Monday, January 8, 2018
I am struggling, as always, with my own long existential
depression. It is a battle that I am not winning, as I lay forever in my
trenches and just survive. I’ve not given the order of going up over and
venture into no man’s land. It will be “just” venture, I have no doubt in my
mind that I cannot triumph. I will be 40 this year and I believe that is a
very, very far stretched period of one’s life persisting in utter non-logical
unhappiness. And the fact that I cannot explain it to myself makes it linger into
irrationality and fuels my eternal fear of simply living. I’m not talking about
a simple life, though it is my goal and my wish, I have no deep yearnings for
the riches of the world and I do not want (at the moment) for money or things.
I am talking about waking up in the morning, getting up and going about my
business. No, I wake up and I immediately go into a panic frenzy that keeps
throughout the day, pushes into deep night, nourishes my insomnia, which is
just a child of fear, and torments all that it is my being. And I do not know
why. But 40 years is too long to live not knowing. And all these years I’ve
tried many things to put a stop to such nonsense. No luck.
I am weird. Not nice weird, not fashionable weird, but
unhealthy and unwanted weird. I’ve hidden it for 40 years and only a handful of
people know the truth, and most of them suffer because of me and for me. Coming
to this conclusion has been a long ordeal, as I’ve always consider myself
normal with normal needs, or better said I’ve always wanted to be like that.
Many years ago, I had a falling-out with my best friend. For
about a year didn’t talk to her, write to her or communicate in any way. For
all others that knew us together, not seeing us together must have seemed
unnatural, and for us, not talking (this is all we most of the times do, and
God, we do find topics of discussion like you wouldn’t believe) should have
been impossible. My best friend is also unhealthily weird, she also has a secret
drive that sets in the moment she wakes, but hers is not fear, is fury.
Our fight had personal reasons, I do not need to bore, but
we’ve been close for almost two decades now and yet there’s a chasm that
separates us infinitely and that is the fact the she’s out there, out of her
trenches, in full fury, fighting it and not winning either. But what enrages
her is that I haven’t done it yet. That I lay back and just bitch
about it. My dear, with all my heart, I want to be there, but I don’t know how.
Correction, I only know one how.
I’m not sure if I’m not also a coward, as there have been
moments in my life when I thought I was out there fighting and winning, despite
pain and seemingly self-destruction. I mean I did move out of my parents’
house, I did marry a guy I loved, in spite better judgement and a few warnings,
I did divorce the guy when love had been killed (by me, of course, also a big
weird win) and I did live on my own in sheer poverty, not being able to buy at
least one book each month, and also food. But like in defiance of it some of my
choices, one of the big ones, started with good reasoning and decent sense and
ended in stand-up comedy for God (apparently, He laughs at man’s … what was it,
choices, plans … life?)
I will be 40 this year! It is not about the fact that it is
a round number or a milestone (one of my friends got an amazing gift for
turning 40, a trip to Paris from his parents. That was an incredible gift!). It
just seems a lot!!!! And now I have a kid and most of times I have no idea what
I’m doing with a kid. I am not a model mum. I do not feed him only bio stuff, I
do not enroll him in Montessori education systems (or any, for that matter), I
just go with the flow. Somehow, I have this belief that no matter what I’ll do,
he’ll have his 40 years of fucking everything up. And yet I feel responsible
that I should be responsible.
My best tactic so far in dealing with my panic is hiding,
hiding it and myself. Oh, you should see me, I’ve mastered it. And one of the
ways is comedy, I like to make people laugh, I feel good about it, and it comes
so natural to me. And because I also have a big on-going infectious laugh,
people generally believe I’m mostly fine, which drives them to leaving me alone
and not questioning. See, hiding, in plain sight! It used to feel really good, I
felt good about it, it didn’t seem like lying, nor hiding. I told myself it’s
the way I’m dealing with pain and fear. I was ok. In 2014, on August 11th,
comedy ended for me. I’m still doing it, but this time is a big fat lie. Of
course, I didn’t know him personally, and he was my favourite actor and
stand-up comedian by far, but not until his death did I realize that somehow, I
saw myself in him, “I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make
people happy because they know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless and
they don’t want anyone else to feel like that.” When he died … my will to put
people at ease died too. I saw no point in it anymore, I came to the
conclusion, I think the correct one, that all I had been doing until then was trying
to liberate people from fear, when I, myself, was caged by it for all eternity;
it really didn’t help me, and had no real effect on others. When Robin took his
life … well, he was just tired. And I was growing tired too.
