“Sometimes, I do wonder what he is thinking. But then again I’d probably rather not know,” she said.
It was the sort of non sequitur to which a person hardly knows what to say in response. To agree makes it sound like you think he is thinking about something bad that she wouldn’t want to know, or else that you think she shouldn’t want to know what he is thinking because that is obtrusive, when honestly what does it matter. But then it got me to wondering what it is about other people and only some of them anyway, that really would make you want to know what they are thinking. So here I was thinking about thinking about what other people are thinking and getting my brain all twisty like I sometimes do, and then I thought, oh god it’s tricky enough to follow my own thought patterns and really who wants to know about someone else’s. Then she looked at me with this glazed-eye expression, sort of like maybe she was making a picture puzzle out of my face, which was very intense, especially as my brain was already so twisty.
“What?” I said. “You’re making that face.”
“Oh, sorry, I was just thinking,” was all she said.
“About…?” I prompted.
“That it’s funny to be sitting here thinking about what he’s thinking instead of thinking about something more interesting,” then she laughed. And my brain untwisted itself and lunch carried on.
Finally he arrived, at which point no one really cared about what he might have been thinking and the entire exchange and my twisty-brainedness was nearly forgotten. About which time he said,
“You know, I’ve been thinking …”
And she started to laugh, but not the kind of laughing you could sustain without explanation. And I knew at that moment that it was things like that which makes Len think women are so complicated or mysterious. I could actually picture him getting all nit-picky and obsessed about, “seemingly spontaneous, yet freakish laughter for which there is no apparent cause,” (and believe me he really says things like that which is what makes me pretty glad I don’t know what he’s thinking.) Who is he, anyway? He’s just a guy that we know. And I know that’s not saying anything really but it’s like any other person who is in your life. Sometimes it seems complicated when it is simple or simple when it is complicated. Then I realized I was thinking too much and everything was getting funny, like when you leave the freeze frame on too long on a VCR ( because obviously this doesn’t happen with DVDs) so I said,
“Sorry Len, you were saying?”
“Oh, right,” he started in again. “I was thinking about something the other day,” and he took a pause, which was a good thing because then you could be sure he really was going to go on and on about what he’d been thinking, as opposed to saying something like, “I’ve been thinking we should go to the beach on the weekend,” or something mundane like that.
“Oh?” Eliza said, but with an undertone of amusement. Here she was about to get an answer as to what the hell he was thinking about. Or at least some sort of glimpse into the way he thought about things which I guess piqued her interest.
“I was thinking about circularity and cycles and spherical things,” he began. “See, how every opposite is kind of on a circle and if you put one of them at one side and the other on the other side then in between every opposite thing are all these other things and ideas which connect them together. So then maybe opposites aren’t so different from each other, except that you have to walk around the circle instead of being able to go straight across. Then I was thinking about circumferences and radiuses and pie-shaped things and how everything in the world must, theoretically, be able to be broken down into a kind of triangle.”
Then he looked into his coffee cup in this deep way, which was, to my mind, totally contrived. I swear he watches reflections in it, whether his own or other people’s I am not sure. But it is bullshit stuff like this that makes me completely disinterested in what he has to say most of the time and the exact same thing which fascinates Eliza. I wondered how long it took him to come up with the stupid circle and triangle crap or whether he read about the idea in some book then thought up words like radius and circumference to make it seem like a random image instead of a theory he got from someone else. I have a feeling I think entirely too much about everything.
But then you have to know Len. Len is obsessed or well obsessive. Mind you so are a lot of people, including me, at least a little. However, I am not the kind of person who sits around obsessing about one thing or anything like that. I just think a lot. Len, on the other hand, is sort of obsessed with one thing. Len seems to think he needs to be some sort of lyrical genius. Regardless, I’m sure, of whether or not he’s any kind of genius at all. This is because his mother named him after John Lennon. His name is Lennon, and somewhere along the way he got fixated on the idea that he has to be special in order to live up to the name. At least that’s as much as I’ve been able to squirrel out of him without his noticing.
When neither Eliza nor I had said anything about the circles and triangles, he said,
“Did you know I’ve been writing again?”
“Really?” I replied. “Is it that one where you write down one image every day for a week without looking at the other ones you wrote?” I asked him (this is apparently how John Lennon wrote “I am the Walrus”).
“Did I already tell you about this?” he asked looking at me strangely, the way people sometimes do when I’ve said what they are thinking. It seems I do this quite often.
“Oh, maybe,” I said so as not to freak him out.
