2005-01-08 - 7:54 p.m.
Unusually introspective lately, a situation that's never done me much good. Or maybe it has. Having lost all perspective on which of my choices are good or smart ones, how can I be sure? Lately the glass I see through seems darker than ever, and what I'm fumbling towards bears no resemblance to ecstasy. Heh.
I've been reading the old Zim journal. Well, no. Tell the truth and shame the devil. I was thinking about it before I finally gave into weakness and went back to the old journal like a dog to its vomit. I was thinking about the sort of stuff I used to write, lengthy philosophical shite that related only tangentially to life as I knew it, and covered all the unspoken country of my mind.
I don't feel like I write like that anymore.
Another symptom of the fall from faith, I suppose. What good to ponder the extingencies of a life that no longer concerns you? Now I am only tangential to life, and not solely my mind. I am the fold in the cloth, hidden and protected from the harsh rays of the sun, brightly colored only in solitude...and other than this occasional melancholia, I don't know if its good or not.
Rob and Tosh are supposed to come tomorrow and I find myself dreading it. The joy of living with Andre is that there are almost no questions, and the questions there are relatively simple to answer. Not introspective himself, Andre isn't going to ask anything that will jar me from my state of uncomfortably numb.
I worry about that. The numbness. The question that remains the most important is whether this is the numbness of nerve damage, or merely the numbness of novocaine, transitory and thereby less worrisome? But maybe that's not the most important question, as either prospect is not pleasing. The numbness at least is a sort of insulator from the chasms of misery I felt before, trying to live through a pane of cold green glass. So permanency is not without its appeal. And then too, it's not the numbness that kills, per se; it's the going back. The return of sensation, and not only the major pain of healing wound, but all the little aches and twinges that went unnoticed until they were absent.
But this numbness doesn't feel normal. All conventional wisdom (not, I suppose, that I've ever been very conventional) says the numbness is not normal. So do I worry for my own sake, or merely because I have been programmed to do so?
I feel like such a liar, when Andre tells me he loves me and there's that little gap where you have to essay some comment in return. Emotionally flatlined, how can I tell if I really love him--or any of the other people I did or do or might love? I feel like such a calculating bitch, possessed of the coldness I've always been accused of. I feel as if the serial killer comes a little closer to surfacing, bloated malignant toad stirring resentful in the muck at the bottom of my soul.
I think youth is about certainty. You "know" things. Sometimes you know everything. Heh. Youth is a big picture state of mind.
But as you get older, you realize that this big picture is just like the last one. And the one before that. You realize the fractal nature of the big picture. What becomes important, what becomes the distinguishing characteristic is the detail. And then you get stuck in a morass of detail. You've lost the forest for the trees.
I don't know anything anymore. I don't feel that I even know myself and that is the one thing I ALWAYS had. The one thing I can't stand not having now, the part that is driving me a little deeper and a little crazier every day. And no one can tell me. Everyone is stumping along as blindly as I myself. Any answers to be had will only be given after the final exam and by then, will we remember the questions? Will we care?
