20 December 2021
0 we none of us ever know
09 December 2021
0 i worry i make it all up
i fundamentally do not trust myself.
i fundamentally do not think i deserve what i want.
i felt a moment of peace for a hot second. because the acupuncturist took my pulse and looked at my tongue and was like i think really what is happening is that you're angry and nina was like anger is a part of depression and i reflected on my whole life since senior year of high school and was like yeah, that checks out.
and then for like 24 hours, bingley had FIP and was dying and i thought omg the cat who overtly loves me is going to leave me, and it's not that but it remains unclear and i do not know where that leaves us.
my jackie book is about to sell and i feel nothing.
i'm in therapy talking about how i feel nothing.
i go to the acupuncture place and i'm able to breathe more deeply than in yoga, but still i feel nothing.
it would've been entirely in keeping with 2021 for bingley to have sparked joy for four months and then to have died.
and yet that did not happen.
for 24 hours i thought that was what was about to happen. reader, i prepared myself. i cried in the shower. i cried from 2 am until i had to teach at 7 and then i cried from the walk to and from target after that.
i do not have words for how hard this year has been.
i tell the egyptian it's been the worst year of my life and i'm surprised by the surprise in his voice. i thought having told him, on our second date, that a man raped me in january, would've clarified that fact, but apparently not.
i do not know what to say. there are no words. the men, dear people, when you find the words, they do not listen.
it's all very bleak, i'll be honest.
but i went to church irl last week. i struggle to believe in god these days, i do not take communion, but there was a feeling there as everyone, in their masks, waved across the room to pass the peace.
there was a feeling.
i love wearing a mask because the thing is you can weep openly and no one will ever see your mouth scrunched up and the effort involved in trying not to. you can just cry, in public, and it's all ok. it's all going to be ok.
05 December 2021
0 what even the fuck
k and i are walking on saturday and i ask, how's our depression? and then somehow i wind up asking, do you think i'm depressed, and she's like what huh, OF COURSE.
and it sounds so obvious and i feel so stupid, but it also makes so much sense of what's been happening and how i've been feeling since august that i don't know how i've not seriously considered this before.
since august i've felt this way. since before the on and off and on and off and on again and off again with the egyptian and the dalliance, in between all that, with the music man.
in therapy, i talk about men a lot. i talk about me in there too, but the men are the focal point.
i think i'm far more comfortable with the men being the cause rather than a symptom.
i think i'm far more comfortable talking about them and my relationships with them than i am in talking about myself. and my relationship with myself. and how deeply painful i find my own company these days.
towards the end of the massage the other day, zana asked if i've lost weight. and i said maybe, because i've not had much of an appetite this week. nor this month really. but this week, in particular, i've not had the energy to eat when not hungry-- which is what i've managed to do in the weeks preceding.
it would be nice to feel hunger.
it would be nice to feel something.
the jackiebook seems to be slowly careering towards a book deal.
i should be so excited.
i should be so proud.
i should be.... something.
and yet, i am nothing.
if anything i am only disappointed, because the advance is laughable. the advance is the equivalent of teaching two classes. the advance will not free me.
i should be so happy and yet our circumstances are such that it seems very likely i'll be publishing a book about jackie's life in greece without ever having been there. and so what i feel isn't so much pride as shame, and embarrassment. that i have not managed to get there. that i have not seen it for myself. that like all those men who never went to the new world but wrote about it, i'm over here describing the waters of the adriatic, like i have any fucking clue.
i booked a trip to nyc. it took me five solid months to build the nerve, to find the bandwidth, to imagine a future in which i could go to new york city for a single night.
that's not nothing. but, damn, it sure is meager.
the confusing thing is that, throughout all of this, i have been writing. in the past, i could not write. but hey, things change. if teaching in a pandemic has taught me anything, it's that the universe can always find new ways to fuck you up.