Author's Note
Isn't it fun to see what happens when you go cold-turkey on a life-supporting med? I never do this, out of disgust for general cultural acceptance of self-absorption, but here's a fun little snapshot of my brain narrative the last week as told in fragments:
Been working like a dog: 9-day week, 11-day week, w/o break, between two jobs. Ran out of C--, no more Rx, need another. Doc needs to fax pharm. Will he get memo? Will they fill? Will I have dough? Takes DAYS. Meanwhile, fight for one whole day off to have willing friends come over and begin organizing Dresden-esque apt. First touch in a year. Virginal dust. Startled dander. The vacuum cloud and catshit surprise.
Back spasms every morning for weeks/months. Bad sleep. So need memory foam topper, bullets biting, sucking up, stiffening upper. Have the $, the time/energy to clear out space to create space? Dash thru Ikea in last 10 min. Grab such life-changing items as BEDFRAME (!!!), mattress topper and wonder of wonders WRITING DESK. Taken a whole year since move-in. Life in constant suspension, hold-off for faint illusion of travel. First time since leaving family home, know where I'll be in six months. Investments worthy. Friday night fluorescents twinkle on two young women struggling to fit mammoth boxes in tweedly Corolla already full, vestiges of last paid exploitation. Immigrant family's little girl swinging back and forth on dangerous machinery. Can't understand "be careful" in English.
Haul back to apt, pay $60 for delivery of Corolla un-friendly items. Arrives. Takes 4 hours, putting together, bruises, sweat, exhaustion, then to work, 4 hours, min. wage. Come home, bed MAGNIFICENT, sleep amazing but only tip of exhaustion iceberg. Next day, too exhausted for more building, wake up weeping, sore throat, eyes never not swollen. Do makeup in red to match. Is sad, is allergy, is punk, no?
Into shop again. Burst into new tears upon arrival, come to faulty irrational conclusions about life. Instigate text-fight with loved one (fifty points, back to Start, lose a turn). Sit in empty shop with bellyful of anxiety, sorrow, panic, drowning, bottom slid out, falling in dream, bottomless cavern. Allergies miserable. Reality clicking behind eyes, like refrigerator becoming self-aware and checking in, alive? sentient? shoddy slide transitions, disassociation, OBE dig that girl, face-in-hands, bangs need cut, posture/attitude need straighten. Should smile, should greet, should work...
Get in 20-min war w/ register tape, nearly rage-destroy entire machine. Forget to turn off air in shop, on all night, $$$ for owners, woops.
Off 1/2 of meds regimen: 2-3 days.
Home, have self-justified Chipotle and Ben & Jerry's most fattening flavor, the anxiety flavor, the hard day flavor, the I Still Have Rapid Metabolism flavor. Deserving. Distract self w/ most fugue-like episodes of realistic terror-drama. Nearly have fit. Feel worse. Feel danger. (Don't hurt yourself) Switch to Jay and Silent Bob, tend to dish mountain, wander aimlessly, burdened w/ relationship anxiety, bedtime anxiety (have to be at 9, leave by 8:30, wake up 7:30, wash one pair underwear in sink, cats fed and coffee made, so bed by 11, already 10:49, if in bed by 11 then have--on fingers--11-12-1-2-3-4-5-6-7:30 to sleep, plenty, IF successful)
Hear back, breakup tone. Cogent list of my failings laid out in plainview, none the least of which a dire creative standstill, cannot afford, but also cannot afford to have back spasms and rage-inducing clutter, need dough for items, need hours for dough, but need time for art, taken by hours for dough, but no art in level of clutter and physical pain and around and around and around we gooooo.
Already 11:30. Missing sleep, needing answers first or will dream of having stomach entrails ripped out by T-Rex, the monster not the band, lord haven't made a tune in weeks, not a sentence in days, 3rd or 4th night not taking crucial med. Losing track.
Harder to hear someone else notice one's failings. Self-loathing just at bay, thoughts of how my own shadows of peer abuse may be influencing my turnaround treatment of others. How lovely. The monsters linger. How will I ever exorcise? (Awareness, monitoring, foresight, get back on fucking meds, take--no--DEMAND days off...) But when to push on? When to let self-compassion (inner big sister) intervene, interest of self-preservation? Measure against others or only take stock of myself, MY limits, MY capacity, choose worthy struggle over un-worthy suffering? Which more/less worthy? How known? Done to self? IF self-induced then self-fulfilling, then self-solvable?? Seems to be so. Anxiety about creative rut useful/destructive? Probably latter, if too heated. Former if only tepid, passing acknowledgment or none at all.
Have felt this way. The old way. The family way. Before meds, when future seemed improbable, slave to suicide fantasies. The sinking, the fog lattice, watching myself, perma-disassociative fugue. But--remember also?
Remember? those nights wedded to the keys and world onscreen, ideas becoming thoughts shaped into sentences, beauty, strangeness, profundity, into story. A relief/disappointment to have to end or stop. Hours stretching limitless, unfathomable depths of loathing, re-purposed in scribbles, sketches, studies. Sense of lifeline, flotation device, rope descending into hell-canyon. That was grasping. That was life, just a glimpse. That was self-preservation.
A city wrapped in anxiety, resignation, depression. Progressive crashes at night, must be banana peel on street at intersection, the cries of the injured WAKE UP WAKE UP, laughter of gay flyboys and cackles/whoops of well-heeled women in sausage casings, a white couple fighting about their child-dog. The wailings of the homeless in the morning as I step out and almost on another human trying to stay warm behind outer doors, looking in the window at carpet and bed frames, memory foam and depressed women with girl-faces who don't have to pee in water bottles for modicum of animal modesty. The cats swipe apologetically at dingleberry drops. Obsessive. Shamed.
Art the only antidote. Remember, remember.
J is fine.
J is accomplished and capable.
J is intelligent.
J is an artist, a thinker.
J is doing her best.
J is strong and resilient (remember leaving the scene, throwing the roses on the sidewalk, ignoring the voice messages, living with parents, commuting to keep shitty job, enduring sexual harassment at said job, makeup on the eye and grace in the limp, leaving, leaving, leaving. Reinventing, loving again. Remember.)
J is good, seeks and strives for the good.
J is happy, healthy and youthful. (Feel it slipping away)
J is as J is NOW, is fine, feast and famine, ebb and flow. Recall love. Forget pain. Always forward, forward, forward pushing.
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