The Sun Also Sets

The sun is setting behind the hills and I am sitting on The Stairs. Large stone blocks and tall columns climbing the hill between town and the college. There are 216 stairs between town and my apartment. I've counted them over the couple hundred times I've climbed them, each time a little easier than the last. I've since found an easier way.

But these stairs. The Stairs. 

They are my border. I go no further.

I want to go to town. I want to see friends. I want to have a drink and watch a band. But I'm not ready. It isn't time yet. I'm moving forward, just beginning to. I can't yet.

I have headphones in and someone has set up a PA and a laptop and is DJ'ing from the top of the stairs for some goddamned reason. I have headphones in, sitting on a large stone block off to the side, and I cannot hear them. 

The Stairs. The sunset. Me.

The heat on my skin and a thin layer of sweat while I stare down the hill and up Broadway. People down the sidewalk and crossing the street. Enjoying the evening, being people, being.

I wonder if I hold on so long because it's part of the job? Because I said it and it doesn't just disappear? It holds on. Do I hold on so long because it is part of the obligation of ever expressing it in the first place? Don't say it if you don't mean it?

But I argue against it. It isn't obligatory. I feel these things. As present and real as the sunlight in my eyes. As the pen in my hand. As the people on that street. It isn't obligatory and I'm just looking for excuses. I'm moving forward. I'm out of the house. I'm watching the sunset. None of this is obligatory and all of this will fade. 

Each day is better than the last. Soon I will be better. I will be okay. I see these things for what they are now, even when I wish I couldn't.  

I will let go completely. I will be okay. I always am.

New days come. The sun rises.

Days end. The sun sets.

I pack up my things, my phone, my notebook, the Hemingway I'm reading again, and I walk home. 

Up the stairs, past the DJ, onto the campus, through the parking lots, onto my street. Lucy Dacus in my ears now and I think that I'm going to title this some stupid fucking joke and I know that it's boring, but it's relevant and who fucking cares anyway? All of this will fade

Pulling Petals

 It had become pulling petals. Fixing this. I had to remove it all.

I had been using a visualization. A sort of disembodied arm reaching into my chest and pulling out every moment I didn't need. Every thought I didn't want. The residue clinging to my chest and skull. All of it.

My blood test results had come back. It was a good idea. After months of trying one medication after another, maxing out dosages, getting nowhere but worse, my therapist suggested I get blood work done. In case. My vitamin D was low. Off-their-little-chart low. From what I understand, low vitamin D can affect your mood. I don't know if it can affect it to, well, the point I've been, but maybe. I haven't spoken to her since the results had come in, but that night I took the maximum dose, and will probably continue to.

The Welbutrin was also maxed out. Any higher and I risk seizures. I'm not entirely happy about that, but in the last week I have noticed some change. Not a lot, but some. I'm not there anymore. 

Well, at the moment, I guess.

Was it a combination of those three? The arm, the vitamin D, the maxed Welbutrin? Or was it the meditation? Was it the vocalizing? Was it the reading? It doesnt matter, really. 

Elle had talked me down. Again. On ironic advice I had made it a point to make amends with a handful of people, Elle among them. Both in bad and similar spots, we were able to talk and listen and be a support for each other, and she had talked me down. And here I am writing this. Past that moment, and grateful.

Now, I could walk around my apartment. I could drive to work. Small steps, but now I can do those things.

Leanne had come over and it felt nice to put things aside. For a few hours. The band rehearsed. I had been cancelling our rehearsals for weeks. It felt nice to put things aside. Small steps.

I don't know where this goes. I don't know who I am after I come out of this. I don't know if I do come out of this. I can only hope and fight until I can't any longer. C'est la vie, as I'm sure you're tired of hearing me say. C'est la vie. 

Because what else is there to say? Nothing that really matters.

Except, for each of us eventually, I suppose;

I love you and goodbye

Half a Hydroxyzine

Half a hydroxyzine and 20 minutes meditating. Kill the monologue and pictures. Or try to, at least. I had a feeling today was going to be a strange day. I talked about it when I woke up. 

In the last handful of months, since January, my mood had been steadily dropping (I have a mood tracking app with a number of data points for this very reason), and in the last two months it had been dropping faster and faster until, well, things got out of hand. C'est la vie. The last couple of days had been better, but there was something off this morning.

I drove north to see my family. In the last fifteen minutes or so my heart had begun to race and there was a pressure in my head. The signs. I said my goodbyes and drove home.

Half a hydroxyzine. Sat on the couch and spoke outloud to myself. As if I were on the outside. 

