Choppy Seas

I don't know what to tell you, guys. People lately have been mentioning that they follow this blog. Then I feel like writing in it more. Then I sit down to write in it and start it over and over.

I am curled inside myself today, feeling like every moment brings a new heartbreak. Or the visceral memory of an old heartbreak, made fresh again by my vulnerable state. Yesterday was not like this. Possibly tomorrow won't be, either. Today was hard right from waking. Had an appointment to touch base with my GP today, since I have been in an anxious place lately. I have a lovely therapist but she is out of town for two weeks. I thought it wouldn't be a problem, two weeks without talking to someone, but I am pretty shaky. Really vibratey and charged. I waited for my doctor for an hour. Sitting in the waiting room with strangers, holding back tears and crawling out of my skin. This sent me to a place of feeling so frustrated and disrespected, I had another appointment at noon. I decided to leave my doctor a note to update her, but while I was writing I dissolved into full sobs. She came out and I just couldn't sit around any more. Her solution to these things is to constantly ask me, "Are you sure you don't want to go on drugs?" I am sure. I am so sure. I know in my heart I deserve the chance to work my internal demons out with a good therapist, and that I can get through it without the awful numbing and loss of who I am that drugs have brought me in the past. I don't like days like today, I really don't. I am lonely lonely lonely and the thoughts are dark and violent. But I know it won't always be this unpredictable, and I abhor the thought of pulling out of myself again. The Celexa made me fat and slow and foggy brained, unable to wrench out of the torpor. The prozac made my energy unfocused and ramped up the anxiety to levels where the only thing I could do was spin. Medical solution? Sleeping pills to counteract the effects of the Prozac. Solution when left to my own devices? Smoke more weed, drink more booze, fall into a drug induced sleep. None of this strikes me as having been useful. So. Now I am sober. And it has been since March 28th no booze, and April 8th no weed. No wonder I am feeling all unbalanced, I know, and I am so so so so sure that it will all ease with time and tender therapeutic ministrations. Lord, if the mornings and nights were easier.

I feel so trapped today. And I am, I suppose, as we all are. Since I know that no matter how far I run, literally or figuratively, the trap is still around me, in the form of my own skin, my own brain. The loneliness really is new for me. Or, letting it be there is. The temptation to smoke or drink it away is huge, but I'm not into starting that cycle again. I recognize that it starts with smaller things, and that I am now in the thick of those very things. My house is a shambles, I have eaten too many things which are not good for me, I haven't taken my vitamins in days. I wish someone was paying such close attention that they would show up at my door with a plan to help me just finish these few tasks I seem to be skirting. Dishes. Pile of stuff I no longer want to be removed from living room. Furniture to be got rid of. Divesting and letting in air. I have gotten to a place of feeling unable to deal with it my own self. And yet, unlikely to ask for help. I don't even know what the help is I want to ask for. Mostly, I want to ask for a friend to come and sleep here. Get in bed with me and quietly cradle me. This, actually, is the hardest thing to ask for. I miss feeling loved and safe. Nothing feels very safe to me.

The flip side of all of this is that my work is amazing. My creative life has tremendous momentum and I can only see further opportunities and growth as an artist. Magic. And I am doing my very best to orchestrate my work so that I do not disappoint myself or my colleagues. Which means not getting involved in things which cause me anxiety, like stand up shows. I will sing and tell funny stories in a performance setting, but I can't call it stand up, and I can't go to many stand up shows. I am loving the improv, the music, the theatre. And any second now one of these auditions is going to pay off. It feels close. Writing still undisciplined, but the inspiration is there, and as my brain comes back to me in it's full glory, I am nearly unable to keep up with all the ideas.

Piano lessons, singing lessons, therapy...all to the greater good.

This particular portion of my journey is incredibly complex and magical and difficult and some moments I am wide eyed with wonder at the connectivity and serendipity I am cultivating, nurturing and even letting sneak up on me and surprise me. I know I am sometimes cryptic, sometimes overly poetic, but it is coming from me in cathartic bursts and I know the regulatory systems will even out and I am looking forward to deriving so much pleasure from the work.

I don't know if any of this makes any sense to you, but it's coming out of me in waves, and I'm just letting it.

Today seems like the wrong day to try to figure out iDVD and iMOVIE, but, sadly, I have a postmarking deadline tomorrow that requires I learn how to make this quicktime of me burn to a dvd. Sounds easier than it is. I will NOT throw my brand new beautiful computer off the balcony. But I might throw a dish. I feel like throwing dishes. I can really see clearly a lifetime of behaviours behind me driven by exactly what I'm feeling today. It is revelatory, and a bit frightening. Breathing. Always breathing.

With lofty ambitions and limited patience,

xo
RH