Another this time perplexing way of hiding my shortcoming is
inflecting pain. And this is where the not-nice unhealthy weird feature kicks
in. I can do it immediately after I made you laugh, I can take you to wonderful
heights and push you in dark abysm with ease and no conflicting feelings. I do
it rarely and I fight it a lot because … well, it frightens me like you
wouldn’t believe. I’m pretty sure psysiatrists have a medical term for it, I
just call it my dark side. The truth about it is that it’s not a matter of
fiction, it’s not a topic to consume when my rare need of writing drives me to
wake up at 4 in the morning and turn my laptop on, it’s a living organism like
Rowling’s well put obscurial. I think this is my fear. In truth, although I
have been writing diaries for a very long time, I don’t write about myself, but
just about what happens in my life. Well, there! This is what I needed to come
to terms with. This is what all this … not doing much sleep tonight, one little
nightmare that made me scream and moan, two or three very new and peculiar
dreams, waking up early although I told people not to wake me (‘cause, God, I
need at least one night lengthy sleep), very bag lighting and many books
waiting to be read (they will have to wait even longer, but I’ll get to that in
a new entry, now, that I’m on the roll), gastritis and no dinner or breakfast,
missing my kid (left him with grandparents), enraged with myself that whilst my
best friend is out in the world, I still hide under my table or blankets, fat
and lazy, still lying that I’m fine, all this still doesn’t make me mad enough
to change anything. Because I only know one way. I don’t like that way. It
scares me.
In 2013, in midst winter, January, one night, as living
alone and very poor, I wasn’t sleeping late at night. It was months after my
divorce, it wasn’t because of my divorce, but because of the fact that I was
able to go through with it and survive it, I felt free, finally free to fury.
It came to me that night exactly when my laptop showed midnight, I was
listening to some furious music and silent singing and screaming, dancing too.
I said to myself that I’d never tried it before and why not? I took the
decision very quickly, dauntingly and horrifying naturally. Well, it is
horrifying for me now, but then … I felt nothing of the sort. I stepped into
the balcony of my bedroom, wearing knickers and some sort of undershirt. It had
been snowing so I should have felt the cold and some melting under my feet, but
… no. I even opened my arms, like I wanted to jump, or something, upwards, not
to my death. Because that was the point, I meant to do some living. I took a
very deep breath and I let go of all my thoughts, all of them at once. I
believe I wrote about it, a beacon. I remember not feeling, not thinking. All
my being was clear, translucent and new. And that’s when it happened. I felt strength
in my dark side because you see, hate is a powerful drive. And as much as I
fear and I feared, I also hate and hated. It didn’t feel good that I am bad, it
didn’t feel good that I came to the realization that I am bad, or at least also
bad, it felt right because I was being honest to myself and saw that I am only bad. Candor lead to truth and truth
lead to freedom. Quite theological, you would say, but there was no God in it
(not then), it was clear of that, it was me … being simply epistemic. I
dissolved everything with only one thought: fear, past, ghosts, lost love,
another love, being alone, stupidity and so on. I was open for business, new to
build, reborn. I had no doubt in my mind of what I could do, I was going to be
the architect of a monster. I knew what I wanted. I was so sick of losing. I
wasn’t going to accept. I wasn’t going to succumb to other people’s will. I
knew what I needed. I started in uproar and would have gone till the end. I
went on a incredibly strict diet and lost a lot of weight (easy, no money, no
food, no problem), started reading more than ever, writing as well, kept to
working coldly and passionlessly (those who knew me in the past, when I used to
enjoy teaching, would probably not believe this), gave nothing for free, walked for hours and hours and complained that Cluj was just too small for how much I
needed to walk, slept like a baby and no dreams, no nightmares. I embraced the
fact that I was evil and only evil and started walking over anything and anyone
on my way. The plan was to go get what I wanted, I sent really nice written
resumes and got three positive answers, two in Bahrain and one in Qatar. I
chose the one I wanted, the one closest to my plan, I prepared the papers and
was ready to send them. I stopped.
You see, I’m not sure if I’m not a coward. That was 2013 and
now is 2018, the beginning of it, a new January, no snow, no balcony where I
live now and I feel cold all the time. Now … I am not evil, but I am not good
either. Is it purgatory? Am I waiting for something? I do not read anymore. I
do not write anymore (this is such an exception, even God is surprised by it).
But I teach coldly and passionlessly. I do my job very well, but find no
pleasure in it anymore. I am dieting again, losing weight, but hate doesn’t
drive me. I am just ashamed of what I’ve become. Shame is good too, but doesn’t
give me enough momentum to be strict as hate does. I think I’m starting to get
old. 40 years spent in trenches, ventured out only once, did an incredible jog,
almost winning, but going back into the ground. I told myself it was my
conscience and God in me. I told myself that I’m a Christian, though no church
wants me, and I had to do the right thing. I had to keep myself in check. I
also said to myself that it was love that stopped me. I have some doubts.
So, is this the only way I can win? Hate? Should I go back
to that and start again, ‘cause I know how to do it and I do it wonderfully.
Look at me, I am so pleased with the bad things I can do, I’m giggling and it’s
natural! Is this the only way I can do battle with fear? After 40 years,
unfortunately, the answer is yes. I am a nasty woman.
