These past few weeks have been rather tough to make it through life mentally. As someone with a mental disorder, that probably sounds like something I say often, and I do. And I have, for years.

However, things are different as of late. My OCD has been muted a bit, and because of that, that which I feel negatively has been felt without the specificity that my own flavor of OCD affords me. That is to say, if these past few weeks were full of OCD episodes, that would be easy for me to digest (at the least) and maybe (at the best) get beyond and feeling mentally better.

At the same time, feelings of anxiety and depression would not be how I would classify what I’m going through.

Well, we’re whittling away labels for what I’m feeling—and let me just get to the endgame here about that: I don’t know what I am feeling, but it isn’t good. I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, but when I do and finally become productive, I am able easily to make up for the lost time of the day and finish the day… a job well enough done, to borrow a cliché.

Yet, even in muscling through and actually being productive, I feel no bounce in mood from that. And that is uncommon. I can usually move the needle on my mood by forcing productivity. But lately, not at all. Heck, I am writing this here piece just to make sure I have something to post. That is not to take away from the quality of my words here—you’re the judge of that, and I never phone in my writing.

Something is going on with my brain and it does not have a label. It is as if my brain does not want to face the world, but my brain also knows there is absolutely nothing to fear by facing the world.

Do note that at this particular point in time in my life, my stressors are far below the level where anxiety and other such things become an issue. I’m not stressed out (so yet another label we can’t use to describe what is going on.)

Phantom bad.

That’s about the best way I can describe it. It is bad, my whole body—brain and outwards—is reacting to life in a negative manner as if there was a negative stimulus being put upon me. But there isn’t.

I’m not tired in any respect of that word. I’m not angry. The problems I’m dealing with in life are far more structured than usual (which is a good thing.)

Yet, here I am… unable to face the world. For no reason.

This is going to be one of those pieces that doesn’t have a grand ending, by the way.

Phantom bad.

So my brain is doing this, and it is also up to my brain to make sense of the entire universe in which I live—including things my own brain creates. Thus, my brain is not making any sense to itself and it is making things much more difficult for me. Difficult for one, because I have to work harder to force productivity. And difficult on another hand because there is no chance I will find a solution to this.

I’m not happy. But I feel the door is wide open to being happy. Yet, my brain just will not step through this door.

I remain, in phantom bad.