Proverbs 5, Verse 23
"He shall die because he will not listen to the truth;
he has let himself be led away into incredible folly."
---
CHIPPED WISDOM:
"So, how bad is this O.C.D. of yours?" he asked me. Nobody'd ever asked it quite like that before.
I looked at him.
"Well, I wouldn't say it's bad, but it's definitely a part of me. I mean, it's there. Like, for instance, just this morning, I went to a conference, and it was downtown-- would have taken me twenty minutes to get there. And it started at nine. Well, my wife left the house at a little after seven. I didn't have anywhere to fucking be, but I left with her. So, I'm driving around like an asshole with nowhere to go, and I thought to myself, 'Oh, I'll go to Starbucks,' which makes sense, right?"
"Right," he said, furrowing his eyebrows. He could tell I didn't go to Starbucks.
"So, I go to Starbucks, but, as I park the car, I remember, 'Oh, this guy I used to go to school with works there, and he's really nice, but I really can't stand interacting with people and making small talk and shit like that-- plus the mother of a girl I went to school with has some kind of intellectual bullshit discussion group at that Starbucks in the morning and I'll definitely run into her, in fact her car's in the parking lot and I really like her and I loved her daughter like a sister but I think I'll just sit here in the car for an hour'. And that's what I did. Idling, wasting gas, listening to fucking intellectual bullshit NPR like a dickhead dipshit asshole for forty five minutes until I couldn't take the anxiety of not knowing what traffic would be like and I left and got to my conference over twenty minutes early."
He looked at me.
"So, maybe this isn't working." Pause. "Are you feeling any... any spark? That's what we're looking for; a spark. Have you had moments like that?"
I looked at him.
"No."
-----------------------------
Maybe it's too soon. Maybe that's it. Or maybe I don't want it to work. Or maybe they're sugar pills. Or maybe I'm a horse. Or maybe it's the day after Halloween and I should be writing about how my babies went as a Hershey's Hug & Kiss and how the dog at my wife's glasses while we were trick-or-treating. Maybe I'm getting myself into trouble with my big mouth and my self-disclosure and oh, listen to that, my daughter's screaming.
Deal with that, would you? I have neuroses to dissect.
Ordinarily, I'm a pretty decent judge of when things are or aren't working. If I'm involved in a play and it's a disaster, I typically know it, though I am powerless to correct any piece of it aside from my own performance, and sometimes I'm not even adept enough to fix that. I know when writing's working and when it isn't (this piece could go either way at this point) and I've known that my former romantic relationships were going down in flames while it was happening-- hindsight was not required, though it helped.
As for medication-- I don't know. I'm not terribly aware of my emotional state at any given time to be especially keyed in to give a good report. I feel the same as I did four weeks ago as I did fourteen years ago. I don't know what to tell you, or him. I don't know whether I should stay on this smack for the rest of my life just because I know I have anxiety and depression and all that other nonsense that goes merrily along with it, or if I should try something else, or just stick to drinking decaf and putting bacon on everything and split the difference.
In the end, it doesn't really matter, because I'll be dead, and whatever decisions I've made or haven't made relating to diet and caffeine intake and psych meds and wingtips vs slip-ons won't really amount to much. Sure, they seem like big decisions now, but really, who gives a fuck? So I'll be a little more anxious, or a little less depressed. I'll be out a $5 co-pay, or $10 when the insurance changes.
Whatever.
I don't know.
Would it have been such a Zen triumph over the ego or whateverthefuck if I'd gone into Starbucks that Monday morning and hob-nobbed effervescently with the guy I went to school with and the mom of the girl I went to school with and I traded witticisms with the bearded, latte-swilling members of her faux-Mensa group? I do or I don't. The therapist thins his lips or gives a wan smile. Either way, I give him fifty bucks.
I think about death all the time. Not suicide, just death. It pops into my head at lunch or during sex or on a walk or a drive or when I'm holding my son. It happens when I'm being cynical or brooding, but also when I'm funny or contrite, ballsy or bashful. I don't know what it is, or why. But I know there isn't a pill for it and, if there was, I don't know that I'd take it anyway because I don't know what, other than sex, I'd think about.
It's silly, isn't it? It's silly and strange and peaceful and terrible all the time. Each and every day. It's rainbow vomit. It's a Crystal Light chandelier. It's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
-----------------
"We'll try 15 mg and see what that does, okay?"
"Sure," I said. "What the fuck, right?"
No comments:
Post a Comment