My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

Nirvana songs are great because nothing Kurt Cobain ever wrote is particularly straightforward, there’s lots of room for interpretation. He never really told a story word for word, he liked to mix his true ideas with random thoughts or lines of poetry. On a Plain is a good example of this technique. Lately though, I’m really fascinated by Old Age. It’s an outtake song found in two box-sets, With the Lights Out and Sliver: The Best of the Box. The song’s so interesting because it sounds spectacular, but it seems practically incomprehensible. Kurt mumbles his way through it, and google-searching the lyrics doesn’t bring back consistent results. It took some doing, but I think I found a reliable version…

I like listening to it, trying to crack it. To me, it’s a song about a losing battling with addiction, that last fix that can’t ever be the last. I’ve felt that struggle, the idea that this fix will make today feel safe so I can get to tomorrow, then maybe tomorrow I won’t need it.

I think that’s true of liquor, drugs, sex, a lover whispering in your ear, coffee, anything that turns off constant noise. I think life is just series of fixes, all the little things we need today to get to tomorrow. We all have different levels of noise, and how much we can take. Our fixes might not be the same, sometimes they’re ultimately destructive, but a life without fixes breaks. We replace the fixes we lose, try to drop the ones that hurt, that’s how we keep going.

Having had time to look back and process the entire experience, getting myself committed is definitely one of the top five Goddamn fucking dumbest things I’ve ever done. I needed help, but Christ on crackers, I picked the absolute worst possible way. I basically did cut my wrists. I hurt myself, but not on purpose. I should just do the opposite of whatever the fuck I think is a good idea. I don’t do anything the easy way or the right way anymore.

So, in the very back of my mind I had a rather romantic idea of what it would be like to be committed. I kind of pictured a comfortable little room, lots of talking to therapists, nice meds to help me sleep. However, it really wasn’t like that, there’s absolutely nothing romantic about getting yourself committed.

I spent over twenty-four hours waiting in the emergency room, medical, then psych. The psych e.r. is cold and empty, the rooms have electronic locks, no curtains, shatter-proof windows. Since I’m trached with a vent, I got admitted to a medical floor and not the psych floor. I’m really not sure that the latter would have been better. Rather than talking, the first course of action is drugs. I got so fucked up on Remeron I couldn’t think straight for almost two days, my hands and feet swelled up, I didn’t feel real.

It’s all a little fuzzy, really. The entire  three-ish days were physically exhausting. I hadn’t felt so bad since my two-month stay back in 2006, only this time I volunteered for it, I signed up for it. I felt ridiculously stupid, like I was killing myself, but accidentally. In doing so, however, I reminded myself just how much I really want to live.

Eventually, I did get to talk to a psychologist, not a drug-pushing psychiatrist, she referred me to some out-patient therapists. Overall, I feel better about my situation, I don’t feel so lost and stuck. After Sara left, my life took a really bad turn, ridiculously so. An entire nice little future, gone in a blink. Apparently, I couldn’t cope. I had to do something to set things right again, and I think that’s what I did.

Still, I’m absolutely exhausted, and as a bonus, my trache got rather nasty inside, so I’m on ten days of IV anti-biotics. My arms look like a junkie’s, track marked and bruised from failed IV attempts.

Get yourself committed √

Not sleep √

Get astonishingly fucked up on various drugs not in a fun way √

Have the custodian lady ask how your girfriend’s doing √

Regain strong desire to live √

Marvel at your spectacular stupidity √

Finish reading Fathom and love it √

Go for long walk outside with hospital permission to think on everything that went so very wrong √

Learn from a ridiculous and absolutely horrible experience √

So, right now I’m in a psych room, it’s absolutely bare, there are no curtains. It’s nothing like a medical room. I’m sitting here writing and listening to Nirvana, which I find kind of beautiful.

So, I’m listening to Aimee Mann and Elliott Smith, wearing a little pink bracelet that says, “Elopement.” This is because I’m in the e.r. waiting to get a psych evaluation. I don’t know why the bracelet’s pink, I don’t know why it says Elopement. I just decided that I’ve been thinking about, and writing about bleeding in the bathtub for far too long.

