Posts tagged with "crying"

this passage through the flames

This one has been hit­ting me par­tic­u­lar­ly hard late­ly, a wind­ing, dis­so­nant pulse that nev­er fails to draw me to a dark and calm­ing place. Gojira’s albums are filled with aggres­sive, intense pas­sages that explore themes of trau­ma, mys­ti­cism, and death, but none of their songs feel as heavy as this, no doubt influ­enced by the pass­ing of the Duplantier matri­arch1. Yet through­out, as with most of Joseph’s lyrics, is a sense of hope and opti­mism in the face of the chaos that con­stant­ly threat­ens to drown us all.

I’m at a point in my life — again — where it’s good to know that music can still bring me to tears. I long believed SNRIs had robbed me of the abil­i­ty to cry in those small moments between life-chang­ing crises.

It’s a solace I glad­ly accept when sleep is a rose that rarely graces my gar­den nowa­days. Even when I stay up beyond the point of exhaus­tion, I begin to stir short­ly after pass­ing out with thoughts swim­ming in my head, anx­ious and ter­ri­fied before I real­ize I’m already awake again.

And when I can’t con­cen­trate on the things that used to bring me joy, when all I can do is sit in the black­ness of my room, drunk, stoned, and sedat­ed, I’ll take any com­fort I can get.

  1. Mother of broth­ers Joe and Mario Duplantier, the lead vocal­ist / rhythm gui­tarist and drum­mer. []

in the absence of light

It’s been weeks since I left the house for any­thing but a doctor’s appoint­ment, maybe three times since November. I miss the win­ter, even though it’s right out­side my door. I miss my friends, even though they’re rarely more than a short trip away. It’s espe­cial­ly hard not being able to explain the dis­tance. All I can do is hope they trust me when I don’t feel com­fort­able explain­ing, and try not to feel inse­cure about being so out of touch.

Sometimes, the thought of being away from my safe­ty zone fills me with dread. Other times it’s just eas­i­er to not do any­thing. I bare­ly man­age the effort to wash my hair once a week, and the only rea­son I shave is to more eas­i­ly wipe off the vis­cid sad­ness that so often vis­its my face. I sus­pect I would­n’t even be eat­ing if it weren’t for the fact that Heather enjoys tak­ing care of peo­ple to ful­fill her own need for secu­ri­ty. She’s lived here a few months, and she’s already mak­ing sure the cats have their teeth brushed every day and all the bills are paid. I’ve bare­ly known her for twice that time, and I’ve nev­er been more depen­dent on any­one in my life.

It feels like I’ve tak­en two steps back, but I’m at this point cause it means I’m safe enough to start pro­cess­ing and under­stand­ing the things that led to me try­ing to hang myself from the rail­ing of my stair­case a year ago. I haven’t fig­ured out what it means to keep going, when for so long I believed my life was lead­ing up to that moment, and stick­ing around was­n’t a choice I made for myself. Just fig­ur­ing out how to write about such a large and com­plex expe­ri­ence is often too much. I’m left bro­ken when I sim­ply want to under­stand.

I’m learn­ing that recov­ery isn’t a bina­ry process, but a jour­ney with strug­gles and tri­umphs. I still suf­fer the trau­ma of being moments away from dying. I’m still haunt­ed by the guilt of sur­vival. With so many hair-trig­gers that lead to whol­ly con­sum­ing break­downs, I can’t deny I’m not the per­son I used to be. Right now, it’s hard enough just try­ing to be okay with that.

50/50

I’m writ­ing as a way of prac­tic­ing self-com­pas­sion. Weeks get lost to the cus­tomers and com­mute, and when time off involves not think­ing or being around peo­ple, it does­n’t leave much room for per­son­al growth.

The prob­lem is that noth­ing feels real or true unless I write it down. The changes are start­ing to flow togeth­er, and I’m at var­i­ous stages of progress on sev­er­al fronts. There are no begin­nings, no ends, no chap­ters, no dis­tinc­tive tran­si­tions I can sum up neat­ly in a title. The lessons stretch out to years instead of months. Development has giv­en way to evo­lu­tion. It seems sil­ly to write about a feel­ing that won’t last from the first time I hit Save Draft to Publish.

I’ve been reach­ing out to new peo­ple cause it felt like every­thing I was doing was wrong. Marie came to feed the cats, not know­ing I was back from the hos­pi­tal. I broke down in her arms, and she bab­bled at me over break­fast, excus­ing her­self for talk­ing so much cause she was ner­vous about not know­ing how to help. I asked if she’d watch a movie with me, some­thing to do that was nor­mal and not cry­ing. It helped.

Jason’s also been talk­ing me through the upheaval. Advice is eas­i­er to accept when it comes from a sur­vivor, espe­cial­ly one who nev­er pre­sumes to know what’s best for me. He’s become the stick prod­ding me for­ward one small step at at time, a voice of rea­son in my ear that reminds me to keep on doing this until liv­ing is like breath­ing again.

It’s a reminder that I’m here only cause peo­ple believe in me; they’re the ones tip­ping the scales when it feels like I might as well flip a coin and let fate decide what I can’t.

what fool hath added water to the sea?

O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain,
That shall dis­til from these two ancient urns,
Than youth­ful April shall with all his show­ers

—Titus Andronicus

I lost my life as I knew it, piece by piece, over days and weeks and months. Now things will nev­er be the same. In moments of cri­sis, every­thing has been dis­tilled; what’s gone is gone for­ev­er, and what remains is what I will car­ry for the rest of my life.

And as the threads unrav­eled, I tore myself from the world away, my face unable to bear the bur­den to oth­ers.

Goodbye, little buddy

The vet’s office called this morn­ing to tell me Leonard did­n’t make it through the night.

I’ve been bawl­ing ran­dom­ly since. Uncontrollably1. I haven’t cried like this since I was a kid. I sup­pose it’s the shock. I always expect­ed Dolly to be the one to go first, and not for many years at that. I know I’ll be alright, I just need time. It was such a big deci­sion to adopt anoth­er cat, and I jumped on it cause I want­ed one so bad­ly, and I made all the prepa­ra­tions, and nursed him back to health so many times, and now he’s gone so sud­den­ly.

____’s been talk­ing some sense into me. I blamed myself for not going to the vet soon­er; maybe there’s some­thing he could have done, maybe being on an IV ear­li­er would giv­en him the strength to recov­er. But I did what I thought was best at the time, and there are count­less maybes in life, and there’s no way of know­ing why he died because the tests weren’t fin­ished. It could have been some­thing con­gen­i­tal, which seems like­ly con­sid­er­ing he was sick most of the time.

Continue read­ing “Goodbye, lit­tle bud­dy”…

  1. I’m so glad I work from home. []