Exiting Depression |
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I started fasting at noon last Thursday, hope to continue through Sunday, and break on Monday. I have a probation meeting on Tuesday, so this should give me enough time to recover. I am already very weak, however. I entered an intense depression Thursday night but have shifted it into softness. I've decided to live in the dark when it is dark and the light when it is light. I turn off all of the lights and electronics and computing and so forth as the day closes. I have decided to shut off the electricity entirely this evening. I have abandoned the regular cycle of eight hours of sleep. I sleep at random for one or two hours, wake and dream, sleep again, wake and dream. I have stopped taking Piroxicam (for pain) and Temazepam (to sleep). It's daylight and I have opened the windows to my apartment to let it freshen. I can sit at the computer because I can see its keyboard. I disabled the clocks in my study and kitchen. I left them on the walls because I like their decorative appearance. I wish to detach myself from the obsession of time, however. Surely there are better ways in which to occupy my mind than by wondering what time it is. I spent the night on the sofa in my empty living room. Awake: Listen to the sounds of the City and its slow, holiday pace. Drink water. Sleep. Dream. In circles. New dreams. New highs. The fasting is taking effect. But I feel no fear this time... In one dream I saw the razor's edge and smelled the sweetness of newly drawn blood. I dreamed in poetry but no trace now remains of it. In another I was angry, very angry. My poetry was violent, filled with the sharp edges of distress; bitter... Rhyming with brutal cadence. I wanted to rise, to slide her cold and unyielding edge along my arm. To drip melting wax into that wound and leave a trail of sorrow in scar tissue below my burnt and falling Icarus. I awoke in a sexual whirlpool that I did not release in the usual way. I let it take me. I took. It took. The delusion was complete and inescapable. I loved. I was loved. I was forgiven. I decided to not leave the Icarus project after all. I cannot remember why I decided to leave it in the first place. I think the paranoia was much stronger at the onset of the depression than it has since become. Why is their world so threatening to me? I am scared of their medicines—they have poisoned me. I am scared of their society—it has rejected me. I am scared of its women - they have savaged me. But there is more, something deeper, something hidden, the little boy's secret. I have hidden it from myself. Is it tied to the psychoanalysis? I was terrified by the realization that working with a therapist was inescapable (the California legal system has seen to that.) It threw me into a mania last week. I now move into the next phase, psychiatric (what?) intervention? More drugs. The long fall continues. But I do not feel that claustrophobic, hysterical fear (yet). Where is the demon hiding!? Tonight I shoot up. I woke up from my nap and became engrossed reading other postings. Now the daylight is fading and taking me along with it. Darn. I had wanted to write about the counselor episode in high school - I think my fear of psychotherapy has some roots in that. But I'm too tired. I may have to break the fast sooner. I simply cannot go on. I am so weak and ill. I might forgo the night tonight. OK, I broke the fast. I am eating cereal and jabbering into Cyberspace. Time for some musing. I think I might actually watch some television this evening and use the lights. I may have over-reacted to the the exclusion I feel at this holiday time of the year. Virulent rejection can be an expression of pain. As in, "Hah! You think you can hurt me? Well I can hurt myself way worse than you can." Cast me in social darkness and I turn off the lights - that's real darkness, you fuckers. Ignore my voice and I become mute. If you don't want me then I don't want you. I don't want your food. I don't want your shallow women and your DKNY boys. I don't want your drugs. Your theories. Your fucking descriptions of me and all my "issues" and while we're at it, I don't want a life among you. Make me bleed inside and I will show you the real color of blood and make you take in its sweet odor. Madness is preferable to what you have to offer. And so begins the long, tortuous climb anew. The truth is, I want to belong to their society. But I cannot do it solely on their terms. I am unwilling to castrate myself spiritually as the price of admission. I would rather remain an outcast. I still do not know if the door is open or closed. Ugh. I'm suddenly very nauseous. I may have eaten too much. I need to lie down. I'm up again. I didn't sleep but rested for about an hour. I feel better albeit still a little queasy. I reset the clocks in the kitchen and study. Oh well. I guess I should be thankful that the fall-out from the depression wasn't worst. I did not indulge in self- immolation, which I recall vaguely but clearly (why does that contradiction make sense to me?) crossing my radar last night. I am hellishly weak from the fasting, which was a Very Stupid Act in light of my nutritional requirements in the Hepatitis C fight. On the other hand, I purged the sugar I should not have eaten earlier in the week. Better pain and gain than no gain at all. I was messianic in my delusions. It's a damn shame I chose to "live in the night" because I have no record of all the poetry I wrote, the delusions I lived, the battles I fought, the love I made, the silence I heard. Damn. Time to remember.... |