Put The Champagne On Ice

What the fuck am I doing?

Sunday, the sun rises. The sun sets. A charcoal line is drawn against the walls of my room, moving every hour, light into dark, day into night. Nothing makes noise, nothing stirs. I lay in bed, peeping at the world through one eye, hoping something cataclysmic befalls mankind to put some color in my world. There is nothing for me to do. I am insanely bored.

I go into my bag and pull out the SHOUT OUT paperwork, going through it, going to the computer, keying in, typing up, sorting out, emailing. I am busy for but only a short period of time, but it's rewarding work. I finish. It's like a curtain falling. The dull ache that is my life returns. I sit back in my chair, staring at the computer screen. I fight back entropy with my mind. I read.

I read old emails. I go back, reading me in the past. Reading how I responded to this stimulus, how I reacted to that one. I am surprised for some reason. This person, this ME is balanced, he's coherent, he's...whoa! But here he's out of control. What? I am teetering, obsessive, demanding, vindictive. Something is wrong. This is not me. Steeped in turmoil, confused, stunned, hurt, withdrawn, obsessive again. Raging here and there. I am not familiar with this person. I don't know who he is. He is out of balance, and yet, he is me.

I stop reading. I can't take it anymore. The revelations are coming too quick. I see myself, through emails, withdrawing away from the poets, becoming more and more of a hermit, having less and less to say, declining more and more invitations until even they stop. I am engineering my world. I am building my tomb. I am creating my final resting place.

I have to stop. In apology I write a number of long emails, that I do not mail. I blog old posts. I can't write this one. I am too deep in my own disbelief. I am not the man that I was before. ABILIFY is one powerful drug, almost too powerful. It has held my thinking tightly, crippling the soul but leaving the flesh to dance about. A cancer from within, unbeknownst to close friends, barely discernable to those even closer. My mind has been descending down a winding staircase, and in retrospect, I am staring in horror.

I want my mind back! I want my thinking back! I am left with a blank slate, and the only way that I can find myself, the only way that I can refresh the memory, is through reading my old emails. Preferably those emails that were written before the introduction of the ABILIFY. I am in awe of the chemical and it's effect on the brain. I am in awe of the destruction and the recuperative abilities of the final frontier, the mind, specifically my mind.

I am up late, very late, IMing. Talking, talking, talking. I am responding to stimuli, chatting with Betty, making a night out of it. I'm not tired. But I have to get up early in the morning and out and across town by 8:30 to the Metropolitan Hospital to search for a therapist. I need to get some sleep. I sign off, turn of the computer and crawl into bed. I lay there, staring at the ceiling. Something runs across my leg. I grope at it, my fingers come away with empty air. Something crawls up my back. I reach for it, finding nothing. I close my eyes and bugs are crawling all over me. I jump up out of bed, turn on the lights, search the sheets, tear them off to search the bed. Nothing. Nothing. I stand up naked into the light. There is nothing crawling on my body. I put everything back in order, crawl back into bed. I close my eyes. The maddening crawling returns. I toss, turn, slap, grope, jump from the bed and take a seat in front of the computer, turning it on, turning on the radio and stare at my screensaver scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, to music. The crawling is still going on, up and down my legs, up and down my arms, across my face, in my ears, around my back and balls.

I am refusing to go crazy. It turns into four in the morning. My head nods. I am tired. I keep the computer on, the music going, to take my mind off my skin, and close my eyes. I drift off to a fitful sleep.

Hobobob