“You didn’t tell me about it,” Eliza piped up, throwing me a dagger look this time. Eliza knows that I know that she likes Lennon, and likes to listen to him go on about himself for ages.
“Do you want to read my thing I wrote?” he asked me. I think he asked me because he knows that Eliza likes him and is an impartial judge, or else he senses that I can see through his false confidence.
“Ok,” I replied, bored.
An unopened envelope grown dusty and forgotten except for two fingerprints on the bottom left corner.
Three red tulips blooming from a crack in the sidewalk.
A lipstick stain on the back of the collar of his white dress shirt hanging in the back of the closet.
Purple clouds wispy and dark across a red sky in morning.
Watermelon scented lip gloss stuck to my face from when she kissed me but missed my mouth.
Two grey doves outside Freddy’s window.
Five curved pieces of toenail in the trash bin alone.
This is what he had written. I never quite know what to say since I am cruel and think it is a lost cause. Whatever Lennon is, I don’t think it’s a lyrical genius. He appears to lack imagination. I know that every one of those images is something he actually saw, and probably all last week too.
No visions of great depth or awe-inspiring new ideas. Everything he writes has a sort of verisimilitude that makes me feel like he wandered around his apartment taking polaroids of crap like the toenail clippings in the garbage can and is trying to make art out of it.
Maybe I am just not very nice. But things are never that simple. How to explain about me and Lennon? I have known Len for quite a while. He is an interesting person but he sort of lies a lot. This is not to say that he exactly lies a lot. He is just a sort of poseur, to my mind at least. This is Lennon in a nutshell, in some ways he is very insecure but with delusions of grandeur. He thinks he is this very talented, misunderstood or underappreciated person. Or at the very least, he behaves as if he thinks so anyway. Personally, I am of the opinion that he is well aware of his shortcomings but likes to appear to be very free-spirited and care-free, when I happen to know that he is very calculating and not particularly free-spirited at all. He will say stupid things like that he thinks he’s psychic when he doesn’t even have enough insight to be introspective and admit to himself that he is adopting a persona. But this is also how I know he is very intelligent. When he says things like that he believes he has psychic abilities it makes people think he is flakey. So people don’t expect someone they view as flakey to also be calculating. The sad thing about Lennon is that even though he is very calculating and contrived, I think the only thing he wants is for people to like him. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to think people will like him for who he really is. I guess the real question is why I am so lacking in sympathy. Simple, I used to like Lennon, and now that I don’t he annoys me. Notwithstanding, he can be a pretty amusing person and fun to hang out with at times, this, however not being one of them. After I read his ‘poem’, or whatever he was calling it these days, I said,
“It’s really interesting.”
“You, think?” he said trying to hide the thrilled undertone that makes him seem like an overexcited puppy, which is when I lose all ability to dash his dreams.
“The verisimilitude makes it very unique. Almost cutting-edge, you could say.”
(Cutting the edges off of what I am not sure… the lines that divide literature from your shopping list, perhaps.) Oh well he was thrilled and I got to feel like a halfway decent person. In addition, Eliza wasn’t giving me anymore dirty looks which is a feat in and of itself.
“So, you wrote that whole thing in only a week?” Eliza said in this admiring tone which made me dubious. Usually Eliza has very good taste, then again we all lose perspective sometimes, or say really stupid things (like that poor drainage really has been the downfall of most great civilizations) when we like someone and would like to ask them out instead. I decided then and there to help if I possibly could.
“Speaking of art, Eliza’s got a show coming up at the gallery next week,” I threw in.
“Really?” Lennon looked surprised. “What is it you do again?” (More evidence that he pays no attention to anyone else.)
“I’m a photographer,” she said with this pissed-off tone which suggested that he should be well-aware of this fact.
“Oh, right. Sorry, I knew that.” He said conciliatorily. “I’ll be sure to check it out. So, what have you been up to, Austen?” he said, turning to me, since Eliza was obviously annoyed.
“Not too much, really,” I replied. “I’m just trying to work on the book right now.”
“Have you got a publisher yet?” he asked with a hint of jealousy.
“Oh, you know how it is, still in negotiations.” I replied cryptically. Eliza was getting tired of Len’s obvious inattention so she stood up and said,
“Ok, guys, I’ve got to get back to the studio. Thanks for lunch,” and as she left she shot me another indecipherable dirty look (which is her favourite mode of communication).
“You really shouldn’t ignore her like that,” I said to Lennon when I was sure Eliza was gone.
“Why not, she’s your friend,” he said as if this was an excuse.
