The day after is supposed to be a fresh start but I just want to hide out or shrink down or do anything except start fucking fresh again. No, I want to become someone else instantly. Because, isn’t that why I wrote a book to begin with? To instantly become someone new?
That’s a quote from my journal the day after I finished my first novel. And here’s a bit from the day after my second:
Lots of thing take seed on the morning after. (Sometimes quite literally, but nobody likes the subject of abortion, so we’ll stick to metaphors.) The hardest work is done, but so is the fun. The joy of getting high and dancing and crying and becoming a crazy person inside a room alone as the characters boss you around and try to make a fool out of you. Hmm…that last sentence is not a sentence at all. Damn.
And here is from a month ago, upon completion of my latest novel:
What if nobody likes it? Just writing that down makes me feel hungry. I also have the intermittent urge to burst into laugher, like a crazy person would. Just to try it out, ya know?
The hardest part of the day after anything wonderful is the incontrovertible truth of the descent. Today is also a great day, but it’s slightly less great than yesterday, and I feel the contrast. I feel depressed in comparison, even though I’m nowhere near the neighborhood of depression right now. I’m happy and fulfilled, mostly. But one can’t be on a high all the time, and there’s no option but to feel a little lower during the cool down. I’ve developed a more reasonable set point, though, and I don’t let myself build up too much negative momentum. I have chosen for myself a good life. Every day it gets better. It’s not that hard to think positively, when I try, and it makes life go more smoothly. So what am I feeling shitty about? Well, nothing, except that I feel slightly depressed even though I’m happy, which is a direct result of yesterday being amazing.
If there are downsides to being on a generally more positive plane, the one I most fear is not being able to write. HappyHappyJoyJoy is not where artists hang out, typically. When I don’t have any ideas, I miss depression. I miss anxiety and fear and shame when I go too long without them. I miss Tortured Angst, who always places his words in the most painfully correct order. So when I feel a slight lowering of energy, a mild joy hangover like today, I listen to old music or watch dark films and visit my old friend Poor Me. And that’s when I write.
I haven’t figured out yet how to write while happy, at least not consistently. I was looking back through old notebooks and laptops preparing to launch this journal of the universe and I found one happy piece. Just one. It was soaked with hope and joy and positivity. I don’t remember whether I wrote it for a novel or for a man not in love with me. I used to do that a lot…write things for other people, most of whom didn’t love me. And I guess that plays into why I miss being all gloomy doomy - I miss the people involved. I miss the drama of heartbreak and repression and suffering.
I’m glamourizing the darkness for the purposes of convincing myself that I write better on steady doses of it. But do I? Unless it’s the day after, when I’m in this strange limbo of non-creative mildly dampened contentedness, depression sucks and I don’t miss it. I don’t miss not being able to lift my body up out of bed. I don’t miss my whole face trembling with the worn-out vibration of tears I was unable to produce…tears that simmered below the surface (because what’s the fucking point?) I don’t miss the hollow void inside my gut, the infinite abyss of darkness pulling me inward. I don’t miss the shrinking. I don’t miss standing on the edge of a cliff and fighting the seductive claw of gravity. I don’t miss this:
(do not pass GO, do not collect $200)
I’m sure there are plenty of things worse
than waking up paralyzed with dread, but not when you have just woken up paralyzed with dread.
today I managed to coax myselves into submission
and sit up. I was back down in a few seconds, but I
proved that I could do it, if I really had to.
(but do I really fucking have to? to be asked exponentially)
I let everybody rest for a bit and splash around in the dread
and soak in it and decide whether it’s worth our while
to live another day.
(life won, but just by a hair.)
I slip-slapped into the bathroom
and immediately knew it was wiser
not to look in the mirror
and get my ass directly in the shower.
And I definitely don’t miss this:
undertaking
every day I wake up and try not to kill myself.
I get dressed and drive to work,
trying not to run my car into a ditch.
I sit at work,
trying not to take the whole bottle of ibuprofen in my desk at once.
I interact with people,
trying to not let them see who I am or what I am.
I come home and feed the dogs,
trying not to imagine what my funeral would be like.
I flip on the tv,
trying not to guess how my friends will feel when they hear I am dead.
I get ready for bed,
trying to think past tomorrow.
I try to be present and acknowledge that I have this life to do with whatever I choose.
I try not to choose death.
yesterday my trying worked,
because I woke up this morning and I was still here.
I was alive again,
and I started the process over.
some days I feel like my only accomplishment was that I didn’t kill myself.
but hey, it’s something.
Despite that being an old and fairly terrible poem, I wanted to share it because I have a hard time remembering that place of turmoil. I don’t feel such extreme despair ever, now. I can’t recall the last time I had an obsessive thought about death. Every day I am being reborn, and I don’t spend much time grieving for old versions of me. I don’t worry about slipping back into that person - even on days like today, when I feel the distant but seductive siren call of shame. I’m not that girl, anymore. I have dips and turns and shitty feelings, but I no longer live there.
So, as a person who has largely given up suffering, what have I really lost? The urge to pen melodramatic poems about suicide? Oh, well. The universe will be just fine with fewer of those.