"It Scares the Hell Out of Me"
I am losing my mind. I know because this has happened to me before.
And it scares me, because the last time I thought I had won for good. The last time I thought I had won my mind back, and it would be mine to do with as I saw fit. Now I am losing it again. It's really happening.
It is a little bit like losing your keys; suddenly, something seems vaguely out of place, and that's when you realize that the one tiny component that kept your life's delicate system in motion is suddenly missing. It's such a small thing, and yet without it everything great falls apart. And you start looking backward. "Where did I see it last? Where have I been?" What was the last thing I was sure of? What was the last thing that made sense? When was the last time I knew who I was? Am I sure? You check your pockets, and you recheck your pockets. Maybe it's just an oversight, maybe you're just momentarily distracted, oh, the solution seems so easy, so immediate; all you need is one little piece, one humble object to put everything back in order and it was just here! Where did it go? The grand solutions fail; looking all over town turns up nothing. The obvious solutions fail; you checked your pockets five minutes ago, did you really think something changed? This is what's insidious; the search itself becomes an undecidable problem. You have no way of knowing whether you've failed to find the object of your search, or whether you've just failed searching. So you search, and you doubt searching, and you cling to searching, and you hate searching.
It is a little bit like losing your voice; suddenly, you're powerless to speak even those simple words that held you to the world of everyone else. You speak, but your words are the words of a madman. Hey, that's not my voice! But even this is a locution by a voice unnervingly unfamiliar. The words hurt too much; the speech hurts too much. Moreover, the effort sounds ridiculous. You're hoarse, and so you talk yourself hoarse trying to speak clearly. The only thing that you can say is no thing. The only communication at your disposal is that of vague, mute gestures with ambiguous meanings, readily misunderstood. Even now I find myself ill-at-ease; "These are not my words ..." I know that they are my words, but somehow knowing has become secondary to doubt.
I recognize all of this. It scares the hell out of me. I've seen this all before; all the trappings and miscellany of fear have all withered away, and now fear is only something silent I feel in the furthest depths of my heart. Fear means only that I stop smiling. To me, this is like seeing all things equal except that the sun goes dark in the middle of the day.
I understand all of this. It frustrates the hell out of me. I've labored so long to put myself together; I've worked so hard to adapt. I've humbly devoted myself to understanding my own problems and resolving my own issues. We all have them, after all. It's taken years of my life just to do this. I've seen Hells and Heavens and turned my back on them. I've grappled hand-to-hand with the fiercest demons of the mind, and I've stood face to face with the most monstrous abominations of the human spirit. Oh god. The things that live there send chills down my spine. Even now this fills me with a fear I don't even know how to describe. In my life I've had brief friendships with two old veterans of the Vietnam War. One of them is now dead. The other I see only now and again. I've never known why we have an understanding. I've never seen war. I've never even been out of the country. But I know weirdly what it is like to have things that burn in your gut but that you can't bear to speak. I know weirdly what it is to see things you don't want to see, and to keep on seeing them. I know weirdly what it is to be frightened by your own thoughts, your own feelings, your own hands and feet. I know weirdly what it is to be lost in the activities of ordinary society, to possess a terrible strength that has no use and no appropriate outlet, to grow weary under its weight. Maybe I'm full of shit. I must confess that I am tired of my own bullshit. But I know of no other analogy to make, perfect or imperfect.
The cause is simple; I've drifted even further from a sense of place I never had. Now, my mind begins to cast this ghastly, otherworldly light over the natural light of the eyes. Now it says, "Let there be light!" and there is light, the dawning of a horribly misbegotten world, spinning rapidly counter to world of the rest. Oh, all I wanted was to find myself in the midst of friends. But how does one make friends over such talk, or how does one fake pleasant talk over such thoughts? Oh, all I wanted was to find myself an occupation and a good use for whatever my talents are. But this never settles in; my best talents are at best useless, and now I can barely suffer to go in to the office and do my ordinary work; sitting constantly alone unravelling vague tasks that seem to go nowhere is too closely the frightening manifestation of everything I fear my life will become. Oh, all I wanted was to get my life in order. But my efforts seem to get it nowhere. Oh, all I wanted was to be normal. But this is the catastrophic failure I should have foreseen, but didn't; my efforts were doomed from the start, and now I have no idea how to accept myself as anything less than abominable. Knowing better is no longer relevant; too much time and effort has already gone into darkness.
