Ashes

And when the ashes scattered I was still coughing. My eyes were red and burning... all of my work destroyed on a whim. I wasn't sure who I was anymore but I knew I didn't want to be the person coming alive on paper. So I chucked everything in the bin and without another thought I grabbed my crappy lighter and lit all of it on fire! I watched it burned... my life. The life that wasn't really mine. Words that I spilled on to paper as a sort of exorcism. But I wasn't that person. And even though they were my words, private words... they were JUST words. Words I would rather forget... I ran to the kitchen to get water so I could put out the small fire I had lit with the last 20 years of my life on page but I froze. I just stood there and watched it burn. Somehow I wished that I would get back all those years as they were burning and turning into ash. But I didn’t. And I didn’t feel free either. Everything was the same except the mess I had made and the wastebasket I had destroyed. I felt foolish and frustrated. I wanted to do something! Something meaningful, something to get me out of this funk, this daze… But I did nothing. I just sat down and stared into nothing. I was oddly calm even though I was frustrated by my inability to move forward. The words on paper were gone but they were still itching and burning in my mind, my memories. They’re just words… but they’re etched into my being. They are a part of me. They are who I am, no matter how hard I fight them or erase them or burn them. Those words are my soul, scattered outside and stuck to the bottom of the bin they were cremated in. I guess their current situation emulate my life – burned, broken, scattered, down in the dumps. I have decided to ignore them. I can’t forget them, erase them, burn them…so I shall ignore them. And I shall write new words. I shall write a new story for myself and I will be the person I want to be – moving forward.

Reminiscing in the cold

After years of confusion and not knowing which path to chose I decided to go back to university and work on a master's. I decided to go back to the university I got my degree because I felt I needed and need to prove myself. I also consider it to be the best place to find my voice because it was the place where I lost myself, my voice, my power.
Sometimes I get depressed because maybe I'm not good enough, or I don't really have a voice or a clear vision... All I have are these words that haunt me when I sleep. People would say "they're just words, Edna! snap out of it!". But words are never just words... they are manifestations of ones thoughts, voice, perspective, vision... Maybe my words are all I have. Maybe the written word is my voice. Or maybe I'm just tripping...

Last  Friday  I went to a lecture on documentary-making and it was quite interesting. It got me thinking maybe I can actually do this. Maybe I can create some art... the one thing in my life that always made sense - art. My ex-classmate gave the lecture and he was very clear... What I gathered from those two hours is that sometimes you have to lose yourself and take your time finding your voice. Once you let out the first syllable you'll be able to scream out your message in no time for the whole world to hear it. I wonder if one day the world will listen to me and see the world as I see it. The whole process of finding myself scares me to death... but I have to try.
This cold I caught leaving the lecture must count for something in the long run. I went outside for a smoke and all these different memories came rushing back - I could see the past unfolding before my eyes, walking the halls, like ghosts or some sort of residual energy hanging around me. I could hear all those voices of people I used to know. Their voices got louder and louder that I had to shut my eyes for a minute. The lit cigarette forgotten between my cold fingers. I heard an echoing voices pulling me out of the past. It was my current classmate. She was talking about her problems and putting her thoughts out there for me to analyze (or maybe so I could agree and validate them) but fuck if I know anything! I can't even fix my own life or understand what kind of shit goes on with me. So... reminiscing in the cold was basically what got me this funky cold that is totally destroying my nose.

Today is Sunday and I'm at my parents' for a visit. I'm ill... this cold might be evolving into something else. It might be the perfect time to settle my ideas and stop freaking out. I need to focus but I am constantly tired. The world around me bores me. I let myself get lost in books - poetry, novels... I should be reading the materials I need to work on my thesis but the truth is I feel so alone that poetic works and novels are the only written solace I can fully submerge myself in and forget about... everything. Even myself.

Maybe tomorrow I'll get out of this funk. But today, I shall crawl into bed with Bukowski and let him take me to places I remember from my past. My past is hidden behind every one of his words. And when I look myself in the mirror and see this person I don't recognize I feel disgusted, angry, sorry, powerless... That is a huge part of my problems. Not knowing where to start to change what bothers me, not knowing how to love myself. Because if I don't love myself who will? Even though I've always felt comfortable on my own and thought that people would have to like/love me for who I am and not how I look, I must confess that I am not happy with how I look. I look tired, heavy, broken, lifeless. I vowed going gym "shopping" and getting my ass back in shape but I'm... I have no idea what is holding me back. I need some sort of motivation and I don't know how or where to get some.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that all these past nights were filled with confusion and random thoughts that made no sense at all. I was mostly caught up with some sort of passive-aggressive  anxiety that is making me feel a lot like a dear caught in headlights. Am I on the right path? Am I reading enough? Am I working enough? Will I be able to get things done? Will I find my voice? Will I finally figure out who I am? Maybe... but not tonight.

