Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Shit: losing it

Eleven days since my last post, but the blog is not dead.

Seven days ago I lost my shit. Complete nervous and emotional breakdown and I came the closest in my life I've ever been to doing myself in. In retrospect, it's scary that one can feel that way, that you can get so close to just saying fuck it and stepping off the edge of a bridge or whatever. It's an impulse that seems to come from out of nowhere (though looking back you see how the voice has been in your head for a long time), and it's almost involuntary, and if you get to the other side of it you look back and wonder by what grace did you manage to not do something deadly and permanent. Today I still have no answer for any of it.

But it's now seven days and three therapists later and things are less bleak (if still uncertain). And there has been progress on the rebuilding of my life. I've been hard at work on my query letters and on my book (both of which are ideal distractions right now), with a new and improved chapter outline and a ton of new material from a journal I started keeping about a month ago. A year ago the book seemed like it would be impossible to write. Now it feels like it can really happen. One of the main themes (which I now see has been developing for the past 18 months): Write or die.

No progress however on the cooking or dance lessons. Why dance lessons? Go see Mad Hot Ballroom. Why no progress on these things? Well, because I went nuts, and because I'm about to be poor since there's a good chance my job is history. There's a good chance things are going to get really thin around these parts. Stay tuned.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm really sorry to hear about your problems. I hope you can hang onto the job -- I was fired after going through a nasty divorce, and i know how one catastrophe can lead oto another.

Hang in there. I like your writing. I won't give you any crap about silver linings or everything happening for a reason, but things do get better. Eventually.

Hang in there. It's good to see you posting something, even if it's not political.

Mustapha Mond said...

Thanks for the well wishes.

The truth on the job front is I won't be sad to go elsewhere, but it might be scary for a while as I figure out what to do. If worse comes to worst, I'll go work at the grocery store or something. All hope is not yet lost!

Here's a question though: is anybody else still stopping by for the politics? I figured that audience (small as it might have been) died off a long time ago. If there's still interest, I might be able to knock out a political post from time to time.