The main problem with disappearing for well over a month is that you then feel the need to come back with a BANG! To rehash all the exciting things that happened over the last few weeks. To excite your loyal audience (hi Chelsea!) with titillating observations and snarky commentary. You get all hyper about how to do it. You construct run-on sentences in your mind. You edit them. You delete them completely and come up with a new subject. You do this pretty much every day until you realize that everything you’ve been wanting to write about is utterly meaningless in comparison with the bag of tortilla chips on the coffee table and the cushy couch growing out of your ass. You compose tender and reassuring poems to your growing ass. Finally, your ass gets so big it doesn’t fit on the couch anymore and you have to get up and go to work. Dammit.
So as you can see, I have returned to work now have nothing better to do than post.
I’ll just give you the overview of the last eight-ish or so weeks. First, I got depressed. Well, actually I got depressed sometime in October. Instead of waiting for Total Meltdown this time, P found some cheap tickets and shuttled us both off to Chicago for Thanksgiving. I saw the whole family, which was really fun except my mother’s version of “hello”, which was as usual a lyrical exercise in criticism. This time it covered (primarily) my knack for losing things and my lack of common sense. Always a good time. After the US, I had one week of pretty happy. Then I crashed into Total Meltdown mode for all of December (in case Ian Curtis below didn’t clue you in). TM mode means I walk around the house bleary-eyed and crying a lot for no specific or apparent reason. P looks at me and I cry. I put my shoes on and find it incredibly sad. I comb my hair - waterworks. I come home and go straight for the couch. P hugs me, I cry. P makes me dinner, I cry. I go to bed and bawl all night. And this whole time sad-me is being watched by psycho-me. Psycho-me turns everything I do into a potential act of suicide. Drive to work- why? when it would be so much easier to drive into a tree. That would quiet things down. Then I feel this incredible bourgeois guilt: “What the fuck is wrong with me? This isn’t the 1800’s that I can inherit my uncle’s money and check myself into a sanitarium for le malaise. I’ve got this thoroughly rich life and I am being a big fucking baby about it. People are suffering all over the world and I’m blubbering about jet-setting around Europe.” Unfortunately, depression is a disease, people. And you can’t really apply logic to a brain that isn’t functioning properly. Unless that logic happens to involve ways to kill yourself.
I feel absolutely horrid writing about this. Because I find it embarrassing to be a weak, whiney baby. Because I have no less than three friends who have lost their parents or other people close to them to this disease. But I don’t want my life or what I write to be bullshit. I want to have real friends who know and love me for who I am. Who love me when I’m fucked up and depressed, and not just when I’m running around making up fun magical adventures. And if you decide you still love me, well - thank you, please leave me a comment so that I know who you are, and I love you too.
Moving on… this TM depression state lasted pretty much through New Years, which was a total effing disaster this year. Pretty much everybody we knew left the country. We didn’t really have the money to go anywhere because P’s divorce got finalized suddenly and he had to fly to Italy to sign the paperwork in front of a judge. The few friends that we do have here were doing their own traditional things (Belgians, like St. Louis people, have this annoying tendency to keep hanging out with the same people they went to highschool with… not that I’m bitter about being left out!). I was so depressed and couch-ridden for the week P really did everything he could to get me out of the house. A colleague of his was nice enough to scrounge us up tickets to a VIP erotic party. Let me say here - not something we do. But we went to a club earlier this year out of curiosity and thought the people and the ambiance were really relaxed and interesting. Besides, it was P’s only option apart from a) staying home listening to me cry or b) knocking me on the head with an ice axe. The party was not relaxing and the people were not interesting. It was a meat festival and at some point I just gave up and started downing Vodka/redbulls. After I was altogether too drunk I had a massive freak-out and P drove me home. The end.
I guess the freakout I had at the party was cathartic, because I came back to life sometime last week and started feeling human for the first time in months. I finally managed to detach the tumor - I mean the couch - from my ass and found that I had gained 6 kilos. That’s a lot when you’re five foot two and started out at 50 kilos. So I started climbing again, took up Pilates (which is a real workout, unlike the “breathe, use your mind” yoga crap I hate), have done a few woodcarvings already, and …well, voilà… poorly written stream-of consciousness, but at least it’s a post, eh?
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Feeling broken and healed all at once feels almost exactly like this perfect rendition of Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley’s version of the original Leonard Cohen song.
January 16th, 2009 at
Love you, silly ass.
January 16th, 2009 at
I don’t know how I managed to do it… today I sat down to check my e-mail, and decided to check your blog also. I had not checked it in about three weeks, and the day I check it is the day of the new post.
I think I have some sort of connection with it. Or just coincidence. I prefer creepy connection. Maybe I will take on the position of the crazed fan… let me know if the position is still open or if it has already been filled.
I am glad to hear you are doing better. Depression is no fun at all- more like the complete opposite of fun. *negative words here to further my description*
I hope the tumor does not come back any time soon.
Play a good prank on Paolo for me.
Much love,
Chelsea
January 19th, 2009 at
welcome back Topo.
January 19th, 2009 at
ALWAYS LOVING YOU TAZ (you didn’t even have to ask)!!!
Really glad to hear that Paolo likes women’s underware….
I will email you soon.
Much Love,
Court
February 11th, 2009 at
Looking looking into the mirror
Who do I see?
I don’t know who’s looking at me…
Looking looking at each feature carefully
I still don’t know who’s looking at me…
……this is very frightening to me.
Looking looking into the mirror
What will I do today?
Go on go on is what I say…
Looking looking am I good?
My little voice says yes, I must confess…
Every day I look & wonder and in the end I stop to ponder.
Am I this?
Am I that?
Should I be here or should I be there…
Can I change this or that …
If indeed this is me, I must accept the person I want to be in order to set her free…
February 11th, 2009 at
ps … call me!