“Well, because she likes you for one and because it’s rude, for another.” I said bluntly.
“Oh,” he said. “I don’t really think she’s my type.”
“No?” I said, surprised. “She’s very pretty and intelligent,” I added.
“Yes, she is,” he agreed but not as if he were conceding.
“Ok, well whatever, she’s not my type either.” I let it drop.
“She’s not very tall,” he threw in.
Whatever Len’s real reasons for not liking Eliza were, he didn’t seem too forthcoming. Len’s attitude had kind of slackened after Eliza left and he wasn’t annoying me quite as much as before. We finished up lunch and left the restaurant to go and buy CDs. I almost never actually buy CDs but I go to the music store anyway. I look around see what is new and what I need to download and pirate off the internet, maybe I am not supposed to admit that, but anyway, then I end up buying a book or something. Nowadays with the internet pervading every aspect of our lives I know there are people who don’t even buy books anymore and just read online. As much as I appreciate and use the internet the idea of not owning books anymore appals me almost to the point that I’d give up this laptop for a scroll of parchment paper and a fountain pen. Maybe it’s just the way I was raised, I love books. I get upset if they’re mistreated if the covers get wrinkled or anything other than the very top corners of the pages are folded. Bibliophiles like me are hardly rare, sometimes I think I would have been better placed in an earlier century, which explains my interest in history… honestly I think the main reason I use the internet is so I don’t completely lose touch with the modern world.
Anyway, back to what we were up to. Len and I went shopping for CDs or more precisely, Len went shopping for CDs while I traipsed around the store with him, lending my commentary whenever necessary.
“What do you think about this one?” he asked me, holding up a CD with a black and white photo of an emaciated and sickly looking girl on the front. ‘Dementia’ seemed to be the name of the band.
“I’ve never heard of them.” I admitted reluctantly. For all I knew they were top of the charts and my admission would make it obvious how out of touch I was with pop culture.
“Me neither,” Lennon grinned back at me conspiratorially. “But I saw a poster for them at a club I was at the other night, and someone told me that they are very cool right now,” he explained.
“Oh, ok,” I laughed. “Well, I don’t know if she’s your type or not,” I said indicating the emaciated waif on the cover, “but she looks more like she’s demented than suffering from dementia.” Len laughed and assured me she was definitely not his type at all and agreed that she did look rather demented but worried that if he didn’t buy the CD she might starve to death. Since it was on sale I told him he might as well assuage his guilty conscience. We were just leaving the music store when Len’s pager went off, and he said he had to take off for his shift at the Gap.
I returned home, to see if I could get anymore work done, and spent a lot of time distracting myself making tea and checking my email. My mind was too busy thinking about unimportant minutiae from the afternoon for me to really focus on work and I had to admit to myself that I really might be obsessive after all. Oh well, I still refuse to see this as some sort of a negative thing, as long as I am aware of it. I merely think more about some things than your average person. Anyway the particular thing I was pondering that day was Len and what type of women he was interested in anyway… and how this was any of my business or even relevant to me in any way was totally unfathomable. He said he didn’t like Eliza because she wasn’t tall, which to me seemed a bit ridiculous as she was actually fairly tall, and then he had almost shuddered when I jokingly suggested that the underfed waif on the CD cover might be his type. Maybe I was merely intrigued because this was the first time he had given any clues to what he was attracted to in the least in the 3 or 4 years I had known him. At some point I just had to stop myself from dwelling over the whole thing, after all what possible purpose could it serve, as there just wasn’t any point in going down that road again anyway.
After the lunch day, I didn’t hear anything from Lennon for over a week. Eliza on the other hand, called to berate me several times. Trying as I was to focus on my work I was screening all my calls. “God, you’re nearly as bad as your friend,” Eliza sighed audibly on my answering machine, and I knew if I’d been in the vicinity I’d have received one of her looks. “I know you’re home and that you’re listening to this so you might as well answer the phone,” she said in a melodious voice after about four messages. Finally, I picked up the receiver.
“Oi, Eliza, I am trying to do some work here,” I said before she could get a word in.
“Yes, I am aware of that,” she replied, “I just wondered if you were going to come and see the show before if was over, even your rude friend Lennon showed up,” she said trying to sound more miffed than hurt.
“Of course I was planning to come down,” I lied. “Didn’t I leave you a message about it?” I asked her.
“Oh, ok,” she sounded mollified if slightly dubious. “I’ll see you later then.” And I hung up the phone and rushed around my apartment getting ready to go and trying to find an outfit that seemed appropriate for an art gallery.
