Comfort and nightmare shade into each other

Comfort and nightmare as frames share the conceit that there is something that needs to be comforted or can be tortured.

Why does this matter to me? I forget. Why did I think of this? I was thinking about when I'm wound up in a self-torturing "egoistic" way. I'm feeling a little bit like that now. Disconnected. Feeling like I have to keep up this way of being, because I am afraid to live with the alternative. The alternative feels like giving up on getting what I want, or giving up on life, and just taking whatever scraps the world throws at me.

Logically I know that isn't the only alternative, but I feel sort of unable in this mode to remember what the reasonable alternative is like or how to get back there.

How does this connect to comfort and nightmare? Well, the mood of this state feels like living a dreadful boring or painful (nightmarish) existence and needing comfort. It feels like I need things to be otherwise to be happy. The ideas of comfort and nightmare co-emerge with the sense that things ought to be different than they are — nightmarish is how I need them not to be, comfort is how I like them to be. And if I'm in this mode then even comfort can come with a sense of dread because I'm so acutely aware of the ways I don't want things to be which can overwhelm the sense of how things are, even though how things are is comforting. Impermanence becomes haunting.

Thinking never seems to rescue me from this place, and writing only helps somewhat. So then what do I do? Just exist, I guess.

It always seems to come back to that. I never like that answer. It's not very satisfying. It might be the best anyone can do. But it's not satisfying.