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It is odd
to go on medication and realize how long you have been unable to properly feel
things. That for so long you were
hollowed out like a melon rind. I don’t
know how long I was hollow. I don’t know
how long the color was turned down on the screen of my life. Maybe I just thought the slow decline was
part of getting older.
I remember
being happy in the past. Able to laugh
to myself about some joke that came to mind for no other reason than I wanted
to make myself laugh. I have been doing
that again as I pace around my apartment.
I have gotten silly songs stuck in my head and then remixed them with
dirty lyrics. I have messaged people
nonsensical silly images. I have managed
to be witty or perhaps just enthusiastic.
My sleep
schedule is all over the place. It is
something to work on with exercise, which doesn’t help, and with supplements,
which hopefully will help. But even then
my dreams are different. I remembered
two dreams over the last few years, and both were nightmares. They weren’t the worst nightmares I had ever
had, but they were bad. Now I have had
fun dreams about helping Dwayne Johnson run for Congress or getting into an
argument with a school of fish who were in my shower.
And when I
wake up from dreams both aspirational and strange I have the strangest
sensation. I can feel so much more
intensely. My fingertips feel more. I don’t want to describe it as tingling, but
there is no other word for it. My
fingers feel so much more that they seem to be tingling.
I let
myself daydream. My daydreams used to be
a blending of frustration and grey resolve.
I used to buzz with anxiety. That
was the words I used to describe it to the doctor. I was constantly buzzing. Other times it felt like something alien was
within me. Drinking me. That a vine was growing or creeping up the
length of my body just beneath the skin and sapping my blood. I don’t feel that anymore. I am not buzzing. I am going un drank.
Instead, my
daydreams let me think of aspirational things that will probably never happen
but make me happy. They let me reminisce
about missed opportunities. And rather
than lament those misses they let me turn the event around in my hands like a
crystal bobble to see all the angles to it.
I understand my past better and can envision my future better.
I can lay
in bed and feel relaxed. I can listen to
music.
I can
daydream about silly things. As I listen
to music I can picture myself talking to the singer in a casual environment and
being the 10,000 person in their life who was nice but got nowhere with them. I can think back to the various women in my
life that I felt for and learned from and how I wasn’t ready to be anything for
them because I was somehow hollowed out.
I feel more
alive and awake than I have in a decade.
And let’s ignore the irony of my saying that during a global
pandemic. That was the thing that
finally pushed me over to try something.
The buzzing had reached new levels and I just could not focus. Looking into the future was a blur. The only thing I could see looking into the past
was my mistakes, that glowed like lighthouses in the haze. Couldn’t dwell on those, the light told me to
steer clear.
Why did I
let myself be sick for so long? Why did
I let this get so bad? Maybe I was worried
that what I was feeling was as good as it could be. Could you imagine a worse diagnosis than, “That
is just how things are”? How damning
would that be? That there is nothing
wrong and that is just how bad it is.
The buzzing will never stop, the vine will keep drinking, the haze will
not lift, and that is as good as it will get.
That must
have been it. The thing that kept me
from trying to fix it. I worried about
hearing the words, “Nope, that’s normal”.
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| Kind of wish this website did a better job of labeling which images they would charge for. This one was free. |
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