Feeling Muted

Hello, my dear reader.  I notice I struggle to get my calorie intake up unless I eat junk food, and when I eat junk food, I want to throw up.  So, I’m trying to find a happy middle.  Mini rant: I have no idea what the fuck ‘pleased as punch’ is supposed to mean.  How are you pleased as punch?  Is it like the beverage punch?  Is it the violent action punch?  I mean, I suppose if we’re talking about how pleasing/satisfying it was to watch Anna punch Hans in Frozen, then yes, that punch is well pleased.  So, “pleased as a well deserved punch to a rather punchable face” would make sense, although the violence indicated is a bit much for my liking.

Update: I just looked up the history of that idiom.  Apparently, Punch is the name of some demented Italian serial killer puppet thing that happened to also be a wife-beater.  So, ‘pleased as Punch’ means ‘as pleased as this one demented Italian serial killer named Punch as he’s dispatching his victims’.  I’d like to think that my interpretation wasn’t too off.  Still rather violent though.

I’m not sure if any of you have noticed, mostly because this is a written medium on which I communicate with you rather than a face-to-face interaction, but I’ve been rather ‘muted’ lately.  Not muted as in not speaking, but muted as in I’ve been feeling rather put-off from everything.  I’ve had no motivation to do much.  I’m not feeling depressed, just rather Apathetic.  I haven’t the foggiest idea why, although ‘slightly foggy with a chance of rain’ is the mood I would currently describe myself in.

Honestly, I had some tiny inklings that I may be depressed, but dismissed them because this isn’t what depression feels like to me.  I’m only slightly disconnected, I’m not full-blown dissociated from reality.  I’m not sure why.  I think it started when I came across Fred the other week.

Charon noticed it too.  I’m not depressed though, just a bit off.  I guess I could call it being in a cage of my own making.  I don’t like feeling overly emotional, so when I started to freak out too much over a random deceased kitten on the walkway, I sort of just shut down that emotional part of my brain.  I have loads of practice doing it.  It’s almost like an immediate reaction whenever I start feeling too much of anything.

It’s not good to do that.  It’s effective, yes, but only in the short term.  In the long term, I have to step back and accept that emotions are part of reality and living in the now.  Maybe stepping back is the problem.  I should say, I have to step forward and allow myself to feel those intense emotions without going overboard with them.

And if I recall correctly, that’s all part of Emotion Regulation, which I really, really don’t like.  There’s a bit on Emotion Regulation in the book Living Well on the Spectrum, but I haven’t made it that far yet.  Honestly, I haven’t made it past the first few paragraphs.  I’ve been having a hard time concentrating.

Oh my various heathen gods, I might be a bit depressed.  I have been chewing my lip a lot more lately and I’ve not been doing Habitica or the Mr. Oinkers things.  Maybe I should get back on those.

I have nothing else to say today.

-The Sarcastic Autist