I Envy People in Comas

Last night turning into morning before I could even get a wink of sleep. I spent those hours reading. I dove straight in to the story and I was right there with the characters. My mind was on overdrive. When I looked at the clock I was startled! I had to get to sleep. And so I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow and I felt happy that this one time I would not toss and turn waiting for sleep to take me into dream. Speaking of which I had none this night. There were no dreams, no nightmares. No confusion, no sadness. Only deep sleep. Only rest. Of course at 9 a.m. my brain jump-started back up and I was awake again. So much for rest. I got up and drove my mom into town since I came up north for a visit. I went to buy my medication and my mom went grocery shopping. As I walked around with her I sort of felt like a ghost roaming the isles of the supermarket. I had coffee at home, I had an espresso downtown... still... I was groggy and unrested. I just wanted to go back home, crawl into bed and sleep a couple of more hours. I took the groceries to the car and I felt the rain hit my face. It felt like a kiss. I do love the rain - I feel at home in darkness (not evil/darkness... but melancholic darkness - no light to hurt my eyes or burn my pale skin). I jumped in the car and turned the key... I had to wait because my mom decided to play the lotto or whatever. Then I saw her making her way to the car. I was already right up front to make it easier for her to get in. We drove back home and I wished that it would have been a silent drive... but it wasn't. She always has something criticizing to say (and not in a good way). My mother is the person who most criticizes me and she is the only person in the world that really makes me feel like crap all the time. I'm sure she doesn't mean to, it's just her nature. And even though I've told her plenty of times to stop bringing me down she just keeps at it. It's useless. I just sort of learned how to ignore it. I couldn't wait to get home so I could disappear up into the attic and take a nice nap. I did try... but the nap wasn't taken. I read some more. I decided to write and here I am now... envying people in comas because I can't seem to sleep over 4 or 5 hours straight. It's like I sleep in shifts or something. I just know that although comas aren't quite amusing or healthy (or something to take lightly) I do wish I could sleep 8 hours a night and I wish I could stop dreaming. My life in dreams is so much better I fear that the short hours of sleep is the way that my body has found to keep me from wanting to never wake up.

Last Night I was Lost in Thought. Today... I'm Just Lost.

The blinking cursor compels me to write - it's what's keeping me going. Like regular people are fueled by coffee or whatever other vice is considered normal and acceptable. I take coffee too... I try to fit in. But coffee alone isn't enough to jump-start my day, my thoughts, my whole being... I think I died during the 90's and never quite got my whole soul back. My life was over even before it began. I am a walking corpse, a walking cautionary tale, a walking disaster, a living-dead memory somebody fights hard to forget. I have my own memories... memories I would like to bury deep in the past. But they are constantly being brought back to life by the trivialities that surround me daily. My memories are open wounds that never healed properly. I fear that my emotional death might be diagnosed as depression or other fabulous psychiatric fashionable label. I have the latest medication to prove it... Last night I took 2 tablets and stared myself in the mirror. I told myself I was dead. I told myself I was an abject being, a fat lump of useless waste of space. I wanted to sleep. I took another tablet. I spun around in my bed... restless, sleepless. I told myself I was so useless I couldn't even sleep. Then I was perfectly still and the room around me was spinning and I felt like I was sinking, I felt like I was actually dead and I smiled. I closed my eyes. It seemed just for a second. I opened my eyes and it was morning. The church bells were ringing... they pounded loudly in my ears and I just wanted to fall back down in the hole I had fallen just a few seconds ago. I wanted to drift off again so I could live in those few seconds before you fall asleep where you can't remember who you are or where you came from. I wanted amnesia. I wanted something other than this lifeless  existence. I wanted to be brought back to life somehow. I wanted the 90's to be erased. I wanted my years back, my life back. I wanted everything that was taken from me. And as I awoke all of those feelings came rushing in and I cried. My pillow soaked in tears made me get up and drag this lumpy corpse to the bathroom where I started to go about my day. I had coffee. I read. I had lunch. I listened to music. I stared at my guitar. I picked up a book and flipped through it's pages. I couldn't concentrate. The cursor was blinking for over 45 minutes before I even started to write. And now... it is almost 6 p.m. and I haven't even gotten out of my pj's. I wasted a whole day. I just sat here at my desk. Reading, thinking... remembering. Lost.

How time flies/Lost In Thought

Time flies by regardless of how much free time you have on your hands. When I had no time at all I dragged myself around stressing about how much I had to do in so little time. Now that I have practically all the time in the world I feel sad and depressed. I have all this time to do my work, my art and all I want to do is crawl into bed and just stay there until the world ends.
Sometimes I cry when I am taking a shower because everything that once gave me (even if minimum) pleasure has withered and sort of tastes like ash. I fear I am turning into some kind of depressed zombie with my head stuck in books. I feel no joy, no pain... only apathy.
I am still obsessing over Charles Bukowski. I read his books in haste hoping I might feel something... a spark... But my eyes glisten and are clouded. The poem Lifedance as somehow pricked some sort of numbing membrane I developed around my heart.

LIFEDANCE

"the area dividing the brain and the soul

is affected in many ways by

experience -

some lose all mind and become soul:

insane.

some lose all soul and become mind:

intellectual.

some lose both and become:

accepted."

~ BUKOWSKI

Besides spending my whole summer in such a funk I did manage to work a bit on my upcoming thesis. Sometimes I am in the classroom and I can hear all the people around me but I'm not really there. I've never been "all there". I read Kristin Hersh post on Facebook and she said her therapist told she's not bipolar after all. Kristin wrote a whole book about being bipolar. Her therapist diagnosed her with multiple personality disorder (I think that was it, I'm not sure though). I think it's all kind of ridiculous. So... one minute you're one thing then you have multiple personality disorder? I keep wondering if I have any kind of mental disorder. Then I tell myself that I am sure of it but it's nothing a therapist can label. I'm just damaged, broken. I don't think I can ever be put together, or fixed. Maybe I just don't want to. Maybe I feel comfortable with the numbness alternating with the (almost) unbearable pain/sorrow (or whatever people call it - depression?). Maybe this is who I am. 

And sometimes, in the classroom, my thoughts drown the voices around me and they start to fade further and further away, like I'm falling in some kind of  trance, until they all go silent... and I am left alone within myself in a kind of darkness that feel cold yet comforting. I stare outside, through the window, and I once saw a man passing back and forth, like he was in a hurry to get nowhere, smoking his cigarette lost in his own thoughts unaware that I was watching him and at that moment I stepped out of the darkness within me and wondered if his thoughts were the same as mine...