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Awakening: The Reborn Dreamer

6

I wake up every day look­ing at Death, and you know what? He ain’t half bad.

—Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp

Its not until you lose every­thing that you are free to do anything.

—Tyler Durden, Fight Club

I used to take pride in the fact that I felt like I could die sat­is­fied any day. I was at a place in my life where I couldn’t ask for more, and there was a tremen­dous sense of over­all sat­is­fac­tion. I had every­thing that I deserved. After that, all I had left to expe­ri­ence, every fall morn­ing caught or tear shed, was a bonus. Of course, the clos­est I had ever come to death was a minor case of pneu­moth­o­rax, which I imag­ine is as fatal as pinch­ing one’s skin between two Lego pieces while build­ing the Death Star, so this feel­ing was never actu­ally put to the test. I’m sure I’d feel dif­fer­ently if I ever came fright­en­ingly close to the end of my life, although just how much remains a mystery.

Perhaps this grew from a cogent sense of frailty, per­pet­u­ated by all the sto­ries of freak acci­dents echoed through­out the media. The stu­dent who impaled his heart on a num­ber 2 pen­cil while try­ing to catch a foot­ball in the mid­dle of class. The gen­eral who drowned in a pool of his own blood from a nose­bleed on his wed­ding night. Even the pres­i­dent of the United States almost choked to death on a pret­zel. To dis­tance myself was the only way I could deal with it.

The prob­lem, I’ve only recently dis­cov­ered, was that this left me alien­ated and unat­tached. I have no dreams, noth­ing to live for. Not even a goal to work towards. During high-school, the goal was to get into a uni­ver­sity. After uni­ver­sity, the goal was to get a ful­fill­ing job. After the job was the house. Now that I own a house, it feels like the rest of my life has been laid out in front of me. No risks, no sur­prises. I appre­ci­ate every­thing that I’ve been given, but it feels like it’s been a lit­tle too easy. Even my most sig­nif­i­cant goal was rather sud­denly accom­plished this year. As Logan Pearsall Smith once wrote in his book Afterthoughts, “How many of our day­dreams would darken into night­mares if there seemed any dan­ger of their com­ing true!”. A simul­ta­ne­ous ful­fill­ment and dissatisfaction.

I pre­sented this prob­lem to Pat, and from his infi­nite wis­dom (at 24, no less) I real­ized that one should never live for what might hap­pen. Otherwise, a per­son would go crazy. Of course, to truly live this way, it doesn’t hurt to be a bit of a fatal­ist. Having this belief means that one can only do the best that they can, and to go means that it was meant to be.

For now, I’ve been keep­ing myself occu­pied, until I can fig­ure out what I want in the last rest of my life. Blessed is the per­son who is too busy to worry in the day­time and too sleepy to worry at night. It’s only now that I’ve dis­cov­ered that I need a few dreams to survive.

And I can only hope to never reach them.

The Awakening Series

  1. Introduction
  2. Cause
  3. The Reborn Dreamer
Date  September 14, 2005
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Categories  Thoughts

Awakening: Cause

4

Worry does not empty tomor­row of sor­row — it emp­ties today of strength.

—Corrie ten Boom

It started with a sin­gle panic attack, at work, in the mid­dle of the day.

Heart rac­ing, dif­fi­culty breath­ing, par­a­lyz­ing ter­ror, fear that I was about to die.

If you’ve ever had a bad trip off psilo­cybe, or magic mush­rooms, the effects are very sim­i­lar. Not that I’ve ever had a good one. Half an hour into inges­tion, I start to feel nau­se­ated. At the back of my head there’s a creep­ing sense that some­thing is wrong. My hands start to trem­ble, my mind feels like it’s shud­der­ing. Eventually, there’s a com­plete uneasi­ness in the body, both phys­i­cally and men­tally. Around that time, the body reacts quickly to rid the stom­ach of what­ever is caus­ing these symp­toms, and vio­lently ejects them in the form of vom­it­ing. Stems and caps come out as dark brown flecks, and you won­der how eat­ing some­thing so small thing can make you feel so terrible.

But with a panic attack, there’s no expla­na­tion. No sense of pre­ven­tion. No float­ing fun­gus in the pool of your toi­let you can point your fin­ger at and say, “I’m never doing THAT again”.

It comes with­out warn­ing, with­out obvi­ous rea­son. All you want is to end the attack. To crawl into a cor­ner and hide. To tear off your stran­gling clothes. To die.