I used to be pretty against Courtney Love, mostly because I felt like she killed Kurt Cobain one way or another. However, until a few weeks ago I’d only heard three Hole songs. I’d never realized she wrote some pretty amazing stuff. I know it’s alleged that she didn’t write everything, particularly their entire second album, but I don’t buy it. I think Courtney’s writing is smart, and honest, and fucked up in a really beautiful sort of way. العب كازينو

I admire songs like Dying, and Miss World, and Reasons to Be Beautiful. I’ve felt like those songs. Just like Kurt Cobain, I don’t think Courtney was or is an “act,” she feels what she writes, it’s real. Very dark, but very real. I can’t say whether or not she killed Kurt, only she knows, but I definitely don’t hate her. طريقة لعبة البوكر في الجزائر She’s really fucked up and she writes about it, as do I.

I was talking Ziztur earlier about how it’s been suggested that I need lots of therapy, and she said…

That’s what happens when you don’t hide how you feel to the rest of the world. العاب ربح المال من الانترنت  I have a sneaking suspicion that everyone is just as batshit as we are – we just tell other people.

I just know that really honest writing makes me feel better, whether it’s mine or someone else’s. We’re alone, but together in our dark places.

Today was not my most stellar of days. I was rather astonishingly depressed, and managed to upset some people. It actually started last night, I was giving Sara advice about a story on a guy with locked-in syndrome. I was explaining what the lack of being able to easily communicate can do to a person, and the longer we talked the worse I felt.

It’s hard to explain, but I am really terrified of the idea of not being able to communicate at all. I also get depressed thinking about how different things have gotten for me over the last few years, I get scared things will only get worse. I find that I talk to people less sometimes, just because it’s slower and more difficult. I know that people talk to me less for the same reasons. I’m really lonely sometimes, having to type or use the alphabet for everything. There are very few people around whom I don’t feel like less of a person. I couldn’t admit that to myself until recently. It’s actually worse around people who knew me back when I could talk. 

So, I kind of freaked out, and I think Sara and I are officially, officially done on all levels for awhile. Sometimes I feel like I’m entirely broken and I don’t know how to fix it.

So, last night, I got this crazy idea and I’m looking for a way to fund it. I figure I’ll pitch the idea to you all and see what happens…

At any rate, it’s always been a dream of mine to take a road-trip via Greyhound bus. Aimee Mann is performing her Christmas show on December 18th at the Nokia Theater in NYC. So, I aim to hop a bus and see the show. No family, no swanky hotels, just a bus, my gear, an assistant and the cold. Then, I want to write about and publish the entire experience.

Well, that is my idea. It’s time for me to get back in the game. Anyone who contributes $5 will get a special thanks at the end of my writing. Those interested in being a part of this absolutely crazy idea can paypal me using the button below. Also, feel free to e-mail any questions to michael@lithiumcreations.com.

So, I’m sitting here in the dark listening to Aimee Mann’s Christmas album, One More Drifter in the Snow. It’s so spectacularly melancholy, the perfect background music for ripping open presents or slicing open wrists.

Listening to it this year is so entirely different. I got it last year after Sara and I went to see Aimee’s Christmas concert in Boston. On the flight up one of the batteries for my breathing machine died unexpectedly, and I heroically killed a pair of pants. It was so astonishingly cold, the kind of cold that makes you wonder if you’ll ever feel warm again. It was the first Northern-winter trip I’d ever taken with my trache, so there were plenty of problems. I could have done so many things so much better.

Still, just being there with Sara, holding her close in that dark theater listening to such sadly beautiful music, life seemed pretty perfect. I just felt happy, I pictured next year being better. Now it is next year, and everything’s the opposite of what I want, it’s like a bad dream that won’t stop. I didn’t want to quit, I didn’t want her to quit, I saw things so differently. It’s just so Goddamn fucking stupid.