About thirty minutes later, I arrived at the gallery to find Len and Eliza chatting with Eliza’s agent and about ten other art enthusiasts. Len seemed to be recounting something and plainly had the others’ attention. “And then I said, squares? Man triangles are where it’s at. I mean I swear I was just being a prick of a schoolboy but I think it made a difference.” I didn’t know who or what Len was talking about but it really didn’t matter as it probably wasn’t true anyway.
“Hey, Austen!” Eliza’s agent called as he saw me enter, and I walked over to where they were standing. Luckily, there was lots of wine, which I knew I would need if Len were going to keep telling his “stories” all night. At the sight of me, though, something in his mannerism changed and he stopped talking. The others started chatting enthusiastically amongst themselves and it was clear that they all knew each other. I walked over to Eliza, gave her a hug and said that the show looked great.
“You forgot about it didn’t you?” she whispered.
“Yeah, sorry,” I knew my game was up. “How has Len been tonight?” I asked.
“Oh, you know, same as usual,” she said rather disappointedly. “I don’t think I like him anymore.” She admitted.
“Happens to everyone eventually,” I laughed. Then I wondered, I always claimed that I didn’t like Len and that he was annoying, which he was, but I seemed to spend an awful lot of time thinking about him if I didn’t like him. Oh well, self-reflection is a funny thing, usually you don’t know what to do with the things you discover about yourself. So I just poured myself another glass of wine, or three, and tried not to think about anything at all.
*************************************************
I wondered if my forgetfulness technique worked for anyone or whether it is just an excuse or a tricky way to become an alcoholic ... probably both. Needless to say it did work for a while when I was easily distracted in the brightly lit gallery full of interesting people. But as always seems to happen to me after a few drinks things stop being so clear and interesting and the brightness seems over bright and kind of scary. I knew I was having some kind of a meltdown when I started seeing things in the images reflected off the floor and bouncing around in the glass covering the photos. By seeing things I don't mean I was delusional or anything but just hovering on the edge of a state of reflective-ness that may not be too beneficial. Seeing things or finding meanings in things which might be better left as arbitrary and meaningless is a sad pitfall of a slightly obsessive mind.
Maybe that's all this really is anyway ... some sort of refraction of my overly-fragmented mindset. What does an obsessive person think about all day ... well here's an example. Like anyone else an obsessive thinks of many things in the course of a day, an hour or a minute, just speed it up a lot and get yourself bogged down frequently in unimportant details and you will have some idea how it feels. I was a good Gap employee as my compulsiveness helped me fold things over and over without going insane. But eventually all of us have our limit ... mine is not so much with repetitive tasks but with unintelligent people. I only have so much patience ... my patience has gotten better since I taught for a few years but when I am writing and I spend all of my time with other highly intelligent fast-paced thinkers I get bogged down with little stupidities which get in my way. I don't want to spend all my time explaining simple things to people who refuse to understand. I wonder what it is about some people that no matter how many times and ways you explain something to them giving them reasons why something is a certain way or why you are sadly unable to make say an entire company or language different just because they don't like it and yet they still continue to insist that you are obstinate and stubborn instead of them. I don't know but I guess we all have our moments. I try hard to accept things as they are or at least accept when some things are out of my hands and I cannot change them. I know that sounds preachy and religious or something but honestly as a high-strung person I have to let go of my desire to control every little thing ... or at least the big things I can't control and ok if it is something like say the arrangement of salt and pepper shakers I can just move them and they'll stop annoying me.
**************************************************************
Sometime later that evening I found myself sitting on a chair in the gallery pretending to analyse a photo when really just willing my head to stop spinning and not to let myself become too paranoid. It wasn't working too well but at least most people thought I was really interested in the piece of art across from me.
"That's some piece, eh?" this guy said walking by me and looking at the photo, "Kind of mind-bendingly surrealistic"
"Oh, yeah ... um definitely," I managed to choke out at first having no actual idea what he was talking about. Len came by after a while and said,
"How about we take off, looks like you've made yourself all drunk and paranoid again, Austen. Unless you really were planning to buy a sideways psychadelic rendering of a dog."
"Yeah, not so much," I replied. I had been wondering what the photo was of anyway, not that it mattered in the end. So we left the gallery, after telling Eliza what a great show it had been, or at least how her photos were the best ones there, and wandered a few blocks looking for pizza or some other highly greasy food.
