I saw Cloud Atlas tonight. It probably wasn't the right movie to see at this moment. Themes of love and death and the continuity of personas over time... it's not something that I can take comfort from or even be enchanted by the magic of it all. Although it was an amazing movie.
Throughout the movie I had one panic attack after another... just the mini-things that I've been having with some regularity, feeling like I have to leap up, to get free. Feeling like I can't breathe. The trouble is that I feel trapped in my own body as much as anything else, and I see no way of freeing myself of that. It's hideous.
I thought I'd gotten past that, but I think that too much caffeine today plus a bunch of other things tipped that biochemical balance over. I'm pretty sure that chemistry is the catalyst for these things, because the worst times have always been related to other stuff. But it doesn't matter that much, except that maybe I can prevent them. I hadn't been feeling so much this way since I started meditating and yoga... and deep breathing was the thing that kept me from screaming tonight.
But it's all larger than that. Love and death and despair, and my anger with pretty much all the men of my life... and myself, too. That I keep hooking myself into things that bring me heartbreak, tying myself into love, or what passes for it, and then the bonds smother me and close me in. I'm torn, all the time, between wanting arms around me and wanting to be free, to breathe, to not want those things at all.
I don't know how to find any peace with this. I feel like a victim of the legacies of Michael's family and mine... trapped in the cycle of damage that all the previous generations created. And at the same time, the one complete and perfect thing is my son. The one thing that I haven't screwed up... although that's more of a tribute to him than to me.
Phillip Larkin was so right and so wrong, all at once.
I don't have any idea where to go from here. All the paths that I can see from here, including the one on which I have my feet firmly planted, feel wrong and alien.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Anhedonia
I realized today that a lot of the problem is that there is nothing that look forward to anymore.
It's not that I don't enjoy some things when they happen. For a while anyway. Some small things... lying warm and peaceful in bed, a beautiful fall day, my son, moments when the music sweeps me away and I dance. But there is nothing that I look forward to. It's like my heart stopped when Michael died. I stopped believing in a future.
And I say that, and it sounds all melodramatic and like love in the grave or something like that. But it's not like that. I think I just had too much. Michael used to say that if he even let all the pain out, it would kill him. (The truth of that, I think, is that not letting it out did in the end kill him.) But I understand a little better now what he meant. I'm not so numb as I was for a while, but that's worse, and I feel like I have to hold myself encased in armor to keep all the painful things at bay.
I've been watching The West Wing again. And I can't help remembering now and then how much we enjoyed it the first time. It was earlier on, when Michael was still more well, and things were on the whole better, and we loved it so much, were so caught up in it. It's hard not to flash back to those times.
I sit here by myself. I can't focus, I'm not working well, and I have no idea how I'm going to get done all the things that I need to do. My hip hurts all the time when I move, and I wonder sometimes if I need to accept that this will never be any better. I wonder if I'll ever feel like a normal person again, and I wonder if I'll ever feel less desperate for something more than this.
Tomorrow night I'll have a few precious hours with someone who will make me feel better when he's here, and I'll take those few hours, because that's the only time all week that I'll feel like a real person. Even though this path is nothing but wrong.
I need this to be different. I need to feel different. I need it all to turn around, and I need for that to happen now, soon, because I can't bear a lot more of this. It's like skating on the surface all the time, and every now and again you fall through, into something that is sometimes white-hot, but mostly icy cold and razor sharp and painful beyond words.
It's not that I don't enjoy some things when they happen. For a while anyway. Some small things... lying warm and peaceful in bed, a beautiful fall day, my son, moments when the music sweeps me away and I dance. But there is nothing that I look forward to. It's like my heart stopped when Michael died. I stopped believing in a future.
And I say that, and it sounds all melodramatic and like love in the grave or something like that. But it's not like that. I think I just had too much. Michael used to say that if he even let all the pain out, it would kill him. (The truth of that, I think, is that not letting it out did in the end kill him.) But I understand a little better now what he meant. I'm not so numb as I was for a while, but that's worse, and I feel like I have to hold myself encased in armor to keep all the painful things at bay.
I've been watching The West Wing again. And I can't help remembering now and then how much we enjoyed it the first time. It was earlier on, when Michael was still more well, and things were on the whole better, and we loved it so much, were so caught up in it. It's hard not to flash back to those times.
I sit here by myself. I can't focus, I'm not working well, and I have no idea how I'm going to get done all the things that I need to do. My hip hurts all the time when I move, and I wonder sometimes if I need to accept that this will never be any better. I wonder if I'll ever feel like a normal person again, and I wonder if I'll ever feel less desperate for something more than this.
Tomorrow night I'll have a few precious hours with someone who will make me feel better when he's here, and I'll take those few hours, because that's the only time all week that I'll feel like a real person. Even though this path is nothing but wrong.
I need this to be different. I need to feel different. I need it all to turn around, and I need for that to happen now, soon, because I can't bear a lot more of this. It's like skating on the surface all the time, and every now and again you fall through, into something that is sometimes white-hot, but mostly icy cold and razor sharp and painful beyond words.
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