from my journal for\u00a0February 1971. \u00a0I was living in a big house in Portland Maine with my sister. \u00a0I was 29 years old and had left California after a breakdown and all I wanted to do was hide. \u00a0I had no idea how cold and lonely that winter was going to be.<\/p>\n
My mind is going around in circles and banging into stone walls.\u00a0 I keep running across interesting ideas and when i try to imagine carrying them out in my own life i run smack into something frozen, something confused and jamming and stuck.\u00a0 I can’t decide how to attack the next moment: shall i force myself to do something i think i want to do though there is no internal motivation, or shall i plunge deeply into my own despair hoping that the way out is through<\/span> it rather than away from it.\u00a0 Should i try to find a creative job that will give me a sense of confidence, or will it be impossible to find that job without a sense of confidence?\u00a0 at the moment i am avoiding job-hunting, i do not seem to have the energy for an all out effort, i do not really care.\u00a0 are these the symptoms of breakdown?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I went “home” to Cincinnati to stay with my parents in the house where I grew up. \u00a0It was very very cold, too cold for our house (inadequately insulated and without storm windows) so I was cold the whole time. \u00a0I don’t remember interacting with my parents at all, though I must have done. \u00a0There’s a way in which they weren’t there, just as they hadn’t been there in my childhood. \u00a0While I was there, I watched “The Night of the Iguana<\/a>” on TV. \u00a0It’s darkness suited my inner darkness. \u00a0The four lines below are from the play.<\/p>\n
how calmly does the olive branch
\nobserve the sky begin to blanch
\nwithout a cry, without a prayer
\nwith no betrayal of despair…<\/p>\nwow. two whole weeks of terror \u2014 standing at the edge of the Abyss and looking down.\u00a0 utter lack of meaning \u2014 that is hell \u2014 that is the sin against the holy ghost.\u00a0 seeing myself weak, shabby, ineffectual, a typical ‘old maid’\u00a0 (but not a maid!)\u00a0 a pitiable creature, without even a job to redeem her.\u00a0 I even came to a final cold place where suicide seemed the only alternative to terror\u00a0 (a betrayal of despair, though)\u00a0 and my fantasies were of how to get the sleeping pills, not how I would be rescued.\u00a0 walking through a long dark tunnel \u2014 no sign of light ahead, no memory of light or warmth behind\u00a0 (the cold, the cold is so appalling)\u00a0 and I keep walking because the pain is so great and worse when i stop.\u00a0 praying the plane will crash.\u00a0 ogod.\u00a0 wishing i could still believe in god.\u00a0 praying to apollo and knowing it won’t work because i don’t believe \u2014 I have plunged into weaving as an antidote.<\/p>\n
I have achieved limbo \u2014 no hope yet, but suicide no longer a reality \u2014 have decided to stick with despair.<\/p>\n
still further from the abyss.
\nout of terror into a space of sunshine<\/p>\n(what is it, i wonder, between the darkness and the daybreak that makes us ride, wild-eyed, to seek the tumbling noon)<\/p>\n
what caused or created my salvation?
\ntranquillizers.
\nweaving as if my life depended on it.
\nwatching TV and reading the paper.
\nstopping to see david & trudi on the way to the coffee house.
