Early this morning sleep was elusive and I found myself picking through a box of books that have no bookcase to call home. Eventually, I pulled Susan Orlean's novel The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup from the pile and read a couple of stories. It's an excellent book. If you want to borrow my copy just email me. Anyway, that got me thinking about this and that, so I went for a short walk around 3am. It was cool, but I enjoyed the smell of lilacs and rain. My little stroll took me past a shabby apartment complex named, "Arizona Terrace" and on to the Mystic River just across the street. It wasn't as dark as I'd have liked, with all the streetlights, but I enjoyed it anyway. The river was black, and is wide and deep enough to move silently, so I stood on the bank (which I could see) and looked out on the river, which I just assumed was still there. It was a fantastic opportunity to murder me, but nobody took advantage of it.
There was a pleasurable moment there when I fondly thought of Ray Bradbury's novel, Dandelion Wine. The river made me think of it, because there was no moon out this morning and the river was so dark that it looked almost like a ravine. And there's a pitch black ravine in Dandelion Wine that every adult in town fears because children insist on cutting through it to get home at night. There is something wretched and evil about the ravine, and everyone is on edge about it. So a mother waits nervously for her child to walk in the door, and until he does she imagines him just disappearing off the face of the Earth, into that murky chasm.
After fondly reminiscing about Bradbury's prose, I had an anxiety attack that had me altering the course of my stroll and heading home. A sort of suffocating guilt hit me and I was overcome with a wave of nausea. With my hands on my knees, I tried to vomit, but I just dry-heaved a few times. A little fun fact...it's almost impossible to throw up after my stomach surgery. After that, I got dizzy and walked purposefully toward home.
When I got home, the cats enjoyed sniffing my shoes, which were covered with wet grass. I analyzed my guilt for awhile, trying to identify and defeat it. As usual, I gave up and took 4mg of lorazepam, which ended up knocking me out until 7:48am. So that was nice. When I woke up, though, I found the guilt curled up on the rug, staring at me. It was relentless and obdurate and it was starting to piss me off. At some point, though, I shook it off and enjoyed my coffee without feeling sick.
Just before I went to sleep last night I stretched out on top of my blanket, on my little bed, naked. I crossed my hands on my chest, held my breath and pretended I was dead. My heart was beating very hard, so the illusion was spoiled a bit. But the thought of lying on the slab, whether tomorrow or twenty years from now, made the pointless guilt look absurd. Ridiculous self-condemnation, that I've apparently anthropomorphized in some way. I enjoyed showing the guilt that eventually I'm going to be totally free of it, and for all time. I was the void and the dark river and the pitch black ravine. Ha! But it smirked back at me, letting me know that it will travel with me until the end, however and wherever I die there it will be, my fellow traveler. Fucker.
At least I won this morning, for awhile. My glorious pills put me to sleep, and luckily there were no dreams. For a little while my guilt and I didn't exist. Just for a little while, and it was nice, too. At least it felt like victory.
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