June Journal

What qualifies me for this blog might also disqualify me. Others have routines; I have my moods, and they similarly dictate my daily activities, even if to occlude them. But, like routines, my moods are, at least in retrospect, predictable; and, like a workday, they cycle me between productivity and leisure, though on a scale of weeks or months instead of days.

Two weeks ago, I kept waking at sunrise after two to three hours of restless, thin sleep. Even if the morning's sunlight made me dizzy, even if I got out of my bed by falling off it, even if my body wanted to vomit itself across my sheets to stay in bed, I viewed my insomnia as a gift.

I've always been a heavy sleeper. Usually, sleep drugs me, paralyzes my arms in the morning so I fall back into it. I can sleep twelve, fourteen, twenty hours, more — and days blur; the calendar's boxes, as if submerged in water, loosen and dissolve. I sleep through my scheduled meds, and withdrawal is instant and unforgiving; I cold-sweat through my sheets; my sweat freezes me inside my dreams. And The Dreams: before I went on my meds, they were already deformed, cruel, vivid, but the past two years they've become more real, and more thematically consistent, than my waking life. (Veins are made of blue thread that, pulled, unravel innards; moles grow into nipples; parents attack me; my brother tries to seduce me; even if I'm not depressed during the day, in my dreams I'm mourning, inexplicably desperate, devastated, hopeless.)

If I can escape sleep, I will. Insomnia's a friend. But it also gives me false confidence — I'll eventually crash, but I forget that. I might also "forget" to take my pills. (1. Last week, I remembered a time last summer when I was out of meds and didn't have a ready refill. For three days, I took half my dosage; and it was as if an overcast sky sailed in; my thoughts sombered, gained heft, and I felt grounded by their dark weight. Last week, I missed that more substantial self. 2. Habits can become so regular they turn invisible. Did I just smoke that cigarette? I don't remember. Or, each repetition of routine is an infinite return, a moment of no time in time. The pill bottle is open on my desk; did I take my pills while reading? Everyday, I take two, and I know the routine without having any memories of it.) So, I think I skipped half a dose twice last week.

If I miss my pills completely, my nerves feel like boiling water, frenetic and violent for attention. It's a bodily sensation that no other type of self-destruction achieves. But if I lower my dosage, the effect is, at first, strictly psychological. It feels like a mixed episode — my thoughts turn strange and sad, but the act of thinking feels Romantic. At the end of last week, in this very self-important mood, I sat on a bench in my town's public square and listened to music while drawing passers-by and writing down thoughts. In my notebook are things like,

Sadness pulls life to it … a forgotten realism.
I long for people, but always turn the longing into a strict lesson: how to be consoled by, content with, my own company.
I'm always on the verge of crying. My throat is a salt lick.
I look up and a homeless man who's staring at me pantomimes a sad face to show me mine.
I can feel the sadness thumbing my face like clay — pushing my cheeks lower; firming my brows' muscles, but underneath that tensing, carving a hollow stare.

Angsty and cartoonishly sad as those thoughts may be, writing them energized me. I felt I was a conduit for someone else, maybe a pre-medicated self — and rather than worry me, the thoughts seemed like bright insights into the mind of a character —one more desperate than myself — I might store away for a story.

When I got off the bench, the sun was setting. By the time I got back home, it was set. My sleep schedule is usually vampiric, but only because nighttime, on some level, scares me, and I don't feel safe falling asleep until the sun's mopped up my bedroom's shadows. Or, maybe I shouldn't say night "scares" me. It traps me, sequesters me from comfort; it grows black walls over my windows. I want to be there when the walls fall, to make sure they do.

So, that night, my perverse joy in my own sadness gave way to frantic, confused, helpless depression. I call these worst nights my "episodes." Everything changes. I can't talk or read. I'll huddle in fetal positions around my apartment, sobbing with the certainty that something's deeply wrong with me. I feel like a poorly anesthetized patient who wakes up during surgery but, paralyzed, can only wait and wait and wait though a terror that feels longer, deeper, larger, than time. If I manage to distract myself, it's with plans to die. No method appeals to me, and I don't want to slash or crush or jam my body with my mind's desperation. But thinking about dying calms me, gives me direction. When I'm crying on my apartment's unvacuumed carpet, I only feel paralyzing vertigo: no energy to change positions, my thoughts not even looping but spinning.

The next day, after heavy sleep, I'll feel better but exhausted, as if I ran a marathon. My body: sore and weary. My thoughts: drab and wrung dry. But the exhaustion feels wholesome, like my body's mistaken the previous night's episode for sun-blessed, toxin-sweating labor.

I may slip downward at sunset, down into the night's drain again. But, if I'm writing, I'm hopeful. I'm not romanticizing sadness but hacking its arch into words.

I don't know if my postings will ever be regular, but if depression keeps me away, it also brings me back again.

Posted by nchicha at June 22, 2004 03:45 PM