Oh, the Webs We Weave

On my good days, I can be proactive about my bad days. This weekend, for myself, I've taken my heart to the hills. Inside the hills, I have (at least) some sense of safety, because the contour of the land calmly directs the movement of my eyes. It also comforts my heart, because it gives me the chance to experience what happens when a collision doesn't vaporize everything. Uplift is courageous. Mountains are brave. They change, but they rise. There is erosion, undoubtedly, but there must be contrast in order to recognize the significance of anything.

When I feel safe like this, I can take care of business. I can situate my life just a little bit. I am painfully aware of and unable to repair the deficiencies in my brain chemistry, but I can do small things. I can force my brain through a traumatic pulse in order to, in a sense, reset things. I can awaken my hypothalamus and my amygdala and my pituitary gland; I can frighten and stimulate. I can just go get another tattoo. 

Close my eyes, smile, and let my brain buzz with the needle. It's interesting. The sequence of my life is interesting. I learned about the neurobiology of trauma from a TED talk given by Dr. Rebecca Campbell. Three months later, I randomly attended a Unitarian church in East Lansing with a friend, only to find that I was standing right in front of Dr. Campbell and had the opportunity to properly thank her. Now, I feel like I can manipulate my brain in small ways while it continues to work behind my back, or I suppose, above it.

It is no secret that I internalize my trauma, and that it is too heavy for me right now. It is also very obvious that I adopt everyone else's trauma, because it feels better to share the load even if it makes things heavier. I acknowledge these things. I will also note that my deep awareness of our trauma is likely turning out to be extremely unhealthy for me right now. However, I am more afraid of ignoring our stories, because that is the root of my wound. It's what stings the most. For me, at least, the events themselves were easier to survive and forgive than the events that followed. It is why people wonder if I ever have victory (I do). It is why I still drag my baggage around with me ten years later. I won't ignore it. Ignoring it is betrayal of self. Ignoring my trauma is ignoring my need; my need to feel safe, and my need to be heard and believed and validated and taken care of and loved, loudly loved, nonetheless.

So, I understand your frustration, outsiders and insiders alike. I am also frustrated. It's unbearable to carry my own story only to find that I've taken on the stories of everyone else as well. It's even worse to realize that, while I once believed that things would get better and for a time things did, even my ancient story can still take sharp turns for the worse. And I can't do any more sharp turns for the worse right now. I won't survive another one. Not when the joke is on me. It's cruel, and it seems like further evidence that I've overstayed my welcome in this life.

And I have fucked up. I didn't realize it until now, but I have royally fucked up and I'm so sorry because I never meant to. I didn't see it coming. I have spun myself an impossible web. Several months ago, I was talking with a friend about the webs she had been spinning in her life, but she was building a network for the betterment of everyone; I have spun myself into a corner. I am the spider and I am the fly. I've trapped myself with carbon silk thread that, regardless of elasticity, is stronger than steel and I am weak. 

Scratch that, I'm not a fly. I'm a moth. A Gypsy Moth. A gypsy that has spun her own chains, how nice, because I realize now that I can't get better if I continue to be the version of myself that is a gypsy. Or, if I continue to be myself.

It really looks like I'm running, doesn't it? I am. But it's not because I'm scared. It's because I'm terrified of being anything other than a nomad right now. I'm terrified of stagnation, but I've trapped myself. I'm also terrified of being unreliable. I've made commitments and I must travel to the locations that those commitments require. It's as simple as that, isn't it?

I may only have one viable option. No, I have no viable options, but I may only have one close-enough option. And close enough has never been good enough, and that sentence to settling terrifies me even more. The fact remains that in order to get the care that I evidently require, I will have to stay in one place for a while. I don't want to keep feeling this way, but I don't want to kill the part of me that wanders. 

Because that will kill the rest of me.

Lists, Etc.

I can only recall this one existence. I have not been able to determine whether or not some morsel of me has existed before this life, not that it really matters, but all that means is that I can't think largely enough for the things I'm trying to comprehend.

Like, what do I know about what happens after I abandon this life? Do I stop existing or do I keep on going? Let's assume for the sake of argument that I just dissolve. That's what I want right now, anyway, so I'm going to indulge that desire. 

There I go, fizzling out, dissolved.

Now that I'm gone, let's make a list of the things that I could do in the moment before I dissolved, and I can't after:

1. Eat Nutella
2. Hug people and things and dogs and myself
3. Drive
4. Sing
5. Learn

...and I really don't care about anything else.

I've shoved myself into a corner of a room that isn't mine but that I'm borrowing, completed by a giant wall decal of Mickey Mouse with hands held high, reminding me to have a wonderful day at work because I live just a couple hours from the Happiest Place on Earth, irony notwithstanding. I'm afraid that I take up too much space, or that 24 years of uninvited existence are catching up with me, or that I'm falling into the black dots.

I feel spent. Evidently, I'm good enough to work all day at jobs that I like, but I'm unworthy of receiving help for the things that I don't like. Unsure about what's happening. Questioning my impulsivity. Wondering each day if that sunset will be my last, tears escaping because maybe I won't ever see my family or friends ever again, because today is the day that I might go? 

