not to be read
A mess of unclean thoughts, no editing, not worth reading, just me writing to satisfy a requirement I had for myself today, a requirement to post something, because I am supposed to journal every day but lately it has become something less than that. On Thursday I want to be able to report to my therapist, who I think of as Scarecrow from Nolan’s Batman movies because he looks virtually identical, that I am doing my homework like a good little boy and cranking out the daily journal entries.
In the vascular center’s waiting room at the hospital I think about parking costs and how when I was younger I would have parked two blocks away from the hospital to save the ten dollar lot fee but nowadays I don’t give a fuck and will stick my car as close as possible to the doors to improve convenience and get fewer raindrops on my head, then I think about the irony of parking closer to the doors for a vascular checkup when parking farther away would have been better for my vascular health because I would have had to walk a bit more. There’s a little card on the coffee table that tells me to pay my parking ticket before returning to my vehicle and I wonder how exactly to do what — where is the machine? Multicolored stones are decoratively stuck to the wall and I wonder how they are affixed. Glue? Some kind of bolt in the back? Something that is no longer in waiting rooms: Magazines. Everyone here looks at their phone. There is no longer a need.
On the morning trip in the hospital:
A pale gray sky, the world making an attempt to brighten up, but the dense cover of clouds serves as a lid on the darkness, keeping it contained and close to the streets. I see clusters of kids waiting for the bus and remember Tucker Collins who used to drink full sugar coca-cola from a red twelve ounce can at seven thirty in the morning as we waited together to be picked up to go to Middle School so many years ago. I remember hating when the bus was late, particularly on chilly days and wet days, days like today when it’s drizzling and damp and the misery index is cranked, like the amplifier in Spinal Tap, to 11. These memories somehow make me feel good and I wonder how it is that bad memories can be capable of such a thing.
On Lexapro:
I’m up to 10mg and it’s OK so far. I think I’m somewhat better. I don’t want to die anyway. I may not be having as many negative thoughts. Small tasks don’t seem as difficult to do — they are less draining. It seems easier to make inconsequential decisions. My sense of taste has returned.
On Opendiary:
I comment on someone’s predicament. A “computer guy” in a relationship with someone who can’t be bothered to make dinner for him when he works until six or seven at night and she’s only working for 3-4 hours a day. Says he is walking on eggshells around her. When they fight, she makes everything about her, instantly. I say: I went through this. Your relationship is cooked. Later I felt bad about commenting because I don’t know enough about his relationship to say definitive things such as the thing I wrote. He commented on my most recent post — approving of my non-drinking stance. He says that alcohol causes a lot more problems than most people are aware of. I want to respond but I decide not to, not directly anyway. I want to say: Yes, I’m aware. Alcohol is a class one carcinogen, a trigger for high triglycerides, a swinger of blood pressure, a destroyer of stable blood sugar levels: It is absolutely terrible for you. I want to say: I didn’t drink because I thought it was good for me. I want to say: I drank because it felt good, because it loosens the brain, and then it tightens the brain, and then drinking becomes something one can think about all the time — when the next drink is, what it will be, what you can do during drinking and after drinking — how to best get well from being sick after drinking — how to recover and when to drink again, how to start up the ‘ol drinking machine again — and thinking about drinking can be a relief from thinking about one’s life, when one’s life is going badly. I drank because of the numbness and because sometimes, on the rare occasions when I could become both astonishingly drunk and hyper stimulated at the same time without passing out, I would feel good about myself, and this relief, however intermittent and brief, seemed to, at the time, be worth the amount of physical and mental torment I suffered from the toxins. But no, I won’t drink anymore, and despite recognizing that it does solve certain problems, I don’t miss it, and I want to live the rest of my life without drinking. I want to say you are right about this.
Jennie was up half the night tossing. I think she is sick again. She said her body hurts. She thought she was pregnant maybe but she took a test late in the day and it was negative. She’s several days late now though. I didn’t sleep well as a result of the tossing. She just kept moving, I could tell she wasn’t comfortable. My guess: Flu. I had my shot, she didn’t.
Every time she moves she wakes me up. There in the blackness of the room I think of something interesting to write on Open Diary for my entry — I think this will help me go back to sleep — but it doesn’t. I come up empty. There will be no art today, no unique perspectives, no interesting takes. I feel boring and dull. Eventually I give up and return to some of my go-to thoughts when I try to go to sleep, which consist of juvenile fantasies. The default go-to-sleep code that my brain executes is this: I am holding a baseball bat and swinging it against someone’s body — always a bad person, a faceless terrorist, a bully, Ted Cruz. Swing, thud, swing, thud. There is never a reaction from the person or thing I am hitting — I might as well be swinging against a pig hanging in a meat locker. Nine times out of ten this relaxes me and makes me want to sleep. It’s the act of trying to imagine new details that makes me the sleepiest. Is the baseball bat I’m holding decorated in any way? Wood or aluminum? If I swing it enough will I get callouses on the palms of my hands?
Thud. Thud. Thud.