2004-06-12 - 3:22 p.m.
torn... tattered
It's getting to me.
I'm not even sure which "it" it is, but it's gettting to me just the same - or it could be the combination of everything is just dragging me down, pulling me apart.
I slept for maybe 10 hours last night. I was at least half-drunk when I came home.
I left the bar at 1 - a slightly unusual occurance, and for a very unusual (for me) reason: if I hadn't left, I think I would've just kept drinking instead of switching off to water like it was definately time to do.
There was a nice older guy (graying beard) who seemed to take it on himself to cheer me up. Asked me to dance. Chatted with me a little. Asked my name, what I did for a living. Commented with something like satisfaction when I seemed to relax a little. Also commented that I was burning through my pack of cigarettes pretty quick. To his credit, he never once asked me what it was that was wrong. Either he didn't want to be nosey, or he figured I wouldn't want to talk about it to a stranger. Either way, like I said, I think that's to his credit.
Mom's going to be in the hospital at least until Monday from the sound of it. So far, no surgery, but the dental surgeon doesn't seem to want to rule it out, either. They will probably do the CT (that never happened yesterday) on Monday, and decide again from there what they're doing.
I'm actually a good bit later heading out than I'd planned on being. In spite of the sleep - or maybe because of the poor quality of it, or because of the possibly myrid reasons it was such poor quality - I'm feeling listless and utterly unmotivated today. Run down. Worn out. Faded, ragged.
I'm aware that I need to eat, that it's been well over 12 hours - probably about 18 since I've eaten anything. But I'm not hungry. I'll stop off and waste some money on fast food I'll probably only eat half of on my way to the hospital.
There's no energy, no drive. I've got a line of poetry (of my own, though I can't for the life of me remember which piece it's from) running through my head: the only energy left to me is apathy. And like so much of what's run through my head lately, it's unhelpful, because it's inaccurate. This isn't apathy. It's more like a keenly aware helplessness than it is apathy. Or rather, it's that keen edge in regard to some things that's driving the apathy towards everything else.
I'm cut off from everything, or at least that's the way it feels. Like I've taken a step backwards through some invisible wall, and now I can't push back forward through it. (If, indeed, I want to at all, yet.) I felt that acutely last night at the bar, before I'd found myself a seat. Standing there with a beer in one hand, a smoke in the other, and just barely too warm in my jacket, I watched the people. That's a large part of why I like bars, you know - the chance to watch people. Might be the writer in me, but that's not the point. The point is that I was more a spectator than I have been in at least a year, maybe a year and a half. It was like I'd gained an insubstantialness - or had lost what there was in me that was substantial, and concrete to the rest of the world.
I can't say I felt I didn't exist, this wasn't like those moments when I've felt my existence was a myth of my own making. I chatted with Paula for a moment just as I'd gotten in - she hasn't worked the last few times I've been in the Wharf, and evidently she'd noticed not seeing me on the parts of the weekends she was around.
But I was so completely outside the realm that should've been around me... I don't know how to explain it better than that. It was almost like being my own ghost. I haven't ghosted like that in a long time, and as nearly as I can recall, the last time I was "dim" in a situation like that (term borrowed knowingly from Stephen King's The Eyes of the Dragon) it was intentional.
I'm half curious: if I can evidently be almost unknowingly "dim," does that means I still have the knack of going dim on purpose?
Some days it's felt like I've been hanging on admirably, not letting myself be pulled down by what is so far a very nasty month.
And then there's days like today, waking up to feel - if anything - more tattered than I had the night before.
Tattered... Now I've got the chorus to a Carbon Leaf song in my head. I'll share, because I might as well fill the space with something interesting, rather than my own ramblings.
"And I don't need any apology
And you know I don't need any apology
And it's a long walk away
Oh, it's a long walk away
Torn, tattered. torn...
Of course, my own comments about posting that make me think of Third Eye Blind's Narcolepsy - the line about "I write everything down except what's on my mind" in particular. And having thought of Carbon Leaf in general seems to have brought a few of their other tunes to mind. I might have to try to remember what I did with the copy of the live double-disc set Pauley gave me.
I've wasted enough time writing for now. Too much time. Treading over the same ground, more or less. With a different viewpoint than on some past writings, but really with no different a collection of things to say. I'm still confused. Baffled. Hurt. A little lost, to be honest. Knowing I don't hold any hope for her to change her mind, but also knowing that if she did, I'd jump right back in. Wishing it all made a little more sense to me, but not sure if I'd like the answers if it did.
Got to go, now. Trade one uncomfortable situation of introspection for another uncomfortable situation - one equally out of my hands to change, control, or to have forseen much before it happened.
I'd say the month has to get better, but that's entirely too optimisitic an assertion for the mood I'm in. So we're just back to waiting to see what happens next.
They say God never gives you more than you can handle. I say the universe has a cruel sense of humor.
I can't be so many of the literary (or musical) role models that I think would help me (at least in a functional way - who knows if they'd actually be "healthy" means of coping). But I still think I can try to be Roland in this. Torn and tattered or not, still going on. Trying to remember a need to shrug and explain it away as Ka. Everything happens for a reason - that's what I've sometimes believed, and that's what people have seemed intent on reminding me to think lately. Someday that reason will be clear, and it will as much be a part of the lessons - some easy to learn and hard to retain, some hard to learn and of a kind that I will have trouble unlearning someday - as anything else.
It's useless to wonder how far off that "someday" is for me now. Ka - especially the part of it that is yet to be - takes care of itself.
And I'm half tempted to wonder if rereading (and eventually just reading when it comes to the new material) Dark Tower is actually helpful at all to me now. But it's what I'm doing. Routine. Rote. Habit, pattern, ritual - however you want to look at it.
I'm not going to think too closely about how something that (in it's context) is new can feel so old and established. Because that just dredges too strongly at things that will hurt me just now.
previous howl
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Murrrrrrffff? - 2005-01-04
A Late Review - 2004-09-12
Weekend Update - 2004-08-08
Intermission - 2004-08-07
Rambling or something. - 2004-07-31
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