sublingua

The heart with a mind of its own.

(Be present.)

The mind with a heart of its own.

(It's past.)

The dream that is your waking life.

(Go there now.)

The Demon Who Left It All Behind
Sunday, Dec. 14, 2003

If you followed the banner link, you�re probably here to see the demons. If that's the case, you�re going to have to wade through a bit of shit first. Shit is a major demon export product�but at least they�re self-feeding. If you didn�t bring your wading boots, you might want to go ahead and click up there on �Older Lies.� Begin with �The Tell-All Demon.�

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I went back to the �other location� (TM The Demon Who Always Does the Right Thing) yesterday, the home where I used to live with David before he and I were divorced and I moved into the my own place near campus. I went back there because, when I left, I left behind everything. Okay, no, that�s a bit of an exaggeration. I brought about twenty or thirty books with me (out of the three thousand or so that I own). I brought my desk and my chair and coffeemaker. I brought two bowls, two plates, and four cups. I brought the few clothes that still fit me, which amounted to a six pairs of underwear and three bras, two pairs of pants, and three shirts that I had bought literally the week before I left. Everything else was new: The futon was my birthday present from David. I purchased a pan, four forks, four knives, four spoons, four wine glasses (one of which disappeared during a party that my neighbors and I had shortly after I moved in), a corkscrew, a serving spoon, a broom and dustpan, two towels, two washcloths, two sets of sheets. And that was my existence. And I loved it. I loved the novelty of it.

At first, I would sit in the front room (the apartment is a room, a kitchen, a bathroom, two good sized closets, but, on the whole, is only slightly larger than the office I occupied in the other location) or on the floor in the kitchen, thinking, thinking, thinking. The brain was going all the time. My friends were worried. They called, came by, offered with loving hearts and good intentions to give me things I didn�t want and didn�t take. They offered television sets (I don�t own a television set and never will again), radios, plants, guns, mace, games, liquor, furniture.

But I didn�t want things. I had just left a life that was bounded on all sides by things. I wanted time. I wanted space. I wanted to see who I was when I didn�t have to be constantly living in a lie ( a lie that I chose to live in, so don�t get me wrong. There�s no blame there and no spite). So I sat and thought. And when the conversations with the brain went south, I would pull out my books and study physics and biochemistry. I read a lot of Shakespeare. I read some Faulkner. I smoked too much. I dyed my hair and painted my nails. I started wearing makeup again. I went and had my nose pierced, something I had wanted to do since I was a child and saw my mother take great delight in a young man with a pierced nose. I had a new tattoo laid down on my back, hoping that it would be more painful than it was, hoping that the pain would shock me into some different brand of consciousness or make me feel something. I took long baths every night, needing desperately to be in the water because water has always been my comfort.

I had a few bad moments. The worst one came just after school had started. It was Saturday morning�I have physics on Saturday morning at 9:00 am�and I was sitting at the pulled-out cutting board in the kitchen finishing my homework. I looked up, looked around my kitchen, and thought, go home. What are you doing? You�re lonely. You�re making a mistake. You were better off in a halved life than you ever will be on your own. You�ll never make it. And I fought down the panic. And I finished my homework. And I went to class. And I stayed in my own apartment and didn�t go back to David.

But there were times when I wanted to go back. I had left behind everything. I had left behind pictures of everyone I loved, all my artwork, my books, my books, my books, my beloved Doppelganger. And those things were all incidental. Because what I had truly left behind was the man I loved (and continue to love) and had wanted desperately to spend my life with. And I say this having known for years before I left that I was going to leave him. I knew it when we first moved back in together after the Mike & Chris debacles. I knew it when we moved from apartment to apartment and then from house to house. I knew it when I started school. I knew it when the judge pronounced us husband and wife. I knew. I knew I couldn�t stay and yet I stayed. How could I ever say that I was committed to him unless I tried everything to make it work with him? I loved this man.

Or, as x might say, I had picked my poison.

I fell in love all the time with other men. I never cheated. That is something that is beyond me. Having been cheated on, having felt betrayed, lied to, devastated and humiliated by the experience, I thought that I knew I could never cheat. The most dangerous man was probably one of David�s old bosses. There was never any physical contact between this man and me, but we would email each other long letters talking about nothing at all really. We played chess together once or twice. I went to lunch with him (and Dave and other co-workers) quite often. We bought each other little token gifts. Dave and I had dinner at his house with his wife and two gorgeous little girls. And then he took a job in another city and moved away. Thank god, because I don�t know what I might have been capable of if he had stayed. I think, looking back, that what drew me to him was how decent he was. He was a decent man, faithfully though not believingly Christian, faithful to his wife, a loving father, humorous. And I wanted that. I had a veneer of decency at home. Dave and I looked committed and loving and as though we had a wonderful relationship�as long as you didn�t look too long or too closely at us, at our dynamic.

I had turned into something of a shrew. I felt his constant and elemental rejection of me and I fought with him all the time, treated him like shit in front of other people, tried to express how unhappy I was with the situation. I ate and ate and ate and got fatter and fatter. I was depressed. Some days I couldn�t get out of bed. Though I was working or going to school the whole time, some days I would come home and crawl into bed in my clothes and sleep. I slept a lot when I could sleep. Most of the time I suffered from insomnia and would wander around the house at night like a ghost. I saw a therapist, Beth. Over five years, she helped with the depression, though I never told her the truth about the nature of the relationship I had with David. I left her care, thinking that I might never have to face another episode of profound depression again. But the thing that was at the center hadn�t been fixed. After another couple of years, I felt myself sliding down into the black hole again. I panicked. I went to a family practitioner and had her prescribe antidepressants. I took those for a year. I took them for a year and it was like a year�s worth of winter. Do you know how it feels when it snows for the first time in winter and you go outside by yourself in the middle of the night to look at it, and everything is lit up too bright for its being night, and everything is quiet, dampered? It was a year of that. It was a year of no feeling. I couldn�t feel outwardly or inwardly.

There were frightening moments too. One of the side effects of the antidepressant I took was an increase in suicidal ideation. They know this when they prescribe it, or should. It was one of the things I suffered from. Shortly after I began to take the medication, I woke up very early, at three-thirty or four in the morning. Dave was sleeping beside me. I had an overwhelming feeling that it all had to end right that moment. I knew, knew with more certainty than I have ever known anything, that I wasn�t going to live out the hour. I got out of bed, went into the bathroom, began collecting otc meds, recalling my mother�s once having told me that it would take more otc medication to commit suicide than most people even think of taking when they try to kill themselves. I thought that I could manage with a mixture of all the things we had in the house.

retreat or surrender

More lies:
Waking Sleeping Demons II - Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011
Waking Sleeping Demons - Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011
time - Friday, May. 20, 2011
- - Wednesday, Oct. 06, 2010
The Return - Tuesday, Oct. 05, 2010

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