A week ago it rained. Darkness feel, the kind of darkness only autumn wields, the long deep darkness after so long light, and it poured. It poured, like the aftermath of that night swallowing my apothecary's pills in a sardonic concrete tomb. It poured, like my looking out across the neon orange, waiting for the inevitable blow to come, waiting for the ax to fall with "I do not love you, anymore" with "I cannot do this" with "You drain me." It rains. And drains. And when the sky returns, with a beautiful pallet of color, I am born anew. Dead, but acutely aware that these colors, so distant in the sky, represent a longing for a life I've yet to live. Longing for the rains to cease, for the colors to seem more real than the dark skies and white noise and cold. Noise and cold, death. When what I want is living color.
I'll just come out and say it: I hate October and I'm depressed. October is all about terrible memories of breakups and suicide attempts, the school year revealing itself as yet-another "I can't wait until next time" event, my weeks entering a cold monotony of procrastination and self-hatred.
I have written variants of this at least three times, but always stopped, because I want to like October. I want to like the dark and cold, because it's always felt more "true" than a callously bright summer, the way rainy days feel right because they make the world look how it feels. I want to like October, because I want to need, I want to need someone to keep me warm, to stave off the past and charge the present, to have the darkening days be all the more reason to stay close at night. I want to like October like I want to like depression: it is rich and real and painful.
But I hate it. I hate it because it feels terrible. I hate it because time is running out, and I have so much to do that I am not doing. I hate it because I need someone, I want someone, and she's so far, so sparse, so hurt herself that our moments together are wondrous and our hours, days apart feel like wasted time.
I feel like I'm floundering. I hardly ever work on grad schools. Each day passes almost imperceptibly, and I have no idea what I do or where it all goes. My ambitions about self-improvement and growth are crashed; I'm lucky to stop myself sleeping just nine hours, to read 30 minutes before I sleep, to do something, anything I can look at and say "This matters."
She matters, of course. And she takes up my time. We start talking and hours leave us in droves, yet we still crave more. We never stop for lack of words, we never stop for lack of desire. Sleep, work, the tormentors of our time and distractions of our days pull us apart, violently, and we are left clinging to vapors.
What was going to be "PhD or Death" has turned into "Hope for PhD, settle for Social Work" and I feel so comfortable in settling, as long as I have her. It is dangerous, perhaps unhealthy, but I think I'm ok with my priorities and desires. I'm ok with my massive need, I'm ok with my insecurities, I'm ok with capabilities and limitations. I can always improve, certainly. But love matters more to me than all else; it's all that's ever made me happy, all that's ever made me feel alive, and I've seen nothing in my life to prove to me anything else will do.
So so much now seems wasted time. So much now is a ghostly state, where it is not real but for imagining her in it. What I watch, what I listen to, what I think and feel, is contextualized in some hypothetical space with her, just as I used to do with teaching. I want to share it all. Everything. I want to never be alone, and all of this profound aloneness makes me feel dead. I think of myself as a vampire, sometimes; alive only when I feed upon others who are living, a state only tenable if the other feeds on me. As she does. Perhaps being fed upon is just as important as feeding. But alone? In and of and by myself? I am a ghost. I'm becoming a ghost I like more and more, a ghost that can survive on her own if need be. But a ghost all the same. And I so desperately want to be alive.
That is where I am. Waiting each day to come alive with minutes on the phone, hours via more damned words upon a screen [the vast majority of my emotional life has been textual or, to a lesser extent, auditory; but I crave touch and site and closeness of an immediate kind so so rarely fulfilled]. And when I see her, for brief moments, when I see her I cannot help but smile, cannot help but love entirely anew, cannot help but lust and laugh and sigh and think "Would that this screen was but a window, with my hands, my lips, my breasts reaching through." I live with her. Already. Because it is the only way I can be alive. All else is shade and shadow.
It is not healthy. It is not safe. It is a mistake I have made so many times, a mistake I know I make but I have made, am making, will make again and again for I cannot live alone. I cannot bare to be by myself. Such is my monstrous need. Such is my gaping void demanding sacrifice. Such is who I am and how I am and changing that seems at once like what survival demands but I do not wish to survive. I do not wish to haunt this realm, pale and ethereal. I wish to live or die by love. And, indeed, I have been able to do little else.
