Before the Fiction Arrives
I call it “The
Nameless Dread.” Yes, how Lovecraft of me. It’s that feeling I can’t shake,
when The Fucking Sad punches me in the gut, and my stomach sinks, and I’m
thinking about all the good things going on right now in my life, but it doesn’t
matter, TND is upon me, and now I’m on an MTD bus, crying.
You ever cry on a city bus? People look at you with pity. NOBODY looks at anybody else with pity on a BUS for heaven’s sake! So there I am, on the 2 South Red, staring out the window at boxlike campus apartments, Rivkah’s Steady Beat in my hands, trying to wipe the tears off my cheeks by shrugging my shoulder high enough that my corduroy jacket reaches them.
I get off the bus and smell a cigarette, which makes it worse. Two years now without a smoke. I start running through a list of good things about myself, my life, my friends, Sara, et cetera, knowing it won’t do any good-as The Nameless Dread takes no prisoners-but I run through it anyway, hoping that the list will at least distract me from this stupid fuckoff sadness that’s landed on me and sunk its claws in. It doesn’t. The list is long and full and fabulous, but my brain no longer cares.
Fuck. Fuck Fuck. It’s like somebody just made me watch as they beat my grandmother to death with my cat. It’s like somebody came up and took everything I ever owned away from me, and said, “Don’t worry, they’re just THINGS. What will hurt worse is when I tell you that everybody you ever loved has decided that they don’t love you anymore, and maybe they were wrong about you the whole time.”
Nameless Dread. Unfightable. Only sleep kills it, and sleep kills ME, it’s the fucking enemy. Sleep is Dead While Alive to me, it’s time I could be spending reading, or with friends, or watching a movie, or creating, or just staring at a tree. Sleep wastes me away with every second.
Now, two hours later, TND is finally withdrawing, leaving little droppings of story ideas behind it, as though to say, “You HAVE to go through this, benjamin, but if it makes you feel better, here are a few ideas. Sure, you have to SCRAPE my SHIT off of them first, but there might be something worthwhile in there. Or not…like I care.”
And then I’m just left with that lingering bit of doubt, that unscratchable itch, which I have to pound down into my soul and ignore and maybe it will fuck off long enough for me to do my library work, or write something that isn’t me talking about how the abstract depressions are the worst, and how apparently doubling my meds didn’t help, and how I can never decide which neurological disorder I’d most like to be rid of…
b
Ready for writing and whiskey sours at home
You ever cry on a city bus? People look at you with pity. NOBODY looks at anybody else with pity on a BUS for heaven’s sake! So there I am, on the 2 South Red, staring out the window at boxlike campus apartments, Rivkah’s Steady Beat in my hands, trying to wipe the tears off my cheeks by shrugging my shoulder high enough that my corduroy jacket reaches them.
I get off the bus and smell a cigarette, which makes it worse. Two years now without a smoke. I start running through a list of good things about myself, my life, my friends, Sara, et cetera, knowing it won’t do any good-as The Nameless Dread takes no prisoners-but I run through it anyway, hoping that the list will at least distract me from this stupid fuckoff sadness that’s landed on me and sunk its claws in. It doesn’t. The list is long and full and fabulous, but my brain no longer cares.
Fuck. Fuck Fuck. It’s like somebody just made me watch as they beat my grandmother to death with my cat. It’s like somebody came up and took everything I ever owned away from me, and said, “Don’t worry, they’re just THINGS. What will hurt worse is when I tell you that everybody you ever loved has decided that they don’t love you anymore, and maybe they were wrong about you the whole time.”
Nameless Dread. Unfightable. Only sleep kills it, and sleep kills ME, it’s the fucking enemy. Sleep is Dead While Alive to me, it’s time I could be spending reading, or with friends, or watching a movie, or creating, or just staring at a tree. Sleep wastes me away with every second.
Now, two hours later, TND is finally withdrawing, leaving little droppings of story ideas behind it, as though to say, “You HAVE to go through this, benjamin, but if it makes you feel better, here are a few ideas. Sure, you have to SCRAPE my SHIT off of them first, but there might be something worthwhile in there. Or not…like I care.”
And then I’m just left with that lingering bit of doubt, that unscratchable itch, which I have to pound down into my soul and ignore and maybe it will fuck off long enough for me to do my library work, or write something that isn’t me talking about how the abstract depressions are the worst, and how apparently doubling my meds didn’t help, and how I can never decide which neurological disorder I’d most like to be rid of…
b
Ready for writing and whiskey sours at home