Days all blend together when I am alone in the house. I couldn’t tell you if it’s Wednesday or Thursday. I woke up the other morning and was convinced that it is Fall when it is actually early Summer. They say that losing sense of space and time is one of the first steps along the path of completely losing your mind. A misstep that leads to a breakdown. So now I am trying to keep conscious of the date and the time and the season and what it is, exactly, that I do all day. It is almost a liability that I can make my own schedule. As long as I meet my deadlines, the university I work for could care less if it is written at 3 am or 3pm. But what do I do, what have I been doing, because God knows I have not been able to concentrate. This is what I come up with; I grieve.
Someone once told me that there are professional mourners who are hired for sad occasions to fill out the room. I imagine they are hired for wakes of unpopular people. Perhaps the funeral home arranges it, you know, to make the family feel better. These mourners are professionals and are paid for their work. But my grieving could never be professional; it is wild, tangled, an emotion of strong gales and heavy rains. So when someone next asks me what I do for a living I will tell them: I grieve. This is what I do. But how much do you want to know? When we pass in the hall or meet at a cocktail party or opening and you ask, How are you? I know I am supposed to say Fine. Oddly, even if someone is doing better than fine – say doing fantastic, great, fabulous, they are not expected to say so. Just say Fine.
So on this Sunday as I sort of watch but don’t watch a French film (which is very French and probably the last thing I should be watching in my present state) I literally have a rash all over my neck and shoulders and hives on my face and hands. I wonder if I am mourning the loss of love – all kinds of love, familial, agape, Eros. That thing that happens to all of us and we think we’ll never recover, yet we do. I can’t decide if that’s merciful or merciless. It just is. And though, these past days, there have been too many times when I literally wish I would not wake up, this old body fights against me and rises anyway, as if it were strong enough to face another day. It defies me, defies my will that says Quit now. But I want to tell you how I am doing. I am doing fine.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
A painful and gripping torrent. I can absolutely relate to the great-shit dichotomy, and it took me years to realize it wasn't necessarily one or the other, to realize that I am rarely either, and that doing my best to do my best is about the best I can do and is something I should be happy with.
I was a very early bloomer, a relative slacker, and then a late bloomer - I think I am finally beginning to realize my potential again. All we can ever do is our best, which is both a humbling and empowering realization.
Please take care of yourself.
2 - srp
well, i think too many of us feel this way, and you just have to at some point learn to be your own fan, which is not arrogance, but about belief in yourself. it all sounds so freakin' trite, i think, but at the same time, it really is the core of who we are - and i think this experience is pretty universal. freud said that everyone is insecure (though maybe he figured he wasn't - don't know). the main point is to just get it out of yourself - and i guess that's all i wanted to do here. spit it out, like a disease and get it out of me.
yes, i'll take care of myself. and you too.. and thanks for giving me a place to put this. it seems to be the human condition, and that's sad. we need to just cut the shit and move on. say Enough, and just march forward.
thanks for all, eric --
srp
3 - CW Fisher
Dear Sadi,
Write on and don't stop. You've got it. At first I thought I was reading the work of a very old man, which is not a criticism but an observation of the depth of the wisdom and the simplicity with which it was expressed. As a lifelong student of the voice of depression, I have deep admiration for the writers who try to expose its landscape to the ones who can't experience it. Like Eric Olsen perhaps. You have a wonderful gift, Sadi. Follow it in the direction of hope, for our sake and for yours, of course. I look forward to reading you again.
Curt Fisher
4 - Dan
Dependency is a familiar state. We're born that way. Hopefully, we have parents who provide a source of support, comfort, and a wall against loneliness. Most important, if we're lucky, they give us unconditional love.
As adults, that wonderfully dependent, unique relationship of child to parent no longer exists for us. But we still want it. We realize we are alone. We may have healthy, comfortable, and close relationships with our spouses. We may have friends who support us, and even children we provide unconditional love for, but we still suffer the lonelieness of being an adult.
Luckily, Nature provides us with an instinct for self-preservation. But a desire for regression to the safe comforting dependency of childhood puts us in constant danger of being seduced and betrayed. If we indulge ourselves in the illusion of dependency it undermines our natural instinct for self-preservation. We don't trust ourselves. Madison Avenue dictates what we think we should strive for. Like an addiction, our dependency eventually makes us fragile and impotent. And depressed.
It's possible to hook-up with a non-assclown who appreciates your struggle with solitude, just as you do theirs. It's possible to achieve some sense of fulfillment through a mutually respectful relationship. It's unlikely though, that you'll ever get what you might think you need from someone else.
It's also possible and, perhaps likely, that I don't know what I'm talking about, but it's only from a feeling of empathy for what you've written and a desire to make you feel better that I tell you the truth as I know it.
sincerely, Dan