Tried writing from a different point of view today. It was like doorways were opening up in my mind. The writing was fresh, took the story in a new direction. What I'm doing is all re-write, but to my amazement, there was so much new content pouring out of me. Don't really know what I've written until I review it again after some time has passed, but the feeling is like standing on the crest of a wave. I'm high above ground and moving with a brutal natural force beneath my feet.
For the first time I left the reality of my main character, Rachael, and added fiction. She was my look-alike, a personal twin, but now I've got freedom to make happen to her things that never happened to me. I'm not stepping out outrageously, there is still so much based on actual events.
I had Rachael write a suicide note. I've written a suicide note. Rachael's suicide note was not like mine. In spirit similar, but in the novel it is much more interesting. I had to substitute the word "ridiculous" for "psychotic". The note is borderline psychotic, how do you show such a thing but not use the technical word? Technical words are the death of writing. In my life, I cringe whenever my husband uses a word that I don't understand. Not that I'm insecure about my vocabulary, I've got a good vocabulary. But I hate the impulse not to be pure and simple in communication. Using big vocabulary gives one a sense of power; "oh look at me, I know something that you don't know". Spare me your delight. In my writing I am trying to be simple. I will go back and replace complexity, which seems to come naturally to me, with something more simple.
I had a college professor once give me a high mark on some homework. We were writing an interpretive essay of someone else's writing. It may have been Emily Dickinson poetry. I used big vocabulary and long sentences. He said he did not understand exactly what I was saying, but that it sounded good, and thus, the high mark. Although I benefited, I do not believe I deserved to do so. The college professor was wrong.
I think of the simple vocabulary of Susan Clark's novel "Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" (just finished reading) and the simple vocabulary of Dostoevsky's classic "The Brother's Karamazov". I tell myself "use small words" and I hope this works. It boggles my mind that so much complexity can be conveyed using small words. If the revelation is true (in my case usually revealing interior memory and perception) then it can be said simply. Its when you are uncertain for what to say that you stretch and find big words to cover for your inadequacy of meaning.
Didn't write yesterday and tomorrow is Church, so don't plan to write tomorrow. Had some emotional difficulty yesterday, just felt low spirited. I fixed myself with sweets. Bought chocolate and a cheese danish. The sugar made me feel tired, stupid, and compliant with life. I wanted to live but it was a doped feeling. Felt secure. Felt safe. Felt comforted.
Had a session with Jim yesterday and it only seemed to make matters worse. He said to me "my homework for you is to have fun. Watch Comedy Central". I told him that the last fun thing I had done was to go bowling. He said, go bowling more often. I also reminded him that I don't have television, although I do have access to a lot of comedy movies. The reading of my Emily Dickinson biography is dull, the author is currently going through all of Emily's teachers and posing what effects they might have had on the girl. Inter-spaced are snippets of her writing at ages 11 and 12, that to the author's mind, show great promise and are impossible for most 11 and 12 years old to write. Me, being me, thought "goodness, I don't write prose like that, never have, never will - I am so dull compared to Emily Dickinson!" It is sometimes hard for me to read genius because I compare myself to it and come up short.
I sometimes wish dearly that I was genius. Plain different. On a whole different level. Obviously talented. Personally, I rate myself mediocre. I'm in the middle of a huge crowd of writers. I imagine that people read my blog and then break off and never read it again because I've failed to be interesting. Even people who love me, my brother and sister, I suspect fail to read my blog because it is boring. Can I manage to capture the human condition? Or will I write merely to exercise personal demons. My novel won't speak to anyone else but me. This is my fear.
Ah, I've titled this entry "Victory". How soon I experience defeat. And all at my own hand. There is no one who can injure me and reduce me to the smallest person other than myself. I started this writing with glee, and now and hour later I belittle myself. There is something wrong with me.
Yesterday Jim said, "The people who anger those who work in the hospital the most are the borderlines." I had just told him that my therapist in the Institute was exasperated and perplexed and yes, angry, that I wasn't getting better faster. Now, next week, I have to go back to Jim and ask him "Were you suggesting that I've got a borderline personality?" Perhaps I need him to explain to me what he thinks one is, but if he thinks I've got one, I'll be pissed off. I suffer from depression, not a personality disorder. I'm so violently against this diagnosis that I may wish to stop working with Jim if he thinks this is what is wrong with me. Oh I won't leave him, not really, I've got no place to go, but I will have to hold back from insulting his person. "Incompetent noodlehead" is the phrase that I imagine spitting out. And I will offer a letter from my past psychiatrist, seen for 12 years, denying this diagnosis. I will write to her.
In the meantime, I may do some research on the internet to determine that I don't suffer from a borderline personality disorder. I can diagnose myself perfectly well. Always have been able to, always will be able to.
My explanation for why my therapist at the Institute was pissed at me? She was evil. She was blaming the victim. I had no emotional rapport with her what-so-ever except for me to be a good patient and to answer any question she posed for me. I laid myself bare for her and I got thinly veiled impatience for an answer.
I will be standing in the middle of a cross-road if Jim gives me a diagnosis of borderline. I will be at a loss of how to work with him.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Plum Pudding
Just finished a chapter of my book. It is the scene where everyone participates in group therapy in the hospital. 51 pages of group therapy. Now I go back and re-write it changing the point of view from first person (my heroine Rachael) to third person omniscient. That is what my dream told me to do. I have never done this type of exercise before and I have no idea how difficult it may be. Once the chapter has been re-written I will show it to my husband to read. That is the real test I'm curious about; will the chapter sustain his interest or will it bore him? Don't want to think about the horror of boring him. It is the same as crashing failure. So far I've managed not to do this, even though, I'm writing the type of literature that my husband never reads. Oh once he characterized my writing as something like a book you get assigned to in school. It was both a compliment (good literature) and a complaint (boring literature).
We've been having snow, that at the current moment, has turned into rain. It is predicted more snow tomorrow. The dog is having problem with snow falling off the roof. I assume that from the dog's point of view it is like the sky is falling. She shakes, she whines, and she tries to get up into the bed with us sleeping in it.
It is of utmost importance that my husband every night get his 7 hours of sleep. He earns the paycheck that we both survive on. I have a memory that one night when he did not get enough sleep he called in sick to work. So lesson learned. I don't want him to lose pay - sick days are days of no pay. I try, in my wifely way, to give my husband no excuse not to go to work. And I honestly think that my husband's days of tireless energy are gone, both as a result of his mental breakdown eight years ago and simple old age. He is not the man he used to be. He has his limits, and sleep apparently, keeps him feeling sane.
So when the dog acts up I turn on the heat in the rest of the apartment and take the dog with me to sleep on the couch in the kitchen. Last time we did this I had to put a chair in front of the bedroom door. The dog was determined to get back into the bedroom where my husband was sleeping and get into bed with him or perhaps, crawl under the bed. The dog obsessively worked at tipping the chair over and getting at the bedroom door. When the chair tipped (this happened twice, and a dog never forgets when it has succeeded at something) I had to wake up (the chair would bang when it fell over) and pull the dog away from the door and put the chair back. That night I got 4 hours of sleep.
The next day, after my husband had left for work, I tried to go back to sleep to make up for what I had missed. This time I slept in the bed and let the dog hide under the bed. Eventually she heard some snow fall off the roof and woke me trying to get up on the bed. This time I let her. She would curl herself near my head, some part of her trembling, panting, body touching mine. It was too foreign a sensation, I couldn't sleep again. But I existed in near sleep, and I find, that there is something very romantic about having a big furry body so close. While sleep eluded me, I felt very tenderly toward my poor dog. Apparently I, and the bed, is a source of comfort in her mind.
Tomorrow night, while we are expecting a storm, we will try a new tactic. We will move Plum's kennel (a large wire cage) from the mud room which is unheated into the kitchen and cover it with blankets. We will create a large, snug cave for the dog and lock her in it. My husband reminded me that we have tried this before with success - it allowed me to sleep through the night on the sofa. Hopefully Plum slept in the kennel. That I am on the kitchen sofa and not in the bedroom with my husband is for the comfort of the dog, to give her some creature company.
I am currently reading a biography of the poet Emily Dickinson. I was pleased to read in the introduction, that the man writing the biography, finds some of her poems incomprehensible. So do I. But I had always assumed that this was simply because I was not smart enough to figure them out. The biographer seems to believe that she really did write for herself, a diary of her interior experience, and that incomprehensibility is a result of trying to record a subjective and very personal view point.
It further amazes me that incomprehensibility does not turn me off. I am intrigued by what I don't understand instead of bored. Some of Dickinson's poems are tantalizing, they are like the soft focus of an impressionist painting. I am content with half understanding. I am content with mystery. I can love a poem even not knowing exactly what it is about. This gives me a further hope - a long shot - that I may become a more spiritual person in the future.
The two most spiritual people I know, my mother and my husband, both possess a degree of certainty that I don't have. They simply know that there is a God and they feel the presence of God in their lives every day. From my perspective they are beyond having faith. They don't question, they don't seek, they don't fumble very much. They feel guided. They feel accompanied. They feel a whole range of emotions, and they do have their difficult times, but religion is not something that is on the table to be messed with. Other issues perplex them - not religion. To me this is like having a safety net. You can walk on the high wire of life and know that if you fall something will catch you. How much anxiety this would take away from me!
