vocations

No amount of introspection will cure what ails me. I’ve seen doctors, talked to therapists, and consoled with pastors. Nothing can cure mental illness — definitely not drugs. Doctors look at me as if I were an alien. Shoot, they are successful professionals with families and rewarding hobbies; what do they want with me? It seems the whole world works on an alternate axis. I am floating out of orbit like a lonely planet.

Pffft. What maudlin, silly things to say. I have prayed (or think so) to god countless times. I don’t know how god answers prayers, but I’m not being ornery in saying that none of mine been have answered. If there is a god, he has so far failed me. So it goes.

Where to go and where to begin? So far nowhere. Could I ever fall in love or get a good job? It seems unlikely. This is a darkness. Here we go!

Now wind is near the soil and dew lay on the grass,

The starry blizzard soon will freeze into the heaven,

And soon under the earth will sleep each one of us –

By whom a sleep on it to others hadn’t been given

— Tsvetaeva

The Secular Masque

All, all of a piece throughout;

Thy chase had a beast in view;

The Couple

They switch off the light and its white shade

glimmers for a moment before dissolving

like a tablet in a glass of darkness. Then up.

The hotel walls rise into the black sky.

The movements of love have settled, and they sleep

but their most secret thoughts meet as when

two colours meet and flow into each other

on the wet paper of a schoolboy’s painting.

It is dark and silent. But the town has pulled closer

tonight. With quenched windows. The houses have approached.

They stand close up in a throng, waiting,

a crowd whose faces have no expressions.

— Tomas Transtroemer

poem

October

It is time to lose your life,
Even if it isn’t over.
It is time to say goodbye and try to die.
It is October.

The mellow cello
Allee of trees is almost lost in sweetness and mist
When you take off your watch at sunrise
To lose your life.

You catch the plane.
You land again.
You arrive in the place.
You speak the language.

You will live in a new house,
Even if it is old.
You will live with a new wife,
Even if she is too young.

Your slender new husband will love you.
He will walk the dog in the cold.
He will cook a meal on the stove.
He will bring you your medication in bed.

Dawn at the city flower market downtown.
The vendors have just opened.
The flowers are so fresh.
The restaurants are there to decorate their tables.

Your husband rollerblades past, whizzing,
Making a whirring sound, winged like an angel—
But stops and spins around and skates back
To buy some cut flowers in the early morning frost.

I am buying them for you.
I am buying them for your blond hair at dawn.
I am buying them for your beautiful breasts.
I am buying them for your beautiful heart.

Frederick Seidel

Zoloft, Xanax, Zoloft, Xanax, Zoloft, Xanax. This is my regimen. But this isn’t the tale of a downward spiral. If anything, I feel better, but I fear the inevitable loss of Xanax. Psychiatrists love it and psychotherapists hate it. I’m not abusing it. In fact, I take it conservatively and for once in my life I feel normal. That is, I don’t agonize and obsess over every minute decision I make. I can change my routine. I can go to new restaurants. I can imagine moving to a different city. I can picture myself getting another job. If those things seem normal, then you have haven’t been in my head the last few years.

Today I flirted with a girl at a coffee shop. Milestone. I actually want to be around people instead of going home to be by myself. I don’t wish to sublimate my anxieties with cheap beer. I’m cleaning the house and exercising afterwards. I’m loving my kitties. I’m providing customer service instead of my usual sullen, jaded assistance. I’m visiting my grandparents whom I usually neglect.

Instead of living day-to-day, I’m thinking about the future. I want to date. I want to meet someone and start a family someday. A veil has lifted and life has been revealed. Somehow I lost sight of it all.

Yet I still struggle and take steps backwards. I’ll go on a bender and the darkness returns. I don’t believe in a devil but the closest thing there is is loneliness. It tells me it’s okay to drink into oblivion, take whatever drug offered, eat fast food, smoke cigarettes.

If there is a God, he must be testing me. I’m mostly failing, but I’ll be damned if I don’t try. And if I fail to do it for God, then I better do it for my dad. People die but their love remains. I need to be strong for him and grow into the man he taught me to be.

