I did not go out to Gibraltar market on Saturday.
For most of the past four days, I did not leave the house, but fell into a slump of low energy and continued oppressive fatigue, sleeping through most of the days and waking through most of the nights. I played Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, on a strange whim, but more often just re-watched old videos listlessly in between sleeping.
I missed two days of school out of fatigue and a deadness of will. I thought often enough of doing my homework, but as soon as the impulse came to me that I should try, it was dragged down under some surface perhaps like a lake by the weight of reluctance and fatigue. I spoke little to anyone, but spoke that little to a close friend who has felt things like this, and understands them fairly well.
Tuesday, I got dressed, and prepared to go to school, but stopped and returned and did not, because it had finally snowed the true heavy snows of what I understand to be winter, and I had not prepared for that. That evening, I did the homework, because it would come due that night. It was not difficult, but I took close to two hours to get through it all, partly because I could not readily drag myself back to the task after each milestone was finished.
I think I am through the slump. I am at school again now. I woke today at four in the morning, and felt more awake than I had in days. I finished a quiz for school before turning back to my comfortable videos, and took another bit of sleep before I would need to go to school. It was broken by the sounds of argument from the upstairs neighbors. When I woke to my alarm, it was tempting to go back to sleep. The habit, perhaps evasive, is a seductive one.
Dear Memory, I think I came to understand something important during my slump. In this numb, half-dead time, it was not you I waited for, but me. I still thought of you, from time to time, but what I waited for was spark, life, the power to move... You are not the only source of that, although I do think that your nature tends to nurture and inspire it in me.
My first class back at school, I was rapt and perhaps overexcited. I giggled often and bowed my head and blushed when I gave wrong answers, but turned back to listen more. I worried that I was being a pest, obnoxious in my brightness, or seeming pretentious. ...I just sat here for over a minute, I think, trying to remember the word pretentious. I wonder whether it is okay. I worry that it is unhealthy. I remember my mother's friend Tom, who seemed so wonderful and sensitive, a man who loved mysteries and riddles. He suffered from bipolar disorder, and I think... The way it was described to me in relation to him, this reminds me of that.
I do feel as though my emotions are perhaps bent, too-sharp and nervous. I feel slightly like a whirring wheel in a greater machine juddering out of balance. I still feel the distant cling of fatigue like traumatic memories of oppression. I fear slipping back into it, although I know I still must rest sometime. I prepare to encounter again the sequence of tasks and due dates that I have spent a bit of time neglecting and pushing into the future in order to deal with the present, first as a week of midterms then as a slump of fatigue and dead will.
My friend Coda reminded me, with encouraging words, that it is important to forgive myself these weaknesses, remember compassion for myself when things are difficult.
I am confused by spikes of emotion and memory, fresher and harsher after the muted time of feeling little. Although, from a center more stable, despite my fears, I suspect that other people really tend not to notice, unless I tell them. To those who do not have my confidence, that is, in whom I have not confided, I probably seem just to be a bright and reliable student, continuing to get through my work in whatever way it is that I do. Perhaps strange and unstable, but I cannot really say whether others commonly think so.
To you, dear memory, my mind continues to turn at idle moments. I thought a scenario, like a purposeless daydream, in which I referred to you as my husband. I intend not to presume on any such thing when I meet you again. I will not pretend that it is absent from my hopes, however. I will try to learn myself still better and yet better, and how to steer this thing, this storm, better and yet better. I will try to come to you healthier than you saw me before. Healthier than I am now. It is certainly what I would hope for an unbalanced person I had loved, and it is better all around, regardless of whether you want me or not, isn't it?
No comments:
Post a Comment