\nweaving as if my life depended on it.<\/p>\nthen there was the night that david seduced me \u2014 woke in the morning in silent-screaming-terror, but since then the terror receded like a tide.\u00a0 so what then?\u00a0 i can’t always count on having an attractive male around to bring me out of it.\u00a0 or do they show up when im already on the upswing \u2014 like lowell did<\/p>\n
snow-whitened city
\nsnow blind and snow silent
\nmuffled before dawn.<\/p>\ni feel black and grim, used and hurt, hopeless again as usual.\u00a0 naked on the rim of the world turning in space.\u00a0 cold.\u00a0 no one to talk to, no place to go.\u00a0 what i really need is a man to love me.\u00a0 take care of me emotionally.<\/p>\n
shit.\u00a0 the person i have changed into is angry.\u00a0 she is angry at david for using my body for sex and only buying me lunch in return.\u00a0 she’s angry at leah for using my enthusiasm and sense of responsibility to put on a show for a bunch of kids in an intolerable situation.\u00a0 i don’t understand this new person \u2014 she’s cold and hard.\u00a0 she’s not afraid to get angry, she doesn’t give a shit about being nice. \u00a0david’s an OK fuck and thats all.\u00a0 he’s not that good but if you’re desperate \u2014 just out of the valley of the shadow of death \u2014 then any physical contact seems like the warmth and meaning of life\u00a0 [“sappy!”]\u00a0 any physical contact will keep away the fog for that short brief time.<\/p>\n
bad day today \u2014 confusion
\nwhat i so desperately need is a place to rest my mind.<\/p>\ni think i will go back to collecting sleeping pills
\nthe pain is so great and the rewards are so small
\nwhat is the point of endurance?<\/p>\n‘i am a rock, i am an island’
\nto be like the rock and endure…my life is only a flash in the life of the rock after all.\u00a0‘nobody ever loved me and nobody ever will’
\ni feel so paranoid and ugly and lost, and i know that i do it in my own mind, but i can’t change it.\u00a0 could there be a worse hell?<\/p>\nstumbling across the frozen waste, the sun glints off a piece of ice, fresh and cold here and i have left the company of thirteen far behind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The “Company of Thirteen” was a fantasy I was writing. \u00a0Some of its pieces ended up in a book that I published, called “The Feminine of History is Mystery<\/a>.”<\/p>\n
another night of the iguana to be faced & feared through
\ni am afraid to go to sleep.
\nyea though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death<\/p>\nwhat do i do wrong?\u00a0 why has no one ever loved me \u2014 why do they all leave so quickly?\u00a0 am i too involved or too cold?\u00a0 i don’t know!\u00a0 i don’t know!\u00a0 i must be an incredibly awful person that no one has ever loved me.<\/p>\n
yeah, even david.\u00a0 two screws and he’s done.<\/p>\n
how can i get those sleeping pills.
\nit just isn’t worth the fight any longer.<\/p>\ni’ve been reading over my journal\u00a0\u2014 it seems like i’ve been severely depressed for an awfully long time.<\/p>\n
there’s also a chance that im pregnant.\u00a0 peachy.\u00a0 for a man who wouldn’t even give me any sympathy much less hold my hand while i had the fetus scraped out of my womb.\u00a0 god knows id never bring a poor child into this world with me as its mother.<\/p>\n
well then at least i would have had an abortion.
\nSOMETHING would have happened to me.
\ngod what bitterness \u2014 all this written in a sarcastic voice.
\ni hurt – i hurt – i hurt<\/p>\nKILL IT.<\/p>\n
whatever im going through is so strange.\u00a0 first the terror and now the numbness and confusion.\u00a0 i can’t seem to bring my mind to bear on anything.\u00a0 it chatters on and on, i can’t even find a place of silence to rest it, and yet i can’t make it work for me either.\u00a0 can’t make it focus and grasp and follow one current of thought out to its conclusion.\u00a0 a strange blankness \u2014 not the emptiness of silence for which i would be grateful, but the blankness of immovable conflict.<\/p>\n
i keep going through the same sets of images.\u00a0 what can be done to break the ice jam and get things flowing again?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
At the time I didn’t know much about depression. \u00a0I was seeing a psychiatrist and taking an anti depressant which gave me a rash. \u00a0I know now that I never got the dose up to where it would work. \u00a0I experienced the psychiatrist as judgmental, so he was no help. \u00a0Looking back, knowing I’m dealing with PTSD, I see this winter as the “freeze<\/a>” stage in trauma. \u00a0I feel enormous compassion for that lost girl and her suffering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
from my journal for\u00a0February 1971. \u00a0I was living in a big house in Portland Maine with my sister. \u00a0I was 29 years old and had left California after a breakdown and all I wanted to do was hide. \u00a0I had … Continue reading