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Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.
lunes 05/17/2004
But enough about you, what about me? (An exercise in angst)
People I haven’t seen in a while have been asking me, “How are you doing, are you Okay?” My stock answer is “I’m alive,” told in mock serious voice, qualified with a more socially acceptable “actually, I’m fine,” but in truth, maybe I am not so fine.
I can no longer remember the last time I’ve had a full nights sleep. I have always been a light sleeper, but never this bad. A butterfly flapping its wings in the jungles of South America may in fact not cause hurricanes, but it certainly does make enough noise to keep me awake. Even if it were dead quiet, I would still have problems because my mind just will not stop. I spend nights with my brain tearing along at a mile a second, thinking, remembering, and rehashing. It is unrelenting, and refuses to let go. Mornings are not met happily, calm and relaxed, but rather in a state of vague hysteria, anxious and fearful.
Even when I am awake “letting go” is difficult. Releasing anything, emotions, problems, conflicts, is quickly becoming an impossible task. I can’t surrender, but I can suppress. Turning everything inward, submerging my life, compacting my spine and compressing my body. With each day, I am becoming shorter and shorter. I was once 6’4”, but now barely stand 5’6”.
Diminishing who I am is not a painless process. By the end of most days, I hurt. My back aches, my neck and shoulder hurt, and my knees, which have bothered me intermittently throughout my life, have forgotten the meaning of intermittent, falsely believing it to be a synonym for constant. Additionally, I have been grinding my teeth to the point of wearing down fillings and triggering the wrath of dentists.
Shrinking away to nothing has mental consequences as well. I've taken to having recurring work dreams, resulting in a paranoid delusion that I never leave my job. Days, nights, days, nights, and once again days are spent in unending work; conscious, un, and sub, all blended together into a odorous pulpy mess of a brew that chokes when drunk.
I am moody, bitter, and grumpy and not in a cute disney way. I’ve occasionally cultivated the role of a curmudgeon, but somewhere along the way, the false became true. Sadly, a salty, bitter me, is now a nico on a good day.
I spend each workday (and false dream night) dealing with the screaming, self-absorbed antics of the public dealing with the government. I rarely bother anymore to act surprised at the lengths people take to refuse responsibility for their actions. Continually being lied to exhausts me.
I spend each day dealing with people asking me if I have laryngitis and either suggesting that I drink warm tea with honey, or laughing at my weak voice. I rarely bother anymore to correct the assumption that I sound horse due to illness. Continually having to explain the problem with my vocal cords exhausts me.
The older I get the more pronounced is my tendency towards hermiting myself off from contact with other people. Between the weariness caused by work and voice, I am grateful for the opportunity to isolate myself on my days off. The gregarious, outgoing student activist of my youth is an altogether different person, unrecognizable and alien, nor would he recognize me, a not so metaphorical whizzed old man, hunched over from the weight of exhaustion and bitterness, both sitting on my shoulders like ever hungry, unblinking, unforgetting ravens.
I have to relearn how to relax. I have to rediscover calm. More importantly, I have to stop being a whiny drama queen, stop complaining and buck up.
So, um, I’m a mess…and how are you doing?
More later…sort of,
nico