I am waiting for that cry that will purge, at least for a few moments, all the pent up hurt I am feeling, physically and emotionally. The kind of cry that will express the stress and psychological presure of seeing doctor after doctor for about two months during this horrible summer. Anxiety keeps me moving about all through the night except for few hours of sleep, the kind of anxiety that is maddening for there is rare relief from it. Writing at this moment early in the morning this Thursday, August 30, is making me feel less tense and hyper. The war going on in me is ill-defined and a consequence, of course, of everything I am made of. Causation is not helpful at all. Reason pales at the monster I face.
Psychological and physical pain easily makes me throw out all the books and learnings I have acquired. When you are at this point, a mass of quivering protoplasm seeking some relief, at least for me, it all can be tossed. I think of how in childhood I would prod a worm with a twig, probe it, stick it, seeing its responses. I am now that worm, bothered by that monstrous unfeeling child, on a quest to satisfy his curiosity. I am being dealt with by the forces of the world at large and I am helpless.
I associate quickly to that old flic, Forbidden Planet which I saw as a teenager in the mid-fifties. A creature, a horrific creature, is active on the planet as a consequence of the unconscious thoughts of a slightly dotty mad scientist, Walter Pidgeon. It is essentially the product of his id. And he doesn’t have it quite under control, thus the plot device and the scary “fun” of it all. However, I feel out of control as forces in me, underdermining, unclear and malign go about making me feel warped and woolly, and very much at vicious odds with the daily events of the day — taking a bath or combing my hair. The slightest thing sets off these storming whims of the beast within and I become at war with myself.
As I compose this blog over several days I am feeling better for in some way as I express myself I find calm, the kind of calm of a painted seascape, all is still, no movement — I dread movement when I am in this fugue. The coming on of the central air conditioning, a TV show, an ad, normal noises can set me off. I crave silence. I want the world to go silent and have the capacity, it seems, at this moment of great stress and anxiety to see right through all the bullshit our culture gives, the monumental tsunami that we have made on this continent for over three centuries. Gratefully I thank my muse for giving me some relief, some way to cry on paper.
I am being tested this summer, a physical testing that was different than the terrible summer of 1999 when Rochelle died. Yet a testing of everything I have within and I feel within as I am decomposing, turning into shards of dirt and twigs. I worry about the impact on Jane as she chauffeurs me about and waits to hear about how well I am doing after a medical procedure. (I spent the summer seeing her face as I was roused froms sedation.) I watch as we fill up our calendar books for appointments, of sessions with the chiropractor or the fitness trainer. I observe how little patience I have and how the worst side of my nature is exposed, worn thin so that its hardest surfaces and consequences for Jane are expressed.
I disobeyed Jane’s rational injunction last night. I took the car out for a spin to ease my anxiety; I put the windows down as even air conditioning makes me feel contained or boxed in. I wandered the roads carefully for I am on meds that suggest not to drive while drowzy. I forget to take my cell. Given all that, it was a short spin but it did relax me. Jane was unhappy with all that for she knew it was not a wise thing to do. I had to do it. I was becoming the very walls of my entrapment.
I am weeping now as Jane tells me that dinner is ready. I am weeping for everything in my life. The loss of of dear Rochelle, the recent loss of my self, the gut-rending loss of my estranged daughter who has me entrapped in an illuision of her own making. I wish I were sitting on the ground before Rochelle’s stone back in New York, just talking to her about what has happened in my life. I am crying unremittedly now for the terror which has been my life, now and before, of how it has just kept me together because I am really a cracked egg, yolk seeping through. I am experiencing what death will be like, the ultimate yielding of control. I ask in my own prayers for pain to relent, to emotional pain to give way and allow me a day, yes, only a day, of relief, to return me to what sense I usually carried about.
I have been humbled without remorse this summer of 2012. I am not holding up or faring well. Only the melodramatic shreds of a writer is composing these lines.
In between the spasms of anxiety I maintain my sense of humor, thankfully. I watch politics and am appalled at what is going on, observing Connie Rice lambaste Obama’s foreign policy while that unvisited clitoris of hers sent men and women off to war, this prim and prissy virgin; I observed Ryan who someone characterized as a boy scout with a knife (spot on) lie; and the entire amnesia of the GOP which keeps Cheney and Bush sequestered as if we didn’t suffer under their governance. As I see all these things, I am distanced from them all and what matters doesn’t really matter at all. Indeed, what may come out of all this is a more sharpened sense of what is and what is not important, the cosmic truism of anyone in pain as he or she looks about at the comical and stupid games we humans play.
I have little or no patience with human folly at this junction. I have more to say but no more this night.
