Sides

when it happens i call it relapse but it's not
i call it that because it feels more like a fluke
when really all the time in between is the exception

as the cycle goes
it knocks me off my feet, sucking the wind out of my sails
i fall i roll up into a ball then i get up again, each time less reassuringly and
yet
somehow i get up everytime
but faithfully followed by the ole hazy head and a rude shot in the arm of reality
i'm sick. and it's permanent. it's my code, my mode, my life.
unavoidable. undeniable. true.

when the medicine works I forget, I float on the lil cloud of hope
and flutter from dawn to dawn
living the dream of functionality
until
until the sickness gets me
and it always gets me
it settles in my chest, it shakes in my veins
just skin deep, waiting. it's always waiting.
for that one -- peek -- of vulnerability

and it cuts just as deeply as the first time.

and I drown just as deeply as the first time.

and I lose the ground just as terrifyingly as the first time.

and I think of the permanent cure just as terrifyingly as the first time.

then it flies me up to the fan and chops me into bits

...spend the week putting myself back together again

i come back into the world, everyone's still moving around in today
and i'm in the dust of yesterday, trekking through the aftermath trying to get to tomorrow
because tomorrow
tomorrow is new, un-fucked, and possible.

tomorrow could be better
but i don't lie anymore

tomorrow could be better
but it'll still find me.
and kick me when I'm down.
knowing that. knowing it's waiting. off in the distance of days, weeks, hopefully months, preferably eternity...

weighs on me.

and i fear.

that one day i will.

up and give in.

but tomorrow.

tomorrow is new and un-fucked.

and I cannot give up on the chance.

that tomorrow could be better.

sometimes that's all I have.
and sometimes that's enough.

sometimes I forget. I forget, and I'm happy.

Maybe that's the cure.

----------

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8OOWcsFj0U

In the Game

"I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?" - Haruki Murakami

-----

Settling into a time-out from studying in the oven of my car, crusting under the sun of the med school parking lot, a man of humble means strolled up to my window. He kept a conscious distance, assuring me of his harmlessness. That was thoughtful of him, my mind mumbled. He was hungry, and I, hanging out of my car, with my face stuffed into a sandwich, was an open window of possibility. I offered him the rest of my crumbling, slobbered-on lunch, admitting to my meager offer. Understandably, he declined, but not wanting a world of hunger roaming the streets while I sat there, plump and satisfied, I emptied the contents of my coin drawer into his dusty palms.

"How much are one of those?" jesturing to my sub.
"Hmm, maybe five dollars?"
"Well shoot, I only got 48 cents."
"I'm sorry, dude. S'all I got on me."
"That's ok, baby girl. Thanks for keeping me in the game."

------

I wonder sometimes, about those quiet kids, the ones who keep themselves all tucked in and covered up. I wonder how the time shifts over them in their complacent solitude. Whose path remains uncrossed by them? How many hearts are left distanced by the unknown of their passing? Who will know them before the end, to carry their memory past mortality?

Though I cannot expect the world to be one solely of extroverts, but for me I cannot bear the thought of drifting through this world without being found out, dissected, digested, destroyed, and rebuilt by the crashing waves of people, culture, community.

If we're all playing this game together, I care to know my teammates. I care to see into the depths of you, compare navels as they say. I want to know you so that I may too be known.

And likewise,

if you don't know me, how will I remember you?

----

"If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets." - Haruki Murakami

Beyond This

While tossing together a meager morning meal before running off to hide in the depths of my med school's study rooms, I had a light chat about death with some housemates. Not your average pick-me-up sunrise greeting, I know, but the context was in reflection of our future practices. One remarked he did not believe he would want to spend his life facing death every day, that he wanted a more -- uplifting routine. We then shared our thoughts on death and I kept mulling it over, tipping into the afternoon, then finally settled that I'd look to my good friend NPR for some perspective...

Ages ago I discovered NPR's "This I Believe" series and found the following essay entry under the 'death' catalog. It was like reading an essay from myself, in the future, to my daughter... an most certain, impending conversation lingering on the timeline, waiting for me to catch up to it.

Being one that desires to be cremated and my ashes buried in the damp well of a newly planted tree, this essay struck a particularly personal chord.

For your viewing pleasure:

There Is More To Life Than My Life

Jamaica Ritcher - Turner, Australia

As heard on NPR’s Day to Day, April 24, 2006

"My daughter Maia is two, and has just asked about our cat. Our cat is dead. Maia knows this. What she’s wondering is where he’s gone and what has happened to him, now that he no longer meows beneath her kitchen chair, impatient for the drips off her spoon.

This is the moment I realize: I need to know what I believe.

