suicidal suicidal suicidal! and furthermore
Wednesday 5 January 2005 | I like a cookie
It’s not four-thirty am on a Tuesday but also we know it doesn’t get much worse than this: it’s seven-thirty pm on a Sunday, I have two reviews to write tonight and a big feature piece on romantic comedies for Valentine’s Day and half a dozen capsule reviews tomorrow night, the cramps with some nice stabbing pains mixed in, weird blood sugar, so many undone errands and unreturned phone calls it’s literally sickening (including having flaked on possibly two press screenings) and darkest of all, the conviction that I am the world’s worst human being. Terrible friend, terrible daughter, terrible girlfriend, crazy, useless, time-waster, energy-sucker, doesn’t listen to anyone’s advice, can’t pull herself together after all these years, yada yada yada, blah blah blah. Is there a twelve-step group for people who just hate themselves with a passion?
Today was Million Dollar Baby (with a reluctantly moved Ex-Sikh Wife: “I just refuse to cry”) and tea at the Teahouse (costing a bizarre $17) with the Film Critic. He readily agreed to be friends and offered his hand to shake on it almost before I finished asking, so I was foiled in the larger part of my agenda, which was going to be requesting that he tell me in approximately fifty words his version of what happened last year—the translation, as it were—the version he might give to a new acquaintance or an old friend. Just so I could know what he thought went down, to compare it against or possibly match it with my version. Last night I dreamed I was walking across the Sanbusco parking lot talking to him on my cellphone—him never so real to me as when a disembodied voice, I suppose. And I told him, in the dream, how much I had loved him. There was a long pause filled with the clarity and longing in what I said, and then he responded in his wry crackly voice, Come on, you can’t say two things like that during this phone call, you aren’t allowed more than one, you’ve already used up your credit. I can’t remember what the first thing was; I guess that I still liked him and wanted to be his friend. He was trying to tease and say, don’t be so serious. But I ache to be serious. And today it was the same—I couldn’t get him to stay on the topic of me seeing someone or him not seeing anyone or us having not stayed together or what—his eyes averting, his voice changing the subject. Apparently he and the 19-year-old did keep dating for a while longer; he mentioned several more of her raving-in-the-street style emotional outbursts, with which I privately sympathized, and said he just couldn’t maintain the relationship with her level of—he didn’t say craziness but it was definitely implied. And he commented that 24 is not 19, and it’s a world of difference. I shrugged with elaborate casualness. I wanted him to ask questions and he wouldn’t.
That was that. We walked out to my car and I dusted the snow off it, called him babycakes, waved goodbye, drove home to Low, played with the cat, researched Hotel Rwanda and Million Dollar Baby. Let myself realize how screwed up are my bank account and my personal life and things like not going to the newspaper on Friday to check mail and potentially missing two press screenings. I listened again to the Chez Zen seamstress’ message telling me how sad she was that I’m so hard to get in touch with—and keep this message, because it seems to be telling me something I just don’t hear, or can’t keep in mind. Remembered again that I said I’d get in touch with Cube Boy about his film treatment and haven’t. Contemplated I’m going to miss the shuso hossen of one of the Zen priestesses, can’t imagine this, listen to a disgruntled sounding message from my parents, one from N.’s landlady saying he needs to add in $20 to his rent check for utilities, and worst of all two or three from him in which he’s in tears, severely overdrawn at the bank and baffled as to where all his money went. My heart breaks for his hurt and also I am not in the least surprised by this. He asks me finally to help him learn how to manage money and I would be willing but some part of me thinks I am not the person to help him do this, that it would be too co for words.
So there I was wandering the house, trying to make these steamed dim sum things from Trader Joe’s because I thought if I got some calories in me it might help (day’s total so far: almond milk and two Tylenol, handful of roasted almonds and one apple during the film, cup of blueberry tea and scone with cream and jam with the FC, and—and oh dear) and basically wringing my hands, feeling suicidal and miserable and finally getting my phone book and thinking who can I call, a habit dating back at least a decade and one that never furthers me, I always wind up tearful and “realizing” I can’t really tell what’s going on in my life to anyone. Hello Person—I know I haven’t talked to you in years but I just need help tonight because all I can think about is cutting or slapping or poisoning myself. Ideas?
Around an hour ago N. called, also in bad shape, saying he’s going home from work and where he really wants to come is to my house but he doesn’t want to get in my way. I’m snivelling as well, saying I’m in terrible shape and am afraid to be alone but don’t want to get in his way. We decide he should come over and we’ll deal with how excessively dependent we are on each other later. Always later. I can’t get through a day without him right now. And I’ve managed to isolate myself so that I can’t substitute any person other than my Mandarin. And I felt myself, while going through the mental and physical lists of Who Can I Call, considering impossible options: Librarian? M.? And feeling the chill sick recognition that I’ve cut off people, my stupid actions have caused me to lose people, were they people I’m better off without or am I a fucking idiot, should I keep the seamstress’ message, no matter how hurtful I found it, to remind me forcibly that I have the potential to be a terrible person, a bad friend, irresponsible, unreliable, unavailable, or should I just be gentle with myself and erase it and release her to the care of the universe?
I used to be reasonably competent, I think; or anyway I used to get a lot of things accomplished—I managed a big grant and a big magazine, I was married and I wrote two books of poetry. Now I can’t even empty out the cat box. I wake every morning and think of vivid awful images from my life with M., with Maman, with everyone. I feel okay as long as nothing is expected from me—maybe this was true last winter too, I just can’t remember it because I didn’t have to write a couple thousand words every week. Should I be medicated? How have I fallen back into this pit, this place where I don’t feel I’ve been since the early ’90s? N. says this often happens, that if you had a depressive episode in your late teens or early twenties, it can repeat in your midthirties. Am I missing something obvious? Am I bad news and this is why the FC smartly, sagely steered clear of me? Was I a cruel rejecting bitch and/or a heartless flirt with the Librarian, the Lascivious Former Boss, my poor broken husband? Is N. bad news and I am being foolish, pace Herself picking another boy not a man? Why can’t I function without him around? Why am I miserable on my own, who used to love it so? Why can’t I eat? Why do I so dread going to the newspaper tomorrow? I’m not going to love grad school any more, it’s going to make me miserable too, just as it used to do. I hate writing papers as much as I hate writing articles, and struggle over them.
I’m in that mood or that mindset where all I can think or feel is, Everything I do or am, everything I touch, turns to shit. That’s all I am. When Nick Nolte looks at Don Cheadle and says, You’re dirt, we don’t care about you, Paul, you’re dirt to us, I feel a cool small thrill of recognition. Dirt. Shit. Worthless.
In this dark place there must be poems nestling, nesting, stirring in the basement. Baby hatching pit vipers maybe. Something to leave me loveable, liveable.
My secret from the newspaper is that I applied to three poetry programs; the FC’s, that he’s filing with the IRS to claim that he was really an actual employee of the paper, branded and their intellectual property, not a freelancer, not with a week-by-week arrangement but a longstanding one. To me this claim appears to have every legitimacy, and I wonder remotely if I should try to argue the same thing, or at least get a contract drawn up. If they’d go for that, based on—
But I just have to try to finish two reviews tonight. Eat and write and sleep, that’s it.
Listening for N.’s car, again and again and again. Here it comes, its busted-out window and slashed-out CD player, his cigarettes and boot heels and grin. My Missourian, my allergy, he who I need like I need another orifice. He who always says, softly, But I’d love it if you had another orifice.
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