icebluenothing

Six months ago:

My health and energy levels almost completely collapse. I had been spending most of my days off in bed because I couldn't make myself care about anything long enough to stay awake for it. The answer finally turns out to be buproprion, an atypical antidepressant. After spending a couple of weeks as a batshit-insane, impatient, hyper-lucid speed freak, my neurochemistry levels off and settles down to a perfectly functional level.

___________
Three months ago, almost to the day:

I quit my job. This is kind of a big deal; I've been working there off and on (but mostly on) for about four years now. (I don't really want to go into my reasons for leaving, but you can ask me privately off-line, if you like.)

I'm sure I'll be able to find another job easily enough, and in I do manage to keep myself focussed and actively looking better than I have in the past, but it's still fairly spotty. Bursts of frenetic activity interspersed with periods of apathy and despair, and occasional stretches of being "almost sure" I'm going to get some particular job, and therefore not really looking for any others.

I keep busy. I go on several interviews, most of them with recruiters rather than directly with companies. I work on a ton of websites. Aware that what I laughably call my "savings" won't last forever, I start building steampunk toy gun mods, with the intention of selling them on eBay. They look great, but I entirely fail to follow through with this.

___________
Two-and-a-half months ago:

Thanks to wendolen (I owe you dinner for this), I land a one-shot paying gig -- building a demo version of a hush-hush new project from the guys who launched Manifesto Games. Knowing that I'm at least doing something that will eventually generate income isn't quite as nice as, you know, actually having money, but it does help to keep my spirits up.

___________
Two months ago:

Months of unpaid electricity bills catch up to me, and the power to SIXBOX gets shut off. Aside from a few scattered nights spent at home in my very dark condo, I practically live with Ahna and Lars from that point on.

___________
Two weeks ago:

I run out of money completely. I survive by selling off some books and some CDs, scrounging together every tiny bit of spare change I have, and eating mostly ramen and peanut butter sandwiches. (In fact, I've been eating a lot less in general for the past couple of months, and it's starting to show -- I've lost something like twenty pounds. Poverty apparently agrees with me.)

Friends start asking me, couldn't you ask your mother for money? Yeah, I'm sure I could. That's not really the point. I'm not going to be able to rely on her to rescue me forever; I have to teach myself that actions have consequences.

I start relying on Ahna using her credit cards -- since I don't have any -- to pay off the bills I can't ignore, like the phone and car insurance, with the promise that I will pay her back as soon as the check from Manifesto Games arrives. Ahna continues to be patient and loving and generally entirely awesome.

___________
Last week:

I have my second interview with a company called CourtTrax. They have a web service that provides real-time searches of court records, which sounds to me like a good match with my experience. Like the first interview, it goes extremely well.

___________
The very next day:

They offer me the job. I accept. Go take a long, last look at their website -- completely redesigning it will be one of my first tasks. I'll be making three-and-a-half times the amount I was making at Blue Utopia. I'll have full coverage -- medical, dental and vision.

___________
Four days ago:

I wrap things up with the Manifesto Games project and send them an invoice.

___________
Tomorrow:

My first day at CourtTrax.

I will have everything I need for my life to begin again.

Holy crap. My life just went from zero to suck in less than twenty-four hours.

I broke another tooth last night. On a chicken strip. Again. The first time that happened, I managed to get it taken care of, but the second time I chipped a tooth, I just ignored it for a few months because I didn't have the money to take care of it; but now I've chipped a third tooth, and it's pretty major, so I'm having to go to my parents for money for a dentist, and they have enough trouble of their own right now, so I feel like a dick.

So that sucked. And then this morning, my truck kind of died. It runs and all, but it won't go into reverse any more. Which is problematic. saheeb138 thinks it's probably the transmission.

I've put way more than enough money into my truck at this point, and I think this is the last straw. My dad had already planned on leaving me his car when he died; when I told them my troubles today, they decided to just go ahead and give it to me now. Which is good. But I feel awfully guilty.

So what on earth are you supposed to do when you feel terribly lonely and thoroughly sick of people at the same time?

Woke up late this morning, feeling lazy and under-exercised, so set out with the intention of a long walk. Rounded the corner down the hill and set my eyes on the dome of the capitol bulding and decided that was as good a destination as any.

This probably isn't the best possible time to be visiting Olympia; the city isn't at it's best. Traffic is rerouted around construction, and repairs to earthquake damage. Even the capitol building, which looked so pristine and majestic to me in the dark when I went clubbing, has a scaffolding on it.