"You know Austen I don't understand why you do this to yourself every other time you go to a social event. You end up having a crap time and sit alone being obsessive and paranoid, what is the attraction to drinking if that's the result?"
"Sometimes I don't want to think about things or at least forget about the other things and think about something else and it usually works for a while, until my brain melts," I admitted.
"Ok," he replied. "It's your choice I guess. I'd just like to see you have fun for once instead of whatever this state is you usually get yourself into. What is bugging you anyway?"
"Nothing, I just ... it's really nothing but... well I can't talk about it with you anyway!" I blurted out mostly because I was tipsy or upset or who the hell knows why. He laughed.
"Why not ... is it about me?"
"Well yes maybe oh I don't know you'll just hate me anyway if I tell you."
"Try me, Austen, I honestly won't hate you," he promised.
"Well I do have a question first," I started. "Why do you think Eliza is short because she's not?"
"I don't think she's short. I well, I really just don't want to go out with her. I want to go out with someone else," he confessed.
"Oh," I said quietly.
"Sorry, Austen. I know that she liked me and that she's your friend and all it's nothing against her. Is that why you're mad at me ?" he asked puzzled.
"No, and I'm not mad at you anyway but you like someone and that's good, who is it?" I wanted to change the subject and fast.
"Unimportant, why are you upset?"
"Because I like someone too, but I don't think they are interested in me, as usual," I admitted.
"Why would I hate you over something like that? That doesn't even make sense, Austen," he shook his head as if by doing so he could somehow change his perception and I would make sense.
"So, who is it?" he asked.
"Unimportant," I mimicked back.
"No it isn't, I want to know," he insisted.
"You spill first," I said.
"No" he declared, "You first,"
"Never !" I proclaimed.
"You'll tell me, I know you will," he said. "You always do in the end."
"Not this time, not if I were on my deathbed and you were the grim reaper," I countered.
"Oh well this is stupid, Austen really we aren't twelve and I'm not going to make a dare out of it."
"You would too," I argued.
"Yeah well I would win anyway so there's no point."
"You wouldn't win," I insisted. "Let's play."
"Fine, you're on"
"Truth or Dare?"
"Dare,"
"I dare you to stand up in this pizza joint, recite your latest poem, tell the owners you're Elmore Leonard and this is your first poem and that you'll give them a signed copy for a pizza."
"What does Elmore Leonard look like?" Len wanted to know.
"I have no clue and they probably don't either."
I really wasn't expecting him to do it. I thought he would just give in and tell me who he liked but he actually went up to the counter leaned in and said something to the cashier and started reciting a poem. The girl behind the counter smiled and went in the back. I saw Len pull out a copy of his poem from his bag and sign something at the bottom while the girl put a small cheese pizza into a box for him. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes but then again Len was the ultimate bullshit artist. He came back to the table smiling and said,
"See I told you I could beat you at this game, Austen. Now spill it."
"I absolutely refuse," I declared with a stubborn bravado I didn't really feel.
"Fine," Len said nonchalantly, "I know when you're ready to you'll tell me. If there's one thing you cannot do it's keep a secret."
"Hey!" I argued, "That is completely unfair. I keep secrets, just because you don't know I keep them since they're secrets then it makes your ..." I faltered in my confidence, "your argument invalid!" I declared too drunk and tired to keep up with this game.
"Right," he nodded. "Let's just go home ok. You're obviously intoxicated to have made that kind of an argument."
"Yeah, ok whatever," I replied half-heartedly.
We went outside and Len hailed a taxi with one hand, the small pizza in the other. We got in and Len gave the driver instructions. I was so sleepy I just closed my eyes. A while later I woke up with Len poking me,
"Hey, Austen you have to wake up now we're getting out of the cab."
I don't remember anything else from that night and woke up on Len's couch the next morning. Len was gone and I wasn't sure if everything between us was normal or not which made me uncomfortable.
If anything was wrong between Len and myself it didn't come up in conversation, though I couldn't help feeling that things were different. Then again my feelings could have stemmed from my own paranoia.
