I think I may be smoking too much. And the moment I write this, I think of how I want a cigarette, and now one's in my mouth. I've been chain-smoking for four days, reaching for one whenever I want to mimic interaction with my environment. I can't clean the dirty dishes, brush off the ash that's fallen on my bed, find my trash bags to clean my living room floor. But I can slowly fill my apartment with smoke filtered in my lungs.
My remedies to problems have always been the problems I hope to remedy. (Is that the structure of addiction?)
I know three or four types of depression, often as different from one another as classmates with the same name. There's depression which simply blocks action, like a finger pressing flat a vibrating string. The brain demands a bodily movement, and the signal buzzes, live, from neuron to neuron but dies before it reaches where it needs to go. I can feel action about to happen, my body preparing itself to move-- but it's just a body jumping up and falling back down on the stretcher when electricity is applied to its heart. The body moves but it's not revived.
Then, there's a more emotional and dark depression, which has some of the qualities of mania: I'm constantly thinking, and easily return to my old habits of reading and writing. But reading and writing now feels like a defensive gesture. Suddenly the world is unlike me, and I have to protect my personality with the authority of language. People seem vulgar and slow. Sunlight hurts, like my mood's vulnerabilities have made me photo-sensitive (or, I can easily see: photo-receptive. The trees' shadows on my arms turn permanent; the side of my face in the sun will now always be brighter).
My reserves are drying, and empathy, usually exapansive, shrinks under the sun into shrewd defensiveness, craggy as a raisin. I haven't felt defensive (competitive, elitist, so alone) in a long time, and I don't like myself this way. But, I'm reading and writing again: trying to build a moat with sentences, a palace with paragraphs.
seems like somebody needs to go to a good old fashioned monster truck rally, enjoy that for obvious reasons, and realize how good life is especially when you come back to your apt with arms full of interestingly broken car pieces.
Posted by: on October 24, 2003 10:40 AMi have the same problem and even more so in later winter months. at least you are writing--i turn despondent and immobile, your type 1. i also have a feeling dark and writing mode, but in a way i'm giddy happy during those rare periods, but just also self-isolating and defensive during that time. i always wonder what effect taking anti-depressants has--should i be focusing on finding the perfect dose/titration for writing? because i miss writing. and i smoke and smoke. like you, i remedy problems with problems, only i'm not sure i could honestly say they're problems i hope to fix. rather, they're problems that i depend on and tend to like some people do with their beloved little pets.
Posted by: erin on October 24, 2003 02:46 PMI was just wondering why andrew hutkrans defends the catholics so much, while he doesn't seem to be one.
I have catholic friends, so don't missunderstand me.
just wondering?
john
Posted by: john Penner on November 10, 2003 10:38 PM