My parents were straightforward in admitting they didn’t know what happens when we die. As a child, I probably lost a solid year of sleep pondering that enormous mystery: bone-still under the covers I lay awake picturing my future of eternal nothingness and wracked by the tragedy of no more Me. The subject still haunts me. I’d like Maia’s attitude to be slightly healthier. This is what I bring to composing an answer to her question about the cat.

After a weighty pause I tell my daughter that Martin (the cat) is out in the field. I tell her that when animals, including people, die, they are usually put into the ground and that their bodies become the grasses, flowers and trees. I pass my hand over Maia’s blonde curls, gently touch a rosy cheek and check her reaction. She appears untroubled. She seems thrilled by the thought of one day becoming a flower.

I am stunned. In this exchange, I actually realize what I believe, as if so many fragments from my life — camping trips and nature walks, pangs of sympathy, awe toward the crashing sea and towering skyscraper, love, science class, motherhood — have suddenly converged into one, unified conviction: not that I’m destined for plant fertilizer, but that there is more to life than my life. I am not the lonely human, plunked down on earth to aimlessly wander. I am a part of that earth and not going anywhere — just like the spider up in the corner, the dust on the sill and the cat I buried in the backyard. I watch Maia mull things over while she munches her Cheerios. I feel an unfamiliar calm. I feel connected. I am humbled and, what’s more, happy. Life, death, both are all around me, within my every breath.

Later, I reach for my daughter’s hand and we muddy our shoes with a springtime walk. Together, we see new leaves glowing against the sun, green hillsides shimmering with the breeze, the bright purple bursts of lupine. And it’s okay if there is nothing beyond this, because there is this: life, everlasting, in the bloom of every flower."

The Dark Passenger

"She knows. She recognizes demons, dark passengers."

the tricky part about genetic permanence is when it involves chronic illness there's no escaping it

considering i'm fighting nature and nature cannot be defeated it's curious how i've managed to survive so far. it prompts the question, is there something more to it? there must be, something trapped inside the intricate circuitry of my brain, a truth embedded in chemical lies.
---
my biggest fear is a thing worse than death. it is a thing beyond description, a sort of visceral memory with a merciless grasp on my consciousness should i let my guard down long enough to drift off to its dungeons once again. i used to write a lot. i like to think back on that time as an emotional purging, a relief for the nausea of the crushing numbness and terrifying uncertainty of mental illness. because of this i wrongly assumed that to write again would be to tear open those wounds, that to revisit those memories would be to reinfect myself with hopelessness.

wrong has never been so wrong. that idea is fermented in the supposition that this is something outside of my being, a sort of viral inoculation into my person. the reality is it is one and the same. i am the worst parts of me. they are inescapable. what i fear most cannot find me through the written word, it's already found me. it is me.

so here we go, off on a self exploration into my darkest depths...

Day 1.

Dear Time Gods

Guernica - Picasso

the time gods must have made a mistake. that was definitely not the full feel of a year. pretty sure some of the calendar pages stuck together and we skipped january and march, just bypassed new years and st. pats and went straight on through from mistletoe to Peeps. it cannot be true that i managed to truck my way through an entire year of med school lectures and exams, let alone pass them all... i'm not convinced, no, not until i have that white cape dangling off my disproportionately broad shoulders and a fat M and D chasing after my name.

much self discovery and recovery has transpired over this alleged past year and i am still attempting to catch up with myself. somehow i landed the role of the student psych clinic manager, a column in the school paper, the vp posish for the neuro student interest group, the recruiter for my fraternity, and i'm leaving for ghana in a couple weeks.... and all while in the secret chambers of my mind battling with a vicious genetics.

ghana? moi? avec mes amis de médecine? qu'est ce que c'est?? c'est ma vie?

c'est vrais.

if surviving my first year wasnt bewildering enough now i have to digest the fact that i'll be traipsing around on African soil for a month! a whole month! the luck of it all has a profound beside-myself effect on me, as if i am taking a looksie through a window into that parallel life i live in my cloudy sleep. i was pushing so fiercely through a deep dark hole full of thorny memories and skeletons and doubt and merciless neurotransmitters, just aiming to survive i hardly noticed what was passing under my feet.

now under the sticky summer sun and indecisive breezes i take pause.
dear time gods, i write.
dear time gods, what a journey we've had together, don't you think? you've done a fairly splendid job of sewing up my wounds these past few clock spins and somehow you've carted me away from an angry misery to this dreamy present. my vocabulary is shunted by an overwhelming urge to just stretch out my arms and open my madonna-gap teeth and let the surging emotions just channel the wind. just scream it out:

I DID IT. I FUCKING DID IT.

i survived.

Each Thing By Its Right Name

I've been screaming for the past 15+ years. Today my scream was given sound. The sound found a name. And the name took a face. Finally, at long last, in pieces three, I am me, truly, fully, me.