On The Depressive Tip…
July 11th, 2007 by trancejen
Sometimes the J-Man goes on eBay and looks at things – action figures, little Star Wars Lego men for which people are charging ridiculous, sick amounts; cat paraphernalia. He doesn’t have the means to buy these things, but he likes to look. I do the same thing. I spend hours on eBay or Amazon looking at shoes, beads, books, cameras, sunglasses. I spend hours perusing diet pills, exercise equipment, clothes I could never afford or wear.
Sometimes, like J., I just want.
Ani DiFranco comes to mind – and I think I’ve quoted this lyric before, from “Grey”: “What kind of paradise am I looking for? I’ve got everything I want, and still I want more. Maybe some tiny, shiny key will wash up on the shore.”
I look for that key everywhere, it seems. Even on stupid internet sell-everything sites where I know it will never be. I look incessantly for material things, imagining that they might begin to feel the void in me.
Lately my quest for thin is getting somewhat obsessive, which I know is a feeble attempt to fill this void as well. I am good at cultivating obsessions to mask problems. I do not choose to accept the idea of me growing old with this illness, this fucking albatross, this noose around my neck; so instead I decide to view myself as a healthy, dieting, exercising person who is losing weight and becoming attractive. Ha! Take that, you fucked-up body! I can slip into denial as easy as I can slip into the new Adidas running shoes I just charged. Never mind that I pass out in them just as often as I walk on the treadmill in them. Never mind that I look neither young nor slim nor healthy these days.
I go to the bar once very couple of weeks and drink even though I know I’m not supposed to drink on my medication because I imagine that it is going to make me feel better. Half an hour later when I am puking in the bathroom, I tell myself that I will feel better once I am done puking. Ten minutes after that, I tell myself that no one will know I have been puking. I re-apply my lipstick and then I order another beer. I am too fucking sexy for words, and smart to boot. Did I ever tell you that I almost skipped a couple of grades? Smart.
I do not choose to accept the idea that Bullshit wants to move this relationship to the next level, because I just got out of the nuthouse a month ago and am living in my mother’s fucking basement. I cannot imagine co-habitating. I cannot imagine taking care of a houseplant on my own, at this point. In order to deflect this idea, I pass judgment upon his lifestyle and pick fights with him at every given opportunity. Sure! Why not? It makes perfect sense, after all, to go after the person who has been most supportive of me of late. I do not discuss any of this but instead become combative and bitchy. This decreases my sex drive completely, making me the least fun girlfriend ever.
I am such a mess.
The key. Where is the key? I take my pills. For the most part, I do what the neurologist/cardiologist/psychiatrist/therapist says. I troop over to the hospital like a good little patient and don’t miss any appointments or tests. I take all my pills. I get enough sleep, most nights. I exercise every day, lately. I even eat right, lately.
Where is my key?
I just want to feel better, you know? I just want to feel like I’m working toward something, and I don’t. I want to feel like I’m working toward building some sort of life, but all I feel I’m doing is maintaining a very precarious state.
This always leads to the question, “Why?”, and asking that question never ends well for me.
I don’t know.
I am trying so hard. I feel like I am holding on so tight that my hands are bleeding, but I don’t know what I’m holding on to anymore.
It’s exhausting and frightening.
I wish I could remove my desire. It wouldn’t hurt so much, if I didn’t want so much.
Sometimes I look at my son, who looks so like me, and I pray to whatever god there is that he will be nothing like me.
Laura (the Live) wrote on 07/11/07 at 6:29 pm :
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on this very subject lately. The problem is in our thinking (ha). In North America we have been trained to believe that happiness is a right–you know, “the pursuit of happiness” crap. But this is all wrong.
Happiness should not be favoured over the rest of our feelings, emotions, thoughts, etceteras. It is but one aspect of who we are. We are multifaceted, complicated people. Life is goddamned complicated. But that is life. We grow, we digest, we encounter obstacles, we try and work through said obstacles….
But because we have been so trained to “need” happiness we feel like failures when it is fleeting and unknowable. And then it becomes more and more difficult to realize. And the void grows and grows.
I’m not advocating a world of melancholy and anger or fear or whatever. What I am saying is that we need to stop our death grip on happiness because it is killing us–it is making our lives miserable!!! We are not meant to be “blissed out” 24/7. The most enlightened Buddha understands this–we’ve just got it all fucked up!
So don’t beat yourself up for not feeling “normal” or the way you believe you are supposed to feel. Simply feel and live without attachment to your emotions, to the symptoms of your pain. Just exist–because that is a miracle in and of itself.
Alright, I’m off my soapbox now. But I’m dead serious, this is really important stuff.
Be kind to yourself. You deserve compassion just as much as anyone else in the world.
-Laura (the Live)
Ari wrote on 07/11/07 at 6:37 pm :
Sorry dear, no solutions from me. I’m all too familiar with wanting the life I’ll never, ever have. The life I could have had if I weren’t like…this. I wish I could think of something to say that didn’t sound like a fucking moronic platitude, but sometimes you need people to simply acknowledge that yes, it does indeed suck, and no, there are no easy answers and what’s more the answer is different for everyone. So, I guess that’s what I’m trying to do. And hey, denial is fabulous in the meantime. One of the most fitting lines I know of goes, “Every so often we long to steal to the land of what might have been/But that doesn’t soften the ache we feel when reality sets back in.” I think you are working towards some sort of life, but it just seems like you aren’t, right now. Damn, and I know that saying that doesn’t do you a damn bit of good.
kelly wrote on 07/12/07 at 1:04 am :
just hi. and i’m sorry you’re hurting. fuck.
Eeyore wrote on 07/16/07 at 5:34 am :
“I just want to feel better, you know? I just want to feel like I’m working toward something, and I don’t. I want to feel like I’m working toward building some sort of life, but all I feel I’m doing is maintaining a very precarious state.”
I feel this way alot and I’m perfectly healthy for the most part. I just drink alot. I find it best to try to just not think about it. That’s why I rarely write poetry anymore.
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