I am an avid collector of other people's religious experiences. I wonder at stories of wonder. I love near death stories, and psychic stories. I love what some would dismiss as the wanderings of an unconscious mind. I want to believe beyond Freud and beyond modern science. I want to break from the traditional narrow minded teachings of my doctor father and become a daughter who has moved into uncharted territory. I wish to leave childhood I was raised in behind and find a childhood of new thought to play in. I was once a believer, than an angry atheist, and now, am I a believer again? If I could be a believer I think I would not struggle so with painful thoughts of suicide. All clues point toward a relationship with God having as part of it a zest for life. I wish to choose life and choose God. It would be so much more easy for me if God came nearer to me and showed a little more of Himself to me. But until then (an it may never happen) I have to be satisfied with seeing God through the lens of others who He is immediate to.
Emily Dickinson was a very religious person. I hope her biographer goes into this part of her personality. So many of her poems are about life after death and celebrating life in Nature. Nature really tickled her fancy. I think Dickinson was primarily a positive person.
I believe that I have come to a position in life where I am surrounded by positive people. Many of these people come through church, although, some are in the sub-world of the mentally ill.
The most positive of them all though is my husband. It shows you how stubborn depression is when it is so difficult for his cheer to rub off on me. Although usually, eventually, it does. He does have the knack of eventually making me smile. Every day I am so eager for him to come home from work. When he comes home from work he breezes into my life and lifts me up with joy. Oh, how I watch the clock right before he comes home. Even as I write, I'm doing it right now. Calculating the time before I see him again!
We've been having snow, that at the current moment, has turned into rain. It is predicted more snow tomorrow. The dog is having problem with snow falling off the roof. I assume that from the dog's point of view it is like the sky is falling. She shakes, she whines, and she tries to get up into the bed with us sleeping in it.
It is of utmost importance that my husband every night get his 7 hours of sleep. He earns the paycheck that we both survive on. I have a memory that one night when he did not get enough sleep he called in sick to work. So lesson learned. I don't want him to lose pay - sick days are days of no pay. I try, in my wifely way, to give my husband no excuse not to go to work. And I honestly think that my husband's days of tireless energy are gone, both as a result of his mental breakdown eight years ago and simple old age. He is not the man he used to be. He has his limits, and sleep apparently, keeps him feeling sane.
So when the dog acts up I turn on the heat in the rest of the apartment and take the dog with me to sleep on the couch in the kitchen. Last time we did this I had to put a chair in front of the bedroom door. The dog was determined to get back into the bedroom where my husband was sleeping and get into bed with him or perhaps, crawl under the bed. The dog obsessively worked at tipping the chair over and getting at the bedroom door. When the chair tipped (this happened twice, and a dog never forgets when it has succeeded at something) I had to wake up (the chair would bang when it fell over) and pull the dog away from the door and put the chair back. That night I got 4 hours of sleep.
The next day, after my husband had left for work, I tried to go back to sleep to make up for what I had missed. This time I slept in the bed and let the dog hide under the bed. Eventually she heard some snow fall off the roof and woke me trying to get up on the bed. This time I let her. She would curl herself near my head, some part of her trembling, panting, body touching mine. It was too foreign a sensation, I couldn't sleep again. But I existed in near sleep, and I find, that there is something very romantic about having a big furry body so close. While sleep eluded me, I felt very tenderly toward my poor dog. Apparently I, and the bed, is a source of comfort in her mind.
Tomorrow night, while we are expecting a storm, we will try a new tactic. We will move Plum's kennel (a large wire cage) from the mud room which is unheated into the kitchen and cover it with blankets. We will create a large, snug cave for the dog and lock her in it. My husband reminded me that we have tried this before with success - it allowed me to sleep through the night on the sofa. Hopefully Plum slept in the kennel. That I am on the kitchen sofa and not in the bedroom with my husband is for the comfort of the dog, to give her some creature company.
I am currently reading a biography of the poet Emily Dickinson. I was pleased to read in the introduction, that the man writing the biography, finds some of her poems incomprehensible. So do I. But I had always assumed that this was simply because I was not smart enough to figure them out. The biographer seems to believe that she really did write for herself, a diary of her interior experience, and that incomprehensibility is a result of trying to record a subjective and very personal view point.
It further amazes me that incomprehensibility does not turn me off. I am intrigued by what I don't understand instead of bored. Some of Dickinson's poems are tantalizing, they are like the soft focus of an impressionist painting. I am content with half understanding. I am content with mystery. I can love a poem even not knowing exactly what it is about. This gives me a further hope - a long shot - that I may become a more spiritual person in the future.
The two most spiritual people I know, my mother and my husband, both possess a degree of certainty that I don't have. They simply know that there is a God and they feel the presence of God in their lives every day. From my perspective they are beyond having faith. They don't question, they don't seek, they don't fumble very much. They feel guided. They feel accompanied. They feel a whole range of emotions, and they do have their difficult times, but religion is not something that is on the table to be messed with. Other issues perplex them - not religion. To me this is like having a safety net. You can walk on the high wire of life and know that if you fall something will catch you. How much anxiety this would take away from me!
I am an avid collector of other people's religious experiences. I wonder at stories of wonder. I love near death stories, and psychic stories. I love what some would dismiss as the wanderings of an unconscious mind. I want to believe beyond Freud and beyond modern science. I want to break from the traditional narrow minded teachings of my doctor father and become a daughter who has moved into uncharted territory. I wish to leave childhood I was raised in behind and find a childhood of new thought to play in. I was once a believer, than an angry atheist, and now, am I a believer again? If I could be a believer I think I would not struggle so with painful thoughts of suicide. All clues point toward a relationship with God having as part of it a zest for life. I wish to choose life and choose God. It would be so much more easy for me if God came nearer to me and showed a little more of Himself to me. But until then (an it may never happen) I have to be satisfied with seeing God through the lens of others who He is immediate to.
Emily Dickinson was a very religious person. I hope her biographer goes into this part of her personality. So many of her poems are about life after death and celebrating life in Nature. Nature really tickled her fancy. I think Dickinson was primarily a positive person.
I believe that I have come to a position in life where I am surrounded by positive people. Many of these people come through church, although, some are in the sub-world of the mentally ill.
The most positive of them all though is my husband. It shows you how stubborn depression is when it is so difficult for his cheer to rub off on me. Although usually, eventually, it does. He does have the knack of eventually making me smile. Every day I am so eager for him to come home from work. When he comes home from work he breezes into my life and lifts me up with joy. Oh, how I watch the clock right before he comes home. Even as I write, I'm doing it right now. Calculating the time before I see him again!
Monday, February 22, 2010
Saints and the Thrift Store
Wrote for a good three hours today. Surprised I have any energy left to write this blog. But have been having the most peculiar sleeping patterns. I take my medication each night at 6 or 7pm. Yet last night feel asleep at 7:30pm, the night before at 3:30am. Needless to say, after falling asleep in the wee hours of morning I skipped church because it meant that I would have to get up at 9am, and on less then six hours of sleep, I would be very dopey. So instead of church I slept until almost 1pm. I loath being out in public and having an altered consciousness. Sick or sleepy or medicated I prefer all to endure in private. But this means two weeks in a row I have gone without attending church.
I have very mixed feelings about what I am writing about. I am literally making up a definition of what makes a Saint a Saint. I've finished writing about the types that make it into a mental institution. Point was to detail all the different kinds of people you can find, and yet, you won't find a saint in a mental institution. Will eventually have to go back and add quite a bit to the type that I belong to, namely, the broken, neglected and abused. I haven't been broken, neglected or abused in about 10 to 20 years, so it is a category that I fit into long, long ago. The problem with my description is that it is too short and it is too fantastical. The two paranoid schizophrenics I know both talk sense. They are both kind, dignified people. But perhaps when they were in the hospital they talked nonsense. The recovery that people can make after a hospitalization is enormous. Not in terms of regaining their former place in society though. Only in terms of living a happy life. Usually it has to be a widely simplified life from what they knew before.
I don't think Jim the therapist is going to like my definition of a Saint. He sees everything in terms of the unconscious mind. I say, what happens to a Saint occurs with outside intercession. It isn't the God within appearing, it is the God without conferring. I'm not saying that they (the Saints) are more human, I'm saying that they are less human, and that it is a good thing to be less human, because humans are, as a whole, a nasty and selfish lot. I believe I view myself as a nasty and selfish person. Oh, how I think about the crystal Swarovski brooch I bought for myself for a birthday gift in January, and how it cost, too much money - especially for something so rarely worn. I was selfish, pure and simple. My husband does not see me this way, but oh, I know myself and I am.
Money and how it is spent is on my mind lately because my husband's laptop computer seems to be broken. The screen died. My husband claims the computer itself is working perfectly, all we need do is buy a monitor. I'm thinking, just bite the bullet and buy a whole new thing instead of paying out piece by piece as they die off and need to be replaced. He's been telling me that the hard-drive has been making noise and might go any time. So after the monitor, is this the next thing that will need to be bought?
I think we need to buy him a new computer. We just calculated our tax return and it is twice what my husband estimated the first time he (incorrectly) filled out this year's taxes. Last night we both sat down at the table and I went over every single one of his numbers. I'm proud we could do the taxes ourselves, but let me tell you, it was a joint effort. He managed to get the right numbers in the end, but between, he was lousy. Used a lot of white out.