Capitol Lake is mostly drained away. The edges of the lake look dry and surreal, like some post-apocalyptic blasted landscape. Looking down at it, I half-expected to find some small Statue of Liberty buried in the sand.

I made my way to the capitol grounds. I'd been there when I was a child. I remembered the gardens; I'd forgotten the memorials on the grounds. There were so many of them. Memorials to those who served in World War II, at home and abroad; memorials to prisoners of war, past and present.

My parents served in World War II. I can't get my mind around the scale of it all. I read somewhere the other day that 20,000 people died in the invasion of Normany, soldiers with an average projected lifespan of another 60 years; that's 1,200,000 years of potential human experience wiped out with a single stroke. This is above and beyond my imagining. This is not history, surely, it's myth; these are the acts of gods written here, in this place.

This is not what I came here expecting to find. I came here to find life, and hope, a sense of commonwealth; instead I've found a necropolis, a sepulchre. This place belongs to the dead. I see children here, enjoying the garden, not knowing, at play among the boneyard. I see a huge statue of an angel guiding soldiers, a terrifying and dangerous vision of our certainty that God is on our side.

The capitol dome is beyond all this. I can't get in. There must be another entrance, I'm sure, but the entrance I know, the one I remember from childhood, up all those steps, is blocked now, by a chainlink fence.

I know, intellectually I know, that this is because of the construction. I can see the workers on the other side. But even this illusion of being kept out is too much.

I stand under the shade of a tree. I can't look at the capitol; I can't look away. I am very close to tears, and I feel like a man who's lost his faith in God trying to enter a cathedral. It's all been too much, living in a city where we voted against building a baseball stadium, and they built it anyway, and where we voted for a monorail and they haven't bothered to build one; and living in a country where we voted for a president, and another man was appointed instead. My faith, my belief in Democracy, as something real and present in my life, has been shaken and perhaps shattered.

In the end, I had to just walk away from it all; I couldn't go inside. I walked back through the town, understanding it a little better now, I think. I think I know why this place is so vibrant and alive, with its music and its activism and its art. It has to be; this town has to generate so much heat and light and love, to escape the gravity of its heart.

So besides laundy, my only big adventure today was to go out and try to track down a bottle of the new vanilla Coke. I had to go to four different goddamn grocery stores before I found any. Final verdict: it's pretty tasty. It's not my very favorite best new thing in the world ever, but I'm sure I'll be drinking it again in the future.

Other than that -- not much going on for me today. I don't see treebyleaf today, and I feel slightly adrift and not much sure I see the point of living through a day that doesn't have her in it. I find myself feeling that way quite often, I'm afraid. Today the feeling is especially keen, because we had such a lousy time when she was here Tuesday night -- our individual defense mechanisms and neuroses have a way, sometimes, of setting each other off in a tight downward chain-reaction spiral -- and because she's leaving again; Flight 562, departing 11:47AM tomorrow for San Diego, and returning on Flight 529, arriving 5:49PM on Monday. This time, I don't get to go with her to the airport; this time, I don't even get to see her the night before.

I have no plans to see anyone else today, either. I've thought of going out to Midian tonight, but I don't know if anyone else I know will be going, and I don't really know if I could go to an all-ages club night without feeling like Humbert Humbert. So. I may not go anywhere.

Earlier, I kept hearing music coming from somewhere; a melancholy piano. I came back in from the laundry room and realized that the tune I was hearing was familiar -- Nickelback's "How You Remind Me," made strangely poignant. I opened my bedroom window and could hear it clearly, and hear someone singing. I sat on my windowsill to listen and quietly sing along; quietly, in case the unseen singer thought I was making fun of him. I balanced carefully on the windowsill, something I've never done before, I'm too afraid of heights, and I wondered how many others go their whole lives singing quietly for fear the music will stop.

Well, this is a use for my laptop I hadn't quite anticipated;

Fairly often, I'll work up the energy to go down to the Aurafice for the weekly Seagoth coffee social, and discover once I get there that I don't, in fact, feel like being social after all. But since I've gone to all the trouble of coming all the way down here, I'll sit around for an hour or two anyway, which doesn't make me happy, but at least makes me feel like I haven't wasted the trip ....

Tonight, I brought the laptop with me in case there wasn't anyone I knew here. And, well, there are people I know, but I'm suddenly strangely anti-social again, so I pulled it out and started writing.

Hmmm. Now I'm feeling reluctant to actually post this when I get home, for fear that people will think I'm a social misfit or something. Oh, well. We'll see if I do or not.

