious and invasive and brutally truthfully honest about how much pain can be endured and not endured and on and on it goes.

I talk and write about everything and nothing. I ponder the great mysteries of my life and why this and why not that and how can this be and when and where will that be. If ever. It is a wrenching struggle that accompanies these dark days. But these are dark days that are ringed with happiness and fulfillment and art and good food and health and prosperity and optimism and best of all family.

He had white horses
And ladies by the score
All dressed in satin
And waiting by the door
Ooooh, what a lucky man he was
Ooooh, what a lucky man he was
- From Lucky Man by Emerson Lake and Palmer

If only I could realize just anything real and produce from that, I swear I'd....