Category: ultrapersonal

The antidepressant must be kicking in. I should be in the throes of a full-on anxiety attack (if the last few weeks have been any indication of a pattern), but instead I’m just curled up trying to block out the dull, maddening pain of accepting the inevitable. that’s the trouble right now: I’m not lost in some groundless depression that will just drift away with the ingestion of a few happy pills. No, I find myself deeply, deeply unhappy again, perhaps moreso than ever before, considering how much hurt I’ve been dredging up once and for all. In a way, I’m fighting the medication: I desperately crave numbness, a release from the acute emotional tortures I keep feeling, and wallowing in a depressive fog is the closest I ever feel to numb. I can sort out why some things upset me and how those things tie to other things, but it doesn’t change the fact that there are things staring me right in the face and shouting in my ears that make me feel miserable in a very real way.

This, of course, has all been very counterproductive to my master plan of nobly facing my demons and seeking occasional guidance without being a burden to anyone. As far as I can tell, I’m worrying the crap out of some people and becoming an unwelcome burden to others. Or another, at least. I can see that I’m less cheerful in public that I can usually muster the energy for. I can see that the effort to catalogue and battle the demons is taking a toll on me personally, and on my life in general.

And the demon leading the pack lately? Yup, that ol’ devil called low self-esteem. You know the one: it’s everybody’s favorite. The funny thing is, I don’t really think I’m all that bad. I don’t think I’m so bad looking, and I’m clever and often quite witty. I’m open to new ideas and I’m considerate and I have a lot of interesting stories to tell. I’m a good kisser and, when the chemistry is right, I’m a lot of fun in the sack. The thing that gets me is why none of these nor any other virtues and charms ever seem to do the trick when I really want them to. People swear up and down that I’m a great catch, but the positive reinforcement doesn’t come. Quite the contrary, in fact. I’m just the passing fancy, the second best, the good personality, and just the friend, if even that.

Maybe it’s shame more than low self-esteem. Though I can admit that I’ve got plenty of good stuff to offer, I also have to face up to being damaged goods. It’s easy enough to whine, “Wah, nobody loves me,” and blame it on fickle tastes and too much competition, but I’ve been on the other end of the equation enough to know it’s not that simple and sometimes feelings just don’t last. No, it’s the real stuff that upsets me the most: being positive, being prone to depression, getting so needy when it takes a hold of me, feeling the need to aggressively make things right when they go wrong, being too fast for the clean-cut guys yet too clean-cut for the fast guys. This is the stuff that makes me admit to myself now and then, in my smallest, neediest voice, “Why should anyone pick me when it would be so much easier not to bother?” And it’s so easy to listen to that little voice when I appear to screw things up the few times they really count.

So while I was sleeping off the evening’s thrill ride, my old pal Mark had another outbreak of Scaroliosis (his unique condition that makes him so prone to occasionally comic but often catastrophic back luck).

You see, Mark had a long day and strolled outside his front door a little after midnight to give Buster, his sweet and playful Yellow Lab, a quick walk before bedtime. He and Buster were walking a few doors down on his quiet little street in Fort Greene when the cops pulled up and asked where Buster’s leash might be. Mark explained that Buster was just out to find a nearby tree before heading back inside, but the cops informed him that this infraction was a “quality of life crime” and not the sort of thing they could overlook. Since he had no I.D. on him, they asked him to run inside and get something to show. He brought Buster and came back down with his license, and was greeted with handcuffs and a ride down to the station.

The officers who later came by to bring him to a jail for the night were appalled at what had happened — getting arrested for walking a mushy blonde dog of the leash in the middle of the night — and apologized profusely as they brought him to his evening’s accomodations in a 10″ x 12″ cell shared by 10 other guys (at least one of whom had also been brought in for walking his dog without a leash).

So who thinks things are finally back to normal here in the city? Who thinks the terror warnings are no longer quite enough to keep the annoying police-state happenings at bay any more? And who thinks Bloomberg is going to have the same smarmy savvy that Giuliani did to keep things from really blowing up about it once and for all?

I can feel myself stuck in the fog. I know part of this is my body, the chemical soup which will slowly be adjusted by the new ingredients I’ve been adding. Part of it is fatigue, my first chance to sit still and catch my breath without distraction since last weekend.

