to be a snail

Filled with dread and the most horrible physical sadness. It is partly the aftermath of my fit of violence, partly the expected depression of being back in this space in the winter, and partly a result of a relentless castigation at a time when I can probably least handle it.

I feel completely extraneous to others, unwanted, unloved, unneeded. The silence around me presses against my ears and my chest. Today was the first day I think I really didn’t feel like being alive. I am too wimpy and too clever and too considerate to take my own life, but I don’t get what I’m supposed to be living for.

I really don’t. For others? For men? Those I love and have loved do not love me. They push me away fearfully or rudely or so suddenly I can only gape in shock. I can only deduce from this that I am not lovable, or that I am so flawed of a person that I do not deserve to love and be loved. My castigator called me today “Miss Center of the Universe,” but you know, I don’t want to be center of the universe, I want to be devoted, and connected. That’s all I wanted, ever, and everyone has only ever thwarted that. That thwarting, that constant repeated betrayal, over and over again, in my life, is what creates the rage; the rage is infantile, yes, at what feels to me to be a horrible injustice and the unfulfilledness of this most basic, basic human need. I have said it before that if it seems I am paying a lot of attention to myself, it is only because I do not get it from others.

He said many other things, too: that Gary and “his girl” deserve to live their lives (as if, for years, I was not Gary’s “girl” and our relationship, so lightly and meanly thrown off by him, meant nothing); that it is “suspect” that I use my relationships as material for my writing (as if I concoct the relationships in order to have the material instead of simply writing through my confusion and intensity surrounding and infusing the relationships); that it was antifeminist for me to call the other woman a slut (as if, indeed, her conspiring to break my marriage was in any way a feminist gesture); implying, indeed, that my rage was somehow entirely unfounded and that I should bow in total instant acceptance of this change in my life, this desertion that spooks my evenings, pours tears down my cheeks, and makes me swallow pills. He said that because I “seemed perfectly sane” the last time I saw him that I could not have “lost control” when I flew at Gary the other night… as if he was somehow privy to my internal workings or an expert diagnostician. Well, I did lose control. It was as if some gear switched into crazy. I think that anyone on the scene can attest that that is what they saw: the pure crazy lashing out of grief and despair. It was horrible. I’m not happy about it, but then I’m not happy about much these days, it’s just shock and pain piled upon shock and pain, and just when I think I’m gaining some footing something happens again and I’m whirling and/or falling down.

It was mean what I wrote, much of what I’ve written on this blog has been mean. But I don’t think that at base I am a mean person. I’m wounded. Some people, like the castigator, go nuts when they smell blood; vulnerability is disgusting to them. He did say one thing that made sense to me: that there is a buzz in my head that compels me, and that I need to control. Surely that is true. The buzz doesn’t seem to steer me very well. But if I’m perfectly sane, what is that buzz? How do I get a grip on it when I am in such anguish? It’s true, it is a demon, that buzz. Yesterday I wanted to put a coin in a pay phone and call her and tell her… I don’t know what… to stay off my turf… that I wished her much heartbreak and misery… I don’t know. I actually took out the quarter and stood there for a minute. But I didn’t do it. I just stood there in the miserable cold and dank Hoyt-Schermerhorn station and cried. I have just been crying and crying and crying. I know, like you care. My mom said to me on the phone today, people only like good times. People say they are going to call and then they don’t call. I sit and stare and cry.

So I shut down my blog today for a while because it was making me too crazy and I guess it was making other people crazy too because they seemed to stay on for hours sometimes combing through all this emotional wreckage. These are the people who eat vulnerability like bonbons, I guess, or maybe these are the people who are invested in the drama? I don’t know. All I have are ISPs to go on, and they don’t tell me much. “I’m sick of your drama,” Gary said when he left, despite the fact that he was the one who had twice lied to me and been unfaithful, as if that wasn’t, you know, a contributing factor. Well, I’m sick of the drama, too, sick to death of it. I tell myself I thrive on it but I don’t, that’s just me trying to make lemonade. I wanted a sweet home and a stable base out of which the art could come; I wanted someone who would love me enough to work through what needed to be worked through… but he… didn’t even try. That line came up in Swoon somewhere: “you didn’t even try” … yes… I just searched it. Gary wrote me saying it was his favorite Whalen title. It’s torture, in a way, having this amazing document staring back at me with a thousand eyes of irony. Reading it now with 20/20 hindsight produces a kind of pain in my heart so intense that it is nearly pleasurable. That I even had such an experience. I’m pretty sure Gary never looks at it now… but maybe in a couple decades he will, and I wonder, then, what he will think of all that has transpired?

In the meantime, I don’t know. It’s the eve of my birthday. I have just had half the foyer painted coral. I will need to rearrange or change the pictures. And I need to eat something. I do not feel at all enthusiastic about eating. I asked my psychiatrist yesterday whether my violent outburst could have had anything to do with the meds I am on. She said probably not, unless I were bipolar, but she does not think I am bipolar. She diagnosed me as having “atypical depression,” (which is not as atypical as it sounds, since 40% of depression sufferers have atypical depression), but she also said that it is in me an unusual presentation of it; I guess that means I have atypical atypical depression. Wikipedia tells me that two of these four symptoms have to be present:

* Significant weight gain or increase in appetite;
* Hypersomnia (sleeping too much, as opposed to the insomnia present in melancholic depression);
* Leaden paralysis (i.e., heavy, leaden feelings in arms or legs);
* Long-standing pattern of interpersonal rejection sensitivity (not limited to episodes of mood disturbance) that results in significant social or occupational impairment.

I have insomnia and am shrinking, so obviously I do not have the first two symptoms. I have the second two. Interpersonal rejection sensitivity. Yep, that would be it (is there anyone who doesn’t experience that, though?). In atypical depression, also, there is “Mood reactivity (i.e., mood brightens in response to actual or potential positive events),” and this is surely the case as well. I laugh with my friends as I always did. I can still make amusing poems. I still like to get dressed up and go to parties. So there is hope, I guess, that with enough actual or potential positive events I will pull out of this horrible slough.

When I told my psychiatrist the story of what happened the other night, she was laughing a little. Not because it was in any way, by any stretch of moral standards, right, but because, I think, it was so badass. I’m proud of the strength of my fighting spirit even as I am ashamed of what I did. It’s profoundly confusing and just, ugh, all too human, all too animal.

I should pull in and be a snail, I know, and just protect myself, and try to HEAL, but that’s so hard for me. I feel disconnected when I do that; I need always to be running at the mouth. To deal with the buzz. I mean I feel disconnected anyway, even with all this “networking,” but I’m not good at being hermetic and hiding inside myself. I wish I could learn some of that from my friend Konrad. In some ways I really wish I were more like him. But well, I’m not. I have to settle for being inside my own clattering brain, my performative self that some people recoil from. Or… maybe I’ll change. Maybe all this pain will change me. I only hope it changes me, you know, “for the better.”