mahiwaga

T minus 9 days 6 hours 22 minutes

I would like to say that I’m OK now. I would like to say it, but it wouldn’t be true, not by a long shot, but you can only caper around and wail like a raving lunatic for so long before you have to just sit down and brood in silence.

Things insane people ponder as they’re wandering through the juice section of the grocery store:

Beginnings are such arbitrary things, I suppose. So let’s say this all started that fateful July three years ago when I had to decide what I was going to bring on my 2000 mile sojourn from L.A. to Chicago. Two boxes, a suitcase, some CDs. Oh, of course, my computer. Everything I thought I would need for the one year that I was supposed to stay out here. Everything else (which was mostly useless trash that I had accumulated as an undergrad) stayed.

Now, I am an incorrigible pack-rat. For the longest time, I couldn’t bear the notion of throwing something away. It was completely alien to me. I would always let someone else throw it away for me, that way when I missed it, I always someone to blame.

But when you have to go somewhere, when you have to do something, nothing beats being unencumbered. I mean, sure, there’s always the risk of ending up wet because you forget to bring an umbrella, of being hungry because you forget about food, of having to go commando because you forget to pack your underwear, but for the most part, less is more. They can’t steal what you don’t have. And all that shit.

So now I have to do Something—a Quest, if you will—and I suppose that, despite my aching loneliness, I’ve had to do a lot of letting go, especially this year. Maybe not throwing things away in a material sense. But in retrospect, it seems like I’ve had to shave off entire chunks of my soul, possibly things that I need in order to live a normal life. But at this point in time, perhaps normalcy is a sheer impossibility.

So back to what I was thinking in the juice section of the grocery store: It’s all a metaphor. Somehow. I have been pondering Saturn Vs. Those multistage rockets that had to jettison their huge empty fuel tanks as they pulled out of Earth’s gravity well. Until all that was left was the command module. Suffice it to say, these things weren’t exactly reusable. The ultimate in our disposable culture.

This is what I feel like: I don’t know if you’ve watched enough science fiction to want to comprehend this, but sometimes you are being pursued by enemy spaceships, or perhaps you are fast approaching some strategic target like the infamous shaft of the Death Star or maybe the Home Planet of the Bug Beings, and at some point, you might have to start ejecting things in order to get light enough in order to get fast enough so that you can do your dirty work. And in space (except in Star Trek and Star Wars and, I suppose, in any fictional universe that has mastered nanotechnology and the skill of turning energy into matter), because it’s such an effort to make things out of raw materials pulled out of gravity wells like planets and such, there is something of a rationale for installing the bare minimum in spaceships. So when you actually eject something, it tends to be something important, and its importance is usually proportional to how badly you want to get to your target. Often times, it’s the auxillary life support, because you figure your chance of surviving before hitting the target is pretty slim, much less the chance of actually surving after hitting the target and requiring auxillary life support. Sometimes you toss the FTL (faster-than-light) engine (e.g., the warp drive, the hyperdrive, the worm hole generator, etc.) because odds are you won’t be making the trip back home on your own power anyway. In really specific cases you might eject the AI and its cybernetic core since you want to do something that the AI has been expressly programmed to prevent you from doing. My point is that at some point you end up throwing away something that, in normal circumstances, you would actually probably consider as necessary.

And my point being is this: I feel like I am approaching that strategic target, also known as the USMLE Step 1. In retrospect, somewhat pathetically, this is the end point of these past three years out here in the Midwest, and since none of my hopes, dreams, plans, or schemes really panned out, it is now apparently the end-all-be-all of my existence. Everything remaining in my universe is somehow geared to it, whether I wish it or not.

So I think I’ve dropped all my stages already. They’re already burning up in re-entry. I’ve even ended up having to toss out the auxillary life support and the extra spacesuit. I chucked three of the four iron-core onboard computers too. All that’s left is my command module floating around in orbit, loaded with nothing much but the neutron bombs I’m supposed to drop on my target. It’s so peaceful up here in LEO. You can see everything.

And I realize the thing with dropping bombs is that there comes a point where you have to commit. Eventually you get to a point in your dive that even if you do try to pull up, all that’s going to happen is that you’ll stall, and then you’re full of holes from the anti-aircraft guns. So when you fall, it’s all the way, baby. The point of no return.

But honestly, I don’t think the USMLE has got all that much firepower. I’ll probably take some hits, but I’m pretty sure that I’ll pass, that I’ll survive the mission. I mean, I know I shouldn’t think too far into the future, I really shouldn’t think about what happens after the test, but all I can really hope for is that I’ll get rescued pretty soon afterwards. Because without those huge fuel tanks, my range of motion becomes seriously limited, and like I said, I have thrown out my auxillary life support.

OK. So maybe this wasn’t the slickest of metaphors. I’m not ashamed to admit that, given my currently less-than-human state, I’m really not at the top of my game. All I’ve got left right now is not much, just enough to propel me through these last days until I do what I need to do. Beyond that, who knows. What can I say. Deep down inside, I’m hoping for that rescue. Although I know I shouldn’t count on it.