This is terrible. This is perverse. This is the stuff of torment and tragedy, filled with briefly blissful trysts between apothecaries and tombs. Even in living, I die by my hand, distraught over the corpse of another. My name is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I love. I live. I lose. I die. And the rest is October rain.
I'll just come out and say it: I hate October and I'm depressed. October is all about terrible memories of breakups and suicide attempts, the school year revealing itself as yet-another "I can't wait until next time" event, my weeks entering a cold monotony of procrastination and self-hatred.
I have written variants of this at least three times, but always stopped, because I want to like October. I want to like the dark and cold, because it's always felt more "true" than a callously bright summer, the way rainy days feel right because they make the world look how it feels. I want to like October, because I want to need, I want to need someone to keep me warm, to stave off the past and charge the present, to have the darkening days be all the more reason to stay close at night. I want to like October like I want to like depression: it is rich and real and painful.
But I hate it. I hate it because it feels terrible. I hate it because time is running out, and I have so much to do that I am not doing. I hate it because I need someone, I want someone, and she's so far, so sparse, so hurt herself that our moments together are wondrous and our hours, days apart feel like wasted time.
I feel like I'm floundering. I hardly ever work on grad schools. Each day passes almost imperceptibly, and I have no idea what I do or where it all goes. My ambitions about self-improvement and growth are crashed; I'm lucky to stop myself sleeping just nine hours, to read 30 minutes before I sleep, to do something, anything I can look at and say "This matters."
She matters, of course. And she takes up my time. We start talking and hours leave us in droves, yet we still crave more. We never stop for lack of words, we never stop for lack of desire. Sleep, work, the tormentors of our time and distractions of our days pull us apart, violently, and we are left clinging to vapors.
What was going to be "PhD or Death" has turned into "Hope for PhD, settle for Social Work" and I feel so comfortable in settling, as long as I have her. It is dangerous, perhaps unhealthy, but I think I'm ok with my priorities and desires. I'm ok with my massive need, I'm ok with my insecurities, I'm ok with capabilities and limitations. I can always improve, certainly. But love matters more to me than all else; it's all that's ever made me happy, all that's ever made me feel alive, and I've seen nothing in my life to prove to me anything else will do.
So so much now seems wasted time. So much now is a ghostly state, where it is not real but for imagining her in it. What I watch, what I listen to, what I think and feel, is contextualized in some hypothetical space with her, just as I used to do with teaching. I want to share it all. Everything. I want to never be alone, and all of this profound aloneness makes me feel dead. I think of myself as a vampire, sometimes; alive only when I feed upon others who are living, a state only tenable if the other feeds on me. As she does. Perhaps being fed upon is just as important as feeding. But alone? In and of and by myself? I am a ghost. I'm becoming a ghost I like more and more, a ghost that can survive on her own if need be. But a ghost all the same. And I so desperately want to be alive.
That is where I am. Waiting each day to come alive with minutes on the phone, hours via more damned words upon a screen [the vast majority of my emotional life has been textual or, to a lesser extent, auditory; but I crave touch and site and closeness of an immediate kind so so rarely fulfilled]. And when I see her, for brief moments, when I see her I cannot help but smile, cannot help but love entirely anew, cannot help but lust and laugh and sigh and think "Would that this screen was but a window, with my hands, my lips, my breasts reaching through." I live with her. Already. Because it is the only way I can be alive. All else is shade and shadow.
It is not healthy. It is not safe. It is a mistake I have made so many times, a mistake I know I make but I have made, am making, will make again and again for I cannot live alone. I cannot bare to be by myself. Such is my monstrous need. Such is my gaping void demanding sacrifice. Such is who I am and how I am and changing that seems at once like what survival demands but I do not wish to survive. I do not wish to haunt this realm, pale and ethereal. I wish to live or die by love. And, indeed, I have been able to do little else.
This is terrible. This is perverse. This is the stuff of torment and tragedy, filled with briefly blissful trysts between apothecaries and tombs. Even in living, I die by my hand, distraught over the corpse of another. My name is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I love. I live. I lose. I die. And the rest is October rain.
Comments (0)
Post a Comment