the waking world
Mar. 9th, 2023 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seaheroes It's been sort of a year since even though the timeline is complicated and confusing, even after all sorts of retracing steps back to the "beginning" - me lifting two fingers tearily in front of the webcam while my therapist looks on sort of- semi compassionately- I mean, so much retracing. And I'm chronically incapable of starting anything in the beginning. I can go all the way back to laying on my back at the top of the water tower after climbing the fire escape ladder from my window and the exact color of the sky, which is always the same still (but not the night sky?
Last night taking the bins out I point out Orion with his three glimmering stars, raise my arm one higher than the other and tell Mike it always looked like Orion was kind of .. cheering.. I act this out. Mike says "Look at the big dipper!" It's crazy; I don't think the big dipper has ever seemed big to me. I could swear it wasn't so big on the other side of the world, but googling provided no answer to this. It was just a little bright spoon in the night sky) with the clouds stretched out thin, skimmed over the sky like someone scraping frozen butter on toast.
Well- enough digression. Tried to lull myself into a sense of familiarity by just progressing as usual, though I know I started this with the intention of making it public. And so; if you're reading this, if i've linked this to you, somehow, in lieu of explaining anything really, the disappearance of a person you've known in a year- the portrait of the artist as a windblown field. The back of the player, facing away. So to speak. I guess I am asking for a kind of forgiveness.
WHICH is a great point to start. No one has ever really pointed a finger and said, Sharon you are NOT being a great friend right now, you're a failure of a human being and you can't even go out in public now for some strange reason. I've read this popular tumblr post (stay with me) about how the writer struggles with ptsd, mmmm some kind of riff on coming back wrong, starting off something like "you died and came back missing something" it had like 234908 notes. I'm astounded it was such a wildly popular post. And it was tagged covid19. I mean- it was extremely accurate- the whole oh no I'm like a returning revenant or some kind of amnesiac and I don't remember what it was about me that made me go in the past, like there's some unrecoverable character stat I am constantly coming face to face with in a sort of daze: Oh, I think, I used to be able to do that. I used to be able to take a train to the city alone. I used to be able to take a plane alone. I used to be able to eat at a crowded diner. I used to, like cold water down the back of your neck, this realisation that somehow, in dismay, this is something you've somehow lost. Are you still with me? I am still talking about the tumblr post.. anyway, that was what it got right. What it got wrong was how much it focused on.. blame.
Let's lay it out straight. There was no blaming. The guilt is manufactured.
Which doesn't erase the existance of it, nor how this process then generates a kind of insulation: there's no one to blame you, therefore you must blame yourself, etc etc, like a perfectly encapsulated miniature world/aquarium in a glass globe kind of thing. Is that an analogy? It might've gotten away from me. I don't really know what the purpose of bring that whole entire story around was, except as a kind of excuse: I couldn't do this because I was too preoccupied with myself, the real reason I've been so- entirely absent. Sometimes I feel like I've been absent even from my own body, and I'm not sure where I've been, except sometimes I return, exhausted, and there's a hard won fact in my hand. This goes on for a year.
Of course I DO remember certain things. A year is a long time. The extremely stupid texts, pictures of your dog, your very carefully worded care, my trifecta of three plush animals, Everest. I do remember. the other set of memory, more important, peopleless, making me secretly guilty because I mean, I do care about human connections, but there's something very nice about an empty body watching all this while the real me was away (doing what? The aforementioned above, going somewhere, gone)
well this is what the body recorded, when you were gone, Sharon, so I know I've really been writing this to you.
The moon following the car through the trees after building all the furniture in an empty living room, impossibly big; the hawk in his tree, a solitary lump, seagulls in the sky, wind through the trees, the waves looking burnt umber and ultramarine when it's windy, olana and the bend of the hudson shining like a coin on the horizon, your hands are cold, the entire world cooling down and the sky expanding during the sunset at long dock, long dock- summer, fall, winter, rocks skimming over the surface of the ice,
so no, the year wasn't a total blank. I kept the memories, but am I really back? Well; I'm trying. Am I living yet? Pinnocio ass question, isn't it. Honestly: I'm not sure. I think I'm trying to come back all the way though, so perhaps this entry is more appropriately...