Again, this problem like so many problems is very fragile -- just break the cycle. But there are cycles of life and cycles death, and to tell the two apart is very difficult; what is a cycle of death but a cycle of life travelled in reverse? But what are directions other than relative? Again, an undecidable question. Very often, to break one cycle means breaking them both. I am unable to separate myself from my problems, faults, and weaknesses.
Oh, we all have problems. This is the only thread I have left to hang on to these days. "We all have problems. I'm not alone."
Although my life looks less and less like anyone else's a time goes on. I don't know how to reconcile these two statements.
I don't know what I hope to accomplish by speaking of the problem publicly this way. It's just that I don't know what else to do. I couldn't do kung fu; I was too emotionally disturbed. So I went for a run. It was just after twilight. I passed a man, also running, but wearing a hat with a bright LED light attached. It illuminated his body, but his face was hidden behind the light. He waved. I waved. We went in opposite directions. All of this torrid mental drama and its resolution suddenly unfolded in my thoughts as a vivid, touching and beautifully illustrated story. But it was one I could not bear to write or draw. I would rather take the pistol from my bureau drawer and shoot myself in the brain than spend any more of my life in ouroboric self-fecundation. I'm tired of myself, I really, really am. On occasion, I fall asleep to beautiful, complex music that I've never heard before; my brain spontaneously makes it. But I don't play any instruments, and I can barely read music. I could never reproduce it, and I don't know where it comes from. All these forms that my brain produces become things known only to me, either by my stubborn hatred of them, or my simple technical incapacity. And so they just haunt me. They are my life, and my death. I know I must not destroy them, but I can't bear live with them, or carry their dead weight any further.
All I know is that this is for real, and it scares the hell out of me. I've seen it all before.
All I know is that this has a simple, easy solution, but I don't know what it is.
The tree crickets buzzing through the night sound more and more as if they chuckling, laughing at something. I feel a strange wish to laugh with them, except that I don't; I wouldn't know what we all are supposed to be laughing at.
And it scares me, because the last time I thought I had won for good. The last time I thought I had won my mind back, and it would be mine to do with as I saw fit. Now I am losing it again. It's really happening.
It is a little bit like losing your keys; suddenly, something seems vaguely out of place, and that's when you realize that the one tiny component that kept your life's delicate system in motion is suddenly missing. It's such a small thing, and yet without it everything great falls apart. And you start looking backward. "Where did I see it last? Where have I been?" What was the last thing I was sure of? What was the last thing that made sense? When was the last time I knew who I was? Am I sure? You check your pockets, and you recheck your pockets. Maybe it's just an oversight, maybe you're just momentarily distracted, oh, the solution seems so easy, so immediate; all you need is one little piece, one humble object to put everything back in order and it was just here! Where did it go? The grand solutions fail; looking all over town turns up nothing. The obvious solutions fail; you checked your pockets five minutes ago, did you really think something changed? This is what's insidious; the search itself becomes an undecidable problem. You have no way of knowing whether you've failed to find the object of your search, or whether you've just failed searching. So you search, and you doubt searching, and you cling to searching, and you hate searching.
It is a little bit like losing your voice; suddenly, you're powerless to speak even those simple words that held you to the world of everyone else. You speak, but your words are the words of a madman. Hey, that's not my voice! But even this is a locution by a voice unnervingly unfamiliar. The words hurt too much; the speech hurts too much. Moreover, the effort sounds ridiculous. You're hoarse, and so you talk yourself hoarse trying to speak clearly. The only thing that you can say is no thing. The only communication at your disposal is that of vague, mute gestures with ambiguous meanings, readily misunderstood. Even now I find myself ill-at-ease; "These are not my words ..." I know that they are my words, but somehow knowing has become secondary to doubt.
I recognize all of this. It scares the hell out of me. I've seen this all before; all the trappings and miscellany of fear have all withered away, and now fear is only something silent I feel in the furthest depths of my heart. Fear means only that I stop smiling. To me, this is like seeing all things equal except that the sun goes dark in the middle of the day.
