11/3/14

I don't really know. it feels like I broke something. I chipped a weight-bearing bone. I punctured some membrane. I woke up with a fever. That's not true, I didn't wake up like this, I've been hurdling towards it for at least a few years, but now it's here in a new and different way.

I don't really feel much shame or compunction about it, I probably should, I guess. I feel like I'm coming out of the closet again. As a crazy person. As a person who is struggling with... if not mental illness (this is fraught) then at least someone who is struggling with, let's say, insurmountable struggles.

I try. I try really hard, you guys. I exercise at least three times a week. I never get less than 7 hours of sleep. I use alcohol and other substances in moderation (to say the least). I meditate as often as possible, though not every single day. I have creative outlets, I guess. I write here and all sorts of other places. I see a psychoanalyst. I try to tell my friends what's wrong and get advice from them.

And yet, I'm still buried. And for the first time in a long time I'm really trying to face this thing down and start, I don't know, doing something.

I used to think that it was just a matter of my perspective changing. Of being more present. Of paying attention more to the present moment. Of not wishing for some imaginary future, of just dealing with the here and now.

But what if the here and now sucks. What if you can't actually get into the here and now because you don't feel like you're allowed one.

I've gotten some really sweet and supportive advice and assistance over the last few weeks. People have reached out to me and tried to find out what's wrong with me. Yes, I'm struggling to get my work shown, read and seen. Yes, I am struggling with loneliness and isolation. Yes, I am having a very hard time being around other people or talking to people or being heard or seen by people. I'm very frustrated. A lot of the advice seems to boil down to, you know, suck it up. Do your work. Keep writing and making things and then eventually that will prove to be its own reward, the right opportunity will present itself, you can save yourself.

But I can't do my work. I can no longer sift through what's "real" and what is "not real". It seems very real to me that I am hated, strongly. That people in my town, scene, community, that people who'd consider themselves my friends, even, want me to disappear. It seems very real to me that I do not exist. That I would not be missed. That there are significant forces and desires working towards my erasure. It's hard not to see this as real. I have to find a way to move forward and nothing is working.

I don't know. I feel like it's a compulsion, this making stuff lifestyle. Like I don't have a choice. If I lost my job I'd functionally wind up homeless. I could probably get my parents to let me stay with them, but then I'd be stuck in California.

No one wants to see my art or my writing or have me around. Thanksgiving is coming up and I am totally mortified that I'm going to spend it along again. I don't know how to fix anything.

I have an appointment with a mind doctor this week. I'm having actually a lot of kind of protracted and very painful medical issues right now, all of which are very expensive. Here's what I want: someone to hang out with me. Someone to want to see me, not have me come to their party to "bring friends!" Sorry.

I'm getting bitchy. A few different friends have said that I seem angry and that I should let the anger out. I'm scared to do this. I'm scared because I habitually make myself the object of my anger. I'm scared because I don't know if I feel like I deserve to have anger. I haven't cried in, I don't think, five years? Though I've certainly wanted to. I think a lot about the circumstances of the last time I cried, in January 2009. I sort of forgot about those circumstances. Essentially, it was someone I didn't know very well just laying into me about how much they hated me when they met me. Other people could take that, I couldn't. Then some other fucked up stuff happened while I was crying. I guess my big take-away from the last time I cried was that it's not safe for me to cry. That I have no right to cry. That I have nothing to be sad about. That I have nothing worth loving in me. That my only use/purpose is to make other people feel good about themselves. That I am empty, worthless, stupid. I've apparently devoted energy and time in reinforcing those ideas and finding people who would reinforce them for me.

I feel like, I know on some level that something is fundamentally wrong with me but no one can see it, or me. Because the thing that's wrong is the thing that's me. And it doesn't help that trying to talk about it, thus far, makes me seem like a crazy person. I know, I know, "don't care what other people think" but I keep saying, when people ask what's up, what's wrong, how can they help, I keep saying that I feel left-out, that I feel worthless, that I'm struggling to form coherent thoughts or connect to people, that I feel mad and angry about being kept out of so many things. And people keep saying that it's not real or it's not happening or maybe I should try fitting in elsewhere. The writers think I should try to the theater kids. The theater kids think I should try the writing kids. The music kids think I'm too performance art-y and the performance people don't want to know who I am. It's like I keep trying to say that i'm out here, but it just keeps me out

It's a cruel irony that trying to get help results in people being grossed out by me. The only thing worse than being me is being me when I'm down, right? Because it just adds this shitty untouchable layer to everything. Why bother getting involved. He's just being self-indulgent. He's just trying to get attention. What right does he have to feel good. Doesn't he deserve to feel bad.

I wanted to meet people and learn things but it feels like every move I make, in any direction, just makes me less and less a part of anything. No one wants me around. No one wants to actually be my friend. No one actually thinks anything I do is valuable or could be valuable. There is no promise in me. There is no point in being me. This is really frustrating and painful and I'm sorry if it grosses the two people who read this out, I need to get this down.

I do not know what to do.

1 comment:

tim b said...

I hate that there are no comments on this post, so I'm writing one.

You don't know me, and I don't know you, although I stop by to read what you've written here once in a while. So, a little of that weird false intimacy readers get from writers: I've met parts of the inside without having ever met the outside. It almost seems rude to respond, in a way... like not respecting someone's space on the subway.

But for what it's worth, I'm sorry you're having a hard time. I hope the current bad patch isn't too bad, or - if it is - that you get something out of it that redeems it at least a little. I mean, that's one of the (potential) rewards of creative life, or even just self-aware life, right? The chance to alchemize the garbage? I keep hoping, at least.

Anyhow. Hope there's an upswing coming.