But people want me to stay. I can't understand why. But because of that, I probably will.

With the same breath, though, I can't make any promises. And I can't promise that I'll keep the promises I've already made, foolishly. 

List of foolish promises I've made:
1. I'll get help
2. I'll get better
3. Everything will be fine

Here's the thing. I made those promises in order for them to serve as a cushion between reality and the delicate heads of the people I love, not because they're promises that will be met. The truth is, these promises are largely independent of my efforts. I've been told that I am not an island. And since that seems to be the truth, I can't do any of this by myself, nor can I do this my way. It all depends on the availability of help. If the resources do not exist, then they will not be provided; if the advocacy is not available, then it will not be given.

It won't. And once again, dears, the joke is on me and my ridiculous tendency to hope for better. Those bits of hope long dissolved, and those tiny victories turned lies, weigh heavy on me larger than the sum of their parts. It's unphysical, and as such, I cannot solve it.

That is why my existence is unexplainable and irreparable. And that is why there is absolutely nothing that any of you can do. 

So stop trying. I've won some, but it's more than likely that I'll lose this one. And if I do survive, I'm not sure what happens next.

But then again, heading for the hills might be the only thing that can save me, or ever will.

If I Tell You That I Am Nothing, Just Go With It

That's right. Don't argue with me. Don't tell me about how much I mean to you, or Jesus, or somebody else, or the universe (although I genuinely appreciate it, and I love you too, and I'll be much more likely to accept that gift when I'm in a different state of mind. For now, thank you.) Go with it. Give me a "right on" or a high five or a nod or gently tap your glass to mine. Cheers to the abyss, friends; let's dive right in.

Right now, I am absolutely nothing. Right now, my life is meaningless and sedentary. Right now, I take drugs to make me sleep more, but it's less of an escape than I want. It's a restless series of naps interrupted by sadness or my feet getting too clammy or my arms getting too warm or I really have to pee or the bright flashes of light that happen when I close my eyes and just will not go away. The alternative to this, when I'm feeling better less dizzy, is to stare at screens all day and pretend to be real. (I'm almost sorry for that; I know that I tend to make my ridiculous life irritatingly public and I understand that I've essentially flaunted my socially unacceptable behavior like some model strutting down a runway. But I'm desperate to find other humans like me, so bear with me and my candid conglomerates for a bit longer, please?) I can make a delicious quiche, though, and I guess that's real enough.

What if this life is actually an in-between; a prison? What if it is purgatory for those of us who are only spirits, for whom a body is unnatural? We've been losing bodies left and right, folks, and it's hard on us because we can't always see the spirits left behind, or hold them. But we have been losing bodies, bodies only. People who I love as well as the loves of my loves have been shutting their bodies down, permanently. Out of a different vein, I hope, I'd readily donate mine. Body snatchers, come snatch it up. I am a wild spirit when I'm healthy, and I don't want to be trapped anymore; see, I've got places to go. If our spirits are eternal, then they've already transcended dimensions because our universe had a beginning, and it is finite. If we are infinite, then we are timeless and we are able and we aren't constrained to the only dimensions that are observable by our physical bodies. This body is an awful constraint, my skin a tapestry that I've had painted with needles to remind me what might still exist inside, outside.

The redeeming quality to this purgatorial life comes from the glittering beauty of the creation that surrounds us, and then the things that are invisible. Things like memories and dreams, our capacity to design and wonder, and the moments when I can tangibly feel ethereal fingers running down my spine, offering comfort, radiating, whispering "I'm still here" and things like that. Still here, even after my mortal nothingness gets caught making loud demands towards heaven. Shouting demands, like I'm even anything, crossing my arms over my hardened exterior and secretly hoping for a new mercy in the morning.

Still, I wish my sleep were deeper. My medicine wasn't designed to do that. No escape.

But perhaps this season was designed to make me as small as possible, as nothing as possible. I have little utilitarian value, absolutely no financial value, and I can barely exist where I am at any given moment. I have been bled bone-dry while riding this cycle of worthlessness, knowing what I need to do and finding its possibility just barely out of reach, then deeming myself unworthy of getting better, fine. And the thing is, I don't really want your suggestions. That is, I'm not prepared to receive them. There are certainly many very small, very doable things that could make things seem a little bit better for the time. But that's just it; it only makes things seem better, and seem is not worth my suddenly available time. I won't leave my bed for anything so shallow. 

My mom told me that even though there's not much I can do right now, she still wishes for me to have a nice time at home. And I can't give her anything back; there's nothing I can say to that. It breaks my ravaged heart.

What kills me, or rather what makes me want to end this whole charade entirely, is the fact that I was not designed to fritter away my 24th year. I should be free and laughing and thriving and dancing and learning, my God, I should be learning the things that I really, really wanted to learn. I went away to learn, and instead I turned into nothing.

Nothing.

Well. No use crying over nothing, I suppose. It's just...nothing.