I understand all of this. It frustrates the hell out of me. I've labored so long to put myself together; I've worked so hard to adapt. I've humbly devoted myself to understanding my own problems and resolving my own issues. We all have them, after all. It's taken years of my life just to do this. I've seen Hells and Heavens and turned my back on them. I've grappled hand-to-hand with the fiercest demons of the mind, and I've stood face to face with the most monstrous abominations of the human spirit. Oh god. The things that live there send chills down my spine. Even now this fills me with a fear I don't even know how to describe. In my life I've had brief friendships with two old veterans of the Vietnam War. One of them is now dead. The other I see only now and again. I've never known why we have an understanding. I've never seen war. I've never even been out of the country. But I know weirdly what it is like to have things that burn in your gut but that you can't bear to speak. I know weirdly what it is to see things you don't want to see, and to keep on seeing them. I know weirdly what it is to be frightened by your own thoughts, your own feelings, your own hands and feet. I know weirdly what it is to be lost in the activities of ordinary society, to possess a terrible strength that has no use and no appropriate outlet, to grow weary under its weight. Maybe I'm full of shit. I must confess that I am tired of my own bullshit. But I know of no other analogy to make, perfect or imperfect.
The cause is simple; I've drifted even further from a sense of place I never had. Now, my mind begins to cast this ghastly, otherworldly light over the natural light of the eyes. Now it says, "Let there be light!" and there is light, the dawning of a horribly misbegotten world, spinning rapidly counter to world of the rest. Oh, all I wanted was to find myself in the midst of friends. But how does one make friends over such talk, or how does one fake pleasant talk over such thoughts? Oh, all I wanted was to find myself an occupation and a good use for whatever my talents are. But this never settles in; my best talents are at best useless, and now I can barely suffer to go in to the office and do my ordinary work; sitting constantly alone unravelling vague tasks that seem to go nowhere is too closely the frightening manifestation of everything I fear my life will become. Oh, all I wanted was to get my life in order. But my efforts seem to get it nowhere. Oh, all I wanted was to be normal. But this is the catastrophic failure I should have foreseen, but didn't; my efforts were doomed from the start, and now I have no idea how to accept myself as anything less than abominable. Knowing better is no longer relevant; too much time and effort has already gone into darkness.
Again, this problem like so many problems is very fragile -- just break the cycle. But there are cycles of life and cycles death, and to tell the two apart is very difficult; what is a cycle of death but a cycle of life travelled in reverse? But what are directions other than relative? Again, an undecidable question. Very often, to break one cycle means breaking them both. I am unable to separate myself from my problems, faults, and weaknesses.
Oh, we all have problems. This is the only thread I have left to hang on to these days. "We all have problems. I'm not alone."
Although my life looks less and less like anyone else's a time goes on. I don't know how to reconcile these two statements.
I don't know what I hope to accomplish by speaking of the problem publicly this way. It's just that I don't know what else to do. I couldn't do kung fu; I was too emotionally disturbed. So I went for a run. It was just after twilight. I passed a man, also running, but wearing a hat with a bright LED light attached. It illuminated his body, but his face was hidden behind the light. He waved. I waved. We went in opposite directions. All of this torrid mental drama and its resolution suddenly unfolded in my thoughts as a vivid, touching and beautifully illustrated story. But it was one I could not bear to write or draw. I would rather take the pistol from my bureau drawer and shoot myself in the brain than spend any more of my life in ouroboric self-fecundation. I'm tired of myself, I really, really am. On occasion, I fall asleep to beautiful, complex music that I've never heard before; my brain spontaneously makes it. But I don't play any instruments, and I can barely read music. I could never reproduce it, and I don't know where it comes from. All these forms that my brain produces become things known only to me, either by my stubborn hatred of them, or my simple technical incapacity. And so they just haunt me. They are my life, and my death. I know I must not destroy them, but I can't bear live with them, or carry their dead weight any further.
All I know is that this is for real, and it scares the hell out of me. I've seen it all before.
All I know is that this has a simple, easy solution, but I don't know what it is.
The tree crickets buzzing through the night sound more and more as if they chuckling, laughing at something. I feel a strange wish to laugh with them, except that I don't; I wouldn't know what we all are supposed to be laughing at.