Afterward, you’re not won­der­ing what you’re going to lis­ten to on the way home, or how to get the atten­tion of that cutie in the porce­lain depart­ment, or when you’ll have time to go buy more sham­poo. All you’re think­ing about is when the next one will hap­pen. All you’re left with is a bunch of ques­tions and a sense of insta­bil­ity. I have my sus­pi­cions, but I’ve cho­sen not to write about them until I’m cer­tain, some­thing which I believe will come in time. There’s no sim­ple diag­no­sis, no easy answer.

Recently, sci­en­tists have dis­cov­ered that the word “wheeze” can acti­vate asthma attacks in asth­mat­ics. The mind trig­gers an asso­ci­ated emo­tional response, and the body man­i­fests the reac­tion. It’s the same after a panic attack. Sometimes, peo­ple with panic dis­or­der can bring on an attack just wor­ry­ing or think­ing too much about it.

Not that I have a dis­or­der. The fear of an attack isn’t detri­men­tal enough to stunt me socially, and doesn’t pre­vent me from func­tion­ing as what the DSM IV would con­sider “nor­mal”. It was only a sin­gle episode, but habit of con­stant self-evaluation means that the threat of it hap­pen­ing again is always there. It’s in the back of my mind whether I’m at work, or play­ing games, or cook­ing din­ner. Every minute of every day becomes a strug­gle not to think about it. And when you know you feel like dying dur­ing an attack, you start to won­der whether it’s worth liv­ing at all.

People face this ques­tion when they’re diag­nosed with ter­mi­nal ill­nesses. Told that they have only have a few years left, they live more in those num­bered days than they do in their entire lives until then.

They awaken.

The Awakening Series

  1. Introduction
  2. Cause
  3. The Reborn Dreamer
Date  September 10, 2005
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Categories  Thoughts

Awakening: Introduction

0

Sharpen a blade too much
  and its edge will soon be lost
Fill a house with gold and jade
  and no one can pro­tect it
Puff your­self with honor and pride
  and no one can save you from a fall

—Verse Nine, Tao Te Ching

Every time I start to write, I’m led back to this. It would appear that it’s time to express myself. Perhaps I’m ready. It feels like I’m only scratch­ing the sur­face, try­ing to cover aspects of some­thing that I have yet to under­stand. In the shower I decided to split this into sev­eral entries of a series, and in my room the lights are all on.

There’s been more insta­bil­ity in the last month than in the last three years of my life com­bined. Everything I knew, every­thing I believed in, has been turned upside-down. Although I’m still try­ing to fig­ure out what hap­pened, the fact of the mat­ter is that there was a long, drawn-out cri­sis. This cri­sis, which appears to have passed, still affects my thoughts, my actions, and my beliefs.

Even though I don’t com­pletely have my feet on the ground, it feels like I’m com­fort­able enough to explore what’s hap­pened now. This is not an easy task. A sin­gle, seem­ingly innocu­ous thought can end up break­ing the strands of the del­i­cate web I’m treading.

If I can get it all down, I’ll know I’ve gone that far at least.

The Awakening Series

  1. Introduction
  2. Cause
  3. The Reborn Dreamer
Date  September 6, 2005
Tags 
Categories  Thoughts

The Most I Can Say For Now

0

Between the over­time and the ven­ture meet­ings with Aaron, the rest­less nights and the early morn­ings, I try to catch my breath. It’s good to be busy, but not when it means I don’t have the time or energy to write. This is the prob­a­bly the most infre­quent pub­lish­ing period I’ve ever been through since the start of this blog. Thoughts develop in my head, but I’m not ready to get them down and hit pub­lish yet. Maybe it’s a com­fort thing, maybe it’s a front, maybe I’ve sim­ply lost the desire to doc­u­ment every sin­gle detail of my life.

Through all of this I feel myself regain­ing some sta­bil­ity, although I tread lightly, remain­ing both con­scious and cau­tious. This is the most I can say for now.

Date  August 31, 2005
Tags 
Categories  Daily Life

Review Of A Nervous Breakdown

1

I felt like I was con­stantly on the verge of a ner­vous break­down over the week­end. It’s been a while, but I started think­ing about sui­cide again. Not a heavy-hearted con­sid­er­a­tion, sim­ply some­thing I was turn­ing over in my head. Suicide only makes sense when the good out­weighs the bad, long-term con­sid­ered, and for a moment there, it felt like the future had noth­ing to offer. I had lost inter­est in all the small things that keep me sane on a day-to-day basis; the move­ment of my music, the com­pany of my friends, the com­fort of my writ­ing, the mem­o­ries of my rela­tion­ships. The prob­lem was that I couldn’t explain the feel­ing, which was more scary than any­thing else, as some­one who takes pride in know­ing him­self through and through. It was a com­pletely irra­tional pat­tern of thought, and I knew it, but I couldn’t con­vince myself of it. The only rea­son I could come up with was a chem­i­cal imbal­ance, caused by a rather sud­den absten­tion, along with a gen­eral feel­ing of sick­ness I’ve had since the begin­ning of the month.

