Sitting Alone, Below the Weight of Things

I can’t recall. Was there ever a decision reached, as to whether or not one should embark upon -or refrain from- writing under these conditions? I know there was plenty said about writing drunk and editing sober, or simply not writing drunk at all. That was Carver or Hemingway, or both. This is something different. I don’t have any recollection of anything being said concerning writing under the immediate influence of a situation or letting it pass and then reflecting upon it. 

It seems to me that it is much easier to tell a story. To turn a memory into words. I have never been particularly interested in ‘easy’. I have always wanted to take the feelings as they come and let them form their own sentences, and then paragraphs. You see, there is nothing there. Just a sensation. As if my blood was carrying battery acid and little salt crystals around my body. Then an emptiness. At first, I thought it was in my stomach, but having sat quietly with it for some time now, I have learned that it is in my eyes. The back of my throat. My feet. It radiates through my legs like some medical breathing apparatus working in reverse. I don’t want to begin getting lost in how tears feel when they are still just ideas, forming somewhere behind the cheekbones. 

 

The easiest thing to do is tell the story. Walk yourself through it. That way you can see, chronologically, why you are feeling the way you are. And, of course, such things allow the reader to empathise and feel the same as the protagonist, or at least understand why the protagonist might feel the way they feel. But, what use is that to me? 

I absolutely must smoke a cigarette at this point. My face is starting to feel as if there is a thin layer of concrete just beneath the skin, and it is beginning to set. My chest cavity is either shrinking or being replaced with a Catherine wheel, but instead of giving off sparks and flame, it is emitting a brume of darkness. 

Over the years I have learned how to sit with these types of situations. Not indefinitely, but certainly for longer. The practice is far from perfect, and there is still the issue that, the longer I sit with them -if I cannot sit with them completely- the greater the paroxysm. For many years, I didn’t sit with them at all. I just lived a life that didn’t allow them to become conscious. I drank and fucked them away. Retrospectively, I can see that it was a version of these sensations that dictated the paths I took. In a way, that is still the case, but I can provide a little defiance now. Eventually the path of least resistance becomes much more difficult than the task of sitting still. So I began to sit. 

These are the moments that are often likened to hell. Sitting here, denying the soul an immediate escape. And it is in these moments that terrible things can happen. Because, as that brume of darkness grows, as you get deeper and deeper inside of it, you lose the ability to see. All you can do is feel, and these are not the things any of us particularly want to sit and feel. That last-minute decision to escape. The point at which the nervous system takes full control in  an attempt to save the rotting brain. These are the eruptions that have the propensity to cause the most damage.

I always promised, if I was ever going to write, that I would never hide anything from the world. Nor would I word it in such a way that might come across as a cry for help. I've always wanted to be as matter-of-fact as possible in the hope that the feelings might feed the words, and somehow, they might feed me. I shared such thoughts with you because there have been numerous times when I have read writers perfectly explain some difficult state of mind, and it has given me some sense of solidarity in a world I otherwise feel alien to.

So when I tell you what sitting with these situations might lead to, I don’t choose to do so in the hope that you might pity me. I have spent weeks walking around looking for trees that I might hang myself from. Picturing how the birds will continue to sing and the breeze will still cool the hot air around me. I have wrapped one end of a five-meter dog leash around a door handle. Fed the leash over the top of the door and made a loop in the free-hanging end. I have measured out the height. Brought a chair to the door. Stood on that chair. Placed the loop around my neck and sunk down so I could feel how it would feel. So that i could make the decision as to whether or not I would kick the chair away. 

There have been uglier times. There have been times when I obtained bottles of whiskey and wine. Times when I have purchased packets of tramadol from separate pharmacies. Times when I have put on Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks and consumed as much as possible. And in these times, the only thing I have ever killed was my reasoning. There was always a part of me that was very much alive and kicking. That part of me would take my motorbike. Drive somewhere. Fast. Cause a scene. Then, somehow, it would get me back home where I would pass out. I would lose days inside a fog. The salt crystals in my blood replaced with grenades. 

I have broken bones. Opened skin. I have invited rape. I have considered murder. There will always be those who automatically regard this as insane. Some will have questions regarding particulars. But, I think, for the most part, this is where we go when we stop and think about how existence became so unbearable. 

Now, I must interrupt myself. I have done far too much in the way of story telling, and that is not why I am here. I am here, simply because I wanted to see what happened if I sat down and started typing at the point where everything felt hopeless again. I wondered if I might be led to create something that is useful to you. The world is rife with meaninglessness. Empty -or at least misunderstood- promises. There is a lack of understanding as to the whole journey. So we cough up little bits as pearls of wisdom, but they are incomplete. So we spend years collecting tiny fragments in the hope that they might one day fit together. But they won’t. You will either become lost in them, or learn to leave out the bits that don’t make any sense. But those bits! Those bits are so very subversively in control. They wait. They find you. They amputate you from reasoning. They put words in your mouth that don’t seem to belong to you. But that is only the case because you don’t really know what belongs to you and what doesn’t. 

I don’t think many can sit with themselves entirely. I think some living in jaded spiritual states believe they can. I don’t think many take enough time to sit with the emptiness and violence that make up a part of the human soul. Honestly, I see no reason why anyone would want to. But, at the same time, here I am, almost two decades on from sitting in a coffee shop with my counselling tutor. She sat listening to me, looking concerned. And when I asked her what was wrong, she explained that when someone begins to look inwards -earnestly- there is no way to stop it, and all one can do is go deeper and deeper into that blume of darkness that I am sat with now. 

Yet somehow, I can still feel the air been blown across the room by the fan. There are still three dogs that need to be walked, and then fed. I will have to eat at some point myself. By which point it will be time to sleep, and that is when I will find out whether or not this little exercise in sitting with these feelings bore any fruit.

I am hoping for guavas.