Peace And Quiet After The Age Of Pills

For reasons unclear, the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve seems like a month. I'm glad that the holidays are over and we can finally enter what C.S. Lewis called, "The waiting room of the world." Those months between the festivities of December and the warm, green blanket of spring. We have yet to experience a single snowstorm here in Boston. Not an Alberta Clipper or a Nor'easter in sight. It's tempting to blame the strangely warm weather on global warming, but few scientists predict such a rapid transformation. But it is a preview of the future, and that saddens me profoundly. I don't want to live long enough to see 70 degree winters here in Boston, or the extinction of polar bears, or the spectacle of countless refugees fleeing the rising sea. Technology is the cause of global warming, but it could also have been the solution. The nature of capitalism will prevent the best and brightest men and women from solving this problem. There's too much money to be made in not solving it. If you disagree that capitalism sucks, by all means, write me. Please do.

But that's enough of that for now. I'm in a rather affable and social mood today, so I've found myself on the phone frequently. I'm looking forward to my date with Linda on Friday. I've come to think very highly of her. I told her about my psychiatric hospitalizations and she didn't freak out, so I'm practically giddy about that. She probably knows that I'm a pill-popper, but if she doesn't I'll tell her that, too. I'm always putting something in my mouth to make the thoughts in my head go away. Sometimes I take too many and I get dizzy, then I stop for a bit. Soon after I start up again. Survival. I talk about the suicidal thoughts less than I used to, and I'm disinclined to talk about the harrowing, black fear of so many things.

I despise my illness, my disability. When I say that I suffer from depression, I'm leaving out much of the story. There's also paranoia and a frenzied anxiety that pulls at my gut until, of course, I take a pill. I'm tired of being disliked and of people having such a low opinion of me. I endlessly wonder what I'm doing wrong. Am I a pariah, or are my friends merely busy on the avenue or on the job? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, and no matter how many times I run it through my rancid brain I'm never going to know for sure if my brother is embarrassed by me or if he really likes me, or both. I'm not sure of anything. Pop a pill. I'm sure of them, anyway. My poor father must shake his head before he drifts off to sleep every night, thinking about what a stinking failure is his youngest son. That's me. And I know for a fact that my mother was ashamed of me, and that that quickened her death. All of my friends dislike me or resent me or are ashamed of me in a very specific and unique way. And I can never leave those thoughts behind. I'm allergic to whatever the hell it is that I'm supposed to be.

The time of yelling into my pillow, "Leave me alone!" and eating fistfulls of pills grows closer every day. I'm not right in the head, and it's worse than sensitivity or depression. And depression is pretty awful. Before I go, I'm going to make some people happy, do some good. But for the most part, the story of me is written. The great thing about being an atheist is knowing that the story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. When the end comes and they pull that black plastic over my face and cart me off to MedCure there will be no more need of pills. Quiet, just quiet.

But first, a little good, please just a little bit for those I care about. Just something to make them happy to know me. For fuck's sake, something.