Thank goodness for the money that is coming in. My computer is working perfectly but then, how long do laptops usually last? I've had this one for three years. How long before I need a new laptop? Laptops are essential in this household, they get used every day. We do the creative work that best defines our very selves on laptops. I'm hoping that because I only use mine to surf the internet and do word processing that somehow I'm not stressing it like my husband stresses his doing visual work.
In the back of our mind we are always asking ourselves the question; are we saving up for a new car? Our car only has 52,000 miles on it, and we don't drive it much, but still, when we need to buy a new car, can we afford one? We aren't making the gains in our savings that we once predicted we would make. And this is mostly because of small spending. Myself, I need to switch to buying thrift store clothing again. I've gotten the worst habit of loving Banana Republic and Nordstrom clothing.
Yesterday I told my husband that all our car worries would be over if I could just sell a book. Estimates on how long its going to take to finish this book? Three years at a steady pace. Maybe five years to make it really excellent. And yet, in my heart, although I know it can get finished, I have no way of knowing if it is brilliant or trash. I've read my husband's great, 6 year novel and I pronounce that it is both brilliant and trash and unpublishable. So I know extremes of talent can be found within one book. And I know that you can write your heart out and still not get published.
Yesterday I despaired and said maybe I should stop church activities and instead concentrate on writing the book. My husband thought that doing this would mean a return of a wife that contemplated suicide too much. It is hard to know what supports one's existence or what gets in one's way. Funny that the two seem so similar. I needed church once, and now that I feel I no longer need it, is this because its working and that is why I feel so free to drop it? Do you start hunting around for a different husband just as soon as you are certain that you love and can't live without the one you have? In me is a struggle to preserve the preciousness of that I have become accustomed to. It seems that for me familiarity breeds contempt. For instance, lately we have been taking the dog on long walks. Do I need a second dog, as I dream of, (but know we can't afford) or do I just need to take better care of the one dog I have and brush her long coat before it snarls? In some ways I'm thankful that I'm a slave to this book, I definitely need to be subjugated and slowed down, walked all over, and thoroughly confounded. I know the truth of the matter in my heart. Nothing in my life need be changed. I just need to do everything with a grain more passion. Love my husband more. Love my dog more. Love my book more. Love my church more. And consume less. Return to the thrift store.
I have very mixed feelings about what I am writing about. I am literally making up a definition of what makes a Saint a Saint. I've finished writing about the types that make it into a mental institution. Point was to detail all the different kinds of people you can find, and yet, you won't find a saint in a mental institution. Will eventually have to go back and add quite a bit to the type that I belong to, namely, the broken, neglected and abused. I haven't been broken, neglected or abused in about 10 to 20 years, so it is a category that I fit into long, long ago. The problem with my description is that it is too short and it is too fantastical. The two paranoid schizophrenics I know both talk sense. They are both kind, dignified people. But perhaps when they were in the hospital they talked nonsense. The recovery that people can make after a hospitalization is enormous. Not in terms of regaining their former place in society though. Only in terms of living a happy life. Usually it has to be a widely simplified life from what they knew before.
I don't think Jim the therapist is going to like my definition of a Saint. He sees everything in terms of the unconscious mind. I say, what happens to a Saint occurs with outside intercession. It isn't the God within appearing, it is the God without conferring. I'm not saying that they (the Saints) are more human, I'm saying that they are less human, and that it is a good thing to be less human, because humans are, as a whole, a nasty and selfish lot. I believe I view myself as a nasty and selfish person. Oh, how I think about the crystal Swarovski brooch I bought for myself for a birthday gift in January, and how it cost, too much money - especially for something so rarely worn. I was selfish, pure and simple. My husband does not see me this way, but oh, I know myself and I am.
Money and how it is spent is on my mind lately because my husband's laptop computer seems to be broken. The screen died. My husband claims the computer itself is working perfectly, all we need do is buy a monitor. I'm thinking, just bite the bullet and buy a whole new thing instead of paying out piece by piece as they die off and need to be replaced. He's been telling me that the hard-drive has been making noise and might go any time. So after the monitor, is this the next thing that will need to be bought?
I think we need to buy him a new computer. We just calculated our tax return and it is twice what my husband estimated the first time he (incorrectly) filled out this year's taxes. Last night we both sat down at the table and I went over every single one of his numbers. I'm proud we could do the taxes ourselves, but let me tell you, it was a joint effort. He managed to get the right numbers in the end, but between, he was lousy. Used a lot of white out.
Thank goodness for the money that is coming in. My computer is working perfectly but then, how long do laptops usually last? I've had this one for three years. How long before I need a new laptop? Laptops are essential in this household, they get used every day. We do the creative work that best defines our very selves on laptops. I'm hoping that because I only use mine to surf the internet and do word processing that somehow I'm not stressing it like my husband stresses his doing visual work.
In the back of our mind we are always asking ourselves the question; are we saving up for a new car? Our car only has 52,000 miles on it, and we don't drive it much, but still, when we need to buy a new car, can we afford one? We aren't making the gains in our savings that we once predicted we would make. And this is mostly because of small spending. Myself, I need to switch to buying thrift store clothing again. I've gotten the worst habit of loving Banana Republic and Nordstrom clothing.
Yesterday I told my husband that all our car worries would be over if I could just sell a book. Estimates on how long its going to take to finish this book? Three years at a steady pace. Maybe five years to make it really excellent. And yet, in my heart, although I know it can get finished, I have no way of knowing if it is brilliant or trash. I've read my husband's great, 6 year novel and I pronounce that it is both brilliant and trash and unpublishable. So I know extremes of talent can be found within one book. And I know that you can write your heart out and still not get published.
Yesterday I despaired and said maybe I should stop church activities and instead concentrate on writing the book. My husband thought that doing this would mean a return of a wife that contemplated suicide too much. It is hard to know what supports one's existence or what gets in one's way. Funny that the two seem so similar. I needed church once, and now that I feel I no longer need it, is this because its working and that is why I feel so free to drop it? Do you start hunting around for a different husband just as soon as you are certain that you love and can't live without the one you have? In me is a struggle to preserve the preciousness of that I have become accustomed to. It seems that for me familiarity breeds contempt. For instance, lately we have been taking the dog on long walks. Do I need a second dog, as I dream of, (but know we can't afford) or do I just need to take better care of the one dog I have and brush her long coat before it snarls? In some ways I'm thankful that I'm a slave to this book, I definitely need to be subjugated and slowed down, walked all over, and thoroughly confounded. I know the truth of the matter in my heart. Nothing in my life need be changed. I just need to do everything with a grain more passion. Love my husband more. Love my dog more. Love my book more. Love my church more. And consume less. Return to the thrift store.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Follow the Leader
Yesterday was difficult. I was reading a lot of on line stories about Alexander McQueen and people who were interviewed talking about. This is what one socialite and writer said about him;
"I don't think success was easy for him," friend Plum Sykes wrote in the Sunday Telegraph this week. "He told me he was driven by his insecurities, and he believed that all successful people were."
There were details in the news articles that McQueen hung himself in a wardrobe and left a suicide note. It boggles my mind that someone so accomplished should throw life away. So it helped, a little, to hear someone speak of him as being insecure. My instinct tells me that he made a mistake. Suicide is a mistake. If he could have made it through his mother's funeral, cried himself into incoherence, then he would have lived and continued with his work.
One article mentioned the fashionista Isabella Blow and that she had been a friend of McQueen's and had committed suicide three years earlier. So I looked up Blow and read about her life and death.
Then it came time to take my morning medication. My pills are arranged in a little plastic box according to day. I can tell at a glance if I've taken my morning dose or forgotten it. I refill the box once a week. Last week I ran out of my narcotic Klonopin and had to order more from the pharmacy. I order a three month supply. That's 360 pills. I opened the new bottle yesterday, looked at what it contained, and immediately thought that it was enough to kill myself with. I couldn't shake the fantasy throughout the rest of the day. It became an obsession.
I thought, since McQueen killed himself, I should kill myself too. It felt like playing follow the leader. I was not particularly sad or depressed, at least, not more than usual. It just felt right that you should follow the example that someone you admires sets. I told my husband that it felt like McQueen was somehow closer to God than me. My husband pointed out that if you commit suicide you are probably feeling cut off from God.
In my work on the book I'm at a particularly difficult point. It is fun but it is very challenging. I'm trying to describe all the different types of people you find in a mental hospital. So far I've got the broken, the neglected, and the abused. I've got the posers and the pretenders. And I've got the petty criminals and the self-proclaimed victims. I'm naming the types because I'm trying to prove a thesis statement; that you don't find saints in a mental hospital. Haven't yet written about saints. These thoughts about who you might find in a mental hospital are all in the mind of a social worker who is incapable (she knows it) of loving strangers. Her eyes are judgmental and not kind.
I'm really lucky that the Catholic Church has never proclaimed a saint who spent time in a mental institution. Saints are definitely weird people, not like the rest of us. But because they aren't like the rest of us, they don't suffer craziness like the rest of us. They may be eccentric, and they may be protected by the Church, but they are more likely to be killed then to be medically treated.