I have more to live for than most peo­ple I know, but none of that meant a thing. This gave me some minor panic attacks, because I’d lost my rea­sons for liv­ing, and more sig­nif­i­cantly, never saw them improv­ing. I started to under­stand how beau­ti­ful, influ­en­tial, famous, suc­cess­ful peo­ple like Margaret Laurence, Elliot Smith could kill them­selves. All I knew is that I didn’t want to be one of those peo­ple. One of those peo­ple who took their lives sud­denly, irra­tionally, with­out any notice. The step-mother who fought life-long depres­sion. The friend who just decided that they couldn’t deal any­more. If I was going to die, I’d at least wait another year, another ten years to see if the any­thing would change or improve, because life is worth it. I started play­ing Ratchet And Clank to keep my mind off any­thing heavy, and kept play­ing 12 hours through the repet­i­tive motion symp­toms. I dis­cov­ered that it’s one of the most remark­able games I’ve ever expe­ri­enced, and it let me know that I can still enjoy things. That’s at least one rea­son, right? Or am I liv­ing back­wards, des­per­ately cling­ing to what I have left, try­ing to jus­tify my existence?

After explain­ing it all to John last night when he got home, my sit­u­a­tion started to make sense again. Some things only do after I say them. I con­fided in Shirley today too, even though she doesn’t fully under­stand, and never could. She told me that she’d go to hell and bring me back just to kill me again. Hearing that brought a lit­tle smile to my face. I feel bet­ter in a very gen­eral, inex­plic­a­ble sense, and am left with a slightly wor­ry­ing, unset­tled feeling.

This is prob­a­bly one of the most dif­fi­cult entries I’ve ever writ­ten. Even now I don’t know why I felt com­pelled to do so. Being able to means that I’m at least tem­porar­ily com­fort­able enough to speak about some­thing that I’m ter­ri­fied of think­ing of.

Date  August 15, 2005
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Categories  Daily Life

Trinary Maturity: (In)Conclusion

0

I wasn’t plan­ning on writ­ing another part of this series until I asked John for his opin­ion. He was extremely hes­i­tant to com­mit but even­tu­ally opined, with earnest con­sid­er­a­tion of his words.

His most sig­nif­i­cant insight was that I may be hastily pass­ing judg­ment on some­thing that I’ve only begun to expe­ri­ence. “It’s time, not the aware­ness of our accom­plish­ments, that teaches us what’s sem­i­nal”, he put it. I find it dif­fi­cult to dis­agree. After all, I have no idea how impor­tant the last year will be. All I know is that it’s been impor­tant up until now.

I always trust what John says. Like a preacher, he speaks the truth. It’s good to have a friend who can keep me in check, who can give me some per­spec­tive. Perhaps I’ve been look­ing a lit­tle too hard for mean­ing. I want to believe that these things have changed me, made me a bet­ter person.

But only time will tell me for sure.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion
Date  July 18, 2005
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Categories  Thoughts

Living On Borrowed Time (Bonus)

0

An old nurs­ery rhyme pro­posed that life is but a dream. If Dr. Leary were alive today, he would add, most likely in an LSD induced state, that we’re just an imag­i­na­tion of our­selves. I have a hard time agree­ing with either apho­rism, but even if they were true, it wouldn’t matter.

A cer­tain glut­to­nous cat once mused, exactly 19 years ago today, that life can be com­pared to some­thing found on the din­ner table. Perhaps the most famous com­par­i­son, how­ever, was by a tech­ni­cally bor­der­line defi­cient per­son who said that life is like a box of choco­lates, because you never know what you’re going to get. As things go on, one real­izes that there isn’t one com­par­i­son that’s more valid than another.

Even an out­spo­ken Queensbridge rap­per has flowed, “You a killer or a hus­tler, dealer or cus­tomer / Gangsta or buster, young­ster or old nigga / A weed head, a coke snif­fer / You rich or a broke nigga / Know you all relate to this shit that I wrote nig­gas / Life is what you make it nigga”, and I tend not to disagree.

For me, it now seems like life is sim­ply a test.

More impor­tantly, how­ever, from here until the end, no mat­ter what, life is gravy.

Date  May 23, 2005
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Categories  Thoughts
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