My life went on as usual for a good while. I worked on the book making sure to structure my day into some sort of routine to avoid too much time for obsession or self-reflection. I would get up in the morning, go for a walk to the coffee shop I liked, order some kind of fancy caffeinated beverage which I couldn't really afford, and then whip out my laptop in order to assuage my guilt about the expense and try to type a few pages of drivel which I usually ended up deleting later the same day. So though I was "working" on the book it never seemed to be getting very far. Then I would return home listen to some music and try to focus on writing something better or expanding on the mornings drivel it were half-way decent. I would make some kind of lunch generally toasted or bad for me and eventually dinner. Some days in my frustration I would just read the dictionary trying to find some sort of inspiration. I was getting frustrated with my incompetent writing. Sometimes writing a paragraph or even a sentence was like pulling teeth. Then there were the good days when ideas poured out of me and the writing came easy, when it became possible for me to believe my semi-poverty-stricken existence had some purpose. But somewhere inside all this angst and too much time alone I still found time to wonder what had happened on the mystery night. I vowed never to drink so much again. It was hard to believe that I really couldn't remember what had happened but I couldn't, and I had no one to blame but myself.
About three weeks after Eliza's art show she and I found ourselves at lunch again. We were in a little hole-in-the-wall place that served breakfast all day, had horrible coffee but good omelettes and was painted a violent shade of yellow both inside and out. We talked about this and that and then Eliza brought up the art show.
"Did you like it Austen?" she asked.
"Well, I liked your art, of course, but it was a weird night," I admitted.
"Oh, I didn't get much chance to talk to you," she continued.
"What happened that was weird?"
"To be honest I am not entirely sure. Have you talked to Len at all?" I replied.
"Not really, ran into him once, but we didn't have an in depth conversation. Why?"
"Well, I was kind of drunk and crashed at his place. Didn't see him in the morning and haven't heard from him since."
"Is that weird?" she countered.
"I don't know. I just don't remember much and I don't know if maybe we had an argument or something," that was all I would tell her.
"I doubt it, you know Len, he'd have called to yell at you more or something," Eliza reassured me." Besides if you're so worried why don't you just call him up and find out."
"Yeah, that's a good idea," I closed the discussion.
I knew Eliza was right. The only way I was going to find out what happened was to ask Len. But I didn't want to. I wanted to know but I didn't want to ask. Maybe I didn't want him to know that I couldn't remember. I really was obsessing about it and I didn’t know why. I wondered if on some subconscious level my mind knew what had happened but didn’t want to let me remember or if this was all some sort of karmic joke to teach me not to drink to escape my problems. If it was a lesson I sure wasn’t learning it because all the obsession and paranoia was just driving me to want to drink more than I ever had before.
Slowly but surely my ineffective routine started to change, instead of waking early and going to the coffee shop I started to sleep late and get up around noon, drinking spirited coffee first thing and justify myself by saying it was after noon. I knew what I was doing was stupid and self-destructive but I did it anyway. I started every “morning” playing Fiona Apple’s song “Mistake” to own my self-destruction to try to make myself believe that this fucked up existence was what I wanted, that my despondency was “artistic”, my own choice as opposed to a by-product of my Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder or (OCD). My stores of Khalua, peppermint schnapps and Sheridan’s liquors were dwindling fast and I just started drinking everything in the apartment, beer that had been in the fridge for months the cheap “champagne” from last New Year’s, whisky, whatever as long as it had some alcoholic content. I wasn’t falling down drunk, or even really very drunk at all sometimes not even tipsy but it was all psychological (and liver-damaging) anyway. It didn’t matter if I was drinking to forget or drinking to remember because whatever had really happened I didn’t want to know or couldn’t recall no matter how much I tried.
I won’t say my meltdown and isolation weren’t noticed by my friends but I couldn’t see what they saw so I don’t know if they noticed much. I was too much of an expert at hiding my breakdowns and mental illness, even my minor alcohol abuse. Most of my demons were internal, my battles invisible, my insanity unremarkable. Compared to others, I was nothing special, nothing dramatic, entirely ordinary in my dysfunction.
**********************************************************************************
For whatever it was worth, my tortured ego survived the abuses I brought upon myself. Much as my liver survived what I, at least, considered heavy drinking. I tried to put the mysterious might out of my memory, well more exactly stop thinking about the fact that I couldn't remember any of it.
I quit drinking entirely and tried again to pursue writing seriously. It was as if my conviction that I would never amount to anything made me cling all the harder to my dream in protest. I don't know if my writing improved at all. Sometimes despair helps, sometimes it hinders. The worst thing is the writer's block brought on by healthy relationships. There is nothing worse than being happy and feeling your personal life is wonderful and not being able to write a thing. This, I was not suffering from though ... my many moons of singledom attested to it, but perhaps it was the fear of past experience that kept me at an arm's length from everyone. I wish I knew. I wish I had answers. I wish, I hope, I think, and think, and think and this is what I do. To be fair I am not as much a writer as I am a thinker and writing is merely an extension of my thoughts.