I guess, while I was thinking about following McQueen, life felt unreal. I simply did not feel connected to the people in my life, like my husband and family, or the friends at the Church and peer support. I did feel connected to my writing, but the enormity of the project - that it will take several years, that it can be so difficult, - made me weary. I get world weary. I go through the motions of staying busy and try to keep my mind occupied. If my mind is occupied then I don't think about suicide. It is a life built around trying to stay alive and not think about suicide.
The night when thoughts of McQueen got really bad I put a movie on and watched it. Since his death I haven't been able to get on the tread mill. So this movie was watched in bed. It had no sex, no violence, and no special effects in it. It was "Pride and Prejudice" - a love story based on the book by Jane Austin. Oh, there was a final kissing scene at the very end, presumably after the heroes have gotten married. That is the final point to all her novels, getting married.
The movie helped me. It soothed me. It said, "Life is so you can have these little sweet experiences". McQueen is currently unable to. Every little sweet earthly experience is lost to McQueen forever. Even the tiniest.
This morning I brought my dog inside from her morning bathroom break outside. As I closed the outside door, the inner door opened, and for a brief moment both doors were open. The kitchen curtain fluttered. In my mind I imagined that the movement of the kitchen curtain was our gray cat sneaking outside. I did not, in that moment, know what was real or what was not. The cat should not be outside in the cold and snow. Once the cat left us for five weeks. The cat is not allowed anymore outside, but I know, she would like to go outside. I was relieved when, after taking off my coat and heating up a cup of coffee, I looked at the closed bedroom door and saw the cat and the dog sitting outside of it waiting to get inside. The bedroom is where we have an electric heater going all the time. The animals know that is where it is warm and on a winter day, we will, two cats, a dog and myself, all four of us, be inside enjoying the heat. The joy of our gathering is small. But it is real.
Choose life.
"I don't think success was easy for him," friend Plum Sykes wrote in the Sunday Telegraph this week. "He told me he was driven by his insecurities, and he believed that all successful people were."
There were details in the news articles that McQueen hung himself in a wardrobe and left a suicide note. It boggles my mind that someone so accomplished should throw life away. So it helped, a little, to hear someone speak of him as being insecure. My instinct tells me that he made a mistake. Suicide is a mistake. If he could have made it through his mother's funeral, cried himself into incoherence, then he would have lived and continued with his work.
One article mentioned the fashionista Isabella Blow and that she had been a friend of McQueen's and had committed suicide three years earlier. So I looked up Blow and read about her life and death.
Then it came time to take my morning medication. My pills are arranged in a little plastic box according to day. I can tell at a glance if I've taken my morning dose or forgotten it. I refill the box once a week. Last week I ran out of my narcotic Klonopin and had to order more from the pharmacy. I order a three month supply. That's 360 pills. I opened the new bottle yesterday, looked at what it contained, and immediately thought that it was enough to kill myself with. I couldn't shake the fantasy throughout the rest of the day. It became an obsession.
I thought, since McQueen killed himself, I should kill myself too. It felt like playing follow the leader. I was not particularly sad or depressed, at least, not more than usual. It just felt right that you should follow the example that someone you admires sets. I told my husband that it felt like McQueen was somehow closer to God than me. My husband pointed out that if you commit suicide you are probably feeling cut off from God.
In my work on the book I'm at a particularly difficult point. It is fun but it is very challenging. I'm trying to describe all the different types of people you find in a mental hospital. So far I've got the broken, the neglected, and the abused. I've got the posers and the pretenders. And I've got the petty criminals and the self-proclaimed victims. I'm naming the types because I'm trying to prove a thesis statement; that you don't find saints in a mental hospital. Haven't yet written about saints. These thoughts about who you might find in a mental hospital are all in the mind of a social worker who is incapable (she knows it) of loving strangers. Her eyes are judgmental and not kind.
I'm really lucky that the Catholic Church has never proclaimed a saint who spent time in a mental institution. Saints are definitely weird people, not like the rest of us. But because they aren't like the rest of us, they don't suffer craziness like the rest of us. They may be eccentric, and they may be protected by the Church, but they are more likely to be killed then to be medically treated.
I guess, while I was thinking about following McQueen, life felt unreal. I simply did not feel connected to the people in my life, like my husband and family, or the friends at the Church and peer support. I did feel connected to my writing, but the enormity of the project - that it will take several years, that it can be so difficult, - made me weary. I get world weary. I go through the motions of staying busy and try to keep my mind occupied. If my mind is occupied then I don't think about suicide. It is a life built around trying to stay alive and not think about suicide.
The night when thoughts of McQueen got really bad I put a movie on and watched it. Since his death I haven't been able to get on the tread mill. So this movie was watched in bed. It had no sex, no violence, and no special effects in it. It was "Pride and Prejudice" - a love story based on the book by Jane Austin. Oh, there was a final kissing scene at the very end, presumably after the heroes have gotten married. That is the final point to all her novels, getting married.
The movie helped me. It soothed me. It said, "Life is so you can have these little sweet experiences". McQueen is currently unable to. Every little sweet earthly experience is lost to McQueen forever. Even the tiniest.
This morning I brought my dog inside from her morning bathroom break outside. As I closed the outside door, the inner door opened, and for a brief moment both doors were open. The kitchen curtain fluttered. In my mind I imagined that the movement of the kitchen curtain was our gray cat sneaking outside. I did not, in that moment, know what was real or what was not. The cat should not be outside in the cold and snow. Once the cat left us for five weeks. The cat is not allowed anymore outside, but I know, she would like to go outside. I was relieved when, after taking off my coat and heating up a cup of coffee, I looked at the closed bedroom door and saw the cat and the dog sitting outside of it waiting to get inside. The bedroom is where we have an electric heater going all the time. The animals know that is where it is warm and on a winter day, we will, two cats, a dog and myself, all four of us, be inside enjoying the heat. The joy of our gathering is small. But it is real.
Choose life.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Valentine's Day
Last night went bowling. Hadn't been bowling since I was a young girl. I believe we went duck pin bowling for a birthday party when I was about 10 years old. Last night I most certainly made everything up as I went along. Didn't have a single notion as to what was proper to do with my body as I bowled. Had to be instructed how to fit my fingers in the bowling ball holes.
My husband said that I was throwing the ball and that someone was going to come and tell me to stop, I might ruin the wood on the bowling lane. But then the loud music started, and the lights dimmed, and the colored lights started spinning, and the bowling ally filled with laughing people, and he must have thought, "no one cares that Karen is throwing the ball".
I actually beat one of my husband's scores. That was when I bowled two strikes. My husband learned how to bowl in school. The kids got on the school bus and were bussed to a bowling lane for physical education. It was very amusing to watch him be so serious about his bowling form. Usually at the last minute, he put so much push on the ball, that his feet slipped from under him and he nearly toppled over. It happened again and again. He complained the lane was slippery.
I looked at his back, standing so still, considering the lane in front of him, all focus, and for once I saw him in a serious mood. It is not so often that I see my husband in a serious mood. He is very attractive when he is serious. He bowled about one game seriously trying to win, and then, he bought a beer. After the beer, when he stood and held his bowling ball and considered the lane in front of him his hips wiggled a little in time with the music and he danced while he bowled. Dancing was disastrous for his score. When he danced, and ignored the bowling form that he had learned in school as a child, he rolled gutter balls.
I said to my husband, "Don't dance when you bowl" but the woman we were there with (another couple) said, "he's having fun". And of course she was right. I was so mixed up as to whether or not to compete or to have fun that I prayed to God to just let me hit the pins and not throw gutter balls. I must have a competitive personality. Out of the four of us I didn't want to be the low score. I wanted the woman from the other couple to bowl the low score. And rotten me, when she bowled well, I was disappointed. I tried hard not to wish her ill luck. But there was a little devil in me speaking.
The bowling was one price for 9pm until 12am. The other couple we bowled with met us at a Friendly's restaurant at 8pm and we all had ice cream and coffee before we bowled.
I did not get to sleep until a little after 2am. But while my husband was snoring, I left the bedroom and set up on his computer his valentine gifts. There was the Tibetan prayer rug with two fishes which was the big surprise. It is small and there is a specific place for it. It fits on top of his pine witch box underneath his computer. I draped the prayer rug over the top of his computer so he would see it when he wakes. Then there was a heart shaped red candy box with a green dinosaur with googly eyes that moved that says "Valentine, you're Dino-mite!", a bag of Werther's candy that he likes to suck on, and a card. This year I went not for the big message card, but for the card with the best picture on it. It had a picture of two puppies asleep with their heads next to one another. Inside I wrote "You're my best buddy" and "Love you forever".
I received a stuffed toy puppy dog, very cute, and chocolates. A whole mess of different kinds of chocolates in a festive bag with pink tissue paper. I am currently, after one day of eating chocolates, dreaming of biting into an apple. A fresh, crisp, apple. And maybe eating a little bit of grilled chicken. There is such a thing as eating too much chocolate where you begin to dream of other foods.
About three weeks ago my husband and I bought a silver necklace in an antique store. This purchase was understood to be an early Valentine's Day gift. The necklace has spokes that fan out like rays of the sun. It is very substantial, a lot of silver, and I feel like Cleopatra when I wear it.
