The Wellbutrin is...the Wellbutrin. It's not yet a week in but the four days are up and I've doubled the dosage and I'm not feeling much of anything different but hope. My friend Sam told me that in his experience, just the act of surrendering to the medication is enough to change your head a little bit, because it's a concrete action. I've experienced a little bit of that and certainly feel it when I'm on my way to work or going to run an errand, but it's mornings like today, waking up, eating breakfast, and then the great "now what?" feeling that's like a slug to the chest, when I feel completely incapable. That one loud question immediately makes me cry because it's followed by the instant realization that I haven't anything to do now. I should probably make a list of ongoing things, or projects I could tackle in those "now what" moments, like bed-making, room-cleaning, laundry...I wonder if neat freaks are just extraordinarily lonely people who put their time to good use.
I certainly could stand to do some laundry.
Heh...I just got a text from one of the Chefs at Upstairs that read "my arm hurts." I ran food to the wrong table last night because I mis-read the ticket (I honestly think I have dyslexic tendencies) and he punched me in the arm when he found out because he had to re-make the food. So I punched him back. Hard, apparently.
I'm reading a book that Cheryl gave to me at the vineyard over Thanksgiving, it's called Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and on the surface it's about this woman's travels through Italy, India, and Indonesia, divorcing herself from husband and her successful career, and living alone in these countries. But ultimately it's about what she unearths about herself in each place, her sense of pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and in Indonesia her own personal balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. Anyhow, the way she describes herself is resonating with me in the most startling ways. She talks about how when, in love, she throws herself so far in that there are no boundaries, will give you her heart, the sun and the the moon, her spirit, her money, her dog, her dog's money, etc. She talks about a depression that had her on the bathroom floor for two years, and her own struggle to come to terms with and define her higher power. Most significantly is her unspeakable loneliness. She describes how she came to handle this loneliness, and what she did when she was feeling that kind of darkness: she kept a journal in which she would begin to write to God, just her most basic feelings. "I need your help'. And then she waits, and after a little while a response comes in her own handwriting "I'm right here. What can I do for you?" She writes about this with embarrassment because she understands that it's a version of talking to herself and wouldn't be easily understood, but I loved how she wrote about it. She writes
I've been surprised to find that I can almost always access that voice, too, no matter how black my anguish may be. Even during the worst of suffering, that calm, compassionate, affectionate and infinitely wise voice (who is maybe me, or maybe not exactly me) is always available for conversation on paper at any time of day or night. I've decided to let myself off the hook from worrying that conversing with myself on paper means I'm a schizo. Maybe the voice I'm reaching for is God, or maybe it's my Guru speaking through me, or maybe it's the angle who was assigned to my case, or maybe it's my Highest Self, or maybe it is indeed just a construct of my subconscious, invented in order to protect me from my own torment.
I love this idea.
When she's in Italy after a reprieve from her depression and loneliness, she encounters a night when they return full-force, and she's rendered almost hysterically helpless. She reaches for this voice again, and what she writes is that she is weak and full of fear. She writes that she's afraid she will never be without the Loneliness, that she doesn't want to take medication and is afraid she will always have to. She says she is terrified that she will never really pull her life together. You can understand why I'm riveted by this book. She writes all this in the journal, and what she finds herself writing back and all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was hurting
I'm here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it-- I will love you through that, as well. If you don't need the medication, I will love you, too. There's nothing you can do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death, I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.
I read that and cried quietly and wished that I had that kind of faith. I cry typing it now because of how gentle the words are, and how I wish those words would come to me from a person, a real person who could sit across from me and hold my head in their hands for awhile, or at least one I could be on the phone with. I guess that's why we believe in God, because no real person could commit to the kind of consistent reassurance and unconditional love that we crave. And so we construct something to satisfy that. And if it satisfies, it's just as real as if it were someone we knew and could take them out for burritos to say thank you. When I was young I remember Mum telling me about the writing she did to work towards defining her God, and how comforting it was to realize that she could make up the terms, and I remember being truly comforted by that. I can also remember loving the idea of doing that for myself, and actually trying to in a journal I kept, but giving up because I was afraid I was doing it wrong and was making up something beautiful in which I had no faith. That was the big thing, I was worried I wouldn't believe in what I wanted to believe. I distinctly remember telling myself that it was okay because Mom's God had me covered and I could borrow hers if I needed it.
Wow. That's making me cry.
I don't mean that we're fabricating a character here, but that whatever we need is what God will be to us. I believe in God. I know this because when I'm really, really hurting, I say what everyone says when they're hurting: 'O, My God, help me'. And I it. They're said with such intensity and such Need that the thought of them being sent out to the universe without a recipient is unacceptable. Really, I'm unable to accept that possibility. And so for now, I believe in God because I Need God.
Fuck. I really wish it was something more beautiful than that, that I believe in God because of Bach, or because of how I feel on a swing set, or because of how I can now eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm full.
I guess I should take what I can get on this one, letting the belief be enough without berating myself for the lack of poetry in my reason.
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