"It will pass."

"This does not matter."

"You will get through."

(Nine grams.) "You don't want to miss what's coming."

Meditated for 20 minutes. In with light, out with shadow. Simple binaural audio in headphones. Let my thoughts disappear. Kill the monologue and pictures. 

In my early twenties I had to stop smoking weed. Each time I did I was having something akin to an out of body experience (though not quite as fantastical). I would see myself from an unbiased third party point of view. I could see my patterns. My connections. I could see what was actually happening in my life and the ways in which I was running from and coping with it. It was crushing. Each time it would sink me into a week-long depressive wave. So I stopped. Lately, those states have become increasingly frequent.

A few weeks ago, on the interstate, an epiphany struck me. I suddenly, and without reason, saw a pattern I had never noticed. A thread running through a list of important events in my life. It answered a number of questions I had been asking myself, and it birthed a few more. I saw myself from the outside. Three or four days went by and I couldn't return to my normal state. I was working, driving, waking, living in this 3rd party perspective. I became intensely concious of each word I said and each motion I made. Each direction I steered a conversation and each reaction I had to everything. Any connection to the person driving that body seemed to be lost.

It faded eventually, and the wave hit me. I had already been in a bad state, but as it goes, you can always get worse.

I isolated for weeks (I'm isolating now, if I'm being honest). I ate little to nothing. I barely spoke at work and often broke down. What I had seen wouldn't leave me. I was back in my body and it was too much. The monolgue was aggressive, abusive, and constant. The images were all consuming. The repetition of so many moments and futures and mistakes. It all dug into me, coring me out. Grinding away at my chest and head. And eventually, well, things got out of hand.

The next morning I felt like I had been dropped off somewhere. Kicked out of a speeding car, but alive and free.

I began to do everything I could to fight back. To not let it happen again. Meditating more. Using my medications whenever I noticed the signs instead of ignoring them like usual. Actively talking myself down out loud in the middle of my empty house. Focusing on what I could change. What I could fix. What I could build.

The first day was hard.

The second day was easier.

The third day was almost a good day.

I sat down to write this. The hydroxyzine kicked in, and today will be a good day.

Cleaning and a Trauma Wall

 Leanne wants to hang out. 

It's been a long time, beside a few moments here and there. We've always been respectful of each other's lives and always remained somewhere between aquaintances and friends, but from time to time, and not in a long time, it leans into something else. Whatever that is. We never press it, or address it, but it happens. 

We made plans and it dawned on me that now I have to clean. Only in the last few days had I started to crawl out of the swamp I had been trapped in, slowly sinking over months. I wondered if it was the new and much stronger medication, or if it was a couple of things my therapist had told me about safety and my instincts regarding love. I don't know. Something stuck either way and I was swimming quickly to the surface. But now I had to clean.

Occassionally, while I'm in the depths, I'll use cleaning as a distraction.  A way to muffle the inner monologue. It doesn't always work and I often find myself arguing out loud to no one, but sometimes. However, for about a week I had been unable to bring myself to do much of anything. Yesterday had been better than the day before, and today has been better than yesterday, but there was still water above me.

I had to clean. 

Laying on the couch, typing and deleting. The breeze of mid-June across my withering body. I'm going to get to it, but for now I'm putting it off. I did laundry anyway. The rest can wait.

The other day I had made fun of something Leanne had said and asked her where her childhood trauma wall was.

"What's a childhood trauma wall?"

I drank some coffee and set my phone down.

Maybe I'll just hit the carpet with a vacuum.

Roots and Answers

 I look around and I'm somewhere else. 

It's November 2017. I'm on the side porch of the house on Davis Street. Alone and trying to get sober for the first time. I'm sitting on the floor amid piles of paintings on cardboard and sheet rock. My body hurts. I'm filled with a grief I'm ignoring. I'm reading Hellblazer and then

It's 

August 2004. I'm twenty-one and hungover on a broken blue couch in the apartment on Main St. My new roommate is at work and I'm staring at my reflection in the blank screen of the old television and I feel lost and

It's July 2005 and I'm a block down the road in an attic finished with wood panels, laying on a bed smoking Marlb lights and listening to people downstairs argue about who owes who what, but I'm watching squirrels on a power line and I feel happy. I exhale smoke, blow it out the window, and in that moment I'm happy but the world around me shifts hard to the right and it's

April, 2012. Michael and I are drunk in his car, screaming down the interstate after a show. Marilyn Manson's "Antichrist Superstar" is crashing out of his speakers and the adrenaline and euphoria I used to get after shows is still alive in me and I wonder if I could always be this happy, if I could ever be

shift hard to the left

It's June, 2011. My eyes are closed, but I know I'm on the couch, faking sleep in the house on Arlington. I can feel the afternoon sun on me. I can hear the neighbors through the open windows. I can feel the soft breeze over my skin. I'm avoiding

hard to the left again

It's September, 1991. Our new living room on Adirondack still has boxes. I took a book out of the school library on movie monsters. Dracula, the Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I like this new home. I like my room. I like the stairs. I feel a tightness I'm unable to explain yet. A perfect September day and I run my fingers over the pictures. I'm slow to leave this memory but I 

do.