In honor of the holiday I changed the table cloth on the kitchen table to from one that is green to one that is red. On top is a fancy strip of embroidered black cloth, and on top of the cloth there is a fat red candle in a glass hurricane shaped container. Today I dashed to the grocery store to buy several red carnations to put in the small Waterford crystal rose bowl that my husband and I received from my father as a wedding gift. There were tons of flowers at the grocery store, but the prices they were charging! One carnation was $1.50 and one red rose was $3.99. Never mind how much a bouquet of flowers cost. I suppose for the man who wants to impress his woman price does not matter. On Valentine's Day the man is a little desperate. You are under the gun to prove your love. I really wanted flowers on my beautiful table so I bit the bullet and bought four carnations, all different shades of red. A carnation is a flower that lasts a long time.
When I was bowling I looked around at all the happy people and I thought to myself "I have a schizophrenic illness, but look, I am enjoying myself out in public! No one could ever guess at the secret I contain." And I felt pretty. I wore a designer cream cashmere sweater that I bought long ago when I had money from Neiman Marcus and light blue torn jeans. On the drive home my husband said to me that I looked like I was in my early thirties, tops. Truth is, I'm 42. But all of the dieting I have been doing paid off last night. I was not the thinnest girl there, but I had a normal figure. And when you have felt overweight for so long, being normal, feels like the sweetest high. My hair was long and fluffy because I had taken a shower just several hours before we left the house.
I think that I shall ask my husband to take all the left over chocolate with him tomorrow to work and distribute it to his co-workers, or save it for himself as a snack. I want to continue my diet tomorrow. The gift of candy was appreciated, as a gesture, but I really don't want to eat it all. My husband sought to overwhelm me, and this he did. From an economic point of view my husband may find it frustrating that all the candy is returned to him - he will feel like he wasted money - but my eye is on a prize.
I have a goal to fit into the next smaller size jeans by Easter. Easter will be celebrated by visiting with family, and I would like to show off a smaller size to them. I also will change the kitchen table again at Easter, putting on what type of table cloth I do not know yet. But there will most certainly be a new candle holder or stick that co-ordinates with the table cloth. I can always use something I already have, don't have to buy anything new. But I think I will look and plan.
I love having a pretty, decorated house. I would be devastated if my dwelling were destroyed by fire. The objects I own come from decades of patient collection. I think that I refused to try to sell the last two paintings I painted because I wanted them to decorate the kitchen walls. They mean more to me than money. A colorful, decorated living space is a joy to live in. I'm definitely not a minimalist. I would prefer to have someone else's beautiful paintings rather than my own hanging in my house. There is such a thing as being too surrounded by one's own ego. Seeing myself reflected back at myself is not my idea of comfort. I like other people's vision besides my own. But I like quality. I like to be impressed. And quality costs money. So until I can afford the quality of what I paint myself, I have to be satisfied with only myself.
My husband said that I was throwing the ball and that someone was going to come and tell me to stop, I might ruin the wood on the bowling lane. But then the loud music started, and the lights dimmed, and the colored lights started spinning, and the bowling ally filled with laughing people, and he must have thought, "no one cares that Karen is throwing the ball".
I actually beat one of my husband's scores. That was when I bowled two strikes. My husband learned how to bowl in school. The kids got on the school bus and were bussed to a bowling lane for physical education. It was very amusing to watch him be so serious about his bowling form. Usually at the last minute, he put so much push on the ball, that his feet slipped from under him and he nearly toppled over. It happened again and again. He complained the lane was slippery.
I looked at his back, standing so still, considering the lane in front of him, all focus, and for once I saw him in a serious mood. It is not so often that I see my husband in a serious mood. He is very attractive when he is serious. He bowled about one game seriously trying to win, and then, he bought a beer. After the beer, when he stood and held his bowling ball and considered the lane in front of him his hips wiggled a little in time with the music and he danced while he bowled. Dancing was disastrous for his score. When he danced, and ignored the bowling form that he had learned in school as a child, he rolled gutter balls.
I said to my husband, "Don't dance when you bowl" but the woman we were there with (another couple) said, "he's having fun". And of course she was right. I was so mixed up as to whether or not to compete or to have fun that I prayed to God to just let me hit the pins and not throw gutter balls. I must have a competitive personality. Out of the four of us I didn't want to be the low score. I wanted the woman from the other couple to bowl the low score. And rotten me, when she bowled well, I was disappointed. I tried hard not to wish her ill luck. But there was a little devil in me speaking.
The bowling was one price for 9pm until 12am. The other couple we bowled with met us at a Friendly's restaurant at 8pm and we all had ice cream and coffee before we bowled.
I did not get to sleep until a little after 2am. But while my husband was snoring, I left the bedroom and set up on his computer his valentine gifts. There was the Tibetan prayer rug with two fishes which was the big surprise. It is small and there is a specific place for it. It fits on top of his pine witch box underneath his computer. I draped the prayer rug over the top of his computer so he would see it when he wakes. Then there was a heart shaped red candy box with a green dinosaur with googly eyes that moved that says "Valentine, you're Dino-mite!", a bag of Werther's candy that he likes to suck on, and a card. This year I went not for the big message card, but for the card with the best picture on it. It had a picture of two puppies asleep with their heads next to one another. Inside I wrote "You're my best buddy" and "Love you forever".
I received a stuffed toy puppy dog, very cute, and chocolates. A whole mess of different kinds of chocolates in a festive bag with pink tissue paper. I am currently, after one day of eating chocolates, dreaming of biting into an apple. A fresh, crisp, apple. And maybe eating a little bit of grilled chicken. There is such a thing as eating too much chocolate where you begin to dream of other foods.
About three weeks ago my husband and I bought a silver necklace in an antique store. This purchase was understood to be an early Valentine's Day gift. The necklace has spokes that fan out like rays of the sun. It is very substantial, a lot of silver, and I feel like Cleopatra when I wear it.
In honor of the holiday I changed the table cloth on the kitchen table to from one that is green to one that is red. On top is a fancy strip of embroidered black cloth, and on top of the cloth there is a fat red candle in a glass hurricane shaped container. Today I dashed to the grocery store to buy several red carnations to put in the small Waterford crystal rose bowl that my husband and I received from my father as a wedding gift. There were tons of flowers at the grocery store, but the prices they were charging! One carnation was $1.50 and one red rose was $3.99. Never mind how much a bouquet of flowers cost. I suppose for the man who wants to impress his woman price does not matter. On Valentine's Day the man is a little desperate. You are under the gun to prove your love. I really wanted flowers on my beautiful table so I bit the bullet and bought four carnations, all different shades of red. A carnation is a flower that lasts a long time.
When I was bowling I looked around at all the happy people and I thought to myself "I have a schizophrenic illness, but look, I am enjoying myself out in public! No one could ever guess at the secret I contain." And I felt pretty. I wore a designer cream cashmere sweater that I bought long ago when I had money from Neiman Marcus and light blue torn jeans. On the drive home my husband said to me that I looked like I was in my early thirties, tops. Truth is, I'm 42. But all of the dieting I have been doing paid off last night. I was not the thinnest girl there, but I had a normal figure. And when you have felt overweight for so long, being normal, feels like the sweetest high. My hair was long and fluffy because I had taken a shower just several hours before we left the house.
I think that I shall ask my husband to take all the left over chocolate with him tomorrow to work and distribute it to his co-workers, or save it for himself as a snack. I want to continue my diet tomorrow. The gift of candy was appreciated, as a gesture, but I really don't want to eat it all. My husband sought to overwhelm me, and this he did. From an economic point of view my husband may find it frustrating that all the candy is returned to him - he will feel like he wasted money - but my eye is on a prize.
I have a goal to fit into the next smaller size jeans by Easter. Easter will be celebrated by visiting with family, and I would like to show off a smaller size to them. I also will change the kitchen table again at Easter, putting on what type of table cloth I do not know yet. But there will most certainly be a new candle holder or stick that co-ordinates with the table cloth. I can always use something I already have, don't have to buy anything new. But I think I will look and plan.
I love having a pretty, decorated house. I would be devastated if my dwelling were destroyed by fire. The objects I own come from decades of patient collection. I think that I refused to try to sell the last two paintings I painted because I wanted them to decorate the kitchen walls. They mean more to me than money. A colorful, decorated living space is a joy to live in. I'm definitely not a minimalist. I would prefer to have someone else's beautiful paintings rather than my own hanging in my house. There is such a thing as being too surrounded by one's own ego. Seeing myself reflected back at myself is not my idea of comfort. I like other people's vision besides my own. But I like quality. I like to be impressed. And quality costs money. So until I can afford the quality of what I paint myself, I have to be satisfied with only myself.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Alexander McQueen
The truth will come out. One British tabloid said that he hung himself. My therapist thought that he died of a pill overdose. The death was not ruled as suspicious, so I believe, there was a suicide note left behind. The man was making unhappy remarks on Twitter. Anyone who uses Twitter will be prone to leave a suicide note. You will want to communicate with the world.