Part of it is real, though. Most of it, today, is real. All week long I’ve had lots to worry about and think about and do. I’ve had opportunities to be reminded about the things and the people I have that I’m grateful for. I’ve been reminded of some wonderful things that I won’t lose. Even when those reminders were tied with the knowledge of new roles and limitations, they were good, and they left me happy.

Last night and today, though, the loss is really hitting me. The loss of what I hoped for, the loss of what I had (or thought I had), the loss of contact and comfort, the loss of synthesis. Last night and today, I’m realizing how much I’m really being forced to accept. I realize how big the hole is and how sad and disappointed and disappointing I feel. Even if we continue on as such close friends, today I’m feeling the boundaries inherent in that word, and I yearn for what lies beyond them that once seemed in my reach, sometimes even in my grasp.

It really, really, really hurts. And there’s nowhere to hide from it right now.

A report on the World Trade Center collapse is summarized in the New York Times today, filled with investigators. conclusions about what exactly caused the towers to come down. The article itself is fascinating, and clear enough for the layperson to get the jist of (some excellent information graphics, too).

What still surprises me, though, is how visceral my reaction still is when I read about what happened. At this point I’m numb enough to casual mention of the whole thing, but whenever I read or see something that goes into greater depth about that day, I get the same sick, sorrowful feeling all over again. It’s that same feeling I had standing on the street, staring down Park Avenue at the plumes of smoke, and then again watching the fires burn and the towers drop out of the view from conference room on my floor at work. In a way, I’m glad my memories haven’t been too dulled by the months of overprocessing the event. It’s uncomfortable, but still good to get a reminder of my reaction without all the cultural baggage that’s been heaped onto that day ever since.

Fortune has intervened and put me in touch with a new tenant to fill the impending vacancy in the Rumpus Room. We’ve negotiated some terms and talked about some plans for living in the loft together, and swiftly agreed that it’s time to turn the place from an open space into a spacious two-bedroom bachelor pad. So in two weeks’ time, I start to relive the aggravation of hard labor, clouds of sheetrock dust, and the constant smell of drying spackle and paint. Good grief. I hope I can remember all I learned that last time I tried a stunt like this. Luckily, the new tenant is something of a handyman, and will be able to play the construction foreman. (Not to mention his kind offers of installing some new electrical outlets and a washer/dryer. He’s been spoiled by the conveniences of home ownership.) I guess this means that I’ll actually have to clean up all the junk that’s been accumulating for the last couple of months and figure out where the hell it’s all supposed to go now.

Bleah. I don’t have the surplus time or energy to deal with major renovation, but it will be a good thing. Wish me luck.

Every year, the holiday season goes off like an atom bomb in the middle of my loose mental schedule of things to do and people to see. Catching a bug right in the middle this time certainly didn’t help much. There are now all those errands that have fallen by the wayside, all those friends I wanted to see and subject to maudlin holliday sentiment, all those presents and paper I still have to make, that freelance project I still have to do, that endless hydra of a to-do list at work.

So now it’s time to accept the casualties so far (I’ve aleady somewhat politely been told not to bother by someone I had loose plans to make a date with) and get back on the ball before I mix metaphors and drop it too many times. There’s much work to do, many wonderful human beings to hang out with again, and much holiday cheer to still spread around (although any lingering Christmas presents will now be vague midwinter cheer-up packages).

As if there wasn’t enough to hate about the Christmas season, yesterday was the dreaded company holiday party. Since I am once again a full-time employee here, I wasn’t able to squeasle my way out of it the way I have for the last few years. As I was saying to Beau, I would rather stick pins in my eyes than go to the party — not only do I hate mingling under the best of circumstances, but there’s only a small handful of people at work who I’d want to hang out with anyway. Even drearier, the Society opted to make a large-ish donation to the September 11th Fund instead of put as much money into the party as usual. that’s a gesture I approve of wholeheartedly, but it meant that we didn’t even have a big lunch as compensation for suffering through the forced cheer and the tedious speeches. Still, going to the party instead of staying in the office for the day meant getting out 2 hours earlier, and I really needed a nap.