I force the shift now. Any direction. It doesn't matter. I have to get away from whatever is in that moment. Just up the stairs, where the lights are off. Shift hard to 

June, 1994. Same house, but I'm across the street now, in the woods. Standing above and staring down at a spinal column half covered in mud and leaves and remnants of gore. It's evening. It might rain. No ribs. No skull. Just the spine. I have to tell Keith. 

Involuntary shift to the left. 

August 5th, 1993. A moment I've written about before. One I find myself trapped in often. Keith's basement. His bedroom. I'm faking sleep, trying to keep as quiet and small as possible, hidden in the dark room on the couch in the corner as his drunk father is a few feet away screaming at him and punching him and I'm trying to focus on why I didn't stay home that night. Why didn't I want to stay home with my father. Why didn't I want to play Truxton with him. I was sorry I didn't. I am trying to block it out. I am hiding from violence and fear by diving into guilt. Keith's father storms out eventually and I listen to Keith cry himself to sleep but I've been faking my sleep and I hold back crying and in the morning we both walk up the creaking basement stairs and his mom makes us breakfast in their small hot apartment and the moment ends and 

to the right

and I'm watching you tell me you're leaving. November 1995. "What's wrong?" you ask. "What the fuck do you think?" I answer, swearing at you for the first time.

to the right

(no, not here...)

to the right

A fucking knife in my arm. A chair over my back. I have school in the morning.

to the right

(or here...)

to the right

17 years later. I'm watching you wave goodbye, crying. I did this. I did this. 

to the right

Staring at the grass. Years have gone by. I feel each moment. I am drenched in them.

to the right

to the right

I'm standing in a cemetery watching water runoff move down a concrete basin. It's February but warm enough. I'm considering hanging myself again. I think about it regularly. I assume everyone does, I tell myself. The water trickles and flows weakly and I wish I hadn't worn a sweater. The damage I've done. To everyone around me. To myself. The time I've wasted. Squandered. It's 2022 and I'm standing in a cemetery in Austin on a day off and I know what I have to do.

to the right

I'm barely here.

to the right

I'm crying in a U-Haul. I don't know if I can fix any of this. I don't know if I can be better. I don't know who I am or where I belong. I'm going to miss my cat. I keep thinking about the cat. My buddy. Throwing her on my shoulder and walking around outside. Inspecting plants and fences and the world around us. I'm in a U-Haul somewhere near Texarkana and I'm crying about a cat and all the goddamn the damage I've caused. 

to the right

Three days later. I've crossed into New York. I'm driving along the Southern Tier and I keep thinking about how beautiful it is here. How lucky I am to be home. How bright the world seems to me now. After three days of driving, I have vented I am filled with hope. 

to the left

It's May, 2019. I'm in the kitchen at work. I ask a cook if he has DMT. I've been meditating for a year and I've been reading a lot of studies regarding psychedelics and their positive benefits regarding depression, addiction, anxiety, etc. "Yeah," he says, "if you want, but honestly, when it's time, it'll find you," he says. I don't buy it.

to the right

to the right

I'm spread across my bed, awash in color and sound and energy and the woman at the end of my bed shows me. Shreds me. Guides me. Over an intense, uncomfortable, and exhausting six hour journey, she says so many things. But especially; "You don't have to destroy. Just grow," she says. "You don't die. This you dies. A new life is coming. Good things are coming." I come out ashamed, broken, and lighter. 

to the right

I invite you to a show and you come.

to the right

I'm apologizing to you. You're high at my kitchen table. You tell me you're sad. I pull my chair closer to yours and I hug you. I know I'm guarded. I know I keep a distance. I'm trying to fight it. My apartment is hot. It's making us both uneasy. I think "if I could just control that, I could make you feel better" but that's not true. I know that. I don't know how to shake this.

to the right

I'm beyond where I was when I wrote all of this. You left last night. You left a long time ago, but also last night. I'm back to this time travel. This dialectic nostalgia. I've showered. I've dressed. I'm on the floral couch and staring out the window again. The weight.

to the left

Outside a breakfast place smiling.

to the left

taking a picture on the stairs.

to the right

beach boys and crying

to the right

to the left

to the left

to the right

to the left

Circling endlessly. Digging for roots. Begging for answers.