I've always wanted to own something by the fashion designer Alexander McQueen. I admire him oh so much. Last fall they were selling a hot pink sweater at Neimam Marcus for a little over $300. I saw it online. I knew I couldn't afford it, but I would have liked to have bought it. Later in a grocery store I saw the cover of Glamour magazine with the bleach blond singer Gwen Stefani wearing the sweater. The reason that the sweater was even remotely within my reach was that McQueen had started a second, mass marketed brand of clothing called McQ. Naturally I would never be able to own any of his couture clothing. But after the sale of a book, if I was flush with money, maybe I would be able to afford one item from the McQ brand.
I had done my writing for the day and I checked in at Yahoo news, see if I have any new email, what I always do before I fold up my computer and put it away. And this was when I saw that he was dead at 40. The news articles mentioned that he was upset over the recent death of his mother on February 2nd, and that he had left Twitter remarks like "life must go on!!!!!!!" and "if I can only make it through this week". He had fashion shows coming up. He must have been under pressure. One article said that there is a pressure on a genius to always come up with rave reviews. His last show received rave reviews.
A suicide means something different to everyone, but to someone who has attempted suicide it is a bit like looking in a mirror. I think "I've taken a forbidden path that not many people have taken" and then here is this man McQueen, who took my forbidden path, yet, followed it all the way to the end! There is a feeling that he succeeded where I failed. In a secret part of me, I am in love with death. The end to suffering. An escape from myself, a self that I at times despair over and loath. The girl who tried to kill herself in 1995 and the woman I am now are not quite the same. I have become a bit more accepting of my illness. I am involved in a relationship that puts no pressure on me to be more than who I am. But there is still the feeling that I am a failure at life, and that if I did not have this mental illness, I would not be a failure.
I always assumed, because of my experience, that at the heart of a suicide was a person who felt that they had failed at life. It is hard to imagine that McQueen felt like a failure. The people in the industry used words like "brilliant" and "genius" to describe him. The Queen of England gave him a medal in 2003. He has started learning his trade at the age of 16 so he always knew exactly what he wanted to do. And he was given by the owners of his label great creative latitude. New stores of his were being planned in the largest cities of different countries. He was on the rise.
Part of what binds me to this world is my creative work. I want to live because I want to see my book completed. I want to live because I want to solve this creative challenge I've made for myself. Also, as I write the story, I am curious to see what happens next. I have set a mountain in front of me and it is my task to climb it. The part of me that wants to live wants to stand on the summit and take a look at the view. How will I feel when I am closer to the clouds? When the book is finished, published or not, I will not feel like a failure. I can only assume, because I know myself, that once this mountain is climbed, I will begin to look around for another mountain to climb next. This is a healthy part of my personality that keeps me involved in the process of life.
It is hard to believe that a creative person who knew great success due to their creativity would want to end their life. There is much joy to life that simply being creative gives you. Sometimes I think how lucky I am to write every day. Some days it is not on the book, it is on the blog, and some days it is true I do not write at all, but the majority of the days I write. I am not dreaming about becoming a writer, I am doing it. I have met people who dream about writing a book. Not that they have written a book and hope to get it published, just that they dream about writing! It puzzles me, what is stopping them. Perhaps not wanting it enough. Their life is busy and they don't make the time to be creative. For the type of work that I do you need empty, very alone time to be creative. But perhaps there is fear about the act of creativity. The worry of "will I be good enough not to be laughed at" and "can I get what is in my head out of my head and onto......." whatever it is, paper or canvas.
So did McQueen feel like a failure? Or did he feel a lack of love in his life, especially with the death of his mother? I suppose that for a suicide life feels empty. I take note from McQueen's death - fame can feel empty. It is something I have had my suspicions about anyway. But this death confirms it. Fame will not automatically make your life feel worthy of being lived.
I have to believe that McQueen was depressed and grieving. I know a little bit about depression. Depression strips life of meaning. Depression severs ties to life. People outside of yourself no longer matter. Activities that had brought satisfaction no longer matter. In a deep depression nothing can touch you. And you can't see the future in a depression. Time compresses down to the moment, and the moment is black and empty. In that moment you have tunnel vision, there is one thing you see before you, and that is death. This is the depression of the suicide. I suppose that you can go toward death with feelings of adrenaline and a type of joy. It is joy without happiness. When you want death you want freedom from life. Committing suicide you act with purpose and there may be some relief that in the midst of so much emptiness, at last you have found a purpose. It is the purpose to go though with some act (involving a belt or a knife or pills); it is an act that will end life. The moment seems pregnant with meaning. You say to yourself "This act will end my life" - and it is exciting - thus the small jolt of adrenaline. So you can actually feel good about what you are doing. Not all suicides are crying buckets of sad tears when they commit suicide. Some feel very resolute and determined. The secret joy of a last act in life.
What I felt first, after I read the meager facts gathered right after McQueen's death, was not grief. Hours later I would feel grief and I cried a little bit. I turned very sad and morose. Distant from my husband when he came home from work. He tried to feed me chocolates. But all that came later. What I felt first was a shock and a thrill. It was not a happy thrill. But it was a high. It was excitement. A suicide of a personal hero! I looked into a dark mirror. I felt kinship. I felt close to death. Death not by car accident or plane accident. Death probably not from a heart attack because then the death would be investigated as suspicious and an autopsy would have to be preformed. No, the police knew exactly why McQueen had died, and this said to me the causes were not natural. This was death by choice. Death by his own hand. And a note to curtail the investigator's curiosity. I could look at a suicide but not touch it. And so, it was, morbidly exciting.
I have felt this odd excitement before when our country entered into war. There was a moment, in the first invasion of Iraq, when we were defending Kuwait, that the American people were told; we are now at war. Some invisible geographical line was crossed or the first shots were fired. And the news people were told; this is it. Diplomacy is at an end. Lives are being lost. We shoot with the intent to kill and in return, we are being shot at. Even as I write these words shivers are running down my arms as I remember where I was when I heard, over a loudspeaker in the library, "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now at war." Horror spikes adrenaline. I'm not proud of my reaction. I wish the first reaction was pure grief. But I think that in the few split seconds before grief there is horror. Horror is a primitive emotion. You are shocked into stillness but you are restless. You are sad but you are ready to jump out of your skin. Horror fascinates.
My therapist Jim says that somewhere in Shakespeare there is the perfect suicide. This is how the perfect suicide should proceed.
A blind older man decides that he wishes to commit suicide. He summons his grown son and tells his son that he wishes to be led to the cliffs of Dover so that he can jump off. The son takes his father into a field. He tells his father that they are at the very edge of the cliffs of Dover. The father jumps. He jumps and then he falls flat onto the ground.
My therapist says that the old man got to live through his death. He experienced the intent, experienced the action, and then, I suppose, he was reborn. My therapist thinks that when you want to die, something inside of you wishes to die, a part of you needs to pass away so that there can be a rebirth of something new. The problems with suicides, according to my therapist, is that the body is mistaken to be the thing that needs to die. But always there is a mental existence that needs to be let go.
Jim says that when talking about the self, it is always best to say "the depression within me" or "the genius within me" - not "I am depressed" or "I am a genius". Thus you say not "I want to die" but rather, "Something inside of me wants to die".
I can clearly see the sanity of saying "The God within me" rather than "I am God". And my experience of writing, or drawing, is that I am channeling something. This is because the end product usually surprises me. I think, "I did that? No way!" And then there is curiosity. "Where did it come from? I'll have to try again tomorrow and see what new thing mysteriously appears." It is "the creativity within me". I would be a bit presumptuous, and inaccurate, to say "I am creative". Although, of course, this is the common way of speaking.
So now, because I have been working with Jim, when I feel the pain of being suicidal, I ask myself "What in me wishes to die?" Usually it is an expectation of something happening which did not happen. I feel disappointment and I want to die.
Last week, I suppose because I am mentally ill, I felt suicidal while waiting for the plummer. The plummer was supposed to come in the morning and I felt some mild anxiety about letting a stranger into my apartment and having a courteous conversation with him. When the hours went by, and he did not appear, I felt more and more anxious, until finally I was pricked with a feeling and thought that was familiar and yet like no other; I wanted to die.
I called my mother, who is the landlord, and told her that the plummer she ordered had not appeared. She told me, (being an experienced landlord), that often you must wait for plummers and electricians. She said that people in this trade do not know what they are going to find when they go on a job. It can be a monstrous problem or it can be a little one. They have a hard time defining how long a job is going to take because they don't know what the problem really is before they have arrived and investigated. I must be patient she said. The problem was not an emergency - an emergency would be a cascade of water falling from the ceiling which did not stop. This problem was a leak when the upstairs tenant used his shower. He had stopped using his shower. Thus the leak was dry. She said that she would call the plumming agency (I had tried and no one had answered) again and again until she spoke with someone. Eventually she did speak with someone and a new time was set for the next day. On that day the plummer arrived as planned. And as a matter-of-fact, I got along dandy with him. He was a genuinely sweet man.
Inside of me I had an expectation that was not being met. I had to let it go. My mother's voice was very soothing as she talked to me. It felt great. She assured me that she would take care of the problem, and that she would not stop until a solution was found. The burden was lifted off my shoulders and shared with my mother. The stress of the situation evaporated when it was looked at through a new perspective, that of my mother's. My perspective, whatever it was, was diseased and could be discarded once someone else gave me their opinion. I adopted my mother's view of plummers, and the suicidal pain disappeared.
