Feeling down in a low-lit surround

Something has been pulling me down for past few days. I feel a stupidity, realism and irritation together. Stupidity is not being able to figure out why. Realism is to not feel odd. Irritation is the unrest to figure out why.

I have listened to loads of Beethoven, comfortably numb, everybody hurts, tu hi re and the painful kind for past 2 days. Somehow, they just keep expressing me. Which means that I know they are not bringing me down but just supplementing.

Most friends cannot even see it when I talk to them. Some others who felt it, have tried to cheer me up but it just doesn't happen. This irritates me further and I dive in to get an answer.

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On a hindsight, I find a pattern in my life that has existed for almost a decade now. It is a cyclical pattern of highs and lows. Highs are closely matched by acheivements and lows by not just mediocre to low performance, but also by a strong psychological pressure to perform. This pressure may have been created by family, peers, consistent failure or may be by just a habituated feeling of simple lack of acheivement. But this pressure is strong. Very strong. And it often comes in combinations, thereby multiplying the effect.

This low is what I am going through. I have lost a lot of trust in past at such times. People take my behaviour for something completely different and assume it permanent. It has definitely hurted me hard at times.

These lows are often immediately followed by a high. This means that whenever I feel very low, I convert it into an acheivement that I find good enough to sustain me & my self-respect. Then these highs take relatively longer time to die out and to get converted into a low. A graph would typically look like this.

Such small cycles happen in large cycles as well. A combination of low on both has been deadly.

For the time being, I will ignore the reasons and repurcussions of this pattern, shall concentrate on my original questions and will attempt to further understand & describe this low I am going through.

This low is like a void. It generates a thinking process where I search out for ideas for solutions. It is like bending down before the God to beg for an idea for solution. It is to be done continously till I get the answer. It gets marked by introspection as well.

This need for solution is what stops me from cheering myself up. It would be like taking a break from some Tapasya because it was boring. It doesn't work that way. This commitment is unquestionable, even in quintessential sense. Hence, if it is this low, simple outing etc. shall just not work. Answer to the main problem is the only way out.

It seems to have worked till date. I hope it does in future as well.

However, bouncing back needs solitude. Hence, low has to be usually accompanied by a shutting self in the room or a long outing alone. Nagging is the biggest killer of this conversion. Tension is another. Room and outing both usually provide a disconnect from these and hence help.

I hope that my journey to self-realisation has started. Finally, I have started getting answers and not just questions.

Having figured out the stage I am in, I would better get to work. There is a lot of thinking to be done. :)