Stopped working again. The past several days have just slipped by in an indistinct blur. Why do I have so little discipline these days? Was there ever a time when I did have any at all? I can’t remember the last time in my life when I just pushed through something that was difficult or unpleasant. There are no consequences to giving up, or at least none that I meaningfully feel. I feel like I feel so little. Falling down is not so bad, it’s just the normal state of things. I don’t really want to get back up. Did there ever exist a version of me that was not like this? There are things that I have accomplished in the past which remain with me in the present that I know for certain required not just a moment of inspiration but long, long hours and a certain kind of rote repetition. Who was the me that put in those hours? Where did I lose myself? Why do I no longer feel any desire? But only the slow, long dread of shame…
The days have started to bleed together in a fragile, viscous sludge, of mottled greys and other pallid hues. I was actually able to get some work done today despite this, but by evening, I was already well down the spiral of a fatal funnel of feckless, frustrated dejectedness, and as the night progressed I only found myself becoming further and further seized by that awful despair. I don’t understand how things can turn around so quickly. I’m pretty sure just last week at this time, I was terribly optimistic and full of inspiration about the possibility that I could turn things around. Where did all that go, that it feels little more now than a receding, distant memory? And further, what hope do I have at all then if I am so easily defeated by even the most trivial of setbacks? Everything I’ve experienced these past few years has just confirmed, again and again, in increasingly obvious ways, that my interiority has been reduced to a flimsy, tattered scrim. Nothing catches that holds. I don’t feel like I’m able to actualise anything. I don’t feel like I am capable of anything. What remaining talents I do still possess are not really mine, but vestiges of an earlier self who still believed in things and wanted things and expected more of this life. But I can’t do anything with any of that. I can’t do anything at all.
Pentecost. That old familiar sadness has seeped back into my life. I had another nightmare about Ana last night and woke up confused and disoriented and covered in a cold damp sheen of sweat. I haven’t been sleeping well these past few days on account of the heat and I can’t tell whether it was the heat that’s to blame for precipitating this precipitous decline in my mood and thus plaguing my already restless sleep with these feelings or if something inside me had already sufficiently slipped without me noticing and it was the heat that simply created the conditions through which these things were finally able to take full purchase. I am haunted by a pervasive shroud of worthlessness. Why is it that this feels like my baseline state, and not instead the near-obstreperous joy and amazement I felt so sure of just days ago? Someone told me recently that it’s not that my setbacks are particularly severe, only that I have experienced them particularly severely. It’s begun to dawn upon me lately how shallow my sadness really is. This is the thing I hate the most about myself.
It rained throughout the day, and it’s now once again cool, almost cold. I’ve been smoking more again recently. Martin and I get on calls and we walk somewhere and sit down next to each other across that thin virtual thread and we smoke. Months-old packs from winter of last year that I bought with the intention to finish with Ana only to find out not just once but then in the mornings and then in the evenings and then at night and then seemingly every goddamned time I would ask, when I still cared enough to ask, that she apparently just didn’t want to do it anymore, at least not with me. I don’t believe in metaphors anymore. I have been thinking of ending things with Ada soon. It’s not that I don’t believe in metaphors anymore. It’s just that it’s exactly like everyone says. There’s nothing wrong with me except me.
Stumbled around Brooklyn till 5am, then passed out until the afternoon as soon as I got home. It cooled down significantly today after some rainfall this morning, so it was fortunately much easier to not only fall asleep, but stay asleep. Haven’t worked in a few days, although I have been keeping pretty disciplined with the haikus (at least relative to any other kind of output recently). I’d like to get back to it next week. Should start simple and concrete: I think the worm powder fabrication process would be a good place to start.
We’ve now reached the point of the year where it’s quite suddenly become very hot and rather humid. I’ve been trying to force myself to work on my portfolio these past few days. Today was not so good: I ended up falling into a spiral of despair after becoming fixated on the possibility that I had no chance. I was able to shake myself out of it eventually, which I think is good progress in the larger scheme, as usually I just fall into states of irresolute anger which persist for several days afterwards, and end up tanking my motivation completely. That I was able to recognise for myself that I had begun slipping and not only terminate that thought before it seized me completely, but reverse it, I feel, is a significant improvement from before.
Got back from Salem last night. I had a very good time there. I did not expect to feel this way, but it made me feel a lot better about myself, at least for a bit until I woke up today. It made me realise just how isolated I’ve been, both from a greater sense of community, and my own feelings about my work. There was a time, before I learned shame, when things genuinely excited me and the work felt not just purposeful but inspired, and inspiring. I think when I first met Ana, it was what drew her to me, and me to her: a tide of unfettered will and vivacity, an intense curiosity about things and a sense of determined grace. I was so happy back then. For the first time in my adult life, I felt like I had people around me who understood me, who saw the value in my work, in my values. There was neither pride nor pretence yet. The work mattered to me, and was dignified. I felt real in a very real and unabashed way.
This place that has kept me alive for so long is also killing me in a different way. Slower, subtler, more certain. I’m sure of this now. People have been telling me this for years but I’ve always been too scared, too ashamed of my own inaction and complacency to admit that they’re right. I am decaying in this place, and most days, it no longer feels much like a home but a cell. If Tawanda wasn’t around, I don’t know what I would do. I have finally begun to feel the nascence of growth, I think. The emergent possibility that I not only must but can outgrow this if I want to have any chance of living a life worth living. I miss Ana terribly. I have no choice but to relearn everything.