I want to reassure people that if I'm out at Aurafice or wherever and you see me writing, feel free to come up and disturb me. If I didn't want to be interrupted, I'd stay the hell home .... It's just that in moods like the one I'm in right now, I may have come out to see people, but I haven't figured out how to make that next step of actually going up and talking to them. But I wouldn't mind if they came and talked to me.

Aiiiggggh. It feels awkward just writing about it.

I used to be good at this. Being social, I mean. Somewhere along the line, it stopped being second nature. I'm not happy about that.

Much work and progress today on the Merchants of Deva website. It will kick much ass when it's finished. Oh, and I actually did a little laundry. I've eaten like a total bachelor today -- frozen burritos, too much soda, a cheap frozen pizza. Terrible. Tomorrow I see treebyleaf again; tomorrow I will clean the apartment for her visit. Tomorrow. Today hasn't been bad, but tomorrow will be better.

Hmmm. This keyboard is pretty nice, but it's a noticeable effort to type on it -- my hands and arms are getting tired already. That's not good. Hopefully I'll acclimate to the unfamiliar effort.

Now I've turned so I can at least see the room. That's almost like being social.

___________
Postscript: Home now. Both greenwood and autumngray came over and pulled me out of my shell, which was nice. Drove home, way too tired to be driving (ended up taking a free left at a red light, at one point), but still went way out of my way to go to a grocery store to buy ice cream. Realized when I got there that I could buy actual groceries as well. Found out one of my favorite Ben&Jerry's flavors is now available as frozen yogurt, so I got that instead, 'cause it's healthier and stuff. If you've bothered to read all this, give yourself a gold star.

I'm not sure what day it is.

The last time I wrote in this journal, I wrote about the overabundant amount of caffeine I'd had that day, and then I wandered off to bed at 4:00am.

Then a miracle happened:

I slept through the night.

I don't remember the last time that ever happened. Usually I wake up at least once during the night, to go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, whatever. More often, it's two or three times.

Let's pause for a moment, you and I, and consider what ramifications that little fact must have for my typical energy levels and general state of health.

So. Yeah. I wondered what factor, or combination of factors, had led to this little miracle; had the amount of caffeine I'd had stimulated me enough that the resulting crash dropped me into a deep sleep? Had I simply stayed up late enough to exhaust myself? I'd shut the cat out of the bedroom that night, which was unusual -- I'm not aware of the cat waking me, most nights, but does his wandering presence usually prevent me from reaching a deep state of sleep? And so on. I want to crack this riddle so I can repeat this simple feat reliably.

And then after that single small victory, I've had nothing but failure.

I know I've written here before about the form my depression seems to take these days -- that when I'm depressed or anxious, I just want to lie down and sleep. Well, I was at retcon and treebyleaf's apartment, hanging out with friends, and I was feeling depressed and anxious, and I had a headache, whine whine etc., so I decided I should just go home -- and I barely managed to keep my eyes open on the drive home. I got here and just crawled right into bed, even though it wasn't quite 8:00pm.

My phone rang a little after 9:00pm. It was wendolen, or so caller-ID tells me; I didn't wake up in time to answer it. But it was enough to wake me, which was a mixed blessing.

I hate sleep. Seriously. I painfully and powerfully resent the fact that I'm going to spend a third or more of my entire life unconscious, and I especially resent this strange overpowering exhaustion that depression brings. So since I was awake again, I decided I didn't want to waste another minute in bed. I got up and called treebyleaf and asked if I could come back over -- and if she'd make me some coffee.

I need to come to terms with the fact that I seem to need coffee to survive. No joke. I keep discovering this fact, and then forgetting it. When I'm working, when I'm in an office environment with free coffee constantly available, I'm fine. I'm not depressed, I'm not exhausted, I don't get withdrawal headaches. But when I'm not working, and I have to try to remember to make my own coffee, and I don't, well ....

So I went back and had most of a pot of coffee and my headache went away and I was happy and cheerful and all was well. I hung out with people and enjoyed myself.

And then I came home and I couldn't get to sleep. I gave up trying, got back out of bed, and played around with custom styles on LiveJournal. Until 8:00am.

I went to bed and got three or four hours of sleep; got up, got on the computer, went back to bed and slept for another hour or so. Got up again, got on the computer again, went back to bed and slept for another hour or so again. Trying to get the sleep I need in piecemeal scraps throughout the day. Trying to nest, trying to make the bed into something comfortable and perfect; I have my pillows, my herbal eye-pillow, my body pillow, all my usual blankets and most of the guest blankets piled up soft and warm around me and -- Nothing. Works.

treebyleaf called -- I think I was awake at that point -- and we had a series of weird and fragile conversations that ended up with the three of us going out to dinner. Dinner was nice.