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing.

T.S. Eliot

Many of my critics pretend that they have been entirely self-made. They seem to feel responsible for their intellectual gifts, for their freedom from injury and disease, and for the fact that they were born at a specific moment in history. Many appear to have absolutely no awareness of how lucky one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, to not have cerebral palsy, or to not have been bankrupted in middle age by the mortal illness of a spouse.

Many of us have been extraordinarily lucky—and we did not earn it. Many good people have been extraordinarily unlucky—and they did not deserve it. And yet I get the distinct sense that if I asked some of my readers why they weren’t born with club feet, or orphaned before the age of five, they would not hesitate to take credit for these accomplishments. There is a stunning lack of insight into the unfolding of human events that passes for moral and economic wisdom in some circles.

Sam Harris

We are not so mysterious. If you want to get to know someone infinitely better, meet their parents for five minutes. We are attracted to people who were loved in the ways we were loved as children. We are attracted to people who are lacking in ways we understand. We are all terrified to take our clothing off and equally eager to show our genitals to each other. Do not be so afraid. … Mostly, your relationships will end. You will hold people close to you with the knowledge that everyone is on a timeline. That everyone’s heart will eventually stop beating. Most of the time, though, things will not be this grim. If they were, no one would get laid.

Drew Zandonella-Stannard

I have a therapist. I have anti-depressants. How many times have I heard those statements and think people are over-diagnosing and treating themselves? And now here I am. Do I deserve any more sympathy than what I gave others? No, but I still hope for it.

I’m overcome with a fear that has no object these days. It hits me without warning at times but usually when I’m driving past the hospital. Whatever can be said about mental illness shouldn’t preclude one from talking about it’s physical manifestations. My chest constricts and my breathe pants. The jaw tightens and I feel a stress headache come on. Sometimes I pant so hard I feel dizzy. Yup… panic attack. I’m also driving.

It’s probably symptomatic of my whatever condition I think or probably have, but I see no way out right now. It’s purely fatalistic and I know it’s a fantasy but it’s all-consuming. I don’t know how to explain the dichotomy.

Worse is the loneliness. I know I’m not mis-perceiving that one. It is real. It is the empty house, the un-contacted phone, the empty inbox. We measure loneliness in strange ways these days— or at least I do. But it is my fault! How many times I have left a message unanswered? How many times did I refuse a social event? This is my comeuppance! It’s cruel but I have to learn from it.

If there is a God he has ignored my entreaties for a long time. I’ve been a spoiled brat with modest demands: friends, happiness, love, success. My mom says I’m being tested. If she is right I may have failed, but I still hope to teach and to have a chance to help others. That may be my saving grace someday.

I write this not to wallow in sadness. I’m going to get better because no matter how bad it is right now, I know that I love life enough to do so. So help me, God.

baseline

This will be an interesting point at which to begin writing a few notes about myself. This should be me at rock-bottom. Although I’ve said that to myself before when other unfortunate things have occurred, this time I’m putting my foot down. Drawing a line in the sand. Going Pol Pot and declaring “Year Zero.”

It probably appears to be the beginning of a bad idea by posting this (somewhat) publicly, but keeping my thoughts private has been of no benefit to me. Also, this makes it less likely that I’m going to delete or toss out what I’ve written.

This will be a record of illness  and grief. The latter I realize is universal but it has a way of making you feel as if you were the only one suffering.

Tomorrow there is an appointment to keep and I have to get up. I have to get up. I have to get up and re-learn how to live if there is to be any more living.

“Your response to my kiss is I have a cavity. I am in love with incompletion. I am clinging to your moorings. Yes, I have a pretty good idea what beauty is. It survives alright. It aches like an open book. It makes it difficult to live.”

terrance haynes

“Oh I never really realized
Death is what it meant
To make it on my own

Because there is no love
Where there is no obstacle
And there is no love
Where there is no bramble
There is no love
On the hacked away plateau
And there is no love
In the unerring
And there is no love
On the one true path”

smog - say valley maker

“Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.”
- Michel Houellebecq