Journal, Withdrawal

Skip a dosage, and your apartment sinks underground. … You want to say never again. But you only get so many opportunities to travel.

—from "Starting From N," written in 2002

At 1 am, I was alone at a park, swinging. If I looked up, risking nausea, I could watch a star jump free from a tree and then, with the rhythm of a yo-yo, retreat behind the branches.

When I was young, my mother told me she was scared of swings and I decided I was, too.

A swing’s creak foretold disaster: a future moment when the bar finally releases the swing, and I lose the illusion of control; my swing and I fly into an uncharted arch, and I remember — from somewhere, where? —that life is suppressed terror. I fly into the loss opened by this thought, and might never touch the ground again.

Tonight, I ignored the swing’s creak and pumped hard. Even when my legs began to hurt, I kept swinging, because I was fine here, and hadn’t been fine anywhere.

I fell asleep yesterday — I’d meant to nap — at noon, and woke up today at 7 pm. My shirt was cold and wet, and when I tried to walk to my bathroom, I stumbled and let myself fall against a wall. In the bathroom, I looked in the mirror, though I knew better; when I miss a dose of Effexor, my eyes go wild, and my mirrored eyes meet mine with the intent of hunting; I’m prey.

If I’m awake during withdrawal, my nerves go kamikaze and electrocute themselves; I shake and spasm. If I’m asleep, I sweat ice, and dream such painful dreams, waking doesn’t stop them. My dreams are more vivid than life, and span more years than I’ve lived. I marry adulterous husbands; give birth to disfigured babies with small faces as numerous as freckles on their blue-ish bodies; I pilot a helicopter without windows; and I read violent novels about psychic sisters.

After waking up at 7, I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t type. I tried to read, but my body was buzzing and my brain was scrambling words. I took my pills, and drank water. I tried to wash a pot so I could cook myself food, but I couldn’t coordinate the scrubbing. Eventually, I decided to wait for my body to reabsorb reality while listening to music and staring at the ceiling on my back. And, after a while of this, I called my boyfriend -- but my mouth was too slow to pronounce most words, and, when I did speak, I didn’t recognize my intonations.

I watched television, but didn’t enjoy it. I listened to more music, and felt manic. I wanted to go out, but my nerves still felt electric, and when I sang along to songs, I started laughing and the laughing quickly became crying. How long would waiting this out take? I had incapacitated myself.

At around midnight, I went for a walk, tripping on my own feet and swerving a little like a drunk. I called my boyfriend again as I walked to the park. I hadn’t told him I was worried about myself, and now I wanted to, but his voice was thickly overlaid with static, and all I could make out was that he had friends over and wanted to get back to them.

I called several in-town friends, hoping the reality of another person might ground me. No one picked up. At the park, I began to feel that sadness might be nicer company if I indulged it, and I began swinging; the sudden drops and rises in perspective made playground objects move, and I often mistook them for people approaching, maybe people I knew, people who could help me. And then, vision corrected itself, and my loneliness felt warm and maternal, even if the night was cold and my thoughts were empty or disjointed. Loneliness, at least, was familiar, and I could stay on the swing as long as I wanted.

Posted by nchicha at May 15, 2004 03:55 AM