I stand in the middle of an empty road. In front of me is a seemingly endless barren wasteland. Behind me is a tangle of environments and things, people and moments, but when I turn around, I see none of the green--just dead wood and vines. Dead from thirst, thorned and split.
The ground in front of me is also dead. It reminds me of the salt flats, or pictures I've seen of the salt flats.
I have been stumbling for over a year just to arrive at this place, this pinpoint in the middle of an everlasting road. Stumbling and falling and rising only to trip over something else. Behind me, nothing. Around me, nothing. Ahead of me...looks like nothing.
Nothing, and no one. No one will notice if I lie down in the middle of this road and stop moving.
..................................
For the last four weeks, I have lost all will and motivation to keep living. I wake up in the late afternoon or early evening. I try to shower every other day. I try to make dinner from what I have in the cupboards. I go back to my room and watch my D&D shit online. I check my emails. If I find an ounce of inspiration I skim my school readings and throw together some words on a page and submit it. I turn out the bedroom light around 3:00 AM so the neighbors in my building aren't kept awake. I usually, finally, tire out around 7:00 and try to fall asleep for an hour while fighting the venomous thoughts in my head. Sometimes I set my five alarms and am successful at getting up in the late morning or early afternoon; other times (like today) I turn off all five alarms in my sleep and wake up when everyone else in my time zone is eating dinner. Whole days and nights have been wasted this way.
Some days are better than others. Those tend to be the days when I manage to accomplish a school or household task early, or better yet, when I get to talk to a close friend for hours over Signal, or Skype, or a phone call. Talking to them reminds me of how little there is in my daily life while simultaneously distracting me from it, if only for a few hours every week.
Other days I see absolutely no sunlight and barely leave my room, even barely picking up my phone. This leaves my mind room to abuse me. Those voices that people who experience anxiety and depression talk about hearing? The ones that say "You're not good enough?" That voice doesn't address me in the second person, that voice is me.
"I'm so fucking lazy."
"I have no skills, no talents, I can't call myself a creative."
"Everyone else in my life has found something to keep them moving forward, but I can't even take care of myself most of the time."
"I'm pathetic."
"I'm worthless."
"No person could ever love me."
"It would be better if I just ended it, finally, and I wouldn't have to deal with this anymore."
For the last four weeks, maybe longer, I have been suicidal.
It seems worse than it was three-and-a-half years ago. At least, then, I heard of this MFA program, and it sounded like it would be just the thing to carry me to purpose. I could work in a field that would leave more of my soul and energy available to do theatre again. My job could help facilitate making theatre, creating art.
Now I find myself with ideations that don't want to leave, plans that don't sound too scary, that I wouldn't be too frightened to carry out.
At least now, I have a psychiatrist and a therapist and one of my best friends to talk to this about. But to be honest, I'm already tired of talking about these things with other people, so it stays behind my teeth. Rotting, festering. Toxic chemicals sticking to my tongue and being swallowed and digested and absorbed into my bloodstream, making their way to my heart, and back out again. Every time I open my mouth I can smell my own malnourished breath, so I just stop talking about it, and the cycle repeats.
I am tired. No--I am exhausted. I cry at least once a day over the thought of remaining in a country that doesn't care about me or the things I want to, wanted to, wish I could, do. Others are dying and I have no money to donate. Others are living or even thriving and I have no joy to share. Three months ago I noticed, out loud, to a few people that I couldn't remember the last time my honest answer to the question "How are you doing?" was anything more positive than "okay." For the last four weeks, I have struggled to even be "okay."
I am not okay. Whenever I am honest about this to someone who asks "How are you doing?", the honesty only extends itself to a grimace and shaking my head "no." I get apologies for that, and for some reason I almost always follow up with a "but hopefully things will work out soon."
It's been four weeks--three months--nearly one year--and things have not worked out. Things have crumbled, eroded and collapsed in real time.
I have no motivation to keep moving. I have no hope that things will turn out better in the coming year, or years, even. I have no hope.
..................................
Today, I got out of the shower, wrapped myself in a towel, and stood, leaning against the counter, lost in those thoughts again. These specific thoughts were focused on a person that I've known for over a year now who I call a friend, but whose words and voice and songs of choice echo in my ribcage like nothing else. She is the most beautiful woman in the world to me, and she will never know, and if she ever does, she will not leave her partner of how-many years to be with someone like me. Someone who does not have their shit together, who is too weird and like a box of shaken, ill-fitting puzzle pieces, to ever give her the life she'd want. She does not send me songs when she thinks of me in the way that I send her songs when I think of her.
She will leave back to her hometown, with her partner, likely before this year is out. I will stay here because I have nowhere else I could conceivably live and be happy (struck here while the irony was hot).
Dripping dry, hair still a wet, tangled mess after trying to boil the venom out of my skin with a scalding hot shower, I leaned against the counter wrapped in a towel. For the first time, lost in these thoughts, a sharp beam of light broke through.
"So what? You have felt this before. You will feel it again. You will find happiness with someone, someday. You've gotta be alive to do it, though."
Piercing-shone through the heart of darkness. These kinds of affirming thoughts usually need to be spoken aloud at me for me to hear them.
I toweled off, wrapped up my hair, and took care of my skin. Gotta be alive to love. I'll burn it in my palms if I have to. There is something at the end of this wasteland, gotta be alive to see it.
I trudge on.
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