I deeply believe that Alexander McQueen made a mistake. Whatever his anguished view, by talking with someone skilled, it could have been turned. If it was depression he was experiencing, that could have been lifted (not necessarily abolished though) with the aid of medication. That the man was deeply unhappy I don't doubt. But he had reasons to live, the first of which was the talent that lay hidden within his breast.
It is funny, but as I was grieving McQueen's death I said to my husband, "Am I next?" I meant, will life conspire to take away my reasons for living and cause me to take my own life? Or, will I act like a fool, in some moment of desperation, and do what he did?
Always suicide is a mistake. I believe this with all my heart. But believing doesn't set me free. If a missing plummer causes me to feel suicidal, I will feel it again. It seems to be a condition of my illness for my mind to turn, when it is stressed, in that direction.
I've always wanted to own something by the fashion designer Alexander McQueen. I admire him oh so much. Last fall they were selling a hot pink sweater at Neimam Marcus for a little over $300. I saw it online. I knew I couldn't afford it, but I would have liked to have bought it. Later in a grocery store I saw the cover of Glamour magazine with the bleach blond singer Gwen Stefani wearing the sweater. The reason that the sweater was even remotely within my reach was that McQueen had started a second, mass marketed brand of clothing called McQ. Naturally I would never be able to own any of his couture clothing. But after the sale of a book, if I was flush with money, maybe I would be able to afford one item from the McQ brand.
I had done my writing for the day and I checked in at Yahoo news, see if I have any new email, what I always do before I fold up my computer and put it away. And this was when I saw that he was dead at 40. The news articles mentioned that he was upset over the recent death of his mother on February 2nd, and that he had left Twitter remarks like "life must go on!!!!!!!" and "if I can only make it through this week". He had fashion shows coming up. He must have been under pressure. One article said that there is a pressure on a genius to always come up with rave reviews. His last show received rave reviews.
A suicide means something different to everyone, but to someone who has attempted suicide it is a bit like looking in a mirror. I think "I've taken a forbidden path that not many people have taken" and then here is this man McQueen, who took my forbidden path, yet, followed it all the way to the end! There is a feeling that he succeeded where I failed. In a secret part of me, I am in love with death. The end to suffering. An escape from myself, a self that I at times despair over and loath. The girl who tried to kill herself in 1995 and the woman I am now are not quite the same. I have become a bit more accepting of my illness. I am involved in a relationship that puts no pressure on me to be more than who I am. But there is still the feeling that I am a failure at life, and that if I did not have this mental illness, I would not be a failure.
I always assumed, because of my experience, that at the heart of a suicide was a person who felt that they had failed at life. It is hard to imagine that McQueen felt like a failure. The people in the industry used words like "brilliant" and "genius" to describe him. The Queen of England gave him a medal in 2003. He has started learning his trade at the age of 16 so he always knew exactly what he wanted to do. And he was given by the owners of his label great creative latitude. New stores of his were being planned in the largest cities of different countries. He was on the rise.
Part of what binds me to this world is my creative work. I want to live because I want to see my book completed. I want to live because I want to solve this creative challenge I've made for myself. Also, as I write the story, I am curious to see what happens next. I have set a mountain in front of me and it is my task to climb it. The part of me that wants to live wants to stand on the summit and take a look at the view. How will I feel when I am closer to the clouds? When the book is finished, published or not, I will not feel like a failure. I can only assume, because I know myself, that once this mountain is climbed, I will begin to look around for another mountain to climb next. This is a healthy part of my personality that keeps me involved in the process of life.
It is hard to believe that a creative person who knew great success due to their creativity would want to end their life. There is much joy to life that simply being creative gives you. Sometimes I think how lucky I am to write every day. Some days it is not on the book, it is on the blog, and some days it is true I do not write at all, but the majority of the days I write. I am not dreaming about becoming a writer, I am doing it. I have met people who dream about writing a book. Not that they have written a book and hope to get it published, just that they dream about writing! It puzzles me, what is stopping them. Perhaps not wanting it enough. Their life is busy and they don't make the time to be creative. For the type of work that I do you need empty, very alone time to be creative. But perhaps there is fear about the act of creativity. The worry of "will I be good enough not to be laughed at" and "can I get what is in my head out of my head and onto......." whatever it is, paper or canvas.
So did McQueen feel like a failure? Or did he feel a lack of love in his life, especially with the death of his mother? I suppose that for a suicide life feels empty. I take note from McQueen's death - fame can feel empty. It is something I have had my suspicions about anyway. But this death confirms it. Fame will not automatically make your life feel worthy of being lived.
I have to believe that McQueen was depressed and grieving. I know a little bit about depression. Depression strips life of meaning. Depression severs ties to life. People outside of yourself no longer matter. Activities that had brought satisfaction no longer matter. In a deep depression nothing can touch you. And you can't see the future in a depression. Time compresses down to the moment, and the moment is black and empty. In that moment you have tunnel vision, there is one thing you see before you, and that is death. This is the depression of the suicide. I suppose that you can go toward death with feelings of adrenaline and a type of joy. It is joy without happiness. When you want death you want freedom from life. Committing suicide you act with purpose and there may be some relief that in the midst of so much emptiness, at last you have found a purpose. It is the purpose to go though with some act (involving a belt or a knife or pills); it is an act that will end life. The moment seems pregnant with meaning. You say to yourself "This act will end my life" - and it is exciting - thus the small jolt of adrenaline. So you can actually feel good about what you are doing. Not all suicides are crying buckets of sad tears when they commit suicide. Some feel very resolute and determined. The secret joy of a last act in life.
What I felt first, after I read the meager facts gathered right after McQueen's death, was not grief. Hours later I would feel grief and I cried a little bit. I turned very sad and morose. Distant from my husband when he came home from work. He tried to feed me chocolates. But all that came later. What I felt first was a shock and a thrill. It was not a happy thrill. But it was a high. It was excitement. A suicide of a personal hero! I looked into a dark mirror. I felt kinship. I felt close to death. Death not by car accident or plane accident. Death probably not from a heart attack because then the death would be investigated as suspicious and an autopsy would have to be preformed. No, the police knew exactly why McQueen had died, and this said to me the causes were not natural. This was death by choice. Death by his own hand. And a note to curtail the investigator's curiosity. I could look at a suicide but not touch it. And so, it was, morbidly exciting.
I have felt this odd excitement before when our country entered into war. There was a moment, in the first invasion of Iraq, when we were defending Kuwait, that the American people were told; we are now at war. Some invisible geographical line was crossed or the first shots were fired. And the news people were told; this is it. Diplomacy is at an end. Lives are being lost. We shoot with the intent to kill and in return, we are being shot at. Even as I write these words shivers are running down my arms as I remember where I was when I heard, over a loudspeaker in the library, "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now at war." Horror spikes adrenaline. I'm not proud of my reaction. I wish the first reaction was pure grief. But I think that in the few split seconds before grief there is horror. Horror is a primitive emotion. You are shocked into stillness but you are restless. You are sad but you are ready to jump out of your skin. Horror fascinates.
My therapist Jim says that somewhere in Shakespeare there is the perfect suicide. This is how the perfect suicide should proceed.
A blind older man decides that he wishes to commit suicide. He summons his grown son and tells his son that he wishes to be led to the cliffs of Dover so that he can jump off. The son takes his father into a field. He tells his father that they are at the very edge of the cliffs of Dover. The father jumps. He jumps and then he falls flat onto the ground.
My therapist says that the old man got to live through his death. He experienced the intent, experienced the action, and then, I suppose, he was reborn. My therapist thinks that when you want to die, something inside of you wishes to die, a part of you needs to pass away so that there can be a rebirth of something new. The problems with suicides, according to my therapist, is that the body is mistaken to be the thing that needs to die. But always there is a mental existence that needs to be let go.
Jim says that when talking about the self, it is always best to say "the depression within me" or "the genius within me" - not "I am depressed" or "I am a genius". Thus you say not "I want to die" but rather, "Something inside of me wants to die".
I can clearly see the sanity of saying "The God within me" rather than "I am God". And my experience of writing, or drawing, is that I am channeling something. This is because the end product usually surprises me. I think, "I did that? No way!" And then there is curiosity. "Where did it come from? I'll have to try again tomorrow and see what new thing mysteriously appears." It is "the creativity within me". I would be a bit presumptuous, and inaccurate, to say "I am creative". Although, of course, this is the common way of speaking.
So now, because I have been working with Jim, when I feel the pain of being suicidal, I ask myself "What in me wishes to die?" Usually it is an expectation of something happening which did not happen. I feel disappointment and I want to die.
Last week, I suppose because I am mentally ill, I felt suicidal while waiting for the plummer. The plummer was supposed to come in the morning and I felt some mild anxiety about letting a stranger into my apartment and having a courteous conversation with him. When the hours went by, and he did not appear, I felt more and more anxious, until finally I was pricked with a feeling and thought that was familiar and yet like no other; I wanted to die.
