It’s
days like today I wish would cease for all time. Days where nothing is wrong, but there is a pit in my
stomach. I never really got over
it; I don’t think it’s one of those things you “get over,” but then that’s just
part of the illness, isn’t it? The
hopelessness, the sense of futility, the… despair… I hate that word, but that’s
really exactly what it feels like.
You have a Cassandra complex but you know that having one means you’re
crazy, and you don’t quite want to admit that.
Days
like today thinking it’ll ever be OK, you might some day not be crippled – even
if it’s just the terror that goes away – and you might reach the promised land
of being, oh so simply, OK… days like today, being able to believe in “OK” is a
fucking pipe dream. You’re wasting
your time.
Time
to time now, I can smell it, picture it clearly. I’m with her, she’s with her son, and all three of us can
meet our problems with… joy. Sure,
not knowing whether or not you’ll triumph, but knowing that you can only fall
just so far… knowing you’ve got family and friends and home, that wonderful concept, remaining blissfully ignorant of the
full distance to the ground…
I
like those days. They’re usually
Sundays, usually with her, usually in Meeting. The silence is so delicious it should be served รก la
mode. I don’t know how she does
that, how Meeting does that, how sitting in a room in complete silence with
relative strangers can make capital-H Hope out of the hollow nothing I am all
the rest of the time.
In
a Jewish mythos, God himself is in exile from the promised land, shattered into
sparks existing in His Creation. I
feel as if I am collecting them, ephemeral ephemera of Eden. I love it, but am scared of it, this
quest. I feel the bird flying from
blackness into a house – wondering whether more blackness is coming or whether
this is a really, really big house.
There
are days of faith, and days of evidence, but never both. On days of evidence I feel a sense of
security – small though it is – inside of me. I feel brave, almost fearless. On days of faith, like today, I don’t. It’s a small thing, that security, but
it makes such a large difference.
With it, I can face the world in small doses. Without it, I can’t.
I want to crawl into bed and hide under the covers. I know it’s stupid, but for some reason
that seems both reasonable and safe.
I
wonder what’s going to happen with me.
I’m very, very broken.
Maybe more than other people; at least some of ‘em. I fake “OK” well. I’m on Law Review, but my GPA clearly
shows how scattershot my actual performance is under demanding
circumstances. Some days I wonder
whether I really belong permanently in a psychiatric hospital. Or I wonder how smart the shrinks are
when they let me go. Maybe the
electroconvulsive treatment should be given. It can’t make things worse than they are. It sucks that I have to be suicidal to
get it. I dare not try to kill
myself. I’m too afraid of it. And I’m too afraid to hurt people with
it.
And
so we have days of faith: days where the sparks are too slippery to actually
hold, so I have to take it on faith that they’ll catch me instead.
