It’s kind of a catch-22 when you can’t do anything productive unless your apartment is spotless. I find myself in this strange predicament as I gradually sink into my love seat while the hours pass, all the time wishing I weren’t sitting on my love seat. I used to be completely driven by motion. Now, here I am smothering at the hand of a most baffling inertia.
I remember how just a few months ago I was living in an ecstasy-glossed dream world. I felt the Earth move through me, the sun soak deep into my skin as I walked each path. Looking back, I have concluded that I must house some sort of surrealist gene (more preferable to “psychological disorder”). Sure, everyone sees the same world quite differently; but, when I’m high, when I’m manic, colors literally mesh and glow, the air sparkles in a different light. I feel like a model, oozing with self-respect and confidence. Though, such a state is obtainable only temporarily; thus, in generalizing patterns, my life is a reflection of catch-22’s. While mystical illusion – at least to me – sounds most intriguing, tempting even, in comes with several equally negative counter effects. While simultaneously feeling on-top-of-the world during my highs, my anxiety also boils to the rim and often explodes with no mercy. Having dealt with such emotion for most of my life, I’ve found rather odd coping mechanisms in moments of pure desperation. To the outside world, these counteractive measures appear similar to Tourette’s syndrome; I start to flap my arms about, almost like a bird. I let out incomprehensible verbal expressions, small yelps and such. On top of such things, I never want to sleep, never feel tired. Though the worst coping mechanism I’ve attached myself to over past years is alcohol. Unfortunate as it may be, at the ripse age of 22 (ha, 22), I find myself in the throws of a deep-seated battle with alcoholism.
It’s not until the high wears off that I actually begin to realize just how disillusioned I had been behaving and perceiving and feeling before. Above all, I must say that the return flight to normalcy is one of the most depressing transitions I’ve ever experienced. You see gray again; life goes back to unappreciated, dull routine, monotony; I find myself over-whelmed with irritation and a complete lack of motivation. The words stop flowing from my fingers, and every publication brings shame and feelings of immaturity. I don’t lose myself in these “metronome” days, as I shall now call them. I just forget what it means to be alive, how to feel alive.
My writing is a direct reflection of my current mood. Thank god I have found some sort of out in which to express emotion. I lose myself in adjusting and abstracting and reforming my personal thoughts, worries, dreams, fears which I face on a daily basis, as all humans do. Sharing raw emotion with the world can bring about its own forms of anxiety; though, I must remind myself that I hold the choice of anonymity, and that thoroughly comforts me.
I find both hallowed reverence and fear in the idea that I may be alone forever. Though, in some ways, all of us are alone in certain respects. “Island universes” as philosopher Aldous Huxley would describe the combination of our social and psychological environments. In the moments I sit alone, feeling lonely, I often find myself unable to establish who I would actually consider spending any of my time with. This may be a matter of high expectation. Still, to part of this tendency I am unable to find suitable answers. Is it acceptable to lower my standards in a desperate attempt to combat loneliness? Even after seeking companionship, it’s customary to witness how quickly I grow restless and bored, though I know not what activity my mind and body intend to jump to next.
Maybe this is just the continued winter talking as the first day of spring has already come and gone, and I watch from my balcony as ten-inches of snow fall less than a week before the 1st of April. I nest in my beloved sanctuary which lies stale and hollow as my future coffin. I must break away but to where in a city where there is no heartbeat, only metronome days and metronome streets and metronome people?
Tick tock tick tock. Tomorrow never fails to come, regardless.
