4:25 p.m. - 07/31/02
isn't this vacation? why am I not relaxed? [installment four]
I felt sick, lay down, fell asleep - now everything except my head is clear. I'm wrapped in the fog of humidity, of napping, and memory is playing tricks on me. When you remember does your whole body follow you into the past? Can your hands touch the textures of walls long since torn down? It isn't always a gift to be so sensate; I'm trapped inside memories like viruses, memories beautiful and bittersweet. I've been reading asterism. A year ago I was preparing to be told the hospital was calling my name. A year ago? Where am I? Was I there? Where have I come?
Everything is blurring; I can't distinguish between last July when I didn't realize how fiercely I believed the world was ending, last August when my greatest fear turned into my greatest hope, last November when everything collapsed again, last December when I lost the girl it seemed I'd only just met, last January when I reentered IOP like part of me had followed her, and now. Now, now, now, now, now. Now is all these timse wrapped together, trying to make sense of faces that bear such resemblence and have so little in common. Other than the pit widening in their stomachs when they look into each other's eyes. Other than the way it feels when words sneak up on them, when they realize it is not a memory.
What do I do? Do I call RED, where I no longer am? Do I write Tracy, who can no longer answer? Do I call Dr. R and tell him everything's fine except I'm crazy - except my reality is nothing but fantasies, memories, perceptions mixed together - indecipherable? What do I say when the phone is ringing miles away and I've no idea what tomorrow's memory of today will be? I have no way to go back and reclaim what was good, and no hope of escaping all the pain. You don't get over girls who, in one phone call, disappear. You don't get over finding your home and watching as your barred outside the door.
The problem with spending the day in a fog, in someone else's home, is that eventually there's nothing familar to hold onto. There's no way to ground yourself, to say, this is who I am, and I am safe.
I'm sick with missing them. I don't know how I've managed what I have, feeling so badly as I do.
chord
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