swallowing...

Today I wake with heaviness. I don't know if it is the lack of sleep, the lack of food (in my belly, not in general), or just a general lack of direction but I feel heavy, almost sick today. I made a big breakfast, nearly enough to feed another but all for myself this time. I nearly ate it all too and that makes me feel better physically, but nothing more.

I picked up Prozac Nation again today and started where I left off. I found it in my small suitcase yesterday so I know it's been since late August since I last read it because that is when I went camping with the family and thought there might be some downtime. Of course there was plenty of that but I occupied it superficially chatting it up with people I barely relate to anymore.

Yes I wanted to tell her... I am crying because whatever my gifts, the pieces of good buried inside and under so much that I feel is bad, is wrong, is twisted, are less clear than the ability to hit a ball with a bat and break the scoreboard or do a triple pirouette in the air on the ice. My gifts are for life itself, for an unfortunately astute understanding of all the cruelty and pain in the world. My gifts are unspecific, I am an artist manqué, someone full of crazy ideas and grandiloquent needs and even a little happiness, but with no particular way to express it. (Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation)

I think that sums up why I am drawn to into this sad little tale. I think it is in part a journey of self-discovery for me. I never thought of myself as depressed and from what I can tell I probably am not, but I've been around it so much on all sides that I feel a strange kinship with it. I think it is probably that I am sensitive to the things most people pass over without noticing. It isn't about rich or poor, black of white, masculine or feminine. I see pain in all shapes and sizes. I suppose my familiarity with the subject has caused me to become too numb though. I realized the other day that I haven't had a good cry in nearly 20 years. Unlike Wurtzel who cries sometimes for seemingly no reason, I have buried the pain deep and no loss, no grief, no failure, no rejection has ever hurt enough to bring it to the surface.

I suppose I am to blame for this handicap. I could allow myself to feel things more deeply but I am afraid to. I am comfortable with melancholy. I am comfortable witnessing pain. I am at ease being empathetic for others, but it all barely scratches the surface. I wonder if it shows and I suppose it does. How could it not?

Yet today I am heavy. I am weighed down with a loss unknown. I think it is that I have discovered the loss is a part of myself I haven't allowed to exist in a long time. I have felt this before. It is like a gnawing ache that wants you to realize you are missing your self. You've been eating and breathing, sleeping and working but not really living--Busy with the nonsense of life but not experiencing it.

To be continued...

Peace,

b