9:21 p.m. - October 16, 2002
I want to yell and be hurt and wake up
There's no sense pushing when I'm like this, no different than forcing concrete through the expensive pasta maker set to fermicelli. My brain is not fine stone-milled farina imported from Italy, it is Domino's dough from the nearby strip-mall and sits in the mental equivalent of a stomach. Broca's area, Wernicke's area, the processing centers of the brain in its complexity still doesn't help me process mental matter to the keyed word, despite the fancy computer and huge monitor, the thick-milled paper and pens don't facilitate progress any better than carving my book in stone. I took this week off work to focus, to write, and I have punched out four pages, two of which do not satisfy me and will be redone.
Picasso cut off his ear not out of love but because he was tired of hearing his lover's voice taunting him. No, I'm not making comparisons, lofty as they are. I'm saying I understand frustration because I yell at my computer and myself with mounting frustration that surely is akin to missing the boat by minutes and you're left on the dock with the bad guys at your back and then parting with an ear or a finger or a mind isn't terrible after all.
What I want is a shelf with my name on it. I want to leave something permanent behind, point as evidence of import the work I've done but you know as well as I do no amount of pointing will make me feel better inside. That's the twist to writing; as soon as it's an audience in mind instead of the self, the game changes. Before I signed those contracts for books more books more books I had written two and since, I've finished nothing. The interior of my head is heavy and as I try to write only quotes from Shakespeare and Tennyson run through from side to side like the Nike Swoosh taking everything along with it. I've been Swooshed.
Bathsheba, do you know how important you are to me? Of course you don't. Back when I hid out in your grandmother's basement I had a terrible crush on you but didn't want to drag you into post-breakup messes though I regret not kissing you more that one time. Your sudden appearance back into my life has made me feel good and it is often frightening to me to see and feel myself wanting to reach out to others, to connect, because that suggests the bedrock is more like shale and the view from my perch isn't still as I thought but is instead spinning lopsided like an out of control dream. The invite to see you tugs something but I don't want to see you because I don't look the way I did back then and I'm ashamed at the way I've let myself fall apart. Just what the hell does that mean other than reveal insecurities which aren't well hidden in the first place? In other words, I'm not done hiding. I'm feeling vulnerable, worse than usual.
That is what I'm focusing on instead of writing, waking up to the present and all is not well because of course, caretakers become lazy if the master is not at house. What stupid literary allusions come out at night like this, like those dangerous and insipid cliches that bug me? I give up, I concede, I'm caught in the grip of literary devices because I'm too unintelligent to come up with my own witty and novel metaphors. That must be it.
Of course I must skirt the issue but my fear that is manifesting into solid ground is that I'm mentally ill. I've said it. What other explanation for me is there? Make a list, eh? My therapist is working with me on post-traumatic stress syndrome induced by childhood molestation that's taken over my life so that really, my life isn't my own and of course, it makes sense. I'm angry that I'm unable to look past and shrug it off and I wonder, is it because of that that I translate the Enya's Latin and am a supposed over-achiever yet under-performer and keep people at bay and am uptight and cold and rude and quiet, a loner a bookworm antisocial afraid of closet doors and surprises, even surprises that come in boxes with bows on them? Or is all this just because that's me, that his how I was meant to be?
The issue with closet doors even now as an adult is as compelling as it was as a child when I was molested by the guy next door with his mother in the next room and sometimes coming into the room to put clothes into his dresser. How crazy is that, afraid to breathe for fear of being discovered yet wanting to be found at the same time? The more I don't want to talk about it yet do, the more my counselor asks questions and I find I know the answers and they were there all along. One day I want to test closet doors, buy one or two from Lowe's and sleep, see how it goes, then the very next day I think I am out of my mind to consider it, almost as if closet doors = something bad, which it does. But little steps are being made, like last week when I had the floors in my house redone, I didn't stay and hover, watching. I chose to leave strangers in my home (trust me, there's nothing to take, not even much furniture) and that is something I would never do before, out of fear that one might hide and do me harm upon my return. You cannot hurt me, I only hurt myself and that fuels my anger to realize with clarity that all of this, all of it, I've done to myself in the end.
How fucked is that?
