branta

There are two clocks on my bedside table, it is raining and dark although barely noon. Summer is winding down. My head is shaking, ever so slightly, a palsy – this happens sometimes, I think it is the drugs. There is a photo of a famous writer tacked to the wall behind our bed, a woman. My head aches, my neck so tight I keep unconsciously rubbing it, trying to release the bad energy trapped in the muscles. I was possessed by bad dreams last night, although I can’t remember them. My night felt more like being held prisoner than restful sleep. The dreams may come back to me later in the day, the memory suddenly triggered by a household object or a snatch of overheard conversation. I have always had horrific dreams. My mother is the same, although as personalities we are very different. I have always stared at the darkness in life; my mother does not. Yet we are both sensitive and empathetic to an extreme – this is a condition that is almost a disease in itself.

How much of the degradation, the stupidity, the tyranny, of society do we take into ourselves? We swallow and swallow and swallow….No wonder I am sick! This writing is a form of vomiting it up, getting it out, in a sense. Don’t mistake this for a putting down of this book: no, it is precious to me, it means everything. Another definition of the word ‘vomit’ is: “to send something out in a forceful stream, or to be ejected forcefully.” Well, yes, that does seem to fit. This book has been bubbling and churning inside of me for several years now…in my cauldron, my grail, my body, my womb…so another metaphor could be that of giving birth. It’s time, hurry up, get ready now, here it comes.

Was it Dostoyevski who said that to be too acutely conscious is to be diseased? Well, this would appear to be a strangely apt description of my life, of my condition. I know there are many, many others…

I am not young anymore. But I am so determined, so passionate! I feel young, younger than ever, in many ways. I will make myself bold, I will be brave, in spite of my crippling fears, my disease. None of the awful things that have happened to me, or the awful things I have done to myself, have ever dimmed my bright, flaming visions. We all have a destiny, a path to follow, a trail to blaze, before we die. Something you should know about me: I never give up.

I am a poet. I sometimes wonder if most poets are sick: but are we born this way, or do we become sick because society scorns our visions? No one listens to poets anymore. Not in this country anyway. I think this is what makes us sick.

Do I sound conceited, absurdly pretentious and full of myself? Fuck you, if you think so. You ought to be busy being the hero of your own life, not being upset because I am bold. As Goethe said, “Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.” I am so sick of living in a culture where nothing means anything…I refuse, I refuse to live the life society expects of me. I’ve tried, anyway, and it made me ill.

Count the existentialists, so far: me, Dostoyesvsky, Goethe (arguably, I know, but I am arguing it). What does this mean? I am in pretty illustrious company. Who cares about this old-fashioned-sounding philosophical movement, conjuring up quaint images of scowling French men in big overcoats, of men in berets, arguing in cafes– or something along these lines. Or perhaps conjuring up no images or meanings at all.

I am an anachronism. But I am real, I am warm…a woman, a mother, a daughter – and a creator. I had sex last night with my husband, I am very much alive: I knew I so badly needed to have orgasms, but it was hard because of the drugs – they not only repress your sexual self, they also blunt your orgasms, sometimes. I am trying again to get off the pills.

I honestly don’t know if my life is a colossal, pathetic failure, or weird and sad; or gloriously unique and interesting. It depends on the day. How do we define such things? Who defines the worth of a life? Aren’t we always in flux, hopefully evolving as we live? Anyway, it is far from over, and I am still becoming: isn’t that a beautiful word, a beautiful idea? But then, don’t I get to define my own life? I demand that power, and this is why I am writing this, feverish and euphoric, while the rain beats down on the leaves outside my bedroom window, a beautiful summer rain, a dark grey sky I find soothing and restful after the brilliant heat and sun of yesterday.

I am poor; I am barely employed; I am, at this point, still unpublished. I have 3 university degrees but I work part-time at a very low-status job for which I am vastly overqualified; I earn a little more than the minimum wage. I have not even tried to find a better job; this, I know, baffles everyone in my life, including myself. In many ways, I love the flexibility and strangeness of this ridiculous job. I work in a facility for adults with mental illness; the residents are pretty severely ill. I like them a lot. I dispense medication, wash dishes, cook & clean, but mainly do a lot of (unrecognized) chatting/therapy/counseling. The lives of the residents would simultaneously break your heart and enrage you, if I were to tell their stories. In the eyes of my society, they are so beyond “nobody” status that they don’t even register. They are the lost, the outcast, mostly unvisited and unloved, unclaimed. One of them writes poems, another is a gifted artist; most are unvisited by family, forgotten or ignored. They do not have sex lives or love lives. We give them a lot of drugs. Are their lives worthy of the telling? Is there less meaning in their lives than in the life of a movie star? A research scientist? A university professor? A kindergarten teacher? A powerful politician? A multinational corporate CEO?

Many of the staff have no understanding whatsoever of mental illness. I do.

When I am depressed, I think I am an evolutionary failure, undeserving of life itself. I often become utterly convinced of the truth of this: that I am so flawed, so weak, so in need of constant support to just keep me going through my days, weeks, and months — let alone to achieve anything — that I am unviable as a life form: one of those evolutionary failures, doomed to extinction. A non-being. A non-thing whose status is permanently impermanent, untenable.