I find nothing.

I come back. Here, where it's all led.

Tribeca. Amber. Rock & Roll as the Voice of God. A Moment.

 Kevin or Brandon or some fucking thing.

I can't remember his name. He's standing in the middle of a sparse crowd, smiling at a girl with his eyes squeezed shut, in jogging shorts and a tank top and I'm fucking freezing. The rest of us are in sweaters and coats and freezing. Smiling with his eyes squeezed shut. We're friends online.

It's a block party. We're between bands. People meander and drink and I'm doing my best to kill the inner monologue but the only thing that seems to do the trick is fucking hating Kevin or Brandon or whatever his goddamned name is. Let's call him Tribeca.

I try not to read people anymore. In the past I've been exceptional at it. Knowing intentions. Knowing fears. Knowing motivations. The amount of times I've heard "you were right". 

After it doesn't matter. After it's too late.

I can read Tribeca. It's all over him. I don't want to anymore, but it's plain. Try to see a marquee without reading it. He'd love knowing I compared him to a marquee. 

It's freezing.

Earlier I stepped into the restaurant that was hosting the block party. A friend was serving and I smiled and said hello and ordered a drink from her. We're in a strange moment right now. She knows it. I know it. I move past it. 

People shuffle all around the small and dim room. 

Because of the block party the restaurant has an odd system for ordering and picking up drinks in place. Order here. Pick up over there. I'm not sure if it solves anything. They offer $4 "mystery cans". Whatever they are over-stocked on or trying to get rid of. I don't plan on staying long. I order a mystery can and walk to the bar across the room to pick it up. 

Among a handful of others, Amber is working. I don't know what to say about Amber. She reminds me of amber. We get along well enough but there is something I can't identify. Rosemary said there was something there, but Rosemary thought there was something there between everyone. Maybe there is. I don't know. I don't care.

Won't.

Generally, the mystery cans are small niche local brewery beers. Amber comes over and hands me a tall 9.1% beer. 

"You want the good one?" she asks.

I smile at her. I'm fighting the inner monologue. I smile. Hide it. 

"That'd be great."

"I knew it." she said, still smiling. She reminds me of amber.

"Thank you." 

"Of course."

She reminds me of amber.

I make my way through the restaurant and outside to sit at a single-chair table, be present, and fucking hate Tribeca.

The big move was getting out of the apartment. Getting off the couch. Wiping my eyes, catching my breath, and making the decision. To put a coat on. To leave the dark. To go. I didn't know how the night would go, it's hard to tell when I'm in these states, so I walked into town. A quick fifteen minutes. I've been trying to get into New Order lately. In my headphones as I crossed the college parking lot, down the hill, into town. To life. Away from death. 

I didn't look up when I knew you were watching. 

Won't.

Tribeca smiles behind thin lips and he reminds me of a rotting yam. I take a sip from the mystery can and watch the band set up. The drummer sets his cymbals, screws them into place. The bassist thumbs at his E and A and glances casually at the crowd. 

I've not been well.

Some people have been genuinely worried. I try to reassure them, but I'm also worried. 

I get like this. Waves. I assume I'll pull up. Hell, I got out of the house. That's something.

Soon the band begins to play. They are tight. They're having a good time, and for a moment I think about music. It's rare that it even crosses my mind anymore. I think about the math of music. Both timing and tone frequency. I think that maybe "rock & roll" is the voice of god. I think that maybe "rock & roll" was the greatest discovery of the 20th century. It certainly had a far greater impact on humanity than the fucking moon landing. How many lives have been saved by a rock band? How many lives changed, directly or indirectly by a three chord song? 

Billions.

For a moment I am lost. I am weightless and nothing hurts and nothing is speaking to me and nothing can touch me. For just a moment.

I don't feel you.

I don't feel loss.

I don't feel fucking anything.

I simply AM.

There is no Tribeca. There is no amber. There is no 9.1%. 

There is no you.

For a moment I am nothing. I am at peace. I am beautiful. I simply AM.

I got out of the house. I put my coat on. I put my headphones in and listened to New Order. I didn't look up when I knew you were watching. I walked across town, and I came to life. For a moment.

For a moment 

everything was beautiful.