I called my mother, who is the landlord, and told her that the plummer she ordered had not appeared. She told me, (being an experienced landlord), that often you must wait for plummers and electricians. She said that people in this trade do not know what they are going to find when they go on a job. It can be a monstrous problem or it can be a little one. They have a hard time defining how long a job is going to take because they don't know what the problem really is before they have arrived and investigated. I must be patient she said. The problem was not an emergency - an emergency would be a cascade of water falling from the ceiling which did not stop. This problem was a leak when the upstairs tenant used his shower. He had stopped using his shower. Thus the leak was dry. She said that she would call the plumming agency (I had tried and no one had answered) again and again until she spoke with someone. Eventually she did speak with someone and a new time was set for the next day. On that day the plummer arrived as planned. And as a matter-of-fact, I got along dandy with him. He was a genuinely sweet man.
Inside of me I had an expectation that was not being met. I had to let it go. My mother's voice was very soothing as she talked to me. It felt great. She assured me that she would take care of the problem, and that she would not stop until a solution was found. The burden was lifted off my shoulders and shared with my mother. The stress of the situation evaporated when it was looked at through a new perspective, that of my mother's. My perspective, whatever it was, was diseased and could be discarded once someone else gave me their opinion. I adopted my mother's view of plummers, and the suicidal pain disappeared.
I deeply believe that Alexander McQueen made a mistake. Whatever his anguished view, by talking with someone skilled, it could have been turned. If it was depression he was experiencing, that could have been lifted (not necessarily abolished though) with the aid of medication. That the man was deeply unhappy I don't doubt. But he had reasons to live, the first of which was the talent that lay hidden within his breast.
It is funny, but as I was grieving McQueen's death I said to my husband, "Am I next?" I meant, will life conspire to take away my reasons for living and cause me to take my own life? Or, will I act like a fool, in some moment of desperation, and do what he did?
Always suicide is a mistake. I believe this with all my heart. But believing doesn't set me free. If a missing plummer causes me to feel suicidal, I will feel it again. It seems to be a condition of my illness for my mind to turn, when it is stressed, in that direction.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Unconscious Speaks
I had a dream several nights ago. The dream's meaning was very clear to me. It concerns the direction of my book.
As I write the book it has occurred to me to go into the heads of several of the characters. I like to know what they are thinking. However I have been limited because the story is being told through the eyes of my main character, Rachael. Whatever Rachael sees, and interprets, about other people I can detail. She can see sadness, she can see craziness, she can see greatness, and of course, because the story is being told through her eyes, the reader can see all of her insides,- her memories, her fantasies, and her opinions are always very important. But to return to the exterior world, what is known about another character is always known through the lens of Rachael's eyes. The tendency was to make Rachael practically supernaturally intuitive. She just "knows" things about other people. I have thought, "my goodness, is Rachael a genius?"
My blog is being written through my eyes, the first person. I tell you, the reader, what is happening to me, all my thoughts, as thought happens. This is the way that Rachael narrates the book. The book begins with Rachael explaining to the reader the strangeness of her name (I haven't told you yet Rachael's last name) and then continues as she makes a drawing. Yes, Rachael is an artist. Being an artist myself it was very easy to write about the experience of making a drawing through the first person.
When I started this book, a decade ago, (my, my, that dating sounds horrible) my purpose was to write everything that was true. Everything that had happened to me as a result of having this mental illness. I stopped writing the book when my character entered the hospital. I found that my memories of the hospital are not too clear. This is because when I was in the hospital I was always in a desperate and weak state of mind. It rapidly became obvious to me that I would have to invent hospital experience. I would have to turn to fiction. And a decade ago I was not up to the task of writing fiction. So the work on the book stopped. And I turned all my creative energy to making art.
Now I have returned to writing my book and I am deep into writing about the hospital experience. I am writing fiction. There are many interesting characters I've invented that are in the hospital. Lately I find that I have to restrain myself to only see these characters through Rachael's eyes. And then I had this dream.
The dream was longer than what I remember. But I remember the message part of the dream.
In this dream I was an assistant to a famous movie director. This director was in the beginning stages of making a movie. He was at the stage where you draw scene after scene on a piece of paper. So he had in his hand a tablet of blank pages.
On a blank page he drew a rectangle. This is what the lens of the camera would see. In the rectangle he drew the capital letter "I". It meant that the main character would begin the movie as Rachael begins my book, saying "I" blah, blah, blah. The movie would be shot in the first person narrative. The movie would begin with a scene tightly focused on the face of the main character.
Then the director erased the "I". And in his rectangle he proceeded to draw a landscape. It was a lovely landscape. And as a picture on a piece of paper naturally it was much more rich and varied and interesting than the letter "I".
What the landscape meant is that the director was going to start the movie, not with the main character, but with a scene of a beautiful landscape. I believe it was a tropical island. The movie camera pulled back from its tight focus on an individual to instead take in a very wide view.
What I understood, was that by changing the drawing in the rectangle, the movie director was changing the narration of his movie. The narration of the movie changed from the first person, to the third person. The third person is what I call the "God" perspective. It is a perspective where everything can be seen and nothing is hidden as long as the narrator wants you to see it.
My interpretation of the dream is that it was telling me to write in the third person. In this form the narrator is allowed to enter into different people's minds, including of course Rachael's mind, and it is probably a much more interesting way of telling a story. The reader sees a far broader "landscape".
So I woke immediately knowing that the style of my book must change. My mind was telling me that there was a better choice to make than my original one. As the dream director of the movie changed his mind, so I must change my mind.
I really don't know the rules of this new perspective. But today, as I wrote, I went very deep into the mind of a social worker in the hospital. What do I know about the art of being a social worker? Ah, it was all invented. Risky business. I shall have social workers complaining that I know nothing about their talent. One can only hope that inspiration runs true.
Social workers of the world look out. I have invented someone who is either your best hope or your worst nightmare.
And my thanks to whomever, or whatever sends me my dreams.
As I write the book it has occurred to me to go into the heads of several of the characters. I like to know what they are thinking. However I have been limited because the story is being told through the eyes of my main character, Rachael. Whatever Rachael sees, and interprets, about other people I can detail. She can see sadness, she can see craziness, she can see greatness, and of course, because the story is being told through her eyes, the reader can see all of her insides,- her memories, her fantasies, and her opinions are always very important. But to return to the exterior world, what is known about another character is always known through the lens of Rachael's eyes. The tendency was to make Rachael practically supernaturally intuitive. She just "knows" things about other people. I have thought, "my goodness, is Rachael a genius?"
My blog is being written through my eyes, the first person. I tell you, the reader, what is happening to me, all my thoughts, as thought happens. This is the way that Rachael narrates the book. The book begins with Rachael explaining to the reader the strangeness of her name (I haven't told you yet Rachael's last name) and then continues as she makes a drawing. Yes, Rachael is an artist. Being an artist myself it was very easy to write about the experience of making a drawing through the first person.
When I started this book, a decade ago, (my, my, that dating sounds horrible) my purpose was to write everything that was true. Everything that had happened to me as a result of having this mental illness. I stopped writing the book when my character entered the hospital. I found that my memories of the hospital are not too clear. This is because when I was in the hospital I was always in a desperate and weak state of mind. It rapidly became obvious to me that I would have to invent hospital experience. I would have to turn to fiction. And a decade ago I was not up to the task of writing fiction. So the work on the book stopped. And I turned all my creative energy to making art.
Now I have returned to writing my book and I am deep into writing about the hospital experience. I am writing fiction. There are many interesting characters I've invented that are in the hospital. Lately I find that I have to restrain myself to only see these characters through Rachael's eyes. And then I had this dream.
The dream was longer than what I remember. But I remember the message part of the dream.
In this dream I was an assistant to a famous movie director. This director was in the beginning stages of making a movie. He was at the stage where you draw scene after scene on a piece of paper. So he had in his hand a tablet of blank pages.
On a blank page he drew a rectangle. This is what the lens of the camera would see. In the rectangle he drew the capital letter "I". It meant that the main character would begin the movie as Rachael begins my book, saying "I" blah, blah, blah. The movie would be shot in the first person narrative. The movie would begin with a scene tightly focused on the face of the main character.
Then the director erased the "I". And in his rectangle he proceeded to draw a landscape. It was a lovely landscape. And as a picture on a piece of paper naturally it was much more rich and varied and interesting than the letter "I".
What the landscape meant is that the director was going to start the movie, not with the main character, but with a scene of a beautiful landscape. I believe it was a tropical island. The movie camera pulled back from its tight focus on an individual to instead take in a very wide view.
What I understood, was that by changing the drawing in the rectangle, the movie director was changing the narration of his movie. The narration of the movie changed from the first person, to the third person. The third person is what I call the "God" perspective. It is a perspective where everything can be seen and nothing is hidden as long as the narrator wants you to see it.
My interpretation of the dream is that it was telling me to write in the third person. In this form the narrator is allowed to enter into different people's minds, including of course Rachael's mind, and it is probably a much more interesting way of telling a story. The reader sees a far broader "landscape".
So I woke immediately knowing that the style of my book must change. My mind was telling me that there was a better choice to make than my original one. As the dream director of the movie changed his mind, so I must change my mind.
I really don't know the rules of this new perspective. But today, as I wrote, I went very deep into the mind of a social worker in the hospital. What do I know about the art of being a social worker? Ah, it was all invented. Risky business. I shall have social workers complaining that I know nothing about their talent. One can only hope that inspiration runs true.
Social workers of the world look out. I have invented someone who is either your best hope or your worst nightmare.
And my thanks to whomever, or whatever sends me my dreams.
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