T minus 8 days 18 hours 23 minutes

I admit it. I actually really like the last post I made on this blog. I really think it captures the essence of my continued brokenhearted existence. (OK, yeah, brokenhearted is too melodramatic and pretty inaccurate. I feel more, I dunno, squish-hearted. Like I managed to drop my heart out of a second story window and it went splat like only a piece of meat can go splat, and sure it’s bruised and messy and squishy, but it really didn’t break or even splatter. Damaged but intact. Story of my life.) I like it so much that I tossed the last entry I made into the bit bucket, even though it took me over an hour to write, just so my index.html would be that last entry. (OK, I really didn’t delete what I wrote last night. It’s actually here but it really doesn’t make a lot of sense. It is even more incoherent than my usual insomniac 2am ranting and raving, if you can believe that.) I like the other day’s entry so much that I’m beginning to think of it as a piece of poetry.

Seriously, though, by writing it, I feel I have finally managed to articulate what I have felt to be completely wrong with life. It in fact explains why I haven’t gotten over certain particular people despite the fact that incredible amounts of time have elapsed and insurmountable circumstances have arisen. Despite what some people think, it’s not because I think there’s an infinitesimal chance that things might go my way. (Although who am I kidding, it’s not like the thought has never crossed my mind. But then I dream about being able to fly under my own power and of being able to travel through time, too. Any of these scenarios proably have roughly equal probability of occurring: almost but not quite zero.) It is the simple fact that I have equated the act of being rejected with the fact that I suck. And while I do indeed have outrageous self-esteem issues, let me tell you that it’s impossible to go through life believing that you suck. Seriously. I tried it for a little while. Pretty soon, the urge to carve your own heart out with the nearest cutting implement becomes uncontrollable. As long as your executive system in your frontal lobe is roughly intact, in biologist-speak, continuously believing that you suck is “incompatible with life.”

So, because I don’t like believing that I suck (despite rapidly accumulating evidence that it may very well be the case), I hang on to impossible hopes. Unfortunately, this only makes me swing insanely between believing that things might very well work out if I can just figure out how, and believing that I truly do suck and I should just do the world a favor by obliterating myself in the least messy way possible. Undoubtedly, just like everything in the universe, the truth is probably somewhere in between.

And yet. And yet. Despite this painfully won wisdom, I still feel like I haven’t learned a damn thing in these seven years of loneliness interspersed by intense episodes of depression. Seriously. Why don’t I just give up? What’s the use? At this juncture, it is easiest to believe that I will come up against this wall again and again, and that, for someone like me, I will never break through it. And yet I just cannot accept it. To believe that this is all there is, that I will have to wander the world pretty much on my own, maybe with a couple of friends here and there, but never to have someone I can count on to be beside me day after day. I tell you, this is what ashes taste like. It is quite a bitter thing to swallow. But I suppose I should just take the advice that they often give porn stars: If I just relax my throat, I suppose I’ll be able to take it all the way in.

So. A new chapter begins. Or an old chapter, more likely. Same old shit. I just can’t escape this feeling that everything I have to look forward to in this life is stuff that’s happening to other people. All I’ve got is to live vicariously through the victories and successes of my friends and family. I mean, I’m almost like a beggar hoping something will fall off the table. For myself, I can’t help but feel that this is it. From here until I die, this is how I’m going to feel. Anything I manage to accomplish will probably amuse me for a least a couple of days, but without anyone to share it with, it’s pointless. It’s like telling jokes when no one is around. What’s the point of laughing at yourself?

I don’t know. Mostly, I’m tired of disappointment. If it’s never going to turn out right, why try? But if I stop trying, what’s the point of going on?

Well right now, the only thing that keeps me going is that I know for a fact that there’s a finite probability that the things I’m hoping for might somehow come true, despite these repeated rebuffals. Like I said, that finite probability might be so close to zero that even God wouldn’t care about the difference, but it’s really all I’ve got. I know it’s stupid and irrational, but I don’t know what else to do.

If only I could get some feedback somehow. If only someone could tell me what the hell is wrong with me. Hopefully in a constructive manner. In a way so I can at least make an attempt at fixing myself. Alternatively, if only someone could tell me that I’m doomed, there is no fixing this, all I’ve got to do is ride this thing out and wait until they finally stick me into the ground. But, most of all, hoping against all hope, if only someone, anyone just might tell me that I’m doing something right, even if it’s a tiny little thing that no one cares about, and maybe then I can just stick to that.

Don’t tell me to go into therapy. I mean, yeah, it’s probably going to help simply because they’ll prescribe me some SSRIs or TCAs or maybe even give me ECT and I’m pretty sure I do have some kind of Axis I diagnosis, but do I really have to pay someone for this kind of emotional reassurance that it seems like everyone else is able to get for free? Man. The prostitutes and the psychiatrists are gonna make a shitload of money off of me.

Bleh. Me and my fantasies. Fuck it.