I came home, went to bed. The phone rang at about 11:30pm. I got up, checked voicemail -- wendolen again, of course, no one else calls me that late -- and got a drink of water, resisted the urge to get on the computer, crawled back into bed.

The phone rang again about 12:30am.

This time I managed to get to it to answer it. I don't think I was very coherent. It was wendolen again. She apologized for waking me and then asked, somewhat petulantly, if she needed to just let me go back to sleep.

I got off the phone, and went back to bed, and sleep didn't come, and now I'm here. I logged on mainly to write this, but partly because I was curious to know if I'd have whiny, self-pitying e-mail from wendolen, or if there would just be whiny, self-pitying LiveJournal posts. (Both, it turns out.)

Now here I am at the computer again, and God knows when I'll be able to get back to sleep or for how long. I've had a little alcohol; maybe that will help.

This feels like a nightmare. I wish it was. Then, at least, I'd be getting some sleep.

So I went driving, like I said I would. I drove out to the end of a familiar
stretch of road and just kept on driving, going out into the Great Unknown
beyond it.

It turns out there's just more road. It's hard to feel like Magellan when what you find is Fred Meyer stores and Azteca restaurants.

I did find myself at one point, though, on Locust Way, and I have to admit I find myself approving of roads that are named after Biblical plagues.

Spent today sick and strange and estranged, conversation with wendolen not working, kissing her goodbye and getting out of her car and taking a bus home when I needed to go home and rest and there was no time, her errands needing to take her away and get things done. Felt way too strange and final to go separate ways like that. Don't know, right now, if she'll ever want to talk to me again. Maybe that's an overreaction and maybe it isn't. I know I can live without her and I don't want to find out.

Home, then, on a bus I don't ride any more and have grown to hate. Home and staring at the screen and doing nothing and she calls, asks if she can come over when she's done with her errands and I tell her No. I don't feel like being company to her or anyone. I'm afraid as I say it that telling her no this once will be the end of all of it, card house tumbling down. But I don't have any room to compromise any more and I compromise myself too much anyway all the time, give away too much of my time and energy and light.

I go to bed. It's about 6:30 in the evening. Set my alarm for 9:30 so there will still be some day left, so I can get up and write.

Wake up in disorientdarkness, groggy and looking around at the room I can't see. Feel like I've slept for hours, like maybe it's morning, early in the morning before the sun and the day is gone and why didn't the alarm go off? God, how did I waste another day? and I manage to sit up, swimming up through all the fog and night sweat heat and look at the clock at it's 9:24, something inside me has kept track of the time and slapped me awake.

Up.

Stare at the computer and do more nothing.

Grab myself a bottle from the refrigerator that I think is ginger ale and sit back down with it at the computer. First swallow is acid and wrong, something rotted -- I look at the bottle and I've grabbed the wrong thing, this is hard apple cider. It's the wrong thing for me to drink and I drink it all the same, not wanting it to go to waste.

Finally do a little writing. A little. I'm tired and sick and the cider has affected me more than I thought, I keep hitting the wrong keys. I watch the letters appear on the screen, staring in disbelief at their ragged order, this mutiny, among these twenty-six soldiers I thought were mine by right of blood. Not being able to type feels like not being able to breathe.

I send wendolen mail, literally begging her to call me. She hasn't. Either I've missed her and she's gone to bed, or -- I don't want to think about Or.

I write something else. This goes a little better, my soldiers straggling into a reluctant line for my review. Maybe when I get back to The Work it will go a little better, flow a little more smoothly. Maybe.

I feel so desperately alone right now. I'm slowly alienating wendolen and treebyleaf is still so unthinkably far away. I want to go out to the club but there's no way I'd make it there and back alive. I want a cigarette, I want coffee, I want -- something. I just Want. Some kind of icecream sex communion Hollywood sangreal I can just take inside me and finally finally finally fill myself up.

I'm alone right now. But I'm not. Because it isn't now, as I'm writing this, and you know that -- because it's now, as you're reading it, and these words, this telepathy, it can get me outside of my head right now and into yours and I don't have the slightest idea who you are and I never know who you are when I do this like making love in the dark and I don't care, I never care when I reach out and do this, because you're always here, my reader, my reason, I have to believe in you like some men have to believe in God and as these last few words touch you like kisses at your neck I want you to know (I love you I have always always loved you)

I go to a funeral on Friday.

Then I go to another one the next day.

Riff and treebyleaf's 8th anniversary is on Sunday.

There isn't enough alcohol in my liquor cabinet. Or in the world, perhaps.