I Wanted to Dissolve, or, To Clemson with Love

I haven't written anything in here for a few weeks, and I probably should have, but it has been difficult to find words to describe this season that are appropriate for your eyes and consideration. That is to say, I don't need a whole lot of emotional reactions. I have had enough of those to compensate for any of yours, as far as I'm concerned.

At the moment, I'm in Michigan. East Lansing, specifically, at the MSU library. And it's interesting to me the ways by which I've both dreaded and longed for the impossible reversal of time. I mean, I shouldn't say impossible; it isn't. When Einstein recognized that a gravitational field was the same thing as a free fall under any constant force, and that one could manipulate the fabric of space and time simply by using that gravitational field or by traveling fast enough, he was also stretching the fabric of human thought. And those resulting thought experiments brought us to the singularity inside of every black hole; that impossible, invisible pinpoint; that treasure shielded by everything that we're not allowed to see in only three dimensions.

So, we have to manipulate time for the theory to work. It's incumbent upon us to think outside of linearity and causality and imagine, for a moment, that our intangible imaginations are the extra dimensions that we need in order to make sense of anything. 

Gravity, time, these things are everything.

I've been fluctuating heavily. On the surface, it's largely because I'm preposterously undiagnosed and under-medicated. But beneath that, my mind was designed to recognize parallels and the universe is full of them; indeed, it may be one itself.

On one end of my oscillation, I am floating. Floating as if there is no gravity at all, which means that time is unaffected. I am neither bending nor stretching anything; I am existing, and that is about it. I am happy in my blissful cloud, and content to simply sit wherever I am and bask in the energy of whomever I am with. Relaxation washes over me like a rising tide-maybe I'm dying, maybe I'm going numb-but those things don't seem to matter at all and I am a shell. I am lightness, and I am light; a packet of photons with an uncollapsed wave function. I haven't observed myself in any specific reality, nor has anybody else, so I am free to exist in all of them until I decide. I am here, and I am gone, and I am over there; I am floating.

On the other end, however, I am sinking. I am a living embodiment of Newton's 3rd Law, I am my own equal and opposite reaction; however, the Law of Averages has not worked in my favor. There is no happy medium. There is no ground. And actually, eventually, there is no Newtonian gravity where I'm headed. I am falling and I am crushed under the heaviness of what my observed realities are. I buckle and I convulse and I collapse under the wave of black and bright bursts that have clouded my vision for months, and I panic. I panic because where there had been no gravity before, there is infinite gravity here. And we call an infinite gravitational well a black hole. According to the theory, lots of dicy things happen on and inside of the event horizon. I see nuances of my existence annihilating as matter and their own antimatter, I am stretched beyond my physical limitations, and I see my entire history of time in brutal flashbacks that violently sideswipe my memory in this place that I cannot thermodynamically describe. Time is reversing in the worst way. If I were ever significant enough to have my own piece of spacetime, I feel it bending and twisting on top of itself until I'm caught in an infinite loop for which I've tried, time and again, space and again, to construct some kind of tangential escape. But gravity is too strong, here. My tangents always lose momentum and return to the things with which I have not properly dealt. And this time reversal is in no way merciful; it doesn't grant me the opportunity to return to a happier time, a factory reset to my last known functionality. No, not here. Gravity was designed gracefully, but it is not gracious. It is an unforgiving, mysterious force. I am frantic, I am confused, and I am heavy; I am sinking.

Luckily for me and for the rest of the universe, things that were meant to oscillate can still oscillate with or without the influence of a gravitational field. And time will run on my watch in a linear and constant fashion, as long as I can keep myself to three dimensions. But this is all very difficult to describe and it has seemed impossible to live this way on a day to day basis, so you may understand why I simply wanted to dissolve out of Clemson.

I wanted to go quietly. I didn't say a proper goodbye to everybody. The closest thing to a Goodbye Party I had was Friendsgiving, which wasn't really meant to be a Goodbye Party. I didn't ask anybody to help me move my things. I wanted to do this as single-handedly as possible.

As per usual, that plan pretty much disintegrated.

At Friendsgiving and during some everyday interactions following that night, my friends surprised me with so many presents and cards and happy memories and kind words of support for which I really didn't have the emotional capacity to handle. See, I didn't want to impact these people in the ways that they've impacted me. I didn't want to matter. During this season I feel like nothing, and I wanted to be nothing, and I wanted to disappear and not be noticed.

Well, too bad for me, I guess. Because as much as I am my own Newtonian Pair, they are mine as well. Every action is rebutted with an equal and opposite reaction. The unphysical magic of the human experience provides all the mores and lesses that we crave when we strive to quantify, but ultimately, I can't set foot in the spacetime local to Clemson without providing a ripple in that fabric. Nobody can, nobody ever has. And the truth remains that while I felt my personhood and my intellectual abilities shrinking during my time there, my heart grew in leaps and bounds. I fell in love with all of you. All of you. And I remain to be in love with you now, and I will continue to be in love with you for the rest of my life. I am in love with you, Clemson, because love rolls with the punches and leans in for kisses, and we've done all of those things.

Whatever direction time takes us, and regardless of the magnitude of the gravity surrounding us, I am in love with you.

That is a fact.