A Record of the First Year.
Last night taking the bins out I point out Orion with his three glimmering stars, raise my arm one higher than the other and tell Mike it always looked like Orion was kind of .. cheering.. I act this out. Mike says "Look at the big dipper!" It's crazy; I don't think the big dipper has ever seemed big to me. I could swear it wasn't so big on the other side of the world, but googling provided no answer to this. It was just a little bright spoon in the night sky) with the clouds stretched out thin, skimmed over the sky like someone scraping frozen butter on toast.
Well- enough digression. Tried to lull myself into a sense of familiarity by just progressing as usual, though I know I started this with the intention of making it public. And so; if you're reading this, if i've linked this to you, somehow, in lieu of explaining anything really, the disappearance of a person you've known in a year- the portrait of the artist as a windblown field. The back of the player, facing away. So to speak. I guess I am asking for a kind of forgiveness.
WHICH is a great point to start. No one has ever really pointed a finger and said, Sharon you are NOT being a great friend right now, you're a failure of a human being and you can't even go out in public now for some strange reason. I've read this popular tumblr post (stay with me) about how the writer struggles with ptsd, mmmm some kind of riff on coming back wrong, starting off something like "you died and came back missing something" it had like 234908 notes. I'm astounded it was such a wildly popular post. And it was tagged covid19. I mean- it was extremely accurate- the whole oh no I'm like a returning revenant or some kind of amnesiac and I don't remember what it was about me that made me go in the past, like there's some unrecoverable character stat I am constantly coming face to face with in a sort of daze: Oh, I think, I used to be able to do that. I used to be able to take a train to the city alone. I used to be able to take a plane alone. I used to be able to eat at a crowded diner. I used to, like cold water down the back of your neck, this realisation that somehow, in dismay, this is something you've somehow lost. Are you still with me? I am still talking about the tumblr post.. anyway, that was what it got right. What it got wrong was how much it focused on.. blame.
Let's lay it out straight. There was no blaming. The guilt is manufactured.
Which doesn't erase the existance of it, nor how this process then generates a kind of insulation: there's no one to blame you, therefore you must blame yourself, etc etc, like a perfectly encapsulated miniature world/aquarium in a glass globe kind of thing. Is that an analogy? It might've gotten away from me. I don't really know what the purpose of bring that whole entire story around was, except as a kind of excuse: I couldn't do this because I was too preoccupied with myself, the real reason I've been so- entirely absent. Sometimes I feel like I've been absent even from my own body, and I'm not sure where I've been, except sometimes I return, exhausted, and there's a hard won fact in my hand. This goes on for a year.
Of course I DO remember certain things. A year is a long time. The extremely stupid texts, pictures of your dog, your very carefully worded care, my trifecta of three plush animals, Everest. I do remember. the other set of memory, more important, peopleless, making me secretly guilty because I mean, I do care about human connections, but there's something very nice about an empty body watching all this while the real me was away (doing what? The aforementioned above, going somewhere, gone)
well this is what the body recorded, when you were gone, Sharon, so I know I've really been writing this to you.
The moon following the car through the trees after building all the furniture in an empty living room, impossibly big; the hawk in his tree, a solitary lump, seagulls in the sky, wind through the trees, the waves looking burnt umber and ultramarine when it's windy, olana and the bend of the hudson shining like a coin on the horizon, your hands are cold, the entire world cooling down and the sky expanding during the sunset at long dock, long dock- summer, fall, winter, rocks skimming over the surface of the ice,
so no, the year wasn't a total blank. I kept the memories, but am I really back? Well; I'm trying. Am I living yet? Pinnocio ass question, isn't it. Honestly: I'm not sure. I think I'm trying to come back all the way though, so perhaps this entry is more appropriately...
A Record of the First Year.
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Date: 2023-03-13 12:38 am (UTC)