You are like the actor who, at the end of the play, with a final word, reveals that he is is a different character than the one he appeared to be playing. . . - Edouard Levé
New York, NY — 5/31/2024 — 4:03PM. . .
. . .12 fl oz Orchard Crisp Apple Cider (Hard) w/ STIIIZY (hybrid) preroll I took a heroic puff of right before I walked in: mixed with the powdered kratom I mixed with an Americano that morning + residual high from the ketamine I snorted off the key to the door to my apartment as well as the Beatbox (11.1% alch content) I keep inside my backpack on the off chance I need the extra crutch: I am here. I am on my 12 x 19 MacBook. I am in the bar on the Ridgewood / Bushwick border. I type a scene for a drama that I’m working on. In between I walk to the bathroom and sit and weep on the toilet seat. I wash my hands with hot water. I enter back into the bar and feel paranoia re: almost (admittedly) a 90% empty bar w/ ~2 women that talk to the bartender and locals who play at the pool table near the front: I fear my movement back-and-forth to the bathroom then back again to my booth will make it seem like I am either taking bumps of a substance and / or have an upset stomach — in either case, I fear someone might talk to me, look at me, and this will cause me to cry more totally and completely; I reopen my MacBook. I have six pages left to draft so I can be on “schedule” so the drama can be polished and done by next week. I wait until I feel composed again. I click on the Pages document. (Pause.) Grief is like an island. One feels stranded. One feels isolated from those around them and one seeks to connect but fears connection of any form will be unproductive.1 So one seeks therapy, mood stabilizers, intermittent fasting, meditation, exercise, Vitamin D supplements, magnesium supplements, learns about sleep hygiene, manifestation, Eastern medicine, and declares themselves Muslim: All of it allows you to sink slower. There’s no end. There’s not a thing left of who you once were. A stretch of bad days becomes months becomes years and then your life is declared tragic. It was written. One thinks. (Pause.) I write what’s left of the scene but don’t read it. It is evening now — the bar is a bar now and more patrons walk in. I walk out into Bushwick and then up the street to buy another preroll. Tears leak from me. I make noises. I reach Ridgewood before I start to convulse from how I’m feeling2; I stare at the sidewalk. I wait ‘til my vision obscures and teardrops stain the concrete. Pain eats my thoughts eats my body; I feel out of body; I am the state of panic. I remove the same lighter that I use to light spliffs. I light it. I let it lick my forearm.3 Here the release of endorphins: here my pupils dilate and slowly roll back into my head. I fall to the pavement. I don’t know if my sobs are loud or not. I shake a little. I think about an interpersonal situation4 that I analyze again and torture myself with; I come to the same conclusions I’ve readily come to each time: I am unloveable. The love in my heart is a cancer. I reek of despair and self hatred. People can sense it. People don’t wanna be around it. I can’t imagine my life in a month. I can’t see imagine a future for myself. I lose all memory of who I am; I become a vessel for the heavy emotion that flows through me. . . (Pause.) Moments pass. Minutes pass. I am able to cry a little more quietly, and now my bucket hat covers my face. I rise from the concrete and continue up the street. It does not comes as an epiphanic rush nor an immediate shift in my mood but as my tears dry I feel myself within me5; the Spirit so close I can taste it. Any form of suffering is unnecessary — and I’ve failed completely if I’ve glorified it here. You can drop suffering the same way you can drop your wallet. There is no merit badge in persisting in pain — in fact, beliefs such as these are what keep us from true joy (I’m the worse culprit of this). The attention on pain is what creates more pain. You pick at the wound. All that surrounds you is from you but not of you. All of this is easier said than done, of course. You can become so ingrained in thought patterns that you make the mistake the world is out to get you and not yourself. Perception does interpret reality but is the only reality; there is nothing wrong; nothing ever was; the Truth6 leaks into me. I walk into Astoria into night.
Interpersonal pattern of mine where I let on how miserable I am to another —> they express support + say I can confide to them —> I ultimately take advantage of the offer and confide the totality of my depression and the thoughts that arise within me, which then worries and alienate them. We become less than friends; less than lovers. They leave.
Namely, there is a quality of my existence that is innately wrong and perverse: it feels shameful to be alive; I feel shame in everything that I do; “unalive” ideation that lends as escape — as release — from the thoughts that seem both so cutting and neveending; that there is something wrong with me that I well never be able to know completely or fix.
Burn marks look like body acne or mosquito bites in the summer. They are easy to hide because you don’t have to hide them — provided there is not a huge amount. There is also the benefit of the rate in which they heal that seems to range from two week to a month; this is radically more effective than other methods, which have left scars on me for more than a year.
. . .the details of which, I think, would be uncouth to write about here as it would violate the boundaries for those involved.
That-Which-Views-Me — capital Me — I Amness — the You before you who You was. . . not be confused character traits. . . personality affects. . . the sum of which you’ve assigned yourself and which you think you are yourself. Here, language fails us altogether. Reality is defined by this sensation alone. Monotheism is only a metaphor.
You are loved.