Nausea

I often suffer from both forms of Nausea, that is the medical nausea of feeling a bit queasy ( a hangover from my very bad M.E/CFS days and possibly my fondness for either eating far too much or far too little) and the Jean Paul Sartre Kind:

“The Nausea is not inside me: I feel it out there in the wall, in the suspenders, everywhere around me. It makes itself one with the café, I am the one who is within it.”

Today I suddenly woke up in it, though I think it started before I woken my dreams became fraught and uneasy. I can’t remember what happened (apart from the fact it involved lasagne, I also woke up quite peckish) but I can remember the feeling. Things just didn’t seem right, I didn’t feel bad , I didn’t feel good I just felt odd. Things all looked the same, to all intents and purposes it was another boring day full of nothing very much. There was, still is, this thing hanging over me. Following me, always out of sight, in the shadows.

At the risk of appearing even more of a colossal geek than I already am it is a bit like those alien’s from the latest Doctor Whop episode. You are only aware of them when you can see them, when you turn away from them you forget them, yet they are there behind you. Yet you can never truly forget, deep down inside there is a tiny little spark, something that remembers, an uneasy feeling about something you can’t quite put your finger on. It feels a bit like that.

I can almost visualise it, a pair of hands, demonic, ghostly almost, with long Nosferatu nails that dig into my brain. Painlessly they just slip in like a gas and dig themselves in and grab control of it. It feels like small bugs running round my blood. It is an alien, it is an invader. It is something that changes me, it makes me not me, or at least some sort of portrait in the attic thing.

I’m not a fan of Louisa May Allcott, , but this quote say a lot about me and why I pepper my posts with enough literary references to make even the posiest sixth former cringe.

“She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain”

That said I really should read Nausea again (he’s a dejected historian, I a dejected archaeologist, well sort of).
And for kicks (if one can call it that) a picture I took on holiday in Paris . The fact I spent an afternoon on holiday in a graveyard possibly says it all.

The bell jar

Plath’s classic description of smothering yourself in your own stewed air under a bell jar still remains one of my favourite descriptions of depression and what it feels like.

It’s not just the stifling qualities but the sense of detachment that I find so accurate. Within the bell jar you are at once part of the world; you can see it and hear it yet you are not fully in it, you are separated by a thin glass wall, the sounds are muffled and you are always looking through something at the world.

I would also describe it as like being behind a sheet of cling-film; the world is so close yet there’s this thin film that clings to you, that won’t let you fully engage, your senses are dulled and you are still separated. Able to see the world, albeit in a plasticy distorted haze, you can touch but only through a sweaty film barrier.

The imagery of suffocation in both similes (or metaphors? I’m a bit unsure which is most apt) is intensely accurate, the feeling that this thing is draining oxygen and life from you with every breath. The stifling atmosphere of being unable to breathe properly and the distorted focus on your own mortality that this brings. It’s like that uncomfortable muggy feeling of a still, breezeless heat wave, it’s too hot to do much , everything seems such a chore, you are aware of the failings of your body and how uncomfortable all your senses are and you can’t sleep as the heat is too